One death can mean two losses

[Shana A]

One death can mean two losses

Reilly By Rick Reilly

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4817330

This column appears in the Jan. 25 issue of ESPN The Magazine.

On the same day, in the same town, two sportswriters, two friends of mine, killed themselves.

One was my old hoops buddy Mike Penner, who started at the Los Angeles Times the same year I did. The other was Christine Daniels, a blonde who bubbled from heels to highlights.

Mike was a little quiet, a little reclusive, a lot brilliant. He hated going to locker rooms. He preferred staying home, making mix tapes and writing sentences that were chunks of perfection. He once described then-Angels GM Mike Port's fractured syntax as "Port-uguese."

Christine was the opposite: gregarious, 100 mph talker, always looking to cover an event, to be seen, the Funmeter pegged, the curls bouncing. She was flirty, always lightly grabbing your arm when she talked, covering her mouth when she laughed, which seemed like all the time.