Remembering the late Keith Jarrett, our friendship and an unforgettable drive to Fenway
Believe it or not, I helped Keith Jarrett write his first game story on deadline.
Keith and I both started at the Asheville Citizen-Times in 1986. He was a sportswriter and I was a part-time sports correspondent.
It was September of 1986. Keith worked for the afternoon paper, the Asheville Times. The Times printed in the afternoon so when he would cover a game, he would have plenty of time to think about what he wanted to write. But for the Citizen-Times, covering a high school football game on Friday night meant the story had to be done as quickly as possible. Doug Mead, the sports editor at the time, told Keith he had to have his story in 30 minutes.
Keith sat next to me and turned and said he didn’t know what to write and time was of the essence. I simply told him to not worry about what to write for the lead and just write what came to his mind. He did that and his story was finished before mine. As I read his story in the paper the next day, I had to admit his story was better than mine, too.
That was the last time Keith needed any help from me to write a story and for more than 30 years, he wrote brilliantly for the Citizen-Times and later the Hendersonville Times-News. From that conversation, a great friendship began. Keith was the older brother I never had and I think Keith might have thought of me as the younger brother he never had. I was the oldest of five children and Keith was the youngest in his family.
We had a lot of similar interests in sports, politics, movies, books and beer. Keith and I closed a few bars in our time and kept a few open a few years longer during our drinking days. We had to be on opposite sides more than a few times with my full-time job as Sports Information Director at UNC Asheville and he with his job. However, our friendship never wavered. We could agree to disagree and did a few times but it never threatened our friendship.
He was an incredible writer and a masterful storyteller. Keith had experienced a lot in his life and was good enough to tell us about some of his adventures. Geoff Cabe, the Southern Conference Senior Associate Commissioner, and I took Keith to Fenway Park in 2000 to see his beloved Red Sox play at home. We decided to drive the 17 hours to Boston partly because Keith didn’t like flying and it was expensive to fly into Boston.
It was a trip we’d never forget.
Keith reveled us with stories on the way up and on the way down. The experiences of growing up in Marion and playing high school baseball and basketball — how he once stole a ball from James Worthy in high school but Worthy would block his shot on the other end of the court; starting college at Western Carolina, then dropping out for a while before finishing his education at UNC Asheville.
He went to UNC Asheville to become a teacher. Luckily for all of us, that didn’t work out and he ended up being a sportswriter.
Keith enjoyed his first trip to Fenway Park even though the Red Sox were going through a disappointing 2000 season. He fit in well in the bleachers. When we came home, Keith penned a brilliant column about his experience at Fenway. At the time, there was serious talk about building a new ballpark in Boston and tearing down Fenway. People determined to save Fenway saw Keith’s column and used it to put pressure on Boston ownership to keep the Red Sox right there at Fenway.
Much has been said about how Keith didn’t mind writing a negative column and story but we all benefited from his work. The Asheville Civic Center was not the beautiful facility it is now and back in the early part of this century, it lost pro teams and tournaments because of a lack of commitment to the facility. Keith pointed this out numerous times and kept pressure on city officials to eventually do something. Thankfully, things were done and now we’re hosting the Southern Conference Tournament for the 11th straight year and other basketball tournaments have come through.
Oh if you were on the receiving end of one of those brash columns it wasn’t fun to go through. UNC Asheville decided to reconfigure Justice Center where we played basketball back in the 1999-00 season. The work was supposed to be done before the season started but of course it wasn’t. It was done over the Christmas holidays and stunningly it was done about as wrong as it could have been. Rails were put in the wrong places and many fans couldn’t see.
We didn’t have time to fix it right away and we had a doubleheader on Jan. 2, 2000. Both our teams lost and didn’t look good doing it at all. Keith managed to work that in his story on both games and the criticism was scathing but accurate. We were able to get the rails fixed before the next game and I called to tell him it had been fixed.
He wrote a story about the Justice Center being fixed and I’ll never forget his lead: “UNC Asheville fans can see clearly now. The rails are gone.” Oh it hurt but it was a great line. Keith told me that the Johnny Nash song he based his lead on had always been one of his favorite songs and was too good not to use.
Our men’s basketball team used his criticism to go to its first NCAA Tournament. Back in 2003, we played Winthrop in the final regular-season game of the year. The Eagles, under Gregg Marshall, had won four straight championships and looked like they would win another one. We were the preseason pick to win the league but just hadn’t measured up. And we didn’t measure up in the final game of the year against Winthrop at Justice Center. The Eagles had beaten us up physically and mentally.
The next day we all read his lead from an old Johnny Cash song: “Beaten worse than a boy named Sue.” It embarrassed our team but galvanized our club. We ended up upsetting Winthrop a week later in the Big South Tournament and then would go to win the championship with a blowout win over Radford in the finals. The win over the Highlanders clinched our first trip to the NCAA Tournament. We had some good teams that had fallen short but finally we were going to the Big Dance.
We had three seniors on that team in Andre Smith, Alex Kragel and Ben McGonagil. In the postgame press conference, Ben thanked Keith for helping the team to win the title. He said: “When Mr. Jarrett said we were beaten worse than a boy named Sue we knew we needed to play a better and more aggressive to win a championship. So Mr. Jarrett really inspired us with his words.”
I saw Keith blush at what Ben said. He told Ben afterwards he was glad he could help and there were no hard feelings.
We both retired in 2015, sort of. I retired from the state of North Carolina after 30 years of work and received a pension, while Keith accepted a buyout from Gannett. He then went to work improving the WNC Sports Award Banquet. Through his drive and determination, along with a hard-working board, the event once again became the showcase for high school athletics at the end of the year. He also improved the WNC Athletics Hall of Fame and helped usher in new classes that diversified the Hall of Fame.
He was also nice enough to get me involved in 2016. Steve White and I were given the MOOG/Gene Ochsenreiter Lifetime Achievement Award. Steve was the long-time Sports Information Director at Western Carolina before retiring in the mid 1990s. I have to admit I didn’t know what was going on until one day Keith left me a voicemail. He said “Mike call me. I need to talk to you.”
For a second, I thought I was back at UNC Asheville and something was wrong and Keith needed a comment from someone. Then I remembered we were both retired. I called Keith and he told me the good news and that Lisa and I needed to be at the Grove Park Inn on May 15. He also told me I would have to make a speech but it needed to be short.
I owe so much to Keith and our 35 years of friendship. He made my job easier at UNC Asheville as he took a lot of my ideas for stories and wrote brilliant features on them. But the greatest thing he did for me was he helped me meet my beautiful wife, Lisa. And as soon as we met and started dating, I introduced her to Keith and he became a great friend to her, as well.
The past three weeks have been hard for Lisa and I and the many friends Keith had. And last Wednesday was simply a horrible day when we lost Keith for good when he passed at the age of 62. Our area lost not only a brilliant sportswriter, but a warm and caring person.
Earlier this year I wrote a column about former Citizen-Times Sports Editor Wilt Browning who had passed away back in January from COVID. Keith texted me said I had written a great column. I smiled for a week about that because that was the highest of praise coming from Keith.
It’s going to be tough going on without Keith. There were so many things to talk about and more Red Sox games to go to. But what will warm my heart is the fact that I was lucky enough to have Keith Jarrett for a friend for 35 years.
Thank you, Keith. You are gone but you will never be forgotten.
This article originally appeared on Hendersonville Times-News: Remembering the late Keith Jarrett, our friendship and an unforgettable drive to Fenway
