Tim Sassone was a good man in a tough business.
One of the best hockey writers in modern times, the Arlington Heights, Ill.-based Daily Herald’s Sassone dealt with ERA. In a sports journalism profession rife with egotism and elitism, caste systems and high-school lunchroom clique behavior, Sassone believed in an equal rights amendment for his work life. All colleagues were his peers with equal standing as professionals and human beings, even though as a hockey-beat newbie you paled in access and ability as he worked the locker room and phones like a virtuoso.
Wander into the lunchroom at then-Wachovia Arena during the Blackhawks-Flyers Stanley Cup Finals in 2010, and Sassone waved you over to dine with him. Put the products of the good second-period spread (thank you, Rocky Wirtz) on another table in the back of the United Center pressbox, and Sassone would join you, asking for a scouting report on the vittles. The only time where you gave him space was when Sassone was composing his story. You don’t bug masters at work.
Sassone died at 58, much too young by 21st century longevity standards, on March 25 after a long illness. Like losing buddy and co-author Jim Rygelski, 65, last December, the passing rammed home the fact the “Turk” relentlessly comes for all of us, one by one, and each day is to be savored to the fullest, and never wasted.
Making it hurt more is where I first encountered both Sassone and Rygelski: at the Northern Star student daily at Northern Illinois University between 1976 and 1978. I remember our early dealings clearly. Those days were nearly four decades ago, the time gone quickly, with the clock ticking seemingly faster.
I consider myself old-school in the business. So was Sassone. He did not surrender to the gulf that has now widened between media and athletes.
Coming up in the previous century, you stayed ahead of the competition with one-on-one relationships with athletes, coaches, and executives. Professionalism and personality built relationships, upon which good information was obtained. Sources were not burned. If you had to write negatively, the effort wasn’t extracted from an orifice shielded from the sun and had balance and fairness as its basis.
Sassone’s job, like everyone else’s, was made more difficult as access began closing up in a more corporate-oriented, megabucks-at-stake era post-2000. But he was so good at his craft that he was the most respected media person around the United Center, and certainly in the Top 5 in the hyper-political Chicago sports-media market.
As he battled illness to return to work in 2013, the Hawks presented Sassone with a special No. 25 red sweater in honor of his number of years on the hockey beat.
“For 26 years Tim painted a picture for Blackhawks fans and worked tirelessly to be a great reporter,” said Hawks executive VP Jay Blunk, who began in the old-school era as a Chicago Cubs media relations intern in the mid-1980s. “The entire organization was proud to work with Tim each and every day as he was driven to bring the hockey to life on the pages of the Daily Herald. He will be missed by everyone at the United Center and around the National Hockey League. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”
I couldn’t write enough to honor Sassone, having known him in the business probably longer than anyone else working games. No. 2 in longevity on the Hawks beat had to be Tim Cronin. The pride of rustic Worth, Ill. is a true hockey aficionado and golf and sports broadcasting historian who covered the Hawks for three decades starting in 1978 for the Chicago southwest suburban Daily Southtown-Star. More recently Cronin looked over Sassone’s shoulder in the UC pressbox toiling for the Associated Press.
“Tim Sassone was a master craftsman of journalism,” he said. “He knew a good story when he saw one and knew how to make it better. Tim would always, always ask the most salient question, the one that would elicit either the best quote of the night or reveal the unseen truth.
“He was both a solid reporter and a gifted writer. The former was obvious by his command of the facts, but the latter was more subtle. Tim didn’t get fancy. He got to the point. He was able to say in 25 well-chosen words what others failed to say in 100. And he was brilliant on deadline.”
Sassone the person – lower-decibel than average, with a required amount of cynicism, but an absolute love of hockey and intolerance of incompetence in the sport – was just as good as the journalist, if not better.
“He was also a great guy,” Cronin said. “He would poke fun, grouse about perceived sins, help those new to the beat – the (Chicago) Tribune’s probably had eight writers since Tim took the Herald beat in 1988 – and was very much a friend.
“He was fun to play golf with, even when – and it was almost inevitable – he was mad about a shot and would fling a club. I’ve known him since the early 1980s, when he was at the Star/Herald, as the Chicago Heights (Ill.) Star’s Orland Park edition was then known, and knew immediately that he would go far.
“I never thought he would leave us so early. It’s awful. I feel most for his family, which he loved and adored.”
The Daily Herald permitted Sassone to write from home until a few weeks before his passing. He was that capable that he could craft an informed hockey story from afar. That’s the ultimate in respect.
We should not take the passing of such a skilled scribe lightly. We have a thousand sources of information online and on the airwaves. There’s a ton of heat, but how much light is there really? Amid the blizzard of opinions and number-crunching analysis, do we get enough of the “inside information” and educated reporting we really require for the proper perspective of the sports in which we invest so much emotionally?
I know my answer. Hopefully, you’ll come to the same conclusion one day.
Rest in peace, Tim. Heartfelt condolences to wife Christine, daughter Alison and son Andrew. Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Tuesday, April 1, at Blake Lamb Funeral Home, 5015 Lincoln Ave. in Lisle, Ill.
