Columbus Crew historian Steve Sirk's latest book arrives with emotional backstory
It’s hard to have a bad day when you swap Columbus Crew stories with Steve Sirk.
On a Tuesday morning in late August, the unofficial team historian sat in section 112 of a sun-drenched Lower.com Field jovially reminiscing. He was recalling the great lengths he had once gone to in order to resolve a very important question: which member of the 2008 team had the best beard – Eddie Gaven or Adam Moffat?
How he resolved the debate is one of the stories included in Sirk’s latest book, titled “A Massive Collection Vol. 2.” The first volume was published in 2019, and both feature stories from all eras of the club's history.
It's the fourth book he's written about the team overall, and it may be the most personal one yet. That's because the impetus to finish it was a friend, not just to him, but seemingly to everyone who cared about the Crew.
Randy Sims was a season-ticket holder who, for two decades, made a five-hour round-trip to watch games, first at Historic Crew Stadium and later at Lower.com Field. And as Sirk worked on his book, which opens with a chapter explaining the “Massive” moniker as it applies to Crew fans, Sims was diagnosed with terminal Stage IV lung cancer.
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Suddenly, a section of the book dedicated to one of the team’s most ardent supporters and efforts to #SaveTheCrew when it was being threatened with relocation took a significant turn. As Sims fought, Sirk continued to whittle away. Sirk frequently ran new sections past his friend, a friend who was persevering beyond what Sims playfully described as his “best-if-used-by date.”
“He kept, like, apologizing that he kept living,” Sirk said, laughing. “He’s like, ‘I feel like I’m holding the book up.’ I’m like, ‘Randy…I would rather this book never come out and you still be here.’ It’s so Randy, right? ‘I feel so bad that I’m taking so long.’ ”
In his memory, Sirk decided to donate a part of the proceeds from preorder sales made through Sept. 12 at the Nordecke's (the team's supporters section) website. Donations are going to Hospice Care WV, which took care of Sims and allowed him to continue visiting Crew games as his energy allowed.
"Who embodies 'Massive' better than Randy?" Sirk said.
He didn’t get to see the final product of the book, but Sims lived the stories. So has Sirk, and there’s a reason why he started collecting them.
Steve Sirk starts his own notebook
A native of Northeast Ohio, Sirk grew up reading Cleveland baseball beat writer Jim Ingraham in the Lake County News-Herald. Sirk enjoyed the locker room banter, the little asides and behind-the-scenes anecdotes that peppered Ingraham's writing.
That influence eventually led Sirk to start his own notebook, which ran on the Crew’s official website at a time when, aside from the local newspapers, MLS was fighting to grow a larger audience.
“His game stories and his notebooks and things would make me laugh,” Sirk said. “I always thought that was the coolest thing ever. Sports should be fun, and this is fun. When I fell into this, that was what I thought of.”
At the Crew’s previous home, Sirk’s unofficial seat in the press box wasn’t a seat at all – it was one of the steps in the media's sparse, cramped accommodations. Colloquially, it was known as “Sirk’s Step,” and the name tag for the “seat” was plastered to the window at the front of the room. Sometimes he'd watch games from there, and sometimes he'd take them in from the open-air radio booth.
As the Crew was navigating adolescence, Sirk used his online notebooks to further humanize and endear players on a team still trying to grow its footprint in the region.
“If it draws people closer and makes them connect to the players or the team or even going to games, it makes it more fun for everyone,” he said. “When I was a kid, it’s what I appreciated reading, and I always just tried to do the same thing.”
These days, Sirk, whose “real job” is with BMW, watches the majority of games from his home in Avon Lake, Ohio. Rather than roaming the locker room after a game, his contributions to Crew coverage now tend to skew more toward offering historical perspective, connecting prior generations of Crew players to the ones currently on the roster.
Longtime Crew broadcaster Neil Sika asked Sirk to help him write the introduction for the broadcast of the final game at Historic Crew Stadium, and the ensuing “Sacred Ground” video essay won a 2022 Regional Emmy.
At that point, the Crew had been saved, and the old stadium wasn’t being destroyed, just left behind as the club moved on to Lower.com Field. Instead of the closing of a chapter, it was merely a new beginning for the club, one secured by the passion of those fans and residents Sirk has always been writing for.
That devotion had always been there. Looking out over the new stadium, it wasn’t too hard to squint and see the path from Ohio State’s campus to the state fairgrounds and ultimately downtown, a path featuring at least a few bricks laid by Sirk’s stories.
“This is what everybody said Columbus could be when Save the Crew happened,” he said. “This was like if we had committed ownership and really tried to bring the city together. We’ve been a good soccer town in the past and some people didn’t necessarily believe that and tried to say that was not the case, but the proof is in front of us right now – or every Saturday.”
And with each successive collection of stories, the proof grows.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Crew historian's latest collection led by emotional story
