Tony Becca

AS LONG as I live, there are a few men whom I will never ever forget, and numbered among them are the departed Franz Botek, Foggy Burrowes, Jack Anderson, Herbert McDonald, Allan Rae and the great, the legendary George Headley.

They were men to whom I am eternally grateful for the part they played in my life, especially so in my development as a sports writer.

Also numbered among them is James Carnegie - otherwise called Jimmy and sometimes 'Boots', maybe not while at Kingston College but certainly from when he was a boy at Jamaica College.

I first met Jimmy in 1960. I met him through Burrowes when I wrote my first article, 'My World XI,' for Sportslife magazine, and we were friends from that day until his passing last Tuesday.

As an educator, Carnegie was good; as a writer, a columnist, Carnegie was good; and as a historian, Carnegie was first-class. In fact, as a historian he was almost a genius.

Pet Sport

Carnegie knew everything, or almost everything about sport, and it did not matter the sport. He knew the who, the when, the where and, almost all the time, even the how of everything.

Although track and field was his favourite sport - his pet sport so to speak, Carnegie knew about other sports like cricket, football, tennis, golf, boxing, baseball, basketball, etc., as much as any other man.

The historic dates in sports, the performances, great or small, were at his fingertips. For more than 50 years, if you wanted to know anything about sport, anything at all, all you had to do was pick up the telephone and call Carnegie.

I remember those wonderful evenings sitting on Botek's back patio talking about sports in the company of the likes of Botek, Alva Anderson, the late J. D. Hall, Easton McMorris, Dr. Archie Hudson-Phillips and Tony Carr, and while we were expounding the greatness of a cricketer like Headley, Lawrence Rowe or Alfred Valentine, a footballer like Siddy Bartlett, Anthony Hill or Allan Cole, a tennis player like Arthur Ashe or Jimmy Connors, a table tennis player like Fuarnado Roberts or Orville Haslam, a boxer like Bunny Grant or one like Percy Hayles, Carnegie would get up, go to the bar, come back with a glass of Pepsi, lean back in his chair, and ask if anyone of us had ever heard of a man named Wayne Gretzky.

Whether he was showing off or not, Carnegie would then go on to inform those who really did not know who Gretzky was that he played ice hockey.

He went even further than that: after reeling off Gretzky's statistics, after impressing us with his knowledge of sports outside of cricket, football, track and field etc., Carnegie would then shout, so loud that even the neighbours could hear, that Gretzky, because he was so dominant in his sport, was undoubtedly the greatest sportsman of the time, probably of all time.

Synonymous

The name Jimmy Carnegie was synonymous with facts and figures. There was hardly a man in Jamaica who did not know the name Carnegie.

Carnegie loved sports, he lived sports, he respected everyone who played sport and who was involved in sport, and everyone in sport respected him.

On top of all that, Carnegie, in every way, was a good man and a kind man - a man who never ever thought about what he could get, always thinking about what he could give.

Jimmy 'Boots' Carnegie was one of a kind - a kind the likes of which we may never see again.

Walk good, my friend. I will never ever forget you.