Ray Buck eulogizes one of the market's better all-around sports columnists:

Leave it to Revo to beat Neil Armstrong by one giant leap.

Columnist Jim Reeves arrived at the Star-Telegram in June 1969. Armstrong walked on the moon one month later.

Now Revo — that’s what we all call him — has chosen to retire after 40 years at the newspaper, crafting some of the most memorable columns over all or part of the past five decades.

Who can forget how he so eloquently portrayed former Texas Rangers manager Johnny Oates in the last days of his life? Revo wrote from a personal place on a professional level.

More recently, there was the Michael Vick column. Revo wrote: "I’m Vick’s worst nightmare. I’m a dog lover," then gently surmised that his beloved Nick, a rescued Great Pyrenees recently deceased, most likely would forgive a dog killer.

Yeah, Reeves has written things that all of us have disagreed with from time to time (some more than others, of course -- his Michael Young take was particularly ill-received around these parts), but he wrote from a unique perspective and published some eye-opening tidbits and viewpoints from time to time and, well, was better at what he did than many of those comprising his dying breed -- the all-purpose sports columnist. Sure, I've probably taken my fair share of swings at him, and the majority of them might have been justified, but one less source of information on the Rangers is not likely to be a good thing.

[One example of such an eye-opening tidbit, which I gleaned from one of Reeves' Sunday columns but which also didn't get publicized much: during 2008 spring training, the Rangers asked Nelson Cruz about him being converted into a pitcher. He swiftly demurred and the issue was dropped. Good thing.]