With grateful hearts we remember “Everybody’s Friend” Danny Coughlin – Terry Pluto

But one night it was Dan Coughlin. He identified himself as he picked up the phone.

I was so excited. I had read Danny's stories. I wanted to be a sports journalist and I spoke to a real sports journalist on the phone.

“Glad you called,” Danny said. “We were waiting for Benedictine.”

He meant the score and the statistics. I was nervous talking to Danny and kind of stumbled around. He was patient and walked me through the information he needed.

I thought about the phone call 50 years ago when I heard that Danny had died on Sunday at the age of 86.

Everyone's friend

Yes, I call him…Danny. Anyone who ever met Coughlin probably called him “Danny.” He was the type of guy who quickly made you feel like a friend.

I began spending time with Danny in the summers of 1975 and 1976. I had a summer job with the Cleveland Cobras, a professional summer soccer team that played at Baldwin-Wallace.

I was a PR director for $80 a week. I had no idea what I was doing. But I had spoken to Danny on the phone a few times during my Benedictine days, so I called and asked him to come over and write some football stories.

He did exactly that. The same was true for Tim Rogers, who worked for the press. Both men were so gracious to me. They were both encouraging when I told them about my dream of becoming a sportswriter after graduating from Cleveland State.

Another era

At one point, Danny asked me to write a Cobras season preview for The Plain Dealer. Another author was commissioned to do it.

“You know him,” Danny said. “If he writes it, I just have to rewrite it. It will take forever. You know the team better than any of us. You write it and I will write his name on the byline.”

“You mean I'll get a story in the police?” I asked.

“But it will be under his name,” Danny said. “I know I don’t have to deal with your stuff. I have read your press releases. You’re good.”

So began my career as a plain dealer, with a story under someone else's name. I'm not revealing the name because I know Danny doesn't want me to.

I was thrilled that Danny thought I was good enough to write for The Plain Dealer. I loved his stories and columns about everything from high school to the pros.

I have to add that Danny was one of my references when I was looking for a job at a newspaper after graduating from Cleveland State. I was told that not only did he say nice things, but by the time he was finished, Danny had made me sound like a cross between Grantland Rice and John Steinbeck.

Did Danny stretch it a bit? Anyone who has ever met him knows this was the case. He was a classic Irish storyteller. This meant that he never let a few small facts get in the way of a point he wanted to make.

When Danny sold me on as the next big sportswriter to an editor named Irwin Smallwood at the Greensboro Daily News, I gained my journalism experience working part-time at the old Cleveland Press. I took a lot of high school results on the phone and wrote high school stories for their community section.

“You have to hire this boy,” Danny insisted. “He has what it takes!”

The poet, the baseball writer

In 1978, Danny became The Plain Dealer's baseball writer. He was completely unsuitable for the job. Reporting on the tribe meant writing lots of stories – and doing so quickly.

Danny was one of the best writers in the history of Cleveland journalism, in sports or otherwise. But it took him forever to write. His face would be in agony. He grumbled, mumbled and shook his head. He stopped and stared into the abyss trying to find the right word.

Covering baseball is stressful enough.

But Danny had another idea. He wanted to start every game story with a four-line poem…that rhymed!!!

He shouted in the press box, “What word rhymes with…wise?”

Writers screamed, “Guys…Jesus…how the hell do I know, I'm trying to write my own story!”

In honor of Danny, here is my attempt at writing one of his game story poems:

TThe Tribe had a pitcher named Rick Wise

Who is one of the best guys?

But that night when he left the hill

All he heard was a booing sound.

OK, even from the grave I can hear Danny screaming, “This is terrible.”

Then his joyful laugh.

Take me home

After two years of baseball, Danny had had enough. I covered the Orioles for the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1979.

“You have to come home,” Danny said. “I’m going to die out here.”

He said he was going to be around baseball for six months. When the tribe was in Baltimore, I met him at the team hotel. He had two beds in his room. Both had slept. A few beer cans were scattered around.

“I couldn’t remember which bed I was using,” he said. “So why not both?”

Danny told me about a game in Boston. He wrote on a so-called “Porta-Bubble,” one of the first laptops. Danny said after submitting his story, “I picked up this piece of crap and threw it out the window of the Fenway Park press box.”

He did this so they would have to buy him a new computer. Is this a true story? I don't know. But it was funny.

Danny made a plan for me to visit The Plain Dealer the next time the Orioles came to Cleveland.

“I’ll get you the baseball job,” he said. “No one on staff wants it. You’re going to be great.”

That's exactly what happened. Danny let me meet the editors. He made me sound like the next Gordon Cobbledick, the Plain Dealer's Hall of Fame baseball writer. So I actually came home in 1980.

I remember telling the bosses and Danny, “If I get this job, I won’t be able to write poems to go with game stories.”

The bosses said, “Just get the story out on time.”

He loved school sports

Danny graduated from St. Edward High in 1956. From the beginning, he loved high school sports and that never changed. In 1964 he began working at The Plain Dealer.

After a few years he wanted to become a sports columnist. At The Plain Dealer, Hal Lebovitz and Chuck Heaton had that job. Danny was frustrated. In 1982, the Cleveland Press made him an afternoon offer to become a columnist.

Lebovitz and others tried to dissuade Danny from the move. They knew that the press was in deep financial trouble. At this point, many major cities lost one of their two daily newspapers.

A year later the press actually died.

Danny had a contract and received an extra year's salary despite the newspaper's decline. He recreated himself as a sportscaster on Fox-8. He is in the halls of fame of various media outlets and has won dozens of awards in writing and television.

Danny wrote for some suburban newspapers.

Between 2010 and 2018 he wrote four books. His first was called “Crazy With the Papers to Prove It.” The last one was “Just One More Story.” Danny still had a story. He often hosted book signings (and storytelling) at his favorite bars.

Sometimes he anchored Fox-8's sports desk, sometimes he reported. He was good at everything, but never better than at college sports. That was his first love.

Don't you believe it?

Danny reported on the St. Ignatius/St. game on Friday evening. Edward… less than two days before his death.

As I write this, it is with a heavy heart and a grateful soul. Danny loved telling stories, but rarely appreciated how he helped so many others, like me.