Now the story can be told.

The famed "Little Black Book" owned by Peter Gobis.

The subject of the above photo may eventually be regarded by future archaeologists as one of the most important artifacts ever discovered from the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

It is the famed "little black book" formerly owned by Peter Gobis, who covered sports for The Sun Chronicle from 1973 until just a few months ago. It is 132 pages of paper wedged between two pages of faux leather binders, probably purchased 49 years ago in a downtown Attleboro stationery store that hasn't been in business for more than two decades. Many of the pages are filled with names and numbers of sports figures from not only the many towns covered by the newspaper, but also from all over New England and beyond. If there was a contact Gobis needed for just about anything, there was a 99 percent chance that number was contained within the book.

Understand, Gobis never updated entries in the book. He'd just add new ones. There was plenty of room for his impossible-to-decipher penmanship to pile in the entries, and he knew exactly where all of the new ones were -- if, indeed, he hadn't already committed the numbers to memory. For example, I just randomly opened the book to a page and looked at the first five entries. One was for a commercial concern no longer open. The next four were for individuals no longer involved in sports that would require our need for contacting them. Three of those individuals were deceased.

But at least we knew where to reach them in the afterlife.

Now, you may be asking, "How have you come into possession of this valuable piece of local sports history?" and may be thinking that Gobis would want to keep this keepsake from 49 years of local journalism. But if you are thinking that, you never really knew Peter.

Let's track back to the last week of February at the James Albertini Memorial Gymnasium in Mansfield. I was up in my Mansfield Cable Access broadcast location in the stands behind the scorer's table, preparing for the night's telecast, when Gobis climbed the bleachers with a mission.

"Hey, Farinella, I've got something for you," he said. And wasting no time, he reached into his coat pocket and produced the little black book.

I was stunned, but somehow I had the feeling that once he finally decided to retire -- and this was a decision maybe three years in the making -- he would want to divest himself of any and all reminders of the company he had served for 49 years. So I didn't even question his decision to bequest this artifact to me.

"I will treasure this forever," I said. Gobis laughed, then picked up his clipboard and his magazine and found someplace to watch the game where he wouldn't have to listen to my call.

At the TD Garden for tournament action.

As I said, Peter's decision to retire just before the start of the MIAA winter tournaments was the culmination of a long process. And I have to admit, I'm surprised it took him so long to reach it.

He has already seen his 70th birthday disappear in his rear-view mirror, but his stamina is that of a younger man and he was able to shrug off the sudden staff reduction that happened when I lost my job at the paper on Aug. 27, 2018 -- seven months shy of my own planned retirement.

Gobis and I were among the longest-tenured employees in the building. He started not long after the merger of the Attleboro Sun and the North Attleboro Chronicle at the top of the 1970s, while I came on board early in 1977 after having worked for the Sun as a high school correspondent in the late 1960s. I briefly left the paper in 1987 and returned in 1989, and stayed there until new ownership took over at the beginning of August 2018 and decided 27 days later that I was not essential to the newspaper's future (or bottom line).

Without that ownership change, I'd bet that Gobis might still be there today, attending parts of four or five games every day and cranking out the roundups in machine-like fashion. But he had no help whatsoever and he wasn't getting any younger. The new owners immediately eliminated practically all part-time help in the sports department, they didn't fill an opening when the second full-time writer got another job, and they reduced the sports editor's job to part-time, practically eliminating any chance of getting any help on the telephones that would be ringing off the hook every night.

Of course, I'd still help out Gobis whenever I could. If I was calling a game at King Philip or Mansfield, or even if I was not calling a game but "scouting" for a future broadcast, I'd often shoot him a few lines about what happened in case he hadn't heard from the coaches. You work with a guy for more than 40 years, what else are you going to do? I just didn't want it known publicly because my relationship with my former employers (of only one month, if you consider the ownership change) had soured under a litany of broken promises made by previous owners.

Gobis is two rows behind me at an NCAA presser in the 1980s.

I'm assuming that finally, it just became too much for Peter, to be expected to work 24-7-365 as if he was 40 years younger. So when he finally decided to leave, he didn't waste any time. He gave two weeks' notice and was gone when those were over. He wanted no fanfare, no parties or celebrations, and he didn't write a farewell column as so many columnists have done -- and indeed, within mere hours (as a photo farther down in this column attests), he was on a beach in Florida with his galpal, working on that George Hamilton-class tan of his.

Of course, Gobis' departure did not prevent people from offering tributes to a man that had become a fixture in local sports over the course of a half-century. Even the newspaper acquiesced and asked former editor Mike Kirby to craft a story commemorating Peter's departure, including quotes from yours truly. Kirb started at The Sun Chronicle as a member of the sports department not long after I came on board, and we worked together for a long time, so our conversation lasted more than an hour -- a lot longer than needed for the quotes he was able use in the story.

We covered a lot of territory in that conversation, including a lot of humorous anecdotes that should probably remain between us and those of us that worked together for so long. As it is, Gobis has gotten his fair share of kudos and remembrances since his retirement was announced, all of them well-deserved. His position has been filled and everyone is moving on, which is what happens in all facets of life. 

Yes, it is unusual that Gobis made it nearly to a half-century at one newspaper. And in conjunction with my 42 years there, I think that constitutes an "era," so it's only fitting that the generations of athletes that grew up with either or both of us at their games should remember us fondly. From all indications, they do indeed.

For my part, I'll salute Peter as I believe he'd want to be saluted. I won't go all gushy on him and say I lost a brother or something similarly over the top.

We were co-workers and friends, but not necessarily bosom buddies. We were two people of radically different backgrounds and personalities. He loved pro wrestling and I despised it. I got him back by making sure the office TV was tuned to "Saved By The Bell" reruns (after Elizabeth Berkley's movie debut in "Showgirls") in the afternoons. But we found enough common ground to work together seamlessly, with precious few disputes or disagreements, because we had the shared goal of wanting to provide the best possible sports coverage to the readers of The Sun Chronicle that we possibly could. And to underscore that, the long-time owners from Wisconsin (United Communications Corp. of Kenosha) let us do our thing without heavy-handed corporate interference. Yes, there were in-house disputes, one of which led to my departure in 1987. But two years later, on the verge of starting a Sunday edition that would become a showcase for the next 28 years, the local leadership figured out that their demanded changes in the sports section were going over like a lead balloon and needed to be changed again. They got the band back together, plucking me away from The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, and we put out one hell of a sports section for the next three decades.

As I told Mike Kirby, I always thought I was a hard worker. I was, but sometimes selectively so when it came to projects I embraced as opposed to those for which I had less enthusiasm. But Gobis put me to shame. He trudged on every day without relenting, cranking out the roundups and the features about individuals from a much wider cross-section of sports than I cared about. We both learned and grew as our responsibilities changed over the years, we both had our strengths and weaknesses, but I can say without fear of contradiction that I never respected anyone more in this business than Peter Gobis, and I hope he feels the same way about me.

That's not to say we didn't have our detractors. We surely did. We'd get angry letters every now and then, usually from individuals that claimed we were deliberately sabotaging their kids' chances for a Division 1 college scholarship because we weren't writing enough about them. In 99.9 percent of those cases, the kids couldn't get out of their own way and were barely deserving of a roster spot. The best of those letters (and later, printed versions of emails) went into a drawer in Peter's desk called the "Idiot File." And every few years or so, we'd break out those letters and re-read them for a good laugh. It's from those that I developed a catch-phrase, "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American reading public." 

Of course, I don't believe that about everyone -- although as the years have passed, and the decline of my industry has created a less-informed public, I might have been on to a growing problem before it really blossomed. Still, I wish I had asked Gobis for the contents of the "Idiot File" before the contents of his desk went into the dumpster. It would have been a good reminder of what obstacles we faced along the way of turning our shared goal of a comprehensive local sports section into reality. And some of those letters were just too damned funny.

Gobis on the beach in Florida.

I'm probably more thankful than Peter that our efforts have been remembered in a few places. We're both members of the Attleboro Area Golf Association Hall of Fame and the Attleboro Area Football Hall of Fame, and I can just see Gobis shrugging his shoulders and waving his hand dismissively at the honors. It's not disrespect. That's just Peter; after-the-fact accolades were just a lot less important to him. So if I suggested that Attleboro High School name its football press box at Tozier-Cassidy Field in Peter's honor, I'd be doing so in the same spirit as Brockton High did when it named the Marciano Stadium press box to honor former Brockton Enterprise sports editor Pete Farley, a champion of high school sports coverage for that paper's circulation area (and the father of my North TV broadcast partner, Glen Farley). But I can just hear Gobis saying, "Ah, just send the check instead."

Such a character, that Gobis. 

As I said, Peter was off like a shot to Florida once the retirement papers were filed. But even while on the beaches, he still found time to dash off un-bylined assessments of the Providence Friars' run in the NCAA men's basketball tournament and send them to the Blue Ribbon Daily on the sly. Old habits die hard. He's back now, but I suspect he will soon find that perfect tanning spot somewhere in the southern latitudes and leave his beloved Rhode Island behind.

But he left his mark on these towns, no doubt about it. Just like Bill Belichick, he replaced a guy named Pete Carroll (no kidding!) and did a better job for a lot longer. That's a heck of a legacy, and I was proud and honored to be along for the ride for most of those years.