ANOTHER OF MY journalistic idols passed yesterday. Two years ago, it was Peter Jennings. Now, it’s David Halberstam, killed in a car accident.

I never met Halberstam, but his works of non-fiction enriched me. He gave me insight into the cultural and historical implications of baseball, while also opening my eyes to some realities of politics and war. And ironically, Halberstam also helped introduce me—literally—to a new friend and a baseball great—through one of his books.

The book was The Summer of ’49, one of the great baseball books. Read it. It’s not just about baseball. It’s about America coming up age after World War II.

In it, Halberstam spends about seven pages writing about a young, cocky left-hander, Maurice Mickey McDermott, who came up for the Boston Red Sox that year. As a rookie, Mickey reels off sixteen straight wins and keeps the Sox in the pennant race until the final day when the Yankees win a playoff.

Halberstam covers much of Mickey’s career from phenom to journeyman who loved to have too much fun to a washed-up pitcher in 1964.

For some reason, Halberstam’s words painted a picture of Mickey for me. I guess I was meant to read the book and remember Mickey, because on October 8, 1993 while I’m trying on some clothes at a local men’s store in Las Vegas, the store owner wants to introduce me to "this funny, old time baseball player." It was Mickey McDermott.

Upon meeting him, I said, "I know what you were doing 38 years ago today." Mickey wise-cracked back: "I was probably in the bullpen drunk or…" doing something with a woman who was (ahem) playing catcher for him. Mickey had forgotten it was the anniversary of Don Larsen’s World Series no-hitter, but Mick didn’t forget too many stories. And he wasn’t afraid to spill them either.

Months later on a golf course, he told me how the Senators knocked him out of a game in two innings. Angrily, Mickey walked from the dugout to the locker room at Fenway Park. At that time, there was an open hall-way so people from the outside could see the players. A beautiful, blonde woman was standing there and said, "Don’t worry, Mickey, you’ll get them next time." Mickey was in no mood to hear from anyone, so he told the woman to "shut up."

When the game was over, Ted Williams’, one of Mickey’s best friends on the team, came charging into the locker room to look for Mickey. "What did you do, Bush?" using his nickname for Mickey meaning bush league. Mickey didn’t have a clue. Williams asked if Mickey spoke to a woman outside the locker room. Mickey said yes. "Well, that was Jean Yawkey, the owner’s wife, and, Bush, you’ve just been traded to Cleveland."

The story is true, because Mickey allowed me to ask Ted Williams myself. Theodore, as Mickey called him, was in town in 1994 promoted his book about the ten greatest hitters of all time. Mickey got him to do a TV interview with Ron Futrell, my sports anchor at the Las Vegas station. After the interview, we spent a good hour with Ted Williams and Mickey. I will always treasure that afternoon.

At one time, I asked Mickey a personal question. I wanted to know how he survived financially. After all, he left baseball in 1964, long before free agency and the outlawing of the reserve clause. He couldn’t have much of a pension. "Well, Johnsky," he said calling me by his personal nickname for me, "I won the Arizona lottery." Talk about the luck of the Irish. But wait. The story gets better.

Mickey invested the money into a bar. But his wife and brother-in-law embezzled all the money and the bar went bankrupt. The wife was diagnosed with cancer and eventually died. But the brother-in-law, Mickey said, went to prison. "So you lost everything?" I asked still confused about his care-free and work-free lifestyle. Mickey gave me that smile and said, "Johnsky, I won the Arizona lottery again."

Unfortunately, I’ve lost track of Lucky Mickey. He moved out of Las Vegas. But thanks to David Halberstam’s portrayal of Mickey I might not have had those special times with him and the chance to meet, arguably, the greatest hitter of all time, Theodore Williams. To David Halberstam, thank you.

What’s so sad about Halberstam’s death is that, at 73, he was still "at the top of his game" as ESPN reported last night. He died while traveling to interview old-time Quarterback Y.A. Title about the famous Giants-Colts championship game in 1958. I can only imagine the gems we’re missing.

It was Halberstam who made me realize how my team, the Red Sox, probably suffered through so many years of futility because of their owners’ racism. Halberstam writes that in 1959 the Bosox had the rights to a kid from Mobile, Alabama, but they passed on him because he was black. Can you imagine if Willie Mays played his career in Fenway Park? Barry Bonds would have been chasing "Say Hey" next season for the homerun title.

Halberstam also wrote about the lessons of war; lessons we should heed today. In his book, War in a Time of Peace, Halberstam writes about the 1992 presidential campaign between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush and how the civil war in the former Yugoslavia affected the candidates and the electorate.

Clinton, according to Halberstam, used the war and Bush's reticence to jump into the Balkans fray to help win the White House. But after being in the Oval Office for a year or two, President Clinton admitted to Halberstam (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s much easier to run on a war than to manage one.

That's a lesson we have certainly not learned yet. Thankfully I have some lessons from Halberstam I will hold for many years.