During a question-answer session in 2017, when Ray Didinger’s play, “Tommy & Me,” was enjoying its third well-received production in three years, a woman asked the sportswriter-turned-playwright if he was planning to write a second play.

Didinger didn’t have to think.

He immediately said, “No,” adding modestly he couldn’t think of another story that had the dramatic and interpersonal elements of “Tommy & Me,” and then glibly, “it might be wise for me to quit while I’m ahead.”

Cut to 2024.

A yellowed clipping from 1971 captures Didinger’s attention as he’s clearing out drawers in his desk.

It’s an interview he did with an NHL player, Brian “Spinner” Spencer, following Spencer’s bizarre rookie debut night with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the same night his father is killed 3,000 miles away

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