“It was a quarter to three when I struggled into Duffy’s Tavern. As usual, Duffy wasn’t there but Archie the bartender set me up with two fingers of rye. I nodded gratefully, thankful that he remembered this broken-down sports writer’s beverage of choice.”
— Filthy McNasty from John Mutka’s November 7, 2003 column
In the early days, John Mutka showed me the art of working a press box.
I never got to his level.
I always felt like the invisible man when I covered a game with Mutka.
He knew everyone in the press box plus the janitors and they’d all stop to say, “Hi.” It took him 10 minutes to get to his seat in a high school press box the size of a kitchen.
What was, I? Chopped liver.
In Mutka’s presence, I was and that was okay. He earned the goodwill one story at a time in over 50-plus years working as a sports writer for the Post-Tribune.
For Mutka, it was easy. He just showed up as himself.
Underneath his punny facade, Mutka was endearing, lovable, funny, and a world-class human being who was devoted to his family.
Coaches and players gravitated toward him because they knew they’d get a fair shake. There are hundreds of former Region athletes who remember the story that Mutka wrote about them years ago fondly.
He died on Tuesday in Colorado, where he had moved about a year ago to live close to his children.
Mutka retired from the Post-Tribune once in 2003 and again in 2016 — working as a freelancer for his final run.
My relationship with John started when I was roughly 10 years old. It was one-sided then. I was always a newspaper rat and the sports page was my favorite. On some days, Mutka was Filthy McNasty, a character he had developed to commiserate about sports on slow news days. McNasty always went to Duffy’s Tavern and Duffy was never there. A generation of early Mutka readers still talk about Filthy.
I got to know Mutka a little when I was younger through his kids.
We went to the same Catholic grade school in Valparaiso and John’s oldest son, Mike, was my brother’s age. Mutka coached their basketball team and worked as the school Athletic Director in his spare time. I spent a Saturday or two hanging out at the Mutka house, tagging along with my brother.
In 1997, I was hired at the Post-Tribune as a sports writer.
Mutka and I bonded immediately.
We spent many hours in the car on the way to assignments talking and it wasn’t usually about sports.
The subject could be politics, our families, a movie (he loved old movies), or writing.
He was devoted to his wife Ginny, who died in 2020.
In her later years, Ginny developed Alzheimer’s.
Mutka dutifully took care of her at home while continuing to write.
He agonized about putting her in a nursing home near the end.
He’d stop by once, sometimes twice daily to see her even though she didn’t always recognize him.
About a year ago, I went to John’s going away party when he was leaving for Colorado.
I felt like I was in a press box with him again.
Dozens of people stopped by to say goodbye. John was energized by the outpouring. He loved interaction with people, many of whom knew him through his stories.
As a journalist, John wrote with a light touch, sometimes with an awful pun mixed in that was funny because it was quintessential John.
Like Filthy McNasty, it was one of his trademarks.
John never used a blow torch to firebomb someone in his columns. Occasionally, you’d get a scalpel incision in the form of a clever jab that you had to read closely to get.
But outrage wasn’t his thing.
Mutka didn’t draw attention to himself when he wrote, which is a rare quality in a business that is ego-driven.
In many ways, John was the right person at the right time in the right place for his job.
He was born in Whiting in 1936 who graduated from Indiana with a journalism degree. While there, John served as the editor of the Indiana Daily Student. He spent a few years at the Frankfort Times before coming home to work at the Post-Tribune in 1963.
Northwest Indiana was a vibrant place for newspapers for years.
The Post-Tribune had a great sports department in the 70s and 80s, with Mutka and other writers like Al Hamnik, Richard Grey and John Walsh.
Mutka was a star, often writing three or four columns a week while covering a high school football game in the fall and high school basketball in the winter. On Friday nights, Mutka would race back to the Gary office after a football game to help put out the paper.
He covered all the Chicago professional teams, colleges and local sports.
Mutka was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame and he was awarded the Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest civilian honor in Indiana, for his sports writing.
Mutka was offered a job at the Chicago Tribune, one of the North Stars for newspaper reporters but he turned it down because he didn’t want his identity to get swallowed up in the machinery of a large paper.
In his retirement, Mutka started writing sports posts on Facebook.
His last post came on May 10. It was about a Valparaiso University basketball transfer.
Even in his final days, Mutka was still working on his craft.
It was what kept him fully alive.
I can say with certainty there will never be another John Mutka.
He did all of it the right way until the very end.
A celebration of Mutka’s life will be held this summer (date to be announced) at St. Paul’s Catholic Church at 1855 Harrison Blvd in Valparaiso. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in John’s name to the St. Agnes Adult Day Services Center at 1859 Harrison Blvd, Valparaiso, In 46385.
Mike Hutton is a freelance reporter and columnist for the Post-Tribune.
