James Curran was the ultimate Sun sports department prodigy.

He showed up pretty much fully formed, as a writer, at the age of 16.

He could report, keep statistics and file on deadline when he walked in the door. When he was barely old enough to drive. He had spent some time at a weekly in the city of Highland, but I bet he already could do what he did when he got there, too.

That sort of innate ability just doesn’t happen. Ever.

His high-school newspaper advisor once told one of my staff members that Young James showed up in her class and turned in a startlingly crisp and coherent sports story. He might have been 15. The advisor remembered he had told her he knew how to write. She complimented him on the story and Curran apparently said, “I told you I could write.”

Asked how he knew how to write, she recalls Curran saying, “Because I read.”

Within a year he was working for the local suburban, setting off on a colorful career that also had more than its share of drama.

I mean, this is a guy with whom I agreed to a “suicide pact” on the event of (God forbid) Vin Scully’s death. I was kidding. I think he was.

First, some of Curran’s nicknames. James Jimmy. JC Superstar. Emile. Jimmy Big Spear.

The last came from his assertion, at the office one day, that his last name, in Gaelic, means “big spear.” He was quite pleased. (Though I just now did a google of the name, and see “hero” and “spear” and “son of spearman” but no “big spear.’)

JC Superstar, we gave to him. His initials are JC and he was/is a fairly devout Catholic. (And his uncle was a priest.) “James Jimmy” … just seemed obvious. “Emile” might have been his own invention, during a phase where he seemed keen on reinventing us all. He began calling me “Rufus.” Then either he said he was “Emile” or I decided he was. Either way, it was very silly.

James is a strange guy. Or complicated. Take your pick. He might be a little too smart for his own good. More than once he wanted to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, and people who pay attention to these things know comedians often are some of the most complex and unhappy people around. James was a big fan of Dennis Miller, and have any of Miller’s rants ever suggested a guy at peace with himself and the universe? Exactly.

James started on the job for us in the usual way, taking calls and massaging agate. Fairly soon, he was out covering events. I believe he was the local colleges beat writer at one point, and then the recreation writer. He did more than a little Cal League baseball, too.

Something about James … just seemed to attract attention, and not always in a good way. He was a sort of eternal lightning rod. Some of it stemmed from his intellectual contempt for those he considered dull or slow-witted — and that encompassed a big chunk of humanity. Some of it might have been about attention. Some of it may have been utterly unplanned.

He was still a teen when he got a horrible cold. But he was at his desk, slogging through agate. To deal with his runny nose, he jammed wads of tissue into both nostrils. Something I hadn’t seen, and perhaps not something I wanted to stare at, but I grasped what he was doing. He worked with tissue in his nose for an hour or two … until the managing editor called over one of the sports people and said, “Whatever he is doing, please make him stop.”

I knew early on he was a huge Dodgers fan. To this day he can recite Vin Scully’s entire call of Kirk Gibson’s 1988 World Series home run, from “Look who’s coming up!” to “In a year of the improbable, the impossible has happened!”

Somewhere along the line, our Vic Scully suicide pact came up. You know, not wanting to live in a world without Vinny. Who has been doing the Dodgers for the entirety of James’ life. I probably should tell James right now I don’t actually plan to keep my end of the “pact.” Actually, Vin could outlive me, no sweat.

Sending James out to an event often seemed to involve someone ending up unhappy.

I recall a time when we sent him to cover the second day of the local Christmas basketball tournament. The first two games were in the consolation bracket, and James arrived when the second of those games was going on. He knew he didn’t have to cover that game, but he went in and sat down. Not at the press table, as is popularly recalled, but in the stands. Anyway, he began to read a book.

Someone involved in that (consolation-bracket) game took umbrage and called to complain about our guy being at the game but so obviously not paying attention. He felt offended. James’s explanation was brief: “I was there to cover the games that mattered.” Did it occur to him to maybe stay outside, reading his book, until the games that mattered came up? Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t.

He had a rival or two in Cal League press boxes, and I believe he might have come close to a fistfight a time or three with a hothead who later worked for us. Over what, I don’t recall. James was a high-spirited guy.

Some other Curran stories.

He once was pulled over by a squad of cops who thought he was driving a stolen car. Before things got straighted out, he was proned out on Fourth Street. Or it might have been the 215 freeway. Of course, James hadn’t stolen the car, but it seemed very Curran-like that something like that would happen to him.

There was the time when he showed up at work with a broken arm. (Or was it a black eye?) He said he had been driving … and guys he didn’t know got out of their car and attacked him. Ohh-kay.

We thought he might die, at the Joel Boyd farewell party of, oh, 1996. James got going on the Goldschlager with another part-timer, a half-Russian woman who could hold her liquor. Soon, James was massively wasted. He disappeared. A few minutes later someone spotted him sprawled on the grass two stories below Boyd’s apartment. I remember one of our desk guys shouting, “Roll him on his side; Hendrix choked because he was on his back.”

My recollection is that someone was alarmed enough at his condition that they called the paramedics. I do recall leaving the party in some haste, figuring pros would be able to give him whatever help he needed — and not keen to be on site when authorities showed up.

Somewhere along the line, James came up with one of the enduring slugs in Sun sports baskets: A list of knockoffs of the name of another part-timer, Chuck Hickey. It started innocently enough, as Huck Chickey, evolved toward Lip Smackey and then into areas quite a bit bluer. “Pants Gooey” comes to mind. Though the raunchiest ones were added by full-timers who came along later on. That list may still be around.

James left us in the mid-90s. For a time, I believe he was a welfare case worker. After a year or two of that, he took a full-time job with the Temecula Californian, which may already have been owned by the North County Times. He was a sports guy for a time, but for several years now he has overseen the beats of “religion” and “entertainment” … which has to strike him as more than a little amusing. (Totally different concepts? Or pretty much the same thing?)

He has been married twice, I believe (one of the weddings was at a Las Vegas drive-through wedding chapel), and has at least one son … and I believe he has coached baseball with that son.

Recently, he told me he’s reconsidering “the comedy thing,” trying to get an act together. Get back up on stage. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s good at it. I’d pay to see him.

I’ve heard he’s been shaving his head, in recent years. Though he had plenty of hair. Someone who saw him said it was a little scary.

Funny thing about James — as in odd, not comedic — is that I would have said (as recently as at the start of this entry) that I know all about James Curran.

After an hour of struggle, backtracking and racking my brain … I realize I don’t know him. And as I think of it, I realize there is a sort of studied opacity to him. Where he goes, with whom he hangs out, what he does in his free time … I’m not exactly sure. Nor have I ever really known. A former colleague of both of ours said he was a guy “totally loyal to the newspaper, the section … but not someone you really wanted to hang out with.”

Some of that fog around him … maybe it’s about personal pain. Tough childhood, and all. I’m not going to shrink the guy’s head, but pain is where comedy comes from, is it not? Doing stand-up … it would be of a piece.

All the same, he is a guy you don’t forget. Whether that makes for pleasant memories, as it does for me, or less pleasant. That’s our Jimmy Big Spear.