Sports, Ink

There are people just meant to be out there among us, to move and shake the world, to keep us on our toes.

Tom Borrelli is one of those people.

It's said in these situations that those who are fighters do the best. It's a cliche that slides off the tongue when you don't know what else to say to the wife of a man attached to machines, unable to move, to feel, to communicate. But having known Tom since our early days in journalism in the '80s at a paper far from here, that cliche could be the answer.

It has to be.

Tom is well liked here at The News, but his late hours and nose-to-the-grindstone attitude mean that much of the daytime staff whose names are more recognizable really don't know him. They know and love his father, George, a talented and popular political reporter who retired several years ago.

Among the sports staff and old friends like me, Tom is known not just for his hard work, but for his humor and his impatience with the world. We have always called him Ox. To my son, he's Uncle Ox.

Ox has rough edges, but they're the loveable kind. He's all Buffalo -- a no-nonsense, no pretense, jeans and sweatshirts and family and sports above all kind of guy.

Tom is a practical joker. In our early days, when we were in our 20s and life was really still just a game - Tom ordered more pizzas delivered to more people who weren't expecting them than I've eaten pizzas in my life. I won't even get into the military recruiters stories. And there is the "legend of the Buffalo News plants." Let's just say that some newsroom greenery died a slow, painful, hilarious death.

Mostly, though, Borrelli is a "sports guy." We all know them - they eat, live, and drink sports. But Tom's love for and attention to sports is more like a Rainman than a fan.

In the newsroom, he often has an earbud in his ear listing to a game, scoring it in an official score book.

I once walked into his bachelor apartment in Binghamton in the '80s to find stacks and stacks of baseball score books. The living room was just covered with them. Looking around, I noticed Tom had a VCR running with a baseball game on. On his other TV there was a live game. The radio was playing - another game. Three scorebooks were in front of him. He'd fully participate in conversations while in between marking down balls and strikes and hits and errors -- for three games at a time! Legend has it that five at a time wasn't unusual.

In every official scorebook, there is a line to fill in that asks for the scorer's name. To this day in the hundreds (maybe thousands) of scorebooks he has filled, and I know he still does because I recently asked him -- Ox has always written, "Scorer: Tom Borrelli."

Tom Borrelli is also more generous than he EVER lets on. He just wants everyone to think he's Ox - the tough guy. But Tom shows up in my office now and then when our work hours overlap by a few minutes. Almost every time it's to give me something.

At Halloween, he pulled a box of Parkside Candy from his bag and put it on my desk, "I just wanted to give you this for Halloween." Apparently, he hands out candy to many in the newsroom.

He always brings gifts for my son, Ben. Weeks and months will go by without seeing him, and then he'll pop in and say, "I thought Ben would like this official World Series program." Or, like he did just last week, "Think about what Ben might need, I want to get him something for the holidays."

And most of all, it's his love for his wife, Karen, who also works here at The News, that he wears on his sleeve. Most of us have never seen a couple so close, with so many shared interests, so obviously partners.

He can't talk now, but I know that Tom's thoughts today are mostly about Karen and how this will all play out for her. Well, Tommy, for now we've got your back. We are here for her and for you.

But the rest is very clear to me. In those scorebooks it will read like this from now on: "Scorer: Tom Borrelli's friends."

We're doing the scoring now, Tommy, and it's you who has to push hard to win the game. You can do it.

--- Liz Kahn