Sportswriter Larry Millson could sort ‘the vital bits from the decoration’

Philip King is a former editor in The Globe’s sports department.

It’s often said that the more you like someone, the more nicknames you have for them. Sportswriter Larry Millson, who died this week at 83, had lots of them: Millstone, Millbone, Millhouse, Millsie and, of course, Lar. I usually called him Mr. Millson, because I felt he had earned respect.

Larry was a sportswriter’s sportswriter. He could cover a live event and file a complete story, on the unforgiving deadline of a morning newspaper, about any sport – Olympics, football, hoops, hockey, horses and especially baseball, where a game could turn on a single swing in the ninth inning and force him to rewrite the first five paragraphs in less than a minute.

He was a true gentleman, a concise writer, a hard worker and quick with a laugh or anecdote.

And he always remembered to insert what journalists call a nut paragraph – a quick background that gives the rest of the story context. Larry’s graph: He worked for the Toronto Telegram, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and Field Level Media, among many others, in a career that spanned seven decades and thousands of bylines from dozens of events. He was in San Francisco covering the 1989 World Series during the Loma Prieta earthquake and immediately switched gears from the sports pages to writing about the temblor and its aftermath for the newspaper’s front page. Wrote Ballpark Figures: The Blue Jays and the Business of Baseball, the first definitive book on the impact of player salaries on a baseball team; and co-wrote, with former Blue Jays trainer Ken Carson, From Hockey to Baseball: I Kept Them in Stitches. Won a Sovereign Award in 1981 for his coverage of Canadian thoroughbred racing, and in 2016, won the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame’s Jack Graney Award, a lifetime-achievement honour given to members of the media for their contribution to Canadian baseball. Married to wife Diane for almost 60 years. Daughter Cara, grandson Benjamin, great granddaughter Elly. Died Tuesday (Oct. 6) in Toronto of complications of a fall on the stairs leading to his basement man cave.

Larry would have hated that paragraph. Too long. He was more Ernest Hemingway than James Joyce.

My favourite opening paragraph, from a story he filed from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics:

“The chant goes up from venue to venue at these Olympic Games. ‘U.S, eh, U.S., eh.’ Here we are coming into the last weekend of the Olympics, eh, and there are all these Americans still trying to sound like Canadians.”

Larry’s peripatetic job would often take him away from his family for weeks at a time. It took a toll. “It’s like we had two separate lives then,” Diane said. “He was driven. Single-minded in terms of his profession.”

He had his quirks. Typed with two fingers. Never had a driver’s licence. Briefly co-owned a standardbred race horse. Timed the national anthem at baseball games. Followed the Cleveland Browns. Loved the rock bands U2 and AC/DC and, at the other end of the music spectrum, bluegrass/country singer-songwriter Mickey Clark.

After 37 years with The Globe, Larry retired from the paper in 2009. But he kept chronicling Toronto teams, especially the Blue Jays, which he covered for more than 30 years. In an Instagram/X post, the club said, “Larry remained a familiar and welcome presence in the Rogers Centre press box, continuing to share his love of baseball through his writing, his stories and the friendships he built through the game.” The posting generated more than 10,000 likes.

Former Toronto Star sports columnist Dave Perkins, who knew Larry for 53 years, cut to the chase about what made Larry such a good journalist.

“Larry had the best bull detector of anyone I worked with or met in my 40 years in the business of Toronto newspapering. In his horse racing days, the Ontario Jockey Club routinely would pee in your ear and tell you it was raining. Millson would happily give the better weather report.

“You couldn’t fool him. And many tried. He knew how to sort the vital bits from the decoration.”

Dave and Larry were competitors, but also friends. “Over the years we travelled and laughed together through hundreds, maybe thousands of games. Real good journalist. Better guy.”

Larry’s only hobby was sports, writing about them, watching them, talking about them. He could keep fellow journalists entranced for hours with his tales of sporting events he’d covered and characters he’d met through the years.

“Larry was one of a kind. He lived sports,” said Joan Astley, the sports department’s long-time executive assistant, who worked for years with Larry on complicated travel arrangements for his assignments.

He never stopped working. He had two writing assignments due Friday (Oct. 9) for Core Sports, a Toronto-based sports publishing company. It was the first deadline Mr. Millson ever missed.