If you are old enough, you remember those phone call bits by legendary comedian Bob Newhart.

Newhart would sit on stage and pretend to be on the phone. The audience could only hear him talking, but it would get a sense of the entire crazy conversation as Newhart just kept taking the silliness to the next level.

It was one of the best bits a comedian has ever produced.

Well, that is the best way to describe one Friday or Saturday night in the early 2000s for the sports staff at The Montana Standard, but it was no routine. It was a genuine Hudson Willse moment.

Montana Tech played basketball at Westminster College in Salt Lake City that night. This was back when the schools used to fax the stat sheet to newspapers. We would get them off the fax machine and then type up a box score and story based on the stats.

We had the stats for the women’s game, but it was almost midnight, and we did not have the men’s game. It was getting dangerously close to deadline, and we did not want to get chewed out by our bosses the next Monday over a late press start.

So, Hud, the retired sports editor who came out of retirement to work part time on the sports desk, grabbed our booklet that gave us the phone numbers of sports information directors around the country. He found the Westminster College SID and dialed his home number.

The problem was that Hud called the wrong Westminster College. Instead of Salt Lake, he got the SID from the school in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where it was minutes before 2 a.m.

We learned of Hud’s mistake as we listened to one side of the phone call.

“Oh, you’re from the Westminster in Pennsylvania?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

We were all trying to hold back our laughter so when could hear the entire conversation. Then, Hud made us all lose it with his one last question.

“So, how’d you guys do tonight?”

I am pretty sure we missed deadline that night, and I do not remember if we got the story of the Tech game in the next morning’s paper. I do know that all our stomachs were hurting from laughing so hard.

Bruce Sayler, the sports editor, had to take off his glasses because tears were streaming down his face. Those tears flowed for about an hour.

That is the story I thought of when I heard that Hud, a true Mining City Legend, passed away on Saturday. He was 90.

Hud did not ask that last question to try to cover for his gaff of calling the wrong school. No, he genuinely wanted to know if the Westminster College team in Pennsylvania won or lost that night.

He wanted to know which team won every game. He would have covered them all by himself if it were physically possible.

In the sports department of the Standard newsroom, we used to have a dry erase board hanging on the wall. On busy nights, Bruce would write down all the games that we had to cover.

Some were games that we went to, while others were games that we would get from phone calls or faxes. When one of the writers got back from covering a game, he or she would write the score on the board.

Hud would always peek as we wrote the scores.

“Looks like you had a good game,” he would say. Then he would hit us with the questions. He wanted to know everything, and no detail was too small.

That was something that Hud did during his 27 years working as the sports editor of the Standard. Like Lt. Frank Columbo, he kept asking one last question, and that was what made his column, Hudson’s Bay, the stuff of legends.

Hud was a trendsetter in the newspaper business. He set the standard for sports coverage that papers around the state tried to copy. It was a standard that Bruce carried on and instilled in all of us who were lucky enough to work with him.

Whether you were a star on the Butte High football team or the No. 5 player on the Butte Central golf team, Hud made sure your sport was covered. He made us all feel like a big deal.

That is why, in 1997, Hud was enshrined in the Butte Sports Hall of Fame with many of the Butte legends he helped make famous.

What really made Hud stand out, though, was Hudson’s Bay. It was the first thing I would turn to when I got my hands on the sports page in the morning. While I am not sure I ever learned the difference between a “tidbit” and a “this and that,” I always read every word that Hud wrote.

In a column that would appear several days a week, Hud took us behind the scenes of the games. Each column was an informative piece jammed with interesting facts, connections and side stories.

He got those priceless nuggets by always asking that extra question.

While I was never interesting enough to make his column by name, I did make it one time.

Hud, who referred to me as a “Butte Central transfer” in a story about the first golf tournament I played for Butte High, typed my name many times. He made sure every score my teammates and I shot in high school was reported on.

But I made Hudson’s Bay in a failed attempt to prank Butte High golf coach Ed Yeo.

I was a junior in the spring of 1992, and my fellow Butte High golfers snickered in the background as I called the Standard sports desk to report a ridiculous hole in one by Yeo. Hud answered, and I told him I was the pro at the Butte Country Club.

We had it planned for weeks, and I was the one who had to call because Jack Crowley had me call in a few real holes in one from the Highland View Golf Course over the years. So, I knew the drill.

I told Hud that Yeo used a 4-wood to hit his first ace on the 114-yard No. 14 at the Club. That was my favorite part because a 4-wood was too much club for my grandma on that hole.

Hud kept asking questions. He asked me about the course. He asked what it was like to deal with some of the fickle members of the club. Every time thought I was going to get to hang up and laugh with my friends, Hud would ask another question.

Our mistake was making the call the night before Butte High hosted a tournament at the Country Club. After I finally got off the phone with Hud, he called Yeo only to learn that he did not hit that hole in one.

At least that is what I thought our mistake was.

A few weeks went by before Yeo’s fake hole in one finally made the paper. In Hud’s column.

“The imposter, passing himself off as club pro Bryan Morgan, announced the witnesses as Bill Osborne, Larry Ferguson and Bob Crippen,” Hud wrote about the fake hole in one. “Yeo said it wasn’t true, and that he already had an ace under his belt anyway.”

I read that in the paper early in the morning before our bus left to Bozeman for the state tournament that May 14, and I thought I was playing it coy when I boarded.  Yeo was sitting in the front, holding the paper wide in both hands. I tried not to make eye contact with him as I walked past.

The bus was making its way up the hill to Homestake Pass before Yeo eventually spoke up.

“Hey Foley,” Yeo yelled, not looking at me or even taking his eyes off the paper. “The same guy who called you the ‘Butte Central transfer’ is now calling you an imposter.”

Yeo never told me how he knew I made that call, and I really thought that I had Hud fooled.

Looking back, I think I Hud got the final laugh in this one. He must have figured me out with that one last question.

— Bill Foley, who is easy to figure out, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.