'Where God puts a period': Sports columnist Martin Fennelly was one of a kind

Martin Fennelly was a sports writer, not a reporter.

There is a difference. Reporters view the events they cover logically, don't deviate from telling you what's happening in front of them. Fennelly could have done that if he had wanted to, probably did early in his career.

But he wasn't interested in the obvious. He was always looking for something different, something unusual, something he saw that not very many others could see.

This comes to mind now because Fennelly, who made his name locally working first for the Tampa Tribune and then, after it folded, the Tampa Bay Times, was recently taken from us Jan. 26 by a heart attack at the age of 65. It was sudden, unexpected and shocking.

Fennelly burst onto the Central Florida sports scene as one of the young guns who replaced the venerable Tom McEwen, the Tribune's sports editor and primary columnist. McEwen was the last of the old guard, a guy with a folksy style and an ingratiating manner who knew everybody who was anybody. It was said that when it came to sports in Tampa, nothing moved without McEwen's approval. And there was a lot of truth to that.

Fennelly was different. He didn't try — or want — to replace McEwen. He was always doing his own thing, finding stories nobody else could find and telling them in a way nobody else could.

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He was a man of many moods. When rumors began swirling that the Tribune was going out of business, Fennelly accepted it with a bit of sardonic wit: "Every day I go to work, I wonder If I still have a job," he remarked. The Tribune did crash and burn, but Fennelly caught on, at least for a while, with its new owner, the rebranded Tampa Bay Times.

Newspapers, though, were struggling to survive in an age of social media and 24-hour news channels, and many newsrooms and sports departments didn't, or were cut back drastically. Despite his unique talent, the Times let Fennelly — and others — go. He had a good run though. He got his shot and made the most of it.

Several years ago, I ran into Fennelly at the Tampa Convention Center. The place was full of runners waiting for the start of the Gasparilla 15k, which I had entered and he was covering for the Tribune.

We had a wide-ranging conversation that day, going from one subject to another and eventually got around to every parent's worst nightmare, the loss of a child.

I had talked about that with Richard Petty, the Babe Ruth of stock car racing, after he lost his 20-year-old grandson, Adam. Bright and charismatic, Adam Petty was headed for stardom in NASCAR until he went into the wall before a race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and was killed.

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"How do you get over that?" I asked Petty. He looked at me and, his voice quivering, replied, "Never put a question mark where God puts a period."

And we must do that now. Martin Fennelly lived a full life, and his death stunned us. We can question it, but there are no answers.

Instead, we must accept it, period, full stop. Fennelly would want it that way.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Martin Fennelly, one-of-a-kind Tampa sports columnist, will be missed