Ellliott: R. I. P. Nico Cafardo

Former Boston Globe baseball scribe was admired from coast to coast, from press box to clubhouse.

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

Nick Cafardo and I met in September of 1985 at Fenway Park. The Montreal Expos were out of the race and the boss told me to cover the red-hot Toronto Blue Jays the final six weeks of the season.

At the time we were “suburban guys.” Nico wrote for the Quincy Patriot Ledger and I was covering baseball for the Ottawa Citizen. Suburban guys didn’t get a lot of call backs from agents. Yet, players didn’t care.

In 1987, we switched to the Blue Jays full time. Each time we saw the Red Sox we saw Peter Gammons, Gordon Edes, Joe Giuliotti, Nico and others. Nico — he called me Boxer for a wrassler I admired Boxin’ Bob Orton, I called him Nico — was as respected as anyone among baseball scribes. He moved to the Boston Globe in 1989. We were no longer suburban guys. Agents returned our calls. And like Gammons and Edes, he was excellent on TV finding time to do the Red Sox pre-game or post-game show.

Like me, Nico loved the winter meetings, loved finding out what team was talking to whom and always respected the hard work that advance scouts and pro scouts did travelling 180 days a year.

Cafardo died Thursday from an embolism in Fort Myers. He was at the park. It was his day off.

He loved discussing Hall of Fame candidates, rule changes as well as anything and everything baseball.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who would have my vote for American League Manager of the Year right now, for the way he handled things Friday. He addressed the team about Cafardo’s death and used his morning session with reporters to speak for more than seven minutes about Cafardo. He chose not to discuss other topics.

Nico switched to the New England Patriots in time for the team’s first NFL championship in 2001. He used to tell me coach Bill Parcells loved talking ball.

Ben Cafardo of ESPN Communications, ESPN’s Claire Smith, 2017 J.G. Taylor Spink award winner and the late Nico Cafardo.

He came back to the Red Sox as the Globe’s national scribe the past 15 years. His first trip into Toronto was in 2004, the Jays fifth straight year under two million. On the field during batting practice Nico recalled the 1992-93 crowds and SkyDome drawing four million. I told him the empty seats might win tonight.

About the third inning he walked down to where I was seated and asked “Where did everyone go?”

I answered it was a gradual decline from 1993.

Cafardo was also a successful author. He wrote “If These Walls Could Talk,” on the Red Sox, “Inside Pitch: Playing and Broadcasting the Game I Love,” with Hall of Famer Tom Glavine and “The Impossible Team: The Worst to First Patriots’ Super Bowl Season.”

Nico was so proud of his son Ben, who would go on to work in the communications department for ESPN.

Bloodhound Nico discovered I’d been banned from a local Rogers radio station for being too critical of the Blue Jays a few years ago. He asked if he could write it. I asked him to just ignore it and he did.

When I decided to leave the paper he called and it was 45 minutes of questions “Well did you think of this?” “Are you really sure you want to do this?” and “You know we are going to miss you.”

Writing for this web site I wrote a piece on Kevin Gregg, Sox PR man, and his father Eric Gregg, a National League umpire I’d known well from my days with covering the Expos. Nico was the first to send a note how he had enjoyed the piece.

Deepest sympathies to his wife, Leeanne, and children, Ben and Emilee ... Fenway has lost a good man.

Friends and loved ones are invited to celebrate Nick’s life in The Magoun-Biggins Funeral Home, 135 Union St., Rockland, MA, 02370 on Thursday, from 5-8 PM. For directions or additional information, please visit www.magounbiggins.com