Yesterday afternoon on the North Shore, a nearly 11-foot sculpture of Fred Rogers was unveiled. A craggy, smiling kin to the Mayor Richard Caliguiri statue standing vigil on Grant Street, the bronze sculpture of Mr. Rogers sits facing the city skyline. He is tying his shoe.

Though this version of the children's television pioneer would be within its right to demand human sacrifices, like past gods cast in iron, it appears content with the adulation it is receiving -- for now.

Seated next to the archway of a restored bridge pier that could easily double as the Temple of Zeus in a low-budget movie, the Mr. Rogers statue was surrounded yesterday by Pittsburgh political royalty, media and throngs of people who genuinely loved the man the bigger-than-life sculpture represents.

An adorable children's choir sang the theme song from "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" as the clouds parted ever so slightly to reveal blue skies. Even old Mr. McFeely was on hand scoping the place out.

Mr. Rogers' widow, Joanne, acknowledged what had already occurred to thoughtful people at the ceremony. Wasn't there something incongruous about dedicating an enormous sculpture to the memory of her modest, self-effacing husband? Wouldn't Mr. Rogers, a former Sunday school teacher, have been scandalized by the idea of 7,000 pounds of bronze immortality?

Though it would have made him uncomfortable at first, Mrs. Rogers said her late husband would have eventually seen the upside of being an integral part of a monument dedicated to children and families.

She knows Mr. Rogers better than anyone, but I can't shake the suspicion that Mr. Rogers would have considered a statue in his honor an unacceptable concession to vanity and hubris.

But statues like the one unveiled on the North Shore yesterday are for the living, not the dead. And while it is incontestable that a 10-foot-10-inch Mr. Rogers bronze statue is inconsistent with his public image as the most humble of cats, it really does nothing to besmirch his memory.

If Mrs. Rogers can live with it, I suppose the rest of us can, too. But nobody had better freak out once the pigeons begin having their way with the statue in the spring.

Last week, a fistfight broke out in the newsroom of The Washington Post between a respected old-school editor and a younger staffer he accused of taking part in the second-worst article he'd seen in his decades on the job.

The fight generated lots of discussion in an industry which has become populated with homogenized, dull, scrupulously professional but antiseptic people in recent decades.

Newspapers used to be filled with unstable, two-fisted characters. When I started at the PG in 1988, several colleagues were obviously here under the auspices of the federal witness protection program. You've never seen such a rude bunch of gangsters, rogues, psychos, drunks and chain smokers in your life. That's why they wrote such compelling copy.

Most of these weirdos took the buyouts or left journalism altogether because they were a bad fit for more conventionally minded management that has taken over.

I've seen and been involved in lots of shouting matches in my time at the PG, but no fisticuffs. A couple of my colleagues with famous bylines had to be separated during those early years of the PG-Press merger, when passions and grudges from years of competing were still high. I look back on those days as something of a golden age of writing and reporting at this newspaper.

I'm not nostalgic for the craziness, but I do miss the time when getting a job at a newspaper had more to do with one's persistence and passion than the Ivy-ness of the school where you matriculated.

The days of the two-fisted newsroom are supposed to be long gone. That's why news of a fistfight anywhere in our profession stops us in our tracks. We all want to be part of a news operation where commotions like that are still possible, if not everyday events.

People slapping each other down over words in print is a throwback to our primordial roots in 18th-century journalism. We want editors and writers to care enough about what goes in the paper to fight over it when necessary.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes I'm nostalgic for the stupidest things.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.