Cal Alum and Bay Area Sports Writing Legend John Crumpacker Dies

The original "Scribe From Hell," Packer loved football, track and field and people.

Describing my long-time friend John Crumpacker is not a simple assignment. He is unlike anyone else I have ever known.

I met John about 40 years ago, when I first began covering Cal. I wrote then for the Hayward Daily Review, later for the Oakland Tribune. John was beat writer for the San Francisco Examiner.

John was a passionate and fierce reporter, a talented and imaginative writer. He was funny and he was fair. He was a Cal alum (B.A. English, 1977) — getting his start with the Daily Cal — but he was a pro, never a fan.

John, who was in declining health, died early this week at the age of 67.

John Crumpacker at the Olympic track trials in Eugene, Ore

John grew up in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles but made his way to Berkeley — he and the town were a perfect match — to attend Cal beginning in the fall of 1973. He was sports editor of the Daily Cal and developed lifelong friendships with fellow staffers Jon Rochmis (who later worked for the Oakland Trib) and Larry Stone (who went on to become a sports columnist at the Seattle Times).

Our first Cal season together involved covering Joe Kapp in his debut as the Bears’ coach. The experience prepared us for anything we would later encounter because while Kapp was a fascinating man he was not easy for a beat writer.

When Kapp got a question from one of us that he didn’t like — that happened a lot — his answer was invariably, “You saw the game.”

At season’s end, as something of a peace offering, John got the idea to have t-shirts made that featured that well-worn quote. We all showed up at Kapp’s final news conference wearing our shirts and we presented one to Joe. Not sure he embraced the intended sentiment.

John took his work seriously, but never himself.

He loved people but had no patience for self-important phonies. He was loyal and kind. He loved the desert and reptiles of every variety. He was smart, he was tough and he was big . . . in every way.

John lived by himself, his final years in often blazing-hot outpost of Bullhead City, Arizona, across the Colorado River from Nevada. He was content to be on his own but he also loved a good time.

I remember the two of us attending a Friday night reception in the hotel room of then-Cal athletic director Dave Maggard on a football trip to WSU. John had a couple beers in the hotel bar before we headed up, then a couple more while visiting with Maggard and Cal folks.

When Maggard discovered it was John’s birthday, he challenged him to do a finger-tip pushup for every year. Packer threw himself on the floor in front of well-heeled Old Blues and proceeded to peel off 30 finger-tip pushups. John was always a big man, and it was a stunning athletic feat. I was proud of him.

He and I and Monte Poole, on a trip to cover Cal at Oregon, detoured on Friday afternoon to the coast where we conducted the Oregon Sand Dunes Pentathlon, a five-event competition of sorts where John excelled in our version of the ancient Scottish caber toss, where he hoisted and flipped a 15-foot length of drift wood.

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John left the Cal beat to cover the 49ers — the plum assignment for any sports writer in the Bay Area — and he owned it during the team’s greatest era. As always, he made sure the job was fun, creating the first in a series of “Scribes From Hell” t-shirts, which celebrated the joys and challenges of being a sports writer.

By the time coach Bruce Snyder lifted the Bears to national prominence with an appearance in the 1991 Florida Citrus Bowl, John was no longer covering the Bears. So a cross-country Hooters-to-Hooters call (seriously) was scheduled so he could touch base with those of us out in Orlando.

At one point, Rochmis told John he was handing the phone to Monte, but just then Snyder and his family walked in (I’m not making this up), so Rochmis passed the phone to Bruce and told him to say hi to John.

Packer, thinking he had Monte on the phone, greeted him by saying: “How you doing, you ol’ horse’s ass?” Snyder set the phone down and promptly walked away.

We all laughed about it for years.

I continued to see John during the track and field season — you didn’t know there was one, did you? We trekked together to the Modesto Relays more than a dozen times, always beginning the day with a hearty Mexican lunch at Campos Foods around the corner from the stadium.

One year we both managed to talk our sports editors into letting us drive to Hartnell Junior College in Salinas to cover a high-level throwers meet. No track, just field. The shot put, discus, hammer throw. For the diehards.

John had a special appreciation for the big men of track and field — he threw the shot in high school — and rumor was Olympic discus champion Virgilijus Alekna of Slovakia might make an appearance. Might.

Alekna never showed, and I wrote about how he missed the chance to throw in perfect conditions for the discus. Alekna’s son, Mykolas, is the collegiate record-holder in the event for Cal.

He created the Miruts Yifter Fan Club - honoring the two-time Olympic distance champ from Ethiopia - and had t-shirts made for that, as well. In fact, John collected t-shirts from everywhere he traveled, actually accumulating more than 2,000 of them.

We twice drove to Eugene, Oregon, for the Olympic track and field trials, and, as a veteran Olympic writer, John helped guide me through the mystery and the delight that is covering the Summer Games.

There are too many great Packer stories to share them all. Everyone who knew him has their own.

John was one of my best sport writer friends, and I know others feel much the same. There will never be another like him.

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Mark Purdy responding to Jon Rochmis / Twitter

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Larry Stone / Twitter

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Bruce Jenkins / Twitter

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Brian Murphy / Twitter

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Frank Cooney / Twitter

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Jon Rochmis / Twitter

Cover photo of John Crumpacker at the Beijing Olympic track stadium in 2008.

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo