FORT MYERS, Fla. -- When did I first become aware of Nick Cafardo, the baseball reporter extraordinaire we lost far too soon on Thursday?

It was on, of all things, my paper route for the Patriot Ledger in the fall of 1984.

That was my first job, and I was 12 years old. Nobody ever informed me that part of it was to take the actual paper out as I went from driveway to driveway and devoured the baseball coverage.

But that is what I did, because Nick kept my sports-obsessed mind up to date on all things Red Sox every day. His style was his substance -- he wanted you to know the news and he told it in a way that was easy to digest. Nick wasn’t much for the self-indulgent, flowery lead. He was proud of not being a wordsmith. Instead, Nick was a grinder who earned his way up the ladder by outworking the competition.

A suburban paper was only going to keep a talent like Nick for so long. By 1989 he was hired for his dream job of covering the Sox for The Boston Globe, where he remained for the rest of his career.

The story goes that Will McDonough, another journalism legend who died in 2003, told the Globe they needed to hire Cafardo because he was a rising star.

In 1992, I had the thrill of actually meeting Nick instead of just reading his stories. As a Northeastern University student on co-op, I got to work at the Globe, where I would spend the next three and a half years observing giants of the industry. None of them were more down to earth than Nick, who couldn’t have been any kinder on the few occasions I’d see him in the office.

It was a decade later when I really and truly got to know Nick. That was in 2002 when I began my dream job of covering the Red Sox for MLB.com.

This was the start of a 17-year-run in which I saw Nick every day that I worked. And when I say every day I worked, I mean it sincerely.

You see, Nick never took a day off. At least none that I can remember. His bosses slotted the off-days in on the schedule, and Nick went to the ballpark anyway.

This occurred again on Thursday, and it happened to be Nick’s final day at work and in life.

Roaming around the Spring Training complex in search of his next story or nugget for his renowned Sunday notes column, Nick collapsed. He regained consciousness briefly, but was gone within hours.

Going to JetBlue Park on Friday was difficult for the simple reason I knew that Nick wasn’t going to be there, like he always was before.

But when I thought about it more, I knew that all of us on the Red Sox beat had to do it because there is no better way to honor Nick than to keep going to the ballpark. It is what he loved so much, and why he never stopped.

When your job also happens to be your passion, this is what you do. Nick, at 62, had been as energetic during this Spring Training as I imagined he was back when I was reading his words in the Patriot Ledger 35 years ago.

Nick was excited about a book he had been working on with Jerry Remy. He was skeptical about the Red Sox not replacing Craig Kimbrel and asked Alex Cora about it the other day. In what proved to be his final column, which was published on Thursday, Nick was enthusiastic about Steve Pearce being at his most productive in his mid-30s, thus proving analytic projections aren’t always right.

Nick loved baseball for all of its debates and unpredictability. Yet he was very predictable himself. Nick always showed up. He always was engaged in the process. And his mood never seemed to change.

I don’t remember him ever raising his voice. In a business that can have big egos, Nick was a disarming, down-to-earth, kind man who everyone got along with.

The modest Nick wasn’t big on taking compliments, but he loved to give them. In my second or third year on the Red Sox beat, he walked over and told me that I was doing a great job.

He did this with countless other men and women who covered the Red Sox in the years that followed. In fact, I heard him praising someone just a few days ago for a story. He appreciated anyone who brought enthusiasm to baseball coverage.

Nick was such a part of the fabric of the Red Sox that Cora addressed his players about his passing before the team took the field Friday for its morning workout.

“Let's actually celebrate his life,” said Cora. “Like I told the guys, just go out there and have a great day. We hate off-days anyways. Let's have a blast on the field. He loved the game.”