The fat lady has sung.

Dan Cook passed away last week. His funeral is tonight.

I grew up watching Mr Cook on KENS, just like thousands of other San Antonians. Not being a huge sports fan, I don't have as many warm memories of him as a lot of people in SA do, but I was saddened to hear of his passing all the same.

"It ain't over til the fat lady sings," was coined by Dan Cook (actually, what he said was "The opera ain't over til the fat lady sings," but the other's the enduring version) back in the '70s, when Spurs fans first learned the hard way not to celebrate the championship til the trophy is in hand. (We relearned this lesson this year, after teaching it to the Hornets.)

Ken Rodriguez had a wonderful column yesterday. It speaks well to exactly how important Dan Cook was to sports.

Sports writers of the future, Cook wrote, would do well to study economics and law. They would need to dig deeper, report harder, learn their way around the police department and not just show up for games.




Cook envisioned a new order in the toy department: multidimensional journalists who could investigate, write breaking news, put stories in the context of national issues and pen colorful prose in the press box.

This hurts more than AT&T moving its headquarters to Dallas.