RIP Oge

TigerBlog received a few responses to his suggestion that he find a new NFL team to root for yesterday, since he's giving up on the Giants because they didn't hire Marc Ross as their GM.

One suggestion was the Jets, though that came with the disclaimer that "I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." Another didn't really offer a solution, just a warning label about rooting for the Redskins as long as Dan Snyder owns the team.

"The days of Joe Gibbs are over," it said.

TigerBlog covered a few NFL preseason games and wrote some training camp stories during his newspaper days, when the overwhelming majority of what he covered was high schools (1983-89) or college (1989-94).

He never wanted to cover pro sports. They seemed too, well, professional. He's confident that he found the right place for himself, Princeton University, long ago.

Before he ever covered a Princeton game, though, he definitely enjoyed his time on the high school beat. He wrote a lot about schools in Bucks County, Pa., never really imagining that both of his kids would one day play for and against those teams he was covering, primarily in a sport - lacrosse - that he knew nothing about back then.

Most of the high school stuff he covered, though, was in Mercer County, the county that includes Princeton, the state capital of Trenton and a high school sports-crazed town called Hamilton. There's a charm to covering high schools, and TB covered a lot of great games played by a lot of great athletes under the watch of a lot of great coaches in those years.

He saw a lot of familiar faces from those days yesterday at the funeral of George O'Gorman, a long-time sportswriter for the Trentonian. In a world where major cities no longer have multiple newspapers that print each day, the city of Trenton continues to print two papers - the Trentonian and the Times of Trenton.

That's a shocking situation in the current media climate, and it's another story for another day. The short version is that TigerBlog thinks that much of it is driven by the market for high school sports coverage in the area.

George O'Gorman - "Oge" to everyone who knew him, which meant pretty much everyone in Mercer County - spent more than 40 years covering high school sports, though he did much more than that, including covering the Giants during much of that time.

In addition to writing, he was active in just about everything that went on in local youth and high school sports, especially in soccer.

TigerBlog isn't sure when he first met Oge. It was definitely early on. He knows they covered a lot of the same games way back when.

Everyone liked Oge, and everyone respected how hard he worked. There's nobody who can dispute that. He covered a lot of games, often on the same day.

He cared deeply about the athletes and their experience, and he did whatever he could to help them. He had so many behind-the-scenes jobs that TB can't be certain of what they all were. He definitely was involved at Mercer County Park.

He covered some Princeton games through the years. His cousin, Joe O'Gorman, covered a lot more of the Tigers than Oge did before he recently retired. TB saw Joe briefly at the funeral, and it's always good to see him. Like his cousin, he's one of the good guys.

The funeral yesterday was a who's who of people who have covered sports in Mercer County, including Joe. Among those who currently cover the Tigers regularly, Bob Nuse was there. So was Bill Alden. And Kyle Franko.

Ray Clark was there. He and TigerBlog go back to his first day in the newspaper business.

There were many others. The common denominator was that they all liked Oge.

He was a hard guy not to like. He was a big man with a deep voice. He was one of those guys who knew everyone but who always made it seem like you were special to him.

He had a stroke a few years ago and had been battling health issues since. It was Joe who told TB that Oge wasn't doing well a few weeks ago, and then TB saw of his death first from Tom McCarthy, the former Princeton football and basketball announcer who mentioned Oge's passing during a Phillies' telecast.

Oge was 73 when he died.

Maybe the changing media world will eventually catch up with Trenton too, and one or both of the papers will cease to print. It'll be a sad day if it ever comes to that.

As for the glory days, they were back in the 1980s for TB. He'd go to a game, and there'd usually be someone from the Trentonian there as well. Often it was George O'Gorman, and when it was, TB knew he'd be getting a very nice, very genuine "how are you" from the man everyone called Oge.

The world of local sports has lost a really, really good man.