The following chapter appears in “Going 15 Rounds With Jerry Izenberg,” a book exploring and chronicling the legendary columnist’s life and career. Part I of the book features a series of interview with Jerry spread out over 15 chapters.

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Chapter 9: “Gratitude for Readers“

An Izenberg column from November 2015 provided a revealing look at the tie that binds a trio of New Jersey coaching legends: Vince Lombardi, Mickey Corcoran and Bill Parcells.

Corcoran was mentored by Lombardi, an NFL legend, and played an instrumental role in shaping the coaching mind of Parcells, who became an NFL legend, too.

Izenberg traced the historical roots between the three men at St. Cecilia’s Catholic School in Englewood, New Jersey, explaining how it all started with Lombardi, continued with Corcoran and followed with Parcells. It began with basketball at St. Cecilia’s, where Lombardi, who received a pay raise of a couple hundred bucks by Father Tim Moore to add hoops to his busy workload, which already included football and physics, chemistry, and Latin.

So Lombardi “went to the public library and checked out a how-to basketball book written by Dana Bible, the old Texas A&M basketball coach. It was his play book,” Izenberg wrote. “The rest was all due to Lombardi’s intensity.

“And Corcoran, his star pupil, made it work. Together, they won a state title.”

Fascinating stuff.

Izenberg sees the big picture and his historical perspective as a newspaper columnist and keen observer of American and global sports spans decades.

Furthermore, he also recognizes the role he’s had — the enjoyment and thought-provoking material he’s given to readers — for decades, too.

A gifted communicator, he’s appeared as a frequent guest on two Irish sports radio programs for about two decades.

“We have a lot of fun because these people do their homework,” Izenberg said. “They know how to interview and they are not starstruck by television. We do fine…”

When he decided to retire from his full-time columnist workload at The Star-Ledger at age 77, he signed a contract that kept him busy — penning about 50 columns a year. He became Columnist Emeritus.

“But I’m still writing, I’m still traveling, I’m still working,” he pointed out.

Back to one of the Irish radio shows…

“This guy’s interviewing me,” Izenberg said. “He’s doing a great job. He finishes up and comes to the very end and he says, ‘…I want to ask a question and I hope I don’t embarrass you: Tell me, you know, for all these plaques and trophies and awards and all these things, the sportswriters (National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association; the North Carolina-based organization has since changed its name to National Sports Media Association) Hall of Fame and this and that, whatever, the Red Smith Award … Why didn’t you ever win the Pulitzer?’ ”

His reply?

“I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you what your question means to me,” Izenberg recalled saying.

“I’ve been nominated 15 times and I’ll tell you I’m not gonna say it’s political … I’m not even going to get into that. But I’m going to tell you this: At the height of my paper’s circulation, we were a million and a half on Sunday and 650,000 daily. Now let’s take a daily paper. Let’s round it off to 600,000. If one out of every six readers reads my column every day, and I do believe they do, that means I have an extended family of at least 100,000.

“Now when I go to hang it up, if I can look in the mirror and say, ‘Well, I tried, I gave it the best shot I had,’ and if those hundred thousand can say, ‘He did and he really gave us what we wanted, and sometimes what we needed,’ … if that can happen, what greater prize is there?

“I don’t need the fuckin’ Pulitzer.”

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Every year, Izenberg pens a Memorial Day column in honor of his father, Harry, who was a wounded American soldier in World War I.

“Anyway, this year when I went to write it, it was early. It’s the same column; I just make little changes here and there,” he said in 2015. “It was the day before Memorial Day and I get a phone call from this guy. He said, ‘I’m the president of the Jewish War Veterans of New Jersey and I’m first calling for donations.’ And I started to tell him, ‘Listen, I gave at the office during the Korean War, so that’s enough.’ But that’s not what happened.

“He said to me: ‘Is there a flag on your father’s grave?’ ”

Izenberg admitted he didn’t know.

“He said, ‘Well there ought to be.’ ”

“The next day, I get an email with three pictures. This guy got up at 6 in the morning, went to the cemetery — I told him where my mother and father were buried — and planted this flag on my father’s grave. And in his email to me he said, ‘Don’t thank me. It’s the least I could do for what he did, it’s the least I could do for your service, and the least I could do for the pleasure you’ve given me all these years.

“That’s a pretty good extended family,” Izenberg said before admitting, “Well I cried when I saw the pictures.”

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Going 15 Rounds With Jerry Izenberg is available for purchase via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and other online shops.