Ted Silary covered city high school sports like nobody ever did or could

This sportswriter who died this week at age 72, after retiring in 2013, could have had any sports beat in the city. He chose his own calling.

by Mike Jensen

Published May 18, 2023, 6:27 p.m. ET

It was a blessing, the cordial and respectful relationship I had with Ted Silary over the years. I always understood, it could have been different. I’d gotten my start at the Inquirer in 1988 covering high schools. Ted owned the city covering schools for the Daily News, but since I covered Delaware County schools, I wasn’t the competition.

Make no mistake, Silary was as competitive as any athlete he covered, and he covered them all, for decades, for the Daily News and for the Bulletin before that. For years he had a small legion of people gathering daily material, making it seem to readers as if Ted was in every gym in the city. He’d get to as many games as he could, and always the big game of the night, but Keith and Hockey and Huck and Amauro and Cooney and a bunch of others over the years also grabbed phone numbers from a game’s star so Ted himself could follow up and find the story behind the story, all for the next day’s paper.

The man who died this week at age 72, after retiring in 2013, could have had any sports beat in the city. He chose his own calling. He charted the history of a city’s high school athletes, for the papers, and then the glorious TedSilary.com, where you could get lost for hours if you chose to go down any of a hundred rabbit holes.

I wrote about the site in 2019, letting Ted know I was doing it.

“If you decide to ditch the project, you’ll be my favorite sports writer ever (smile),” Ted e-mailed back.

His name appeared over stories on almost every gymnasium bulletin board in the city, but he didn’t write to get written about.

I did write about going to his crazy quilt of a website, how once you had your fact, like how many points Gene Banks scored in this big game in what year, the question became, how long would you linger on the site, your eye caught by “City Hoopsters on AP All-America Teams” or “All-Century Philly-Area NFL-AFL Team” or the “Bill Ellerbee Tribute Page” or “Bill Fox Tribute Page.” (Bill Ellerbee is still with us, Bill Fox no longer.)

His site wasn’t just for superstars. It had all the facts. A list of 15-point scorers each season in each of Ted’s leagues. Summer league sign-up announcements. Donofrio Tournament roundups. The city, for Ted, was the Public League, Catholic League, and the Inter-Ac, regardless of the actual location of the schools within.

His parameters went further. He wrote about the boys, mostly football and basketball. (One of his signature traits: He included nicknames, always.)

He was serious about the competition. If his man Tom McKenna was in some gym doing stats, no chance he was sharing with a reporter from the paper housed just upstairs and owned by the same damned chain. Those stats were property of Ted and Ted only, by order of Ted.

Generations read Ted, knew Ted’s style. “He always referred to kids as spirited,” a Ted reader pointed out Thursday after hearing Ted had died.

He was kind in semi-Ted-style-retirement. Last year, he e-mailed me a story tip, relating the story behind a story, from the early ‘90s. “If you’re already on this, good luck!” I wasn’t. I used it to flesh out a profile.

Google wouldn’t have been invented if the need was simply to archive Philly high school sports.

“You know he did what no one ever did, could do and will do anymore,” said Pat McLoone, Ted’s longtime Daily News boss, who got his own start working for Ted. “He chronicled every point ever scored in a Catholic League or Inter-Ac game. And I mean every point.” (Not the Pub, though. The Pub grew too large and unwieldy, and Ted wasn’t willing to keep a historical archive if he couldn’t get it all.)

McLoone’s own introduction to Silary is out of a novel.

“He picked me up hitchhiking 49 years ago because I had a La Salle basketball jacket,” McLoone said.

Looking for a fact, occasionally I’d cheat, go right to the source. I e-mailed Ted in 2019, “a question that’s a layup for you …” since a reader was asking about the last sophomore to win Catholic League MVP, in case Jalen Duren won it that year. The guesses were Eddie Griffin and Reggie Jackson, two former Roman Catholic greats.

Fine guesses. Ted got back to me with the correct answer: “Adonal Foyle in ‘92 at O’Hara.”

The strange part, it took him six days to provide the answer. He cleared that up, too.

“Came home yesterday from quadruple bypass. Not exactly myself. Ha ha.”

He was exactly himself. RIP to an original, and the best to ever do it, anywhere. May TedSilary.com live forever.