Jimmy Breslin writes last Newsday column

NEW YORK, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- New York Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin abruptly ended his career Election Day with a piece that wrongly called the election for John Kerry.

Newsday published Breslin's final installment Tuesday, with a tagline at the bottom of the column: "This is Jimmy Breslin's last regular column for Newsday. He will write from time to time."

Breslin, 75, who wrote three columns a week for Newsday, went out announcing a definitive Kerry win, a position Breslin reportedly has touted regularly in his column since last spring.

Breslin wrote a Kerry win was inevitable.

"When I figured in the people shocked by the dead bodies of young Americans in Iraq, and brutalized here by unemployment, there was no way to make the election seem close. I said this in this newspaper several times," Breslin wrote.

"Each time as I was typing, the words of the late great Harry (Champ) Segal kept shouting in my ear: 'Go naked on this one!'"