The Times gave retiring Post columnist Steve Dunleavy a sendoff on the front of the business section this morning. The story included this great quote from Pete Hamill, the hard-drinking journalist's competitor at the Daily News: "I always thought he was writing his columns like he was double-parked. He was a tabloid guy in every fiber of his body." Dunleavy also set the record straight about that time he knifed his own father's car in service of a scoop. Luckily, the awesome story is still mostly true:

[The story] goes like this: As a young copyboy in Australia 55 years ago, Mr. Dunleavy was so hungry for a story that he popped the tires of his father’s car at a murder scene. His father, a photographer at a rival paper, could not get to the post office to transmit photos, and Mr. Dunleavy, then about 15 years old, earned his paper a big scoop.

That is how Mr. Murdoch remembers it.

Mr. Dunleavy tells a different version. Yes, he punctured the tires of a car, but it was owned by his father’s newspaper and he did not know his dad was there. And it was not a murder but the story of a group of missing hikers.

“That story gets told and told, and each time it gets a little bit more whiskers on it,” Mr. Dunleavy said.

Missing hikers, murder, accident, whatever: The point is Dunleavy pushed past his own dad to get a story. Those are some great competitive instincts.

As a bonus, the story helps alleviate any lingering guilt among those of us who, say, woke up early to snatch a tape recorder out of our girlfriend's car for similar purposes.

(Our prior Dunleavy retirement coverage is here, here and here.)

Send an email to Ryan Tate, the author of this post, at ryan@gawker.com.