BOB HAMMEL: A DEATH TOO SOON [Sat, 1-17-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Personal Reminiscences of An Old Man—BOB HAMMEL: A DEATH TOO SOON [Sat, 1-17-26]

 

The Indiana House just voted, unanimously, to name a section of IN 45 as the Bob Knight Memorial Highway. It’s appropriate. Bob certainly created a lot of traffic on that road, for three decades, as folks came to fill up Indiana University’s Assembly Hall every time one of his teams ran out onto the hardwood.

But it’s another thing Bob Hammel should get to celebrate, and he won’t. He died too soon.

Hammel was 88 when he died. That’s hardly a tragic death. It would be tragic at 8 or 28, and regrettable at 58 or 68, but hardly unexpected at 88, the age of double infinity. [The sign for infinity is a horizontal 8.] But it was too soon, to witness what he had a right to see.

 

Hammel was the long-time sports editor of the Bloomington, IN “Herald-Times,” and Knight’s best friend and staunch supporter. He was accused, especially by other sports writers, of being blind to Knight’s flaws, but he wasn’t. He just wasn’t vocal about the shortcomings of his friends. Or anyone else, for that matter.

He deplored some things that Knight did, like swear. I don’t think even a tinker’s damn ever crossed Hammel’s lips. But friendship to Hammel was a matter of constant, loving, Christian support, regardless of how badly his friends behaved, or how sick they got. His friendship did not waver. As another of his friends, I had reason to appreciate that.

 

So he would have delighted in driving on the Knight Memorial Highway. But, he died too soon.

The worst thing, though, about Hammel dying too soon, is missing out on the Indiana University football team of these last two years. He wrote columns and essays and books about IU athletics for 40 years, and only once did he get to write about a good football team, the one that lost the 1968 Rose Bowl game to OJ Simpson [USC]. Oh, how he would have delighted in and written about Coach Cignetti and the current football Hoosiers in a way no one else could.

Current IU Athletic Director, Scott Dolson, knows how much IU sports meant to Hammel, and how much Hammel meant to IU sports. He saw it up close and personal, from the time he was just an undergrad student, when he was a student manager for Knight’s teams. One of the first things Dolson did when he hired Darien DeVries as the new IU basketball coach was take him out to Gentry Park Retirement Village to meet Bob Hammel. Bob had been retired for almost 30 years, but Scott knew whose unofficial imprimatur DeVries needed.

Hammel greatly appreciated that visit. He told me about it during one of our regular Thursday morning coffee times in the Gentry Park dining room, when we got together to talk sports, yes, but more so, faith and family, memories and hopes.

I enjoyed and appreciated Bob Hammel’s friendship so much, but I was always surprised by it. When we started hanging out together, often with our wives, he was a legend, known to all. I was a small town preacher, who got his notice because I wrote him a letter about one of his columns.  

When the best sports writers of the 20^th century were named, he was always on the list, along with folks like Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated and Jim Murray of the LA Times. Hammel was on a first-name basis with sports stars like Michael Jordan. He was welcome in the news room of any newspaper. But next to Bob Knight, he said I was his best friend.

I think it was because his true identity was not as a great sports writer but as an honest-to-God Christian. He was a totally dedicated member of his congregation and denomination, but that was only a minor part of this Christian identity. His Christian identity meant that he was a constant advocate for those who were left out. He lived the gospel of personal holiness--he didn’t drink or smoke or swear, etc. But also he lived the gospel of social holiness--promoting civil rights and economic rights for “the least of these.” He was a Matthew 25 Christian.

We were almost the same age, so had grown up in Indiana at the same time. I think he saw in me a fellow spirit, a guy who loved sports, especially IU sports, but a fellow traveler on “the Way.”

I guess everyone dies too soon. No one gets to see everything in life that would have brought them satisfaction. But come Monday night, when the worst team in the history of college football does the unthinkable and wins the national title, I shall be reading Bob Hammel’s report of it in the Herald-Times of my brain.

John Robert McFarland

Bob Knight used to say, “Basketball is a simple game that is difficult to play.” I’d add that life is the same way.