Matt Charboneau

NBA action. It’s fantastic !

@RealTonyGarcia @Graham_Couch @joerexrode @chrissolari

@Graham_Couch What I would give to be at a bar with you @joerexrode, @chrissolari and @mattcharboneau to hear your spiel on why Kalamazoo is a sleeper NBA destination and watch their reactions.

Kalamazoo does have a new arena opening. You could do a lot worse.

STATEMENT FROM THE FAMILY For more than forty years, Detroit's sports fans had Pat's full attention. In the months since his diagnosis, we have had it — listening as he has told us his stories: the ones from the press box, TV and radio studio, and the ones from his life. What follows is drawn from those conversations. The words are his. We share it now, on his behalf, as the goodbye he wants to leave for the people who wrote alongside him, the people who shared the microphone with him, the people who listened, and the people who read his work. We are all so proud of Pat and all his accomplishments. While he's leaving a void in our lives and in the community that he so proudly represented, he's made his mark and his legacy lives on. To his audience he was known as "The Book," but to us he was a cherished member of our family. We love you, Pat. — The Caputo Family ——— A TRIBUTE TO A DETROIT LEGEND "I haven't said much publicly since January because I haven't known what to say," he told us. So we'll start where he started. "When I came out of college I had nothing on my resume. I couldn't type. In journalism class I never wrote anything anyone would want to read." The only useful thing he had, he said, was an idea he'd picked up from a textbook somewhere — that "nobody wanted to be a state capital correspondent, so the lane was wide open if you'd take it." That became the only theory he ever had about this business: "Take the job nobody else wants. Out-work them on the part nobody else cares about." A professor took pity on him and got him a tryout in Three Rivers, an hour and a half west of Kalamazoo, and he learned the trade there by photographing the Pet of the Week with a Sears camera. The job didn't last long. The boss called him in one day, he remembered, and explained, kindly, that "I was just horrible." Within a few weeks he had talked his way into answering phones at the Oakland Press sports desk, where he was so desperate to stick around he'd raise his hand for any game nobody else wanted to cover. "Hey, can I do this one? Can I do that one?" They almost always said yes, he said, because nobody else was going to drive to Lapeer on a Friday night in November to see two 4-and-5 teams play. He still couldn't type. Tom Kowalski — who half of his audience grew up listening to and the other half grew up reading — walked into the office one graveyard shift in the spring with his Taco Bell, watched Pat try to figure out a list of high-school track times one finger at a time, and announced to the room: "This guy has got some coordination problems." Pat, telling the story, said Kowalski wasn't wrong. After nine months they hired him full-time to cover high schools. "I was twenty-four years old, and if you'd told me then that I'd get to cover sports and live in my one-bedroom apartment for the rest of my life, I would have been happy." He never had a grand plan that he would have such an amazing career. He had a fear, which is different. "I was scared every day that I was going to lose the job," he said, "so I worked it like I was going to lose it tomorrow." The writing didn't come easy either. People sometimes asked him how he got better at it, and the only honest answer, he said, was "a miracle." He wrote a lot. He asked people he respected to tell him what was wrong with what he'd written, and then he listened to the answers — the part, he noted, that many young writers skip. The awards came later. They were nice. They didn't change anything he knew about himself. His dad used to tell him and his brothers, "Never quit. Just keep coming." He didn't always live up to a lot of things, he said, but he did live up to that one. He got up every day and put the boots on. He didn't grade the day before he started it. If it was a thankless job, he did the thankless job. If it was a good day at the ballpark, he did that too. "I'd like to think I always did my very best," he told us. "And if I get to leave you with anything, let it be that. Whatever it is you're up to tomorrow, do your very best at it. My very best wasn't necessarily anybody else's best. But it was mine, and I gave it." There were things he never imagined as a kid from Michigan he'd ever get to see. "I got to watch games at the L.A. Coliseum and the Rose Bowl. That was a big deal for a kid growing up in Michigan," he said. He got to cover World Series and Super Bowls and Stanley Cup Finals and NBA Championships. He got a vote for the Heisman Trophy. He got a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He took those last two seriously every year of his life, he said, because he knew what they meant. The people he got to know along the way are the part you can't put on a resume. He knew Sparky Anderson. He knew Bo Schembechler, who he said was a great man, and one he respected. Jim Leyland was one of a kind and someone he really enjoyed. He got to know Tom Izzo back when he was an up-and-coming assistant nobody outside East Lansing was talking about yet. Bill Lajoie, the Tigers' general manager when he started covering them, opened the door for a young writer trying to do this job, and Pat said he never forgot it. Lajoie was a mentor to him. He once played nine holes of golf with Don Shula, he said, because his editor at the Oakland Press, Gary Gilbert, called and asked him if he wanted to. He told us about one of the coolest moments of his career — October of '06, in the press box at Comerica Park, watching Magglio Ordoñez hit one off Huston Street to send the Tigers to the World Series. The players came out onto the field with champagne bottles and started spraying the people in the seats. He sat up there with his notebook, he said, and remembered thinking, "boy, they were really proud." The radio gave him something the print column never could. It let him cover the teams with his audience instead of just for them. It let him hear what they thought, take a punch from a caller, give one back, and argue about Detroit sports the way Detroit sports are supposed to be argued about — out loud, every day, on the air, with anybody who picked up the phone. None of that, he said, happens without people. The producers. The engineers. The people whose names the audience never heard, whose hands kept the show on the air every day for two decades. The colleagues who sat across the table from him, the ones he argued with and agreed with and learned from — every one of them, he said, made him better. "I owe all of these people something I don't know how to pay back." The job — the actual job, the going-to-the-ballpark, going-to-the-press-box, sitting-at-the-microphone part of it — was, he said, one of the best parts of his life. Going to a place like Michigan State, when a kid like him had no business believing he'd ever set foot on a campus like that, was another. The family he has, who have loved him through every part of this, is the rest of it. He made his final social media post in late January. He read every comment people sent him on X and on Facebook, he told us. Every single one. He wanted us to know what they did: they reminded him, in his own words, that "I am blessed." A lot of good things came to him in this life. He had always been thankful for that, he said. He had always been appreciative. He's not the guy you build a statue to. He never was. He was the guy who answered the phones, said yes to whatever game came up, learned to type one finger at a time, and somehow forty-plus years went by. "I just got lucky," he said. "I always have been." In these last months he has been surrounded by family who love him, and who he loves right back. They matter more to him, he said, than any of the rest of it. ——— A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR My Uncle Pat and I shared a special bond. He was my godfather. I was the best man at his wedding. We are both proud Michigan State alums. But truth be told, the bond we shared most closely was the same one he shared with his followers — sports. They were at the core of every conversation. Growing up, we played trivia games — quizzing each other on prospects' high schools, colleges, or where they ranked in Baseball America. Even at Christmas when he was sick, we were playing the game of naming the Tigers' first-round draft picks from the late '80s through last year. In true form, "The Book" got every single one right. I'm going to miss those conversations so very much. — Rob Caputo ——— The Caputo family extend their heartfelt gratitude to everyone who supported Pat throughout his career and during his illness. Thank you so very, very much. God bless. @971theticketxyt @bobwojnowski @stoney16 @MitchAlbom @berniesmilovitz @tigers @Lions @DetroitPistons @RedWingsFeed @MSU_Athletics @MSU_Football @MSU_Basketball @FOX2News @KenKalDRW @TheOaklandPress @dennisfithian @DanMillerFox2 @freep @detroitnews @matthewbmowery @TonyPaul1984

@patcaputo98 Some great memories from early in my career at The Oakland Press included Pat. God, cancer sucks. Rest easy, Pat.

Today May 7th we lost Pat to cancer. Pat was surrounded by his family. Thank you for all your support. The Caputo family

@Graham_Couch Well, it’s not like I was clamoring for it but honestly, I don’t see it as that big a deal. I’ll never buy the “devaluing the regular season” argument. If that’s true, then the regular season already doesn’t matter.

A depressing, but good read, crystallizing that expanding the NCAA tournament - and devaluing the regular season - is indefensible. And I’m yet to see one decent defense of it. If you’re for it, raise your hand and put your name on it. If you’re too ashamed, that’s telling.

@Graham_Couch I wouldn’t count on that. But we shall see

@mattcharboneau You know who else will ignore it? The casuals who make up a lot of the eyes, when they have to get brackets in by Tuesday and don’t. Having no relevant games before Thursday is the key.

First question in any job interview of any of these folks going forward is simple: Were you for this? If the answer is yes, there is no second question.

@Graham_Couch Well, you might ignore it. It’s still an expansion of 8 teams. … I wish there was social media when they expanded to 64

@mattcharboneau They've added 12 teams. Because at 68, we ignore the play-in and essentially act like it's 64. Anything that forces you to factor in anymore than the games that start Thursday hurts the sport. This is a niche sport other than March Madness/bracket pools. This messes with that.

Make it make sense 🤦‍♂️

@USBWA Atta boy, @MexCarey

Michigan State's Carey to receive our 2026 Katha Quinn Award for service to media. Congrats Mex! usbwa.com/a/cb8176ea

The pro-Nebraska crowd in Oklahoma City losing its mind at every call/non-call feels like any Iowa game at Carver-Hawkeye

@JLEdwardsIII Right back at ya

@mattcharboneau 😂😂😂 miss ya man

Hard to imagine being so careless with the ball won’t come back to haunt Michigan State. So many wasted possessions.

@mattcharboneau Chill, Matt

Ok, the second the play by play guy called game, things have been unraveling

Multiple high major coaches are pointing out the fallacy in the argument of High Point coach Flynn Clayman that P5 teams refuse to play top mid-majors. He should look closer to home to see who really doesn’t want to play those teams. sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-basket…

@Graham_Couch I can only imagine the conversation currently taking place at a Buffalo watering hole. It’s right now that I miss it 😉

@mattcharboneau Unless you’re going to become four people, you alone aren’t enough.

The dream of building anything at the mid-major level is dead - and it’s a problem for high-majors. Because there isn’t enough overall interest in the sport without the mid-major fan bases being engaged.

I am so thankful for 15 years at @WXYZDetroit. I am really excited for what's next in my hometown, continuing to connect with so many in this amazing community