OUR COMMUNITY
L
egendary Detroit News columnist Jerry Green, 93, returned from
Los Angeles last month having covered his 56th consecutive
Super Bowl in person, the only daily sportswriter in history to
attend every championship game.
Actually, it’s a title Green has owned since his good friend, now
retired Newark Star Ledger writer Jerry Izenberg,
called Green three years ago to
tell him he was ending his Super
Bowl run at 53 games. “I can’t
go; you carry on,
” Izenberg said.
Hence, as Green has stated: “By
default, I became the last man
standing.
”
Green described this year’s
Super Bowl atmosphere in LA
to me as “too Hollywood.
” Not a
surprising depiction from a man who definitely
doesn’t seem to get impressed by all the sparkle,
just the sports. Hollywood would be challenged
to find a screenwriter capable of improving
on the story of Jerry’s life, both personally and
professionally.
A fully vaccinated Green experienced a
breakthrough case of COVID last November.
While recovered, the status of his challenges
with pulmonary fibrosis and neuropathy may
play a role in his traveling to Arizona next February to cover Super
Bowl LVII. This year’s trip took a little bit of coaxing by the NFL.
“The league has been very, very good to me,
” Green said. “
And the
truth is, in 2021, I pretty much decided I was going to stop. I was the
last man to have covered them all but the league asked me to go.
”
Being honored to be, as Green described it, “Summoned by the
league,
” gave him added incentive to make the pilgrimage to last year’s
Super Bowl in Tampa, that and he wanted to have another chance to
witness and chronicle the amazing career of quarterback Tom Brady.
Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers went on to easily defeat the
Kansas City Chiefs.
Brady made headlines March 13 announcing he was ending his
short-lived two-month retirement to return to the Buccaneers for his
23rd NFL season. Despite having already won 7 Super Bowls, Brady
claimed he still had “unfinished business.
”
If Green does decide to sit out next year’s championship game, his
Super Bowl coverage streak of 56 consecutive games will have ended
where it all began — Los Angeles, the site of the first Super Bowl in
1967. Turns out the number 56 itself, as you’ll read
further on, influenced Green’s decision to keep his
streak alive.
An old proverb says: “a journey of a thousand
miles begins with one step.
” Jerry Green has logged
far more than a thousand miles on his way to
attending 56 Super Bowls. However, it turns out, the
introduction to another sport is what initially whet
his appetite and led to his eventual passion for shar-
ing sports with the rest of the world.
PLAY BALL!
Green was born on April 15, 1928, in Manhattan
Island, New York, but spent his formative years
in Long Island. He shared that he identifies with
Judaism more on a heritage level than on its faith.
“But you would still like a good corned-beef sand-
wich?” I asked, to which he replied, “I prefer pas-
trami.
”
Green’s parents belonged to a Reform synagogue
and Jerry was bar mitzvahed. I suggested that if he
received the traditional old fashion gift of a fountain pen, he would’ve
probably written a sports column with it. For the record he said: “I
got a baseball mitt.
” I should’ve known better.
Green recalls vividly his awakening to sports. “I remember the
day before my 8th birthday, my father told me, ‘the baseball season
is opening today.
’” It was a classic match-up between the New York
Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers.
“I was immediately interested,
” said Green. “My father told me I
could listen to the game on a radio station after school.
”
It would turn out to be an early birthday gift of sorts that would
impact his son’s life, and life’s work, for the next 85 years. “That one
game got you hooked on sports?” I asked, to which Green emphati-
cally replied: “Yes, very much.
”
Catching up with legendary sportswriter Jerry Green.
The Dean of
SUPER BOWLS
Alan
Muskovitz
Contributing
Writer
18 | MARCH 24 • 2022
Jerry Green earlier in his career.