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Colin Dunlap: RIP Deuce

Deuce Skurcenski has moved on to that big fray in the sky.

Who is Deuce Skurcenski?

Who was Deuce Skurcenski?

If you don't know the answer to those questions, you probably didn't spend much time around a high school playing field in Western Pennsylvania over the past 40 years or so.

Lawrence "Deuce" Skurcenski died late Tuesday night at 73, a man woven deeply --- and genuinely --- into the fabric of high school athletics in our area, an area with as profound a tradition in that realm as any in our grand nation.

Deuce claimed to have kept stats at more than 10,000 basketball games and over 3,000 football games, but was known for his curious, quirky and one-of-a-kind sense of humor and manner in which he could take the most innocuous phrases and turn them into his famous expressions.

Games weren't just games, they were "frays."

If a game was really good, it was a "smokin' fray."

For some reason when I saw him, Deuce would always remind me that Moon and Mars had taken their athletic programs "out of this world."

I don't know, maybe Deuce thought I went to Moon or Mars for high school, even though I must have told him 100 times that I had gone to Fox Chapel. And then every time I told him I went to Fox Chapel, he'd tell me about the 50 or so athletes he remembered from there.

Nonetheless, it was that kind of humor --- with a delivery that no one could match although many imitated --- that made Deuce who he was. Deuce was a throwback to a time when people valued conversation, when there wasn't as much impersonal and soulless communication such as texting or tweeting and when events, especially local events, had characters.

And no character in the WPIAL was as well known as Deuce.

Was he eccentric? For sure.

Could he be a pest at times? Absolutely.

Was he fun-loving and harmless and a kind and generous soul? In the words of Deuce, "Awwwww, Yeahhhh!!!!!"

Perhaps the thing that most jumps out at me as I recollect about Deuce is how well known the man was for doing something as menial, something as seemingly simple as keeping score. Whether it was the janitor who cleaned up the gym, the athletic director at a high school or guys like John Calipari or Bob Huggins, seemingly every person of every race, religion, creed and tax bracket who had ever gone to a game around here knew Deuce --- and there was a good chance he knew them and would stop and talk to them, even if many times you kind of wanted the conversation to be half as long as it ended up being.

Man, could Deuce stretch a two-minute conversation into a soliloquy that lasted 20 minutes, diving in and out of latest prospects he saw at a "fray" and interspersed with about 10,000,000 terrible puns and phrases.

But that was Deuce. And that's why we loved him.

I remember a story Post-Gazette sportswriter Ray Fittipaldo told me when I think about Deuce today. Ray was at Five-Star basketball camp at Robert Morris and had an interview set up with famed Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. As Ray began to interview Coach K in a private area, in walked Deuce unknowingly. One of the most revered, esteemed and successful basketball coaches ever to grace our planet looked up and simply said, "Hey Deuce."

That story illustrates just how many people Deuce knew.

And it illustrates just how many people knew Deuce.

He was a mainstay and a legend and somebody you could count on seeing at WPIAL games.

Deuce is gone now, but those who encountered him will never forget the character they crossed paths with.

Colin Dunlap is a featured columnist at CBSPittsburgh.com. He can also be heard weekdays from 5:40 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sports Radio 93-7 "The Fan." You can e-mail him at colin.dunlap@cbsradio.com. Check out his bio here.

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