Another legendary journalist whose newspaper career was launched at The Robesonian has retired in the crappy year that is 2020.

Sammy Batten, however, is unlike the other because his legendary status is not self-assigned, but is widely acknowledged, having been earned through 36 years of covering high school and collegiate sports in North Carolina, four of those years at The Rob and the balance at the Fayetteville Observer. His departure on Tuesday accelerated the plunge of that once venerable newspaper to mediocrity.

I hired Sammy to work at The Robesonian when I was the sports editor here in 1984, and it remains one of my best decisions ever. It wasn’t an easy sale as Sammy was living in Chapel Hill and working for a publication that exclusively covered UNC athletics and athletes like Michael Jordan, who like all who know Sammy called him “The King.” But Sammy came anyway, a tribute to my persuasiveness, but a good time was also promised and delivered.

Sammy and I formed a two-person staff that covered 10 high schools — in alphabetical order, Fairmont, Littlefield, Lumberton, Magnolia, Orrum, Parkton, Red Springs, South Robeson, St. Pauls and West Robeson — in what remains the hardest job I ever had.

Seventy-five-hour weeks were the norm, and the Saturday after Football Friday was the beast. The person whose job it was to put out the Sunday edition was looking at a 16-hour day, and the person who didn’t have that task was looking at about a 10-hour day. I was pulling in a cool $180 a week and was not eligible for overtime, and Sammy even less, but we were too dumb to know we had a lawsuit. We did it without complaint because we believed it mattered.

I will publicly reveal for the first time: I made the decision in 1988 to consider a move to news so that Sammy could be elevated to sports editor, and as part of that decision, I did an audition.

The date was Feb. 1, and if I had not been working news, there is a solid chance I would have been among the hostages that day, but as it was, I was too quick and escaped out the back door. Sammy was held captive for 10 hours, which he spent doing interviews with journalists from around the world that were calling the newspaper and also doing the weekly prep sports statistics.

Sammy left The Rob soon after for the Fayetteville Observer and I joined him there for six years, from 1990 to 1996, before returning here as editor.

Although I hired Sammy, neither of us would have worked at The Robesonian except for the decision by Cliff Sharpe, whose family at the time owned The Robesonian, to bring John Fish in as a sports editor in 1981.

Cliff was in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at UNC with Fish, Sammy and myself, and so began what would become the PIKA connection, which also included Ward Clayton, who hired me, also in 1984.

Cliff’s family had sold the newspaper before I arrived, and Cliff surprised a lot of us with his decision to join the Navy, from which he eventually retired as an admiral. Yep, an admiral.

Coaches, high school athletes and fans are likely to remember Fish and Ward from the early 1980s and, like Sammy, they were both good at their job, respected and well-liked.

They also did pretty well in life.

Fish rose quickly in the world of journalism, eventually exiting the newsroom for the business side while working at newspapers in York, Pennsylvania; Augusta, Georgia; Topeka, Kansas; and Naples, Florida, until brain cancer robbed him of his career and so much more. He is a 12-year survivor and wrote a memoir of his challenges, which continue today. If you are so inclined, send up a prayer on his behalf.

Ward joined Fish for a period at The Augusta Chronicle, and went from there to work for the PGA Tour for several years, and continues as a communications professional with an emphasis on golf, corporate communications and nonprofits. Recently, he produced a film on caddies titled “Loopers: The Caddie’s Long Walk,” and golf fans might have seen him interviewed in a recent feature on the Golf Channel on caddies at the Masters Tournament.

I am now a glorified cart boy and loving it.

I thought Sammy’s retirement was a good time to recall the PIKA connection at The Robesonian. I think I speak for all of us when I say it was our pleasure.