Former Detroit Free Press sports writer Gene Guidi dies at 79

Whether at the ballpark or at the horse track, Gene Guidi spent 3½ decades providing the inside dope for Free Press readers. He also helped readers solve problems through the ground-breaking Action Line column in the 1970s.

An old-style newsman who was fearless with his questioning, held his subjects accountable for their actions and sported a trademark cigarillo, although no-smoking rules kept it unlit in press boxes the last half of his career, Guidi died at age 79 on Sept. 3 in Detroit after a long illness. He had retired from the Free Press in October 2005, continued to reside in Taylor and enjoyed his favorite pastimes of horse racing and trips to Las Vegas.

“Gene was a quiet and insightful observer,” said Dave Robinson, his sports editor at the Free Press for nearly a decade. “He didn’t jump to conclusions or waste words. Readers always learned something new when reading Gene’s stories, whether he was writing about baseball, horse racing or other sports.”

Born Nov. 28, 1942, Eugene Richard Guidi grew up in Allen Park, graduated from Central Michigan and taught English at St. Francis Cabrini grade school in his hometown before joining the Free Press as a sports copyboy, the lowest rung of print journalism. He spent his days filling glue pots, sharpening pencils, answering phones and running errands for the ink-stained (and often alcohol-infused) sports wretches. In the early 1970s, he worked with another copyboy from Allen Park who also became a Free Press mainstay, Mick McCabe, who continues to cover prep sports a half-century later.

“My first day at the Free Press was June 3, 1970, and it was almost my last,” McCabe recalled. “The first person I saw when I walked into the office was Gene. Instinctively, I wanted to turn and run.

“Gene was friends with the two oldest boys in the house across the street, and I was pals with their two younger brothers. One day in the late 1950s, the older guys were playing Wiffle ball in the backyard and we decided to interrupt it by running around in the backyard. Well, I accidently stepped on the ball, crushing it, and Gene grabbed the bat and chased me home, swinging the bat at my head the entire time, but never making contact.

“Thanks goodness, Gene had no recollection of the incident.”

Soon after McCabe’s arrival, Guidi moved to Action Line, a public service column started by the Free Press in the 1960s that became a staple of newspapers across the country. By the late 1970s, Guidi left the newspaper’s downtown office to set up shop at the horse racing tracks around Detroit and Windsor. Besides covering the sport, he also handicapped races for the paper under the nom de plume of Al Speed.

In 1984, with interest in the sport of kings waning, Guidi started covering the Detroit Tigers. With a 35-5 start that season, they went wire-to-wire in winning their first World Series since 1968.

As a payback from the baseball gods, the last five teams Guidi covered finished 30, 51, 76, 18 and 20 games under .500.

Most of Guidi’s time on the Tigers beat was spent with John Lowe, a two-decade close partnership of opposites. In the 1990s, the Free Press publisher at the time, Heath Meriwether, wrote that Lowe was “a polite, even formal man” who relished being called a seamhead and donned a coat, tie and Panama hat for every game while Guidi “likes to be known as the Freep baseball writer who doesn’t wear a tie.”

“Gene was the essence of journalism: precision, concision, promptness and accuracy,” Lowe said. “He was reliable, always.

“Gene had tremendous discernment, whether it was picking horses or predicting events or judging people. He was the first person I heard suggest that Kirk Gibson could be a manager. Years later, in his first full year as a manager, Gibson led Arizona to the NL West title in 2011.”

With Guidi’s passing, Lowe reflected on two of his favorite beginnings — called ledes in journalism parlance — to stories that Guidi crafted.

“The Tigers were 35-5 when they went into Seattle’s Kingdome in 1984,” Lowe said. “The lowly Mariners swept them. Instead of deciding this meant the Tigers had come undone, Gene realized it was just one three-game series in a 162-game season. His lede when the Mariners completed the sweep: ‘Where is the door out of this place, anyway?’

“And then Aug. 11, 1994. With a strike looming the next day in major-league baseball, the last-place Tigers lost at home to Milwaukee. Gene’s lede perfectly summarized the Tigers’ season and the crisis state of baseball: ‘Is that all there is?’”

During Guidi’s final game at Comerica Park in 2005, the Tigers flashed a “best wishes” in retirement note on the scoreboard. He was even more upset when his bosses at the Free Press ran a photo of the scoreboard in the next day’s editions. It was their backdoor way to acknowledge his departure.

Unlike most sportswriters, especially after 36 years on the job and winning awards for his prose, Guidi had no desire to write a farewell column or wax poetic about what were now the good old days. Never one to seek the limelight, he just wanted to fade into retirement without a mention, stop living deadline-to-deadline and avoid the no-smoking signs.

“He was a consummate professional,” Robinson said.

“Gene was as loyal and reliable of a friend as he was a journalist,” Lowe said.

Guidi is survived by a nephew, Jay Bileti, and two nieces, Anne (Bileti) Johns and Lisa (Bileti) Costa. No services are planned.

Gene Myers was the Free Press sports editor from 1993-2015.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Former Detroit Free Press sports writer Gene Guidi dies at 79