January 20th, 2019 at 11:13 PM ^
Didn't know he was still there, newspapers are dead another victim of the internet
January 20th, 2019 at 11:39 PM ^
Good writer - he had a very nice career and should be proud.
Probably better for him than what happened with Joe Falls. He was allowed to stay around the Detroit News for years after he should have retired or forced to leave. Was sad to watch how pathetic his columns became after he got old, cranky and out of touch with reality...
January 21st, 2019 at 7:51 AM ^
Agree about Falls - his fall was a slow and painful one. He became detached from society and longed for the 'good ole days' from the 1950's... We're all going to suffer that fate in some way, though hopefully not publicly like he did.
January 21st, 2019 at 3:28 PM ^
I actually enjoyed Late-era Joe Falls. He offered no insight but there was a certain entertainment to be had in his digressions on the flavor of ballpark hot dogs.
January 21st, 2019 at 8:30 AM ^
If I remember correctly, Joe Falls got picked up for solicitation in the latter half of his career at the Free Press. I don’t think it directly led to his retirement, but I’m a little fuzzy on the sequence, and I seem to remember it was in either the late 70’s or early 80’s. I also remember that the first question we had was “was it a boy or girl?”
January 21st, 2019 at 9:29 AM ^
I'd forgotten about that.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/23653614/detroit_free_press/
January 21st, 2019 at 12:22 AM ^
Good riddance. February 1 can’t get here fast enough. I can’t believe the News kept him around instead of Tom Gage.
January 21st, 2019 at 11:51 AM ^
Lynn Henning retiring? He retired years ago but kept collecting a paycheck. Remarkable that he could be so wordy about nothing much
You're right about Tom Gage.
January 21st, 2019 at 12:38 AM ^
Notice the buttery-smooth setup as Henning slips into the folds of his La-Z-Boy. His high-octane adverbs, as if a baseball scout sprang from the head of Athena spouting hyperbole, routinely baffle minor league readers.
Gone will be his borderline Mapplethorpic prose on the physical attributes of Adonis-like prospects; his strange, almost-but-not-quite-the-right-word command of the vocabulary, like a Joel Zumaya fastball, straight from the forges of the lame Hephaestus...
...
i'm sorry i can't even fake this any more without mouth-vom
January 21st, 2019 at 12:56 AM ^
I had 2 paper routes for seven years as a kid. That money added up nicely. Too bad.
January 21st, 2019 at 2:46 AM ^
Honestly, I hated that spartan slappy.
January 21st, 2019 at 3:46 AM ^
Never saw the lions in a super bowl. Shame.
January 21st, 2019 at 6:44 AM ^
None of us have seen the Lions in a Super Bowl. Crying shame.
January 21st, 2019 at 8:10 AM ^
As a kid,I watched the Lions beat Cleveland in the NFL Championship Game in 1957.
It just wasn't called the Super Bowl then. The game was blacked out on TV, but my uncle had an antenna that pulled in Channel 6 out of Lansing.
January 21st, 2019 at 7:44 AM ^
He could write...just didn't understand the game-like, really nothing about how the game is played. His defense of the Tiger organization, as the consummate homer, was indefensible.
January 21st, 2019 at 8:09 AM ^
Lynn Henning was a pretty solid writer, but I also sometimes found his observations of the Tigers and their organization a bit quizzical, to say the least. Perhaps that is because he would occasionally take the philosophical road when a more mechanical analysis would be appropriate, but that's merely a stylistic quibble.
He had a great career with the News overall, and hopefully he has a great retirement.
January 21st, 2019 at 9:36 AM ^
It's interesting to see the mix of reactions to his retirement. I see it pretty much as you do, but I haven't lived in the Detroit area for thirty years and for the last fifteen have really only come back for funerals. In recent years I only read him when somebody over here linked to one of his columns.
I do hope he enjoys retirement.
January 21st, 2019 at 7:57 AM ^
January 21st, 2019 at 8:22 AM ^
I get that sometime his verbosity was a little overdone, but I will miss his minor league update articles every Sunday during the season. They were a great, concise way to keep tabs on who was trending up/down in the Tiger's system. It was similar to reading Hello posts, except with follow up on how they are doing within the practices as the year progressed.
January 21st, 2019 at 9:08 AM ^
Thank God. Henning was a professional fan troll
January 21st, 2019 at 9:34 AM ^
He was no George Puscas or Mike O'Hara.
January 21st, 2019 at 9:51 AM ^
I really enjoyed Lynn Henning's writing with respect to the Detroit Tigers and MLB in general. He was knowledgeable, insightful, and clear. I'll miss that writing.
I won't miss his auto-fellating of MSU in general and Mark Dantonio in particular. Henning was an unbearable homer on the Spartan beat. I won't miss that writing.
January 21st, 2019 at 12:03 PM ^
He must have had to turn a blind eye to quite a bit over the years.
January 21st, 2019 at 12:23 PM ^
Well, he was a tiger homer too, and it was annoying to hear him continue to be optimistic about the tigers, even though they were in a rebuild. It's like the Mark champion/Dan Miller issue with Lions football. i'd like to be real, not stupidly optimistic if the team is going to lose.
January 21st, 2019 at 12:07 PM ^
OP buried the lede.
Gregg Krupa being reassigned sucks. He always gave it to you straight on the Red Wings. Also interesting that Riley is walking away. The Freep probably could keep everyone else in staff if they just dumped Albom.
As for Henning, I was never much of a fan. He always sounded like a parrot of the Tigers' front office, and his writing style was so overwrought. Classic case of a guy not understanding his audience.
January 21st, 2019 at 3:27 PM ^
Nailed it. My thoughts exactly.
January 21st, 2019 at 12:38 PM ^
No one was ever wrong more consistently in the entire Detroit sports media than Lynn Henning. There is not even a close second. His rank speculation was presented as fact in his writings. Remember David Cutcliffe allegedly turning down the Michigan job? Yeah, right. That was straight from the trap of Lynn Henning via his "source" Gil Brandt who hadn't been relevant in three decades prior. Good riddance.
January 21st, 2019 at 2:19 PM ^
I didn't know he was still alive and would've guessed wrong if you had asked me.