Mickey Doyle joined our newspaper family during a crucial moment in the history of local journalism. The Arkansas Gazette was still breathing, though new owner Gannett mishandled the snap from center repeatedly until the Gray Lady at Third and Louisiana in Little Rock shuttered its doors.
The Gazette, then embroiled in a newspaper war with the folks publishing up the street at Fifth and Scott, spent a lot of money to house a Hot Springs office but not enough to keep Orville Henry writing about the Razorbacks. Gannett brought in Paul Borden, whose work for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., I had come to admire, and the Gazette fought until the end with Jim Harris, Kelley Bass, Donna Lampkin Stephens and others producing quality work.
What Rex Nelson called "the strange hybrid known as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette" greeted readers on an October Sunday in 1991 when the big sports story was Arkansas beating Texas in football (14-13 in Little Rock) the previous afternoon.
Mickey filled an opening created in the summer of 1988 when David Longinotti, long my right-hand man at 300 Spring St., ventured into racetrack management at Remington Park in Oklahoma City. David, now with the hometown track as director of oaklawnanywhere.com, and, like me, one who found his second wind after a physical crisis, remains a friend, ever willing to remind that the Rebel Stakes has been bumped to Grade 2 and carries a $1.25-million purse.
Mickey lacked the racing chromosome, although he faithfully played the 1-3 exacta in Oaklawn's fourth race for some time (don't ask ne why). A Russellville native and Arkansas Tech graduate -- his since-deceased father, Dee Doyle, was big in River Valley radio -- he came to us from Springdale, where the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas challenged the Fayetteville-based Northwest Arkansas Times on a regional stage.
Those days are long gone and, regrettably, much to the dismay of those who worked with him, so is Mickey. He passed away the other day, going down quickly after being stricken one night when returning from his desk job at the Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.
I did not hear the broadcast but am told that Mickey's name came up on the BUZZ (103.7 FM) one morning. He is missed by anyone who loves the newspaper business, in particular Arkansas sports, or appreciates a cleanly written, succinct story. Mickey did not go in for gingerbread.
He deserves credit for some improvements in media coverage implemented by the Arkansas Activities Association. No one I worked with had a more encyclopedic knowledge of high-school track. He was quick to point out that the state overall shot-put record held since 1974 by Paul White was not the Russellville High record. What will we do without him at the Meet of Champions or state high-school decathlon?
Mickey worked here long before the 2003 opening of then-Summit Arena created vistas not imagined by any previous local sports writer. I can only imagine how he would have welcomed the challenge -- currently 12 games in three days at renamed Bank OZK Arena. Basketball, as I recall, was not his passion -- horse racing certainly was not, a matter on which we agreed to disagree -- but he told me early on that Corliss Williamson, Russellville's most famous Razorback, could have played as a sophomore in the old Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference.
Mickey covered Lake Hamilton football during the stretch that it won a state championship (1992) and made three straight title-game appearances. He suggested we double up for the 1993 Class 3A semifinals, thus I saw Madre Hill for the first time as Malvern beat visiting Magnolia while, back home, Lake Hamilton took down Osceola.
A week later, after Madre ran through the Wolves on a wet surface at Little Rock, Mickey noted the absence of injured Wolf defender Daimon Sheets and said, "The only one who might have caught him was on crutches."
On another occasion, after a gully-washer during the Henderson-Ouachita football game, he composed under an Arkadelphia dateline: "The Battle of the Ravine almost became the battle in the ravine."
He called me at home on Sunday of Labor Day weekend in 1992 to advise that my follow-up column on the previous day's Arkansas-Citadel game needed revision: "They just fired Jack Crowe."
He had returned to 300 Spring St. in a desk capacity when wedding bells rang for yours truly in July 1995. I can see him yet, entering West Side Church of Christ in Russellville along with Melinda Gassaway and the late Isabelle Peregrin with sports guy James Gilzow in the audience. Good friends, good times, precious memories, some recounting absent friends.