My friend Matty

How can you get mad at a guy for dying?

Somehow, that's the emotion I feel, trying to get my heart around the fact that Matt isn't on the end of that phone any more offering advice on how to turn a throw-away paragraph into a lead, or coming up with an ending for a column that seemed to meander.

I should have been better prepared for this. I'd seen him enough times in the hospital bed over the last year. Taken him things that he'd left behind in the office because of an ER trip -- once they could be found on his messy desk. Picked him up from doctor visits because he couldn't drive. Delivered him home from work but stupidly detoured through the fast-food window so he could wolf down a chili-cheese burger and drip the stuff all over my car. And then I'd find his wallet lying there on the seat after he collected his things and limped off to his apartment.

Matt McHale was a mess. He was the Oscar Madison in the flesh. This is all a good thing.

We could call him old school, a sportswriter from a different era, when those greasy stadium buffets were what those in the business lived off. It would eventually catch up to all of us. Yet, for Matt, it was as enjoyable as working a scorecard, grabbing a few quotes after the game and crafting a story that no one blogging today would really understand.

So how can this man's life still make me upset, more angry? Because no matter how many times we pleaded for him to take care of himself after he found out he had diabetes, he was, as many say, in some kind of denial. After a while, you didn't want your entire conversation to focus on what he shouldn't be doing. You had to let him live as he wanted. We learn we can't change everything.

For someone with a heart of gold to have two heart attacks in his last days on Earth in another hospital bed seems about as cruel a fate as there can be. And for him to be so far away from us, on the other coast, after we bought him a cellphone so we could have some sort of contact - knowing he probably didn't know how to use it - wasn't fair either.

If you could get past the fact he was licking his fingers and dabbing the crumbs off his shirt to get every last piece of that pastrami sandwich, and listen to some of the column ideas he had, or how much he cared about you and what you were doing, it made your life much easier.

Matt made my professional life easy. He gave me focus when I had none. Made me stop and start again when I was trying to ready, shoot and aim on the keyboard. Personally, he was there, too. At a very important point in my life maybe a dozen years ago when I was having a mental breakdown of sorts -- slipping in and out of depression, bouts of anxiety so bad I couldn't even get out of bed to call in sick, Matt called and said simply: Shut it down. We need you here healthy. Don't worry. We'll get by. He knew that your work can be your life, but your life doesn't have to be your work.

With his health worsening, we could see this day coming, and he probably could, too. He got the short end of having to leave the paper during the latest round of layoffs, but really, he took one for the team. As he always did. Our prayers weren't answered this time. But the best part is he's out of his pain, able to rise above all this and bring out the best in all of us as we try to pull our lives together without him around to pat us on the back and hear him tell us that, if you think you got it bad, his new computer wouldn't work because he couldn't remember his password.

He was for another era, but luckily, stumbled into ours with his crumpled shirt, pens and press guides shoved in his baggy pockets, and, after coughing a few times, a word of advice: You should do a story on that.

I guess I just did.

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One of Matt's many other friends, Mark Langill, now the Dodgers' team historian (who provided that shot above of Matt being congratulated by his teammates after getting the game-winning hit in the 1989 Media Game at Dodger Stadium), had a great thought: "I'm sure he'd be stunned by today's clips. Just think of St. Peter needing a pile of duplicate credentials."
Or course, because Matt likely lost his entrance pass somewhere between here and purgatory and had to call ahead to get another one issued in time.

Thanks, too, to our collegues who've had their heads straight enough to put together the stories on Matt in today's section. For those who haven't seen them:
=The main story (linked here)
=Steve Dilbeck's column (linked here)
=Kevin Modesti's blog posting (linked here)
=Paul Oberjuerge's blog posting (linked here)
=A thread of responses on SportsJournalists.com (linked here), which includes a great tribute by the L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke.
=A mention in Jon Heyman's baseball column on SI.com (linked here)
=Another nice mention in Marc Stein's ESPN.com NBA column (linked here)
=A closing note by the L.A. Times' Jerry Crowe (linked here)
=A story in Editor & Publisher (linked here)
=A note from Louis Brewster in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (linked here)
=Add a tribute yourself to the Daily News guest book (linked here)