by: Frank Fitzpatrick | Inquirer Staff Writer

Assuming for a moment that he could have shed the trademark blue-eyed skepticism that made him so dogged a reporter, Chuck Newman might actually have enjoyed being compared to a Broad Street bully.

Mr. Newman, who died Wednesday of a heart attack at 79, was after all the sportswriting equivalent of the Stanley Cup-winning Flyers teams he covered in the mid-1970s--aggressive, feisty, confrontational, strong-willed and tough.