As some of you already know, we lost one of our league members earlier this year -- Jim passed away suddenly in June. About half of you were lucky enough to know and meet him, the rest of you only know him from his terrible political themed team names and his occasional shots at the Eagles just to see if he could get me riled up.
Jim was a great guy and one of the most dedicated journalists I ever had a chance to work with. When he passed, the Ohio legislature shut down for a day to honor him -- politicians who hated his tough questioning offered their sincere respect for his voice and fairness. He was a great father, a great friend, and deserves much more praise than I can muster the words for here.
We hadn't emailed as much as we should have over the last few years, but he was always in on this league as a way to keep in touch with Jo and me. He'd find some reason every few months to make fun of the birds or brag about the Steelers (or the Yankees, gawd, he really had no reason for that character flaw) and we'd trade some politics messages on Twitter from time to time. It's hard to think of him not being here for the start of this nonsense again this year.
We'll get back to the silliness and anagrams and everything in the next few days, but I didn't want to start up without at least trying to honor him and thank you all for coming back every year. I'll dust off the Awesome Cup and we'll play one coach short this year, and I'll act as dumb as ever because I like to think that Jim is still gonna roll his eyes at most of these posts.
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