Notes on a Scorecard of an Extraordinary Life, Career. . . .

Malamud was a meat-and-potatoes sports guy. If it wasn’t football or basketball or baseball or hockey or boxing, it just wasn’t.

Oh, he wrote about other sports, but more out of a sense of balance for his readers than out of any sort of passion.

We had this ongoing thing about tennis. I wanted more items on that sport in his column. He wanted me to take my racket and leave him alone.

Over the years, I beat him down a little. He actually started watching some of the major events, and even grudgingly admitted that there was some pretty good theater out there once in awhile.

Then, two weeks ago, Pete Sampras won the classic U.S. Open match in which, near total exhaustion and dehydration, he persevered to win while vomiting a couple of times in the fifth-set tiebreaker.

When it was over, Malamud wandered in to my office, chin down, and said: “All right. I’ll admit it. I never saw anything quite like that.”

But did he write a lot about it? Of course not. Had he, I would have been devastated. We would have had to find something else to argue about.