I'm very sad - Chris Thomas, my favorite sportscaster, passed away yesterday. (Read the St. Pete Times article on Chris here.)

To call him a sports reporter vastly understates what he was. He was entertaining, smart, clever, had a great array of sound effects, and loved a good fart joke. He had a great laugh, and he made me laugh too. I think I would have listened to his program even if I wasn't a sports fan.

He was brilliant on television - every morning I would watch his taped sports report, and he always did something wacky. They'd hit him with a plastic hammer, or stick a vacuum cleaner tube into the frame and vacuum his hair - hilarious. When the Browns were stolen from Baltimore, I heard him report the story, and even though I was devastated at the news, he made me feel better as he bashed the NFL for allowing that sort of thing to happen. I was so pissed when they didn't renew his TV contract!

Later, on 9/11, I listened to his radio program, and he comforted all of us. He could be tough, too - when Tony Dungy was fired by the Bucs, he asked the Glaziers point-blank - "You mean to tell me you just fired the man who took you to the NFC championship, and you haven't even thought about who to replace him with?" He always called the stadium where the Bucs play "Community Investment Tax Stadium".

He introduced the word "flumoxicated" and the phrase "rat bastards" into my vocabulary. He always ended his show by saying, "Tell someone you love, 'I love you'", and that's stuck with me.

I knew he must not be well as he hasn't been on the radio for several weeks, so I can't say I was totally surprised. But I am depressed. I listened to him every day, even if it was only for a few minutes. It may sound corny, since I never met the guy - but I felt a kind of connection with him. At least the TV station that let him go did a great story on him, complete with footage of him dancing with a flamenco troupe while wearing a Carmen Miranda-type outfit. Again, simply brilliant.

Goodbye, "Mediocre Sports Hunk".