It was 11 o'clock at night, but Sid wasn't finished. / After sitting through yet another Gopher football home-opener — that probably makes it No. 73 of his sportswriting career — he and his care nurse left the stadium and came back to the office so he could update his column for the morning paper. / …He worried about it being too long. He worried about meeting his deadline. On the internet, such notions mean less than they do for the making of a newspaper, a world embedded in Sid's veins since he first delivered Minneapolis newspapers as a kid in the 1930s. Somebody quipped on Twitter during the game that Gopher receiver Tyler Johnson and Sid were "a mere 78 years apart" as Minneapolis North High students. / … "What are you doing here?" Sid asked me as he stuck his big hand in the bag of pretzels I offered him. / "What are YOU doing here?" I shot back, trying to imagine a 97-year-old man, with a walker, sitting at that hour at a desk in any other office of the massive Capella Tower that houses the newsroom. Let alone an office anywhere in the world, with a nonagenarian actually doing paid work at 11 p.m. Ever. / Sid does this routinely when there's a night home football game. / Not surprisingly, he didn't answer my question. He kept his eyes on the screen and asked his assistant the most important question when you're on deadline. / "How much time do we have?"
Sid plopped down across from my desk one day last week, his walker nearby. That's better than a few days earlier, when he somehow showed up in the office without it. / He can't forget his care aides, fortunately. / "If I didn't have those two, I wouldn't be around.'' / The 98-year-old resident curmudgeon is equally reliant on Jeff, his assistant, who received a much-deserved newsroom award recently for supporting Sid's productivity surge during the Super Bowl. / Sid maintains loudly that he's never been recognized in-house in his 7-plus decades. / "Of course, I would never win an award,'' he grumped to several people that day. "I have more bylines than anybody who works here.'' / "Aren't you in a hall of fame, Sid?'' his assistant countered. "Don't you have a statue down by Target Center?'' / Then Sid was off making the rounds. / "Good column about that Japanese guy,'' he told Chip Scoggins, who wrote about baseball phenom Sohei Ohtani, a name Sid will never come close to pronouncing. / "What's wrong with your Lynx?'' he said to another. / "What would you do if you didn't have the internet?'' he yelled at his new favorite foil, who writes about sports analytics. To Sid, reporting is about access, about getting people to talk to you. Not what you can find out with a computer, which he leaves to his assistant. / … Sid has racked up a phenomenal 22,000 bylines in his sportswriting career. / "Here's the thing,'' he told me. "I can get in any place that nobody else can get in.'' // "People don't turn you down,'' I said. "Who could turn you down?'' / "I'm just saying. I'm not trying to brag,'' he said, and has said, many times. // After a long pause, I asked him, "How much longer you gonna do it?'' / "As long as I'm livin'," he said without hesitation. "My biggest trouble — I don't find enough stuff to do'' outside of work. "I'm talking about life. This keeps me busy.'' / Then as he stood up to leave, Sid looked toward his office. / "Hey, Joe!'' he called out, mispronouncing Joel, the veteran clerk keeping count of his bylines. "I have 22,000?'' / "Close to it,'' was the reply. / Sid, as competitive now as ever, yelled back: "Anybody close?"
On Monday afternoon, the 75th anniversary of Sid's first newspaper byline — Oct. 28, 1944 — he rolled past the open door of the sports editors' afternoon meeting and looked all business. No stop of the walker for his customary rip of "all the geniuses in one room.'' / Sid's first story, headlined "Four Years Old, Henry Boasts Two City High School Championships,'' was about Patrick Henry High School, on the same north side of Minneapolis where Sid had attended another high school and never graduated. But he loved hawking newspapers as a kid. He was working in the circulation department of the Minneapolis Times when the sports department was looking to hire an intern. / Sid, then 24 years old, got the job. / That first story is seasoned with the sports language of the era, with phrases such as "grid team'' and "cage crown.'' Season tickets were "season ducats.'' / ... Asked what he recalled of byline No. 1 as he perused a copy of it, Sid said, "I don't remember too much.'' / Some 21,086 bylines later, it's easy to see why. Besides, he was on a quest that included calling former NFL coach Bill Parcells for a column on the Minnesota Vikings football coach. / "Talk about Zimmer, what a great job he's doing,'' Sid shouted into his landline phone, displaying the kind of softball question that marks his style today probably as much as it did back when FDR was running for a fourth term as president and D-Day wasn't even five months old. / Sid couldn't stop talking — well, boasting — about his Parcells interview afterward, which included Sid thanking the coach repeatedly and offering to put him on his radio show. / "How do you like that?'' he marveled to his assistant after the call. "How do you like that? Parcells takes my call.'' / The former coach also asked Sid a question that, after hearing the answer, makes all of us marvel every day he shows up for work. / "NINETY-NINE,'' Sid yelled into his phone.
