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What is a scoop? Everything from getting the tiniest fact before a competitor to bringing down a president through months of exhaustive research -- a la Woodward & Bernstein -- has been labeled "scoops."
In these days of Twitter, Vine and other miracles of the interwebs, it's muddled even more. If Reporter A finds out that Joe Quarterback has stubbed his toe 20 seconds before Reporter B does, is it a "scoop"? (Sure. Why not? It's at least a mini-scoop.)
Many stories labeled as scoops developed from interviews -- the subject tells something newsworthy to the reporter, who becomes the first to chronicle it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100% of the scoops during my newspaper days were of this variety.
I'll discuss this a little more in a bit, but first, here's the impetus for me thinking about this right now:
It's is the 10-year anniversary of what was probably my final "scoop" as a journalist.
White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen believed he was being mistreated by fans and was so distraught he told me he would seriously consider quitting ... but only if his team went on to win the World Series.
For those who might not remember, here is the column I wrote for the Copley Newspapers and its news service ...
---
September 22, 2005
Feeling so stressed out that he regularly vomits and feeling unappreciated by Chicago's boo-first fans, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen says he might quit after the season if his team wins the World Series.
"I've got (championship) rings already and I'm proud of them, but if I win here, if I help the White Sox do this, it will give me a chance to walk away if I want to," an emotional Guillen told me before Wednesday night's 8-0 loss to the Cleveland Indians.
"I will think about it. I will think about it twice. The way I'm thinking right now, I will tell (general manager) Kenny Williams to get another manager and I'll get the (bleep) out of here. I'll make more money signing autographs instead of dealing with this (bleep)."
I have heard Ozzie say some wild things during his two seasons as Sox skipper, but this one floored me.
Here's a 41-year-old, second-year manager who has guided a modestly talented team to the American League's best record, a guy who in just a few weeks could be the first Chicago manager in 88 years to spray championship champagne, a former White Sox All-Star who gets misty-eyed when discussing his love of the organization ... and he is seriously contemplating his grand exit.
I wanted to make sure I heard him correctly, so I asked him repeatedly to clarify his comments. And he kept saying the same things, often raising his voice to accentuate certain points.
"I'm not kidding, not at all," Guillen said. "I want the fans to be able to say, 'Hey, we finally did it!' I want to make them proud. I want to win the World Series, and then maybe i'm gone. I'll even help Kenny look for someone else.
"I don't give a (bleep) about the money; I've got all I need. The thing is, I'm stressed every day.
"Do I have the best job in the world? Yes, because I'm managing the team I love. I'm managing my team. But every time we lose, I feel sick. I (vomit) sometimes. I get mad. I throw things in my office. It makes me crazy.
"I went to the World Series as a player (with Atlanta) and won one as a coach (with Florida). If I can do it as the manager here, I can say: 'Everything I want to do in baseball, I did it.' Then I'll make my decision."
Frankly, I doubt Guillen will have to worry about winning the World Series.
Although Wednesday's loss reduced their one-time 15-game AL Central lead over Cleveland to 21/2 games, I still think the Sox will make the playoffs (perhaps only as a wild-card team). I simply don't believe they have enough firepower or pitching to advance beyond the first round.
The Indians are so much more talented it's ridiculous. Travis Hafner alone is as good as any three White Sox. Nevertheless, with the division lead dwindling, many fans are taking out their frustrations on Guillen.
A half-hour after telling dozens of reporters that he didn't mind being booed at U.S.Cellular Field - even joking about "the 30,000 managers helping me out" - Guillen showed his vulnerable side during our long conversation.
"It makes me sad when they boo me," he said. "Sometimes I think they don't appreciate me. They should, because I played my (bleep) off for them and now I'm managing my (bleep) off for them.
"You know how many managers are dying for 91 wins right now? And we have that and they don't appreciate that? It makes me wonder what happens if I only have 71 wins, how are they gonna treat me? I mean, they treat me like (bleep) when I'm winning 91.
"My kids are here at the ballpark and they ask me later why I'm getting booed. I say it's part of my job, but deep down inside, it hurts. If I was doing a (bleep) job, sure, go ahead and boo me, but I think I'm doing pretty good."
So do I. With his boundless energy, confident personality, brutal honesty, zany (and often profane) sense of humor and aggressive style, Guillen convinced a completely retooled team - one many preseason prognosticators predicted would finish in fourth place - to believe it could accomplish anything.
The White Sox have blown most of their 15-game lead largely because the starting pitchers have slumped these last seven weeks. Just when it seemed the Sox were ready to choke completely, Guillen led them to a series victory in Minnesota.
Then came the first two games of the Cleveland series, in which the Indians kept taking leads and Ozzie's resilient Sox kept battling back. If the White Sox do qualify for postseason play, credit Tuesday's stirring comeback. Guillen's forceful, can-do attitude played a huge role in that triumph - and in the team's other 32 one-run victories.
Though it's easy to quibble with in-game decisions, the true measure of any manager is his ability to steer his ship through both smooth and choppy waters. That's why he's often called a "skipper."
Ozzie Guillen has been a superb skipper. If White Sox fans don't realize that, they don't deserve him.
---
A few interesting things (hey, at least I think they're interesting) about this column on its anniversary:
++ The genesis of it was this: Guillen was talking to a couple dozen reporters before a game, as managers routinely do. Unlike most managers, Ozzie had absolutely no filter and would say anything anytime. This particular time, he was grousing about the fans, and he felt he was being treated unfairly. After about a 2-minute discussion, the subject changed to something else. (Probably about Jay Mariotti being a jerk.) But as I stood there, I couldn't help but think that Ozzie really was deeply hurt by fans booing him, and I decided that if I had an opportunity to follow up with him about it, I would.
++ On some occasions in the past, my instincts had been wrong. Either the subject didn't feel like discussing a situation in greater detail or there simply was nothing there. This time, though, I happened to be right. About a half-hour after his session with reporters, I pulled Ozzie aside near the back of the batting cage and asked him a question. He went on a 3-minute, stream-of-consciousness rant that would form the basis of my column. When he said he was so upset about the perceived mistreatment that he "pukes sometimes," I knew I had something worth writing. I asked a couple of follow-up questions and he kept going, his voice rising. Friends up in the press box could see Ozzie making exaggerated hand gestures as he talked. Because Ozzie sometimes spoke in broken English and because he often was a jokester, I asked him several times if he was serious; I didn't want to report something only to be told later I hadn't gotten the joke or I hadn't understood. He assured me he was serious and he continued to talk.
++ The result was the column. By the next morning, it was the "water-cooler topic" in Chicago sports. I was asked to go on several radio shows to discuss it. Many newspapers that had nothing to do with my employer mentioned it, as did ESPN. That afternoon, before the White Sox's next game, Guillen again met with the media. My column was the main topic of conversation.
++ To his credit, Guillen never claimed he was misquoted, never tried to back away from what he said and never claimed to have been taken out of context. (The "out-of-context" lie has become the preferred lie of public officials everywhere, as they know they can't say they were misquoted because reporters all use recording devices now.) I liked Ozzie well before this interview, but this situation helped cement his status as one of my favorite people I have covered.
++ A couple of my Chicago sports journalism colleagues tried to say it wasn't a story at all because Guillen had jokingly made similar claims in the past. I don't blame those folks for being dismissive or trying to come up with an excuse, because it's never fun to get "scooped." My fellow columnists at the Tribune, the Southtown and other publications stuck up for me, which was nice.
++ In the ensuing weeks, everybody from USA Today to the Christian Science Monitor made references to Ozzie's remarks to me. In a book he wrote about the 2005 White Sox, Tribune reporter Mark Gonzalez devoted a few pages to it. For a reporter, having written something that kept people talking for weeks or even months definitely was satisfying.
++ I was dead wrong about one thing in that column: my assessments that the Indians were "so much more talented it's ridiculous" and that Guillen wouldn't have to "worry about winning the World Series." The White Sox caught fire again just in time -- in great part because of Ozzie's motivational skills and his handling of the pitching staff -- and Ozzie became the toast of the town.
++ I never really thought Ozzie would quit, and not just because I doubted they'd win the Series. I was quite sure he was just reacting -- some would say over-reacting -- to a perceived slight. Ozzie often was guilty of being "very human," the classic example of the cliche, "he wears his emotions on his sleeve." He often got in trouble because of his knee-jerk emotional reactions.
++ I'm pretty sure most intelligent observers agreed with me that there was little to no chance of Ozzie quitting. But that wasn't really the point. The column opened a window into the soul of a major sports figure in Chicago history. I mean, the man was so distraught about the fans booing him that he regularly puked! It was news.
---
Three more favorite scoops:
1. As a 23-year-old reporter for AP in Madison, I interviewed Badgers forward Cory Blackwell, the Big Ten's leading scorer and rebounder that season. During the course of a long interview, he told me he was planning to leave after his junior season to go pro.
That was news enough because it wasn't all that common in 1984 for players to leave early for the NBA, especially if they weren't shoo-in superstars. Even more telling was the way he said it: He played in Chicago summer leagues against the likes of Isiah Thomas and Doc Rivers, and he schooled them! During the course of the interview, he also ripped Badgers coach Steve Yoder.
It ended up being a great read. And of course, the next day, Blackwell denied it all, said he was misquoted, yada yada yada.
After he spoke to the other reporters, pointing at me and calling me a liar, I confronted him at the end of the court, about 60 feet away from where the other reporters were gathered. It must have been a hilarious scene, as we weren't exactly talking quietly and our hands were moving in exaggerated gestures.
The next day, the Wisconsin State Journal took Blackwell's "side." The Milwaukee papers also were skeptical of my article.
I ended up doubling down -- getting a source to confirm Blackwell's intentions. And, naturally, he DID go pro. He was Seattle's second-round draft pick but played in only 60 NBA games. Maybe he dominated Isiah Thomas in the summer leagues -- riiiight! -- but he wasn't good enough when the games actually mattered.
2. During my time as AP's sports guy in Minneapolis, I used to joke with my newspaper friends that they should be fired immediately if I ever got a "scoop." After all, their entire job was to closely follow the ins and outs of their teams, while I had to cover four pro sports, a major university and even some preps.
But of course, sometimes scoops "just happen." That was the case in 1991 when, near the end of a difficult season, I interviewed Timberwolves coach Bill Musselman after practice. Even though the T-Wolves actually had exceeded expectations their first two years in the league, Musselman was being criticized by some for not giving young players more court time. Mostly, he was accused of stunting the development of 1990 top draft pick Gerald Glass; the ultra-intense Mussleman wanted Glass to actually earn playing time.
Not long into the interview, Musselman started expressing the belief that even management was against him. Just as I knew I had a great column about Ozzie when he mentioned puking, I knew I had something with Musselman when he said Timberwolves president Bob Stein "hates me."
There were denials all around. Musselman, who had always been a straight shooter with me, disappointed me by claiming he had been taken out of context. Stein denied there was a rift. Everybody tried to put on a happy face.
Of course, a month later, Musselman was fired.
And Gerald Glass? He was a soft player who refused to play defense and was soon out of the league -- Musselman had been right about him.
3. A year after Michael Jordan came out of retirement the second time (to play for the Wizards), I had heard from some "friends of friends" that he never really wanted to retire after the 1998 season but felt he had to when Jerrys Krause and Reinsdorf insisted upon pushing out Phil Jackson and bringing in college coach (and Krause buddy) Tim Floyd.
So I began asking around and several sources confirmed that, despite saying he was gone if Jackson left, Jordan would have stayed had the Bulls promoted assistant coach John Paxson or maybe even hired Bill Cartwright, another trusted former teammate. Then, on Dec. 31, 2002, I had a great conversation with then Trail Blazer Scottie Pippen, who said on the record: "I know Michael would have played for Pax."
With that, I knew I had a decent column, but it really came together two days later when a source extremely close to Jordan told me: "Michael would have loved playing for Pax. John Paxson would have been the perfect solution."
It was great to have the truth come out: Reinsdorf let Krause convince him he could rebuild the team quickly by dumping all the big-money players who were starting to get up there in age -- even Jordan. The Bulls would draft early (hello, Eddy Curry and Marcus Fizer), would sign big-name free agents (Tim Duncan! Grant Hill! Tracy McGrady!), and Floyd would guide the Bulls back to prominence.
As Rick Perry would say: Oops.
The Bulls stunk for years and, soon enough, Floyd and Krause were unemployed. Ironically, the man Reinsdorf chose to replace Krause was Paxson.
---
A couple of final thoughts about scoops ...
In 2005, when the Ozzie situation happened, the Internet was becoming a powerful tool -- but Twitter did not yet exist and Facebook, mostly a college curiosity, was in its infancy. When something happened on Sept. 22, it wasn't until it appeared in the newspaper on Sept. 23 that its impact was really felt -- which had been the case for more than a century.
Within a year or two, that was no longer true. Scoops happen fast and furiously, often several in a day. Now, there are what I call SCOOPS and mini-scoops.
It's hard for me to get excited about a mini-scoop -- a relatively minor story that's broken at 10:33 a.m. only to be matched by another outlet at 10:35 a.m.
I'm more impressed than ever by actual SCOOPS, though. There is so much competition and so much immediacy. Also, public figures are so guarded. So to actually "work it" and have an interesting and/or important story come to fruition ... I really respect that.
---
Lastly ...
I hope people don't read this as bragging. The mere fact that I can remember so few scoops so clearly is evidence that I wasn't exactly a "scoop machine." I fully admit that I fell into at least a couple of them.
Having said that, it definitely was a rush when an instinct played out and resulted in a legitimate story.
Real scoops are like no-hitters. If they happened all the time, they wouldn't be special.
^
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2015
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Not-so-happy anniversary: Five years of permanent vacation
^
I'm not going to go all FDR and call Jan. 15, 2009, a date which will live in infamy, but ...
The previous evening, I had received this email from a GateHouse Media mid-level manager:
We need to have you come into the office at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
When Roberta asked me what I thought the cryptic message meant, I said: "Well, I don't think they're calling me in to tell me my last column won the Pulitzer Prize."
Braving blizzard-like conditions, I drove the 30 miles from Lakeview to Downers Grove and was greeted by somber-faced GateHousians. Yes, I was being laid off. No, there would be no severance pay, as that longstanding policy had been terminated along with me. Yes, I would receive compensation for my unused vacation time (but not before they tried to job me out of several weeks of it). No, I would not be allowed to write a farewell column to the readers who had gotten to know me over the previous 11 years.
Just like that, I was an ex-columnist, an ex-sportswriter, an ex-newspaper man, an ex-journalist, an ex-working stiff. All I had ever known professionally was kaput.
GateHouse was going broke. Its stock price had plummeted near zero. It needed every available cent to lavish salary increases and bonuses on its top executives. (A practice that continues to this day even though the company is even more broke. Ah, capitalism!) So, even though I had been reassured just one month earlier that my position was in the budget for 2009, it wasn't exactly shocking that the pencil-necked geeks had deemed me a luxury they chose not to afford.
Sometimes it's hard to believe it's been five years since I was a full-time sports hack. Other times, it seems like forever ago.
I spent the better part of two years trying to get a decent job in the field. I wrote freelance articles for AP, my employer from 1982-1998. I kept writing this blog and, for a while, let the Chicago Tribune publish it. Some months, my check from the Tribune totaled as much as 18 whole dollars! I am not making that up. When I told my editor there I no longer wanted to write for 1/5th of a cent per hour, he actually seemed insulted. I had a guy at one Chicago online sports site jerk my chain for nearly a year: Yes, we might hire you; no, we don't have the budget for it; wait, maybe we do; no, actually, we don't.
Enough. In the summer of 2010, when my wife had the opportunity to work at Charlotte's children's hospital, we decided to move on, literally and figuratively.
Aside from the tripe I occasionally post here on TBT, I have not written a single sports story since becoming a North Carolinian. I write personal finance articles about once a month for SeekingAlpha.com, I do some "survivor stories" for the American Heart Association and I've written a few op-eds for the Charlotte Observer, but mostly I have left that part of my life behind.
I am fortunate that, at 53, I am not hurting financially because Roberta and I were big savers, because we have no debt and because she is a wonderful Sugar Mama. So I earn a little dough doing stuff I want to do, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of being a coach, a referee and an umpire, among other things.
Nobody likes to be told they no longer can come to work. We want the decision to be ours, not theirs. But life gets messy sometimes, so we adjust on the fly.
Do I miss it? Sure, some of it. Not all of it.
In honor of the fifth anniversary of GateHouse sending me on permanent vacation, here are five things I miss about my former life. But first, just for giggles and snorts, five things I don't miss ...
WHAT I DON'T MISS
Interviewing Jocks.
When my son was little, his friends would ask, "Does your dad get to talk to Michael Jordan?" I told him to respond: "No, Michael Jordan gets to talk to my dad." It was a cute line, especially when delivered by an 8-year-old, but it wasn't true. From 1995-98, I spent a huge portion of my life standing around waiting to be part of a big media scrum around Michael Jordan.
For the most part -- and definitely by the time the new millennium had arrived -- everything was packaged for the media. We were led around from one press conference to another. Comments usually were generic. I'd sit down to transcribe my tape and realize I hadn't gotten one freakin' quote worth using.
On the rare occasion that a coach or athlete said something remotely funny, the press corps would pretend to laugh as if Steve Martin and George Carlin were on stage trading barbs. It was embarrassing.
People thought we were lucky that we got to talk to these guys, but more often than not they had nothing to say. When we did get to cover an Ozzie Guillen or a Jeremy Roenick or even a Milton Bradley, it was like manna from heaven. Mostly, the routine became a chore. These guys didn't particularly want to talk to us and, for the most part, I didn't want to talk to them.
Deadlines.
When I was with AP, the slogan was "a deadline every minute." And yes, we did have to write quickly. But as I discovered when I became a columnist, there are deadlines and then there really are deadlines. If the game didn't end until 1 a.m. when I was with AP, I still waited to write until it was over. But if I didn't have my column in on time when I was with Copley (and, later, GateHouse), the newspapers I served would run something else in its place -- maybe even an advertisement.
As newspapers strove for earlier and earlier delivery, the deadlines became earlier and earlier, and I often had to write before an event had ended. If the event was big enough, as when the White Sox were in the 2005 World Series and Game 3 went 14 innings, I'd do several versions of the column for all the different editions of the papers.
Not to make it sound like I was mining coal in West Virginia but it wasn't easy!
The Internet Effect.
When I agreed to start blogging in 2007 (in addition to the columns I already was writing), I didn't get one more cent out of it. What I did get was a ton more work to do, thank you.
Couple the sheer workload with the immediacy of the Internet and there's no such thing as putting a story to bed. In addition, readers suddenly had the right to comment anonymously and in real time. It's always fun to be called a douchebag by some guy who goes by Illini69.
My last year and a half in Chicago, I covered a lot of baseball games as a freelancer for AP and I was in awe at the amount of work -- and the quality of the work -- that the city's baseball writers did: blogs and tweets and photos and notes and game stories and feature stories and graphics. Incredible. Day after day, all year long -- because there no longer is an offseason in baseball, what with all the news that takes place from November to March. Honestly, I doubt there is a more difficult newspaper job in America than baseball beat writer. It was always tough, but the Internet has made it ridiculous.
When I columnized about Erin Andrews' inappropriate behavior in the Cubbie clubhouse, I knew it would be read by a lot of people. But I severely underestimated the Internet effect and her popularity out in cyberspace. For some two weeks, I became a target out there in Dweeb Land. It was interesting ... and a little bit scary.
"Wow. You Get To Go To Games For Free?"
Later in this post, I acknowledge that my job carried a certain amount of prestige, or at least the perception of prestige. At the same time, plenty of folks thought my job consisted of hobnobbing with the athletes, relaxing at the ballpark and rooting on the home team.
Even some of my family members and close friends used to "joke" about how easy I had it, as if they knew. And what was I going to do, get mad and defend myself by telling them how much work I was doing? So I usually went the self-deprecating route instead.
Once, one of my relatives was complaining about all the housework she had to do. After a few minutes, I interrupted and said, "Hey, you're only a housewife. I have to go to football games for a living!"
The Stress.
When I was with AP, I was almost always stressed out. It was a high-pressure job, and talking with friends who are still with the company, it appears that is even more the case now. I excelled under pressure, but that doesn't mean it was easy or fun to deal with. There were several occasions I would wake up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. and realize I had left something out of the final version of my story (a.k.a., the dreaded PMer, a rewrite for afternoon newspapers). I would call the office to make the correction.
By 2006 or so, there were constant rumors that David Copley was going to get out of the newspaper business and sell all of our properties (he did), that the new owner would care only about profit and not about journalism (yep), and that GateHouse would clean house (bingo!). It was a stressful time.
Then, of course, there was the stress I put upon myself. I never was able to "mail it in" on even the most routine AP stories, so I really tortured myself when writing my column. If I wasn't on deadline, I would read, re-read and re-re-read my column until I didn't find even one comma out of place. Sometimes, I would be 3 or 4 hours into a column and say, out loud, "This is complete crap." I'd delete the whole freakin' thing and start over. Not only was my name on my column, but so was my ugly mug. I put a lot of myself in most of what I wrote. It was only a story about a jock or a game, but it still mattered, and I had to do it right.
Now, I live a mostly stress-free existence. Maybe one of the things I like about coaching, refereeing and umpiring is the immediacy of each moment, a non-journalism way to get a little stress back into my life.
WHAT I MISS
The Travel.
I got to see the world, all on somebody else's dime. Many of the trips were mundane -- flying into Detroit for a night game and then going back home the next morning was far from exhilarating -- but I also got to go to some amazing places.
AP sent me to five Olympics (Calgary '88, Albertville '92, Lillehammer '94, Atlanta '96, Nagano '98) and dispatched me all over North America covering hockey, basketball, baseball and football.
During the first three years I was Copley's columnist, I got to manage my own travel budget, and my only restriction was that I shouldn't go over budget. I took full advantage, giving myself some great assignments. In the process, I learned how to stretch a dollar when making travel arrangements, a skill that still serves me well.
After Copley sold its Chicago papers and I became more aligned with the fine folks of Central Illinois, I still had a lot of input into where I traveled. A few times, I even got to fly on David Copley's private jet to the California desert resort town of Borrego Springs for editor meetings. I felt like a VIP, even though I wasn't one.
The Writing
Every once in awhile, I got to write something that actually touched readers. When I wrote a column after my dad passed away, I received more than 100 condolence letters -- not email, mind you, but actual hand-written letters, including one from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. When I wrote about my daughter getting ready to graduate high school and leave home, lots of people told me the column made them shed a tear.
One time after covering a Cardinals-Cubs game, I ran into a guy outside Busch Stadium, and he pulled from his wallet a folded, tattered copy of the column I had written years earlier about Darryl Kile's death. That's right: The guy actually carried it around with him.
I got paid to express myself through my observations and my words, and that was pretty damn cool.
As a reporter, I occasionally got a scoop, and watching my peers have to play catch-up for a day or two always was an amazing feeling.
One thing I really used to love was sitting in the media room after a huge event, the only sound being thousands of fingers banging away at laptop keyboards.
The Paycheck.
Let's not sugarcoat things: We work for money. In addition to being able to buy things we needed and wanted, that regular paycheck helped me and Roberta sock away money for the future.
Who knew the future was going to arrive -- with a thud -- just a few months after I turned 48?
The Press Box.
Basically, sportswriters are a bunch of adolescent goofballs. As we watch the Cubs collapse, the Bears fall apart and the Bulls implode, anything that enters our warped minds somehow finds its way out of our foul mouths. The amount of crapola we spew about the jocks we cover is topped only by the amount of crap we give each other.
I miss debating my peers about important issues such as our Hall of Fame ballots, which Chicago coach or manager would be the next to be fired, and whether Jay Mariotti was the worst human being we ever had encountered or just one of the bottom two.
Sadly, even before I was sacked, many of my best friends in the industry had been sent packing or been reassigned by their employers, so the press box wasn't what it used to be.
The Prestige.
I never considered my job to be particularly glamorous, but others did. I could be in a room filled with million-dollar lawyers or doctors ... and all of them thought I had the best job.
On its good days -- and there were many -- they were right.
As is the case with folks in most professions, my job gave me an identity. Five years later, I still struggle a little when asked, "And what do you do?"
Am I retired? Semi-retired? A freelance writer? A coach? A part-time golf ranger? An ex-journalist? All of those things are true, none rolls off my tongue like: "I'm a sports columnist, and you?"
As stressful and frustrating as it occasionally was, I never lost sight of the fact that what I did for a living was considered a dream job by many.
You know what? It was considered a dream job by me, too.
^
I'm not going to go all FDR and call Jan. 15, 2009, a date which will live in infamy, but ...
The previous evening, I had received this email from a GateHouse Media mid-level manager:
We need to have you come into the office at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
When Roberta asked me what I thought the cryptic message meant, I said: "Well, I don't think they're calling me in to tell me my last column won the Pulitzer Prize."
Braving blizzard-like conditions, I drove the 30 miles from Lakeview to Downers Grove and was greeted by somber-faced GateHousians. Yes, I was being laid off. No, there would be no severance pay, as that longstanding policy had been terminated along with me. Yes, I would receive compensation for my unused vacation time (but not before they tried to job me out of several weeks of it). No, I would not be allowed to write a farewell column to the readers who had gotten to know me over the previous 11 years.
Just like that, I was an ex-columnist, an ex-sportswriter, an ex-newspaper man, an ex-journalist, an ex-working stiff. All I had ever known professionally was kaput.
GateHouse was going broke. Its stock price had plummeted near zero. It needed every available cent to lavish salary increases and bonuses on its top executives. (A practice that continues to this day even though the company is even more broke. Ah, capitalism!) So, even though I had been reassured just one month earlier that my position was in the budget for 2009, it wasn't exactly shocking that the pencil-necked geeks had deemed me a luxury they chose not to afford.
Sometimes it's hard to believe it's been five years since I was a full-time sports hack. Other times, it seems like forever ago.
I spent the better part of two years trying to get a decent job in the field. I wrote freelance articles for AP, my employer from 1982-1998. I kept writing this blog and, for a while, let the Chicago Tribune publish it. Some months, my check from the Tribune totaled as much as 18 whole dollars! I am not making that up. When I told my editor there I no longer wanted to write for 1/5th of a cent per hour, he actually seemed insulted. I had a guy at one Chicago online sports site jerk my chain for nearly a year: Yes, we might hire you; no, we don't have the budget for it; wait, maybe we do; no, actually, we don't.
Enough. In the summer of 2010, when my wife had the opportunity to work at Charlotte's children's hospital, we decided to move on, literally and figuratively.
Aside from the tripe I occasionally post here on TBT, I have not written a single sports story since becoming a North Carolinian. I write personal finance articles about once a month for SeekingAlpha.com, I do some "survivor stories" for the American Heart Association and I've written a few op-eds for the Charlotte Observer, but mostly I have left that part of my life behind.
I am fortunate that, at 53, I am not hurting financially because Roberta and I were big savers, because we have no debt and because she is a wonderful Sugar Mama. So I earn a little dough doing stuff I want to do, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of being a coach, a referee and an umpire, among other things.
Nobody likes to be told they no longer can come to work. We want the decision to be ours, not theirs. But life gets messy sometimes, so we adjust on the fly.
Do I miss it? Sure, some of it. Not all of it.
In honor of the fifth anniversary of GateHouse sending me on permanent vacation, here are five things I miss about my former life. But first, just for giggles and snorts, five things I don't miss ...
WHAT I DON'T MISS
Interviewing Jocks.
When my son was little, his friends would ask, "Does your dad get to talk to Michael Jordan?" I told him to respond: "No, Michael Jordan gets to talk to my dad." It was a cute line, especially when delivered by an 8-year-old, but it wasn't true. From 1995-98, I spent a huge portion of my life standing around waiting to be part of a big media scrum around Michael Jordan.
For the most part -- and definitely by the time the new millennium had arrived -- everything was packaged for the media. We were led around from one press conference to another. Comments usually were generic. I'd sit down to transcribe my tape and realize I hadn't gotten one freakin' quote worth using.
On the rare occasion that a coach or athlete said something remotely funny, the press corps would pretend to laugh as if Steve Martin and George Carlin were on stage trading barbs. It was embarrassing.
People thought we were lucky that we got to talk to these guys, but more often than not they had nothing to say. When we did get to cover an Ozzie Guillen or a Jeremy Roenick or even a Milton Bradley, it was like manna from heaven. Mostly, the routine became a chore. These guys didn't particularly want to talk to us and, for the most part, I didn't want to talk to them.
Deadlines.
When I was with AP, the slogan was "a deadline every minute." And yes, we did have to write quickly. But as I discovered when I became a columnist, there are deadlines and then there really are deadlines. If the game didn't end until 1 a.m. when I was with AP, I still waited to write until it was over. But if I didn't have my column in on time when I was with Copley (and, later, GateHouse), the newspapers I served would run something else in its place -- maybe even an advertisement.
As newspapers strove for earlier and earlier delivery, the deadlines became earlier and earlier, and I often had to write before an event had ended. If the event was big enough, as when the White Sox were in the 2005 World Series and Game 3 went 14 innings, I'd do several versions of the column for all the different editions of the papers.
Not to make it sound like I was mining coal in West Virginia but it wasn't easy!
The Internet Effect.
When I agreed to start blogging in 2007 (in addition to the columns I already was writing), I didn't get one more cent out of it. What I did get was a ton more work to do, thank you.
Couple the sheer workload with the immediacy of the Internet and there's no such thing as putting a story to bed. In addition, readers suddenly had the right to comment anonymously and in real time. It's always fun to be called a douchebag by some guy who goes by Illini69.
My last year and a half in Chicago, I covered a lot of baseball games as a freelancer for AP and I was in awe at the amount of work -- and the quality of the work -- that the city's baseball writers did: blogs and tweets and photos and notes and game stories and feature stories and graphics. Incredible. Day after day, all year long -- because there no longer is an offseason in baseball, what with all the news that takes place from November to March. Honestly, I doubt there is a more difficult newspaper job in America than baseball beat writer. It was always tough, but the Internet has made it ridiculous.
When I columnized about Erin Andrews' inappropriate behavior in the Cubbie clubhouse, I knew it would be read by a lot of people. But I severely underestimated the Internet effect and her popularity out in cyberspace. For some two weeks, I became a target out there in Dweeb Land. It was interesting ... and a little bit scary.
"Wow. You Get To Go To Games For Free?"
Later in this post, I acknowledge that my job carried a certain amount of prestige, or at least the perception of prestige. At the same time, plenty of folks thought my job consisted of hobnobbing with the athletes, relaxing at the ballpark and rooting on the home team.
Even some of my family members and close friends used to "joke" about how easy I had it, as if they knew. And what was I going to do, get mad and defend myself by telling them how much work I was doing? So I usually went the self-deprecating route instead.
Once, one of my relatives was complaining about all the housework she had to do. After a few minutes, I interrupted and said, "Hey, you're only a housewife. I have to go to football games for a living!"
The Stress.
When I was with AP, I was almost always stressed out. It was a high-pressure job, and talking with friends who are still with the company, it appears that is even more the case now. I excelled under pressure, but that doesn't mean it was easy or fun to deal with. There were several occasions I would wake up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. and realize I had left something out of the final version of my story (a.k.a., the dreaded PMer, a rewrite for afternoon newspapers). I would call the office to make the correction.
By 2006 or so, there were constant rumors that David Copley was going to get out of the newspaper business and sell all of our properties (he did), that the new owner would care only about profit and not about journalism (yep), and that GateHouse would clean house (bingo!). It was a stressful time.
Then, of course, there was the stress I put upon myself. I never was able to "mail it in" on even the most routine AP stories, so I really tortured myself when writing my column. If I wasn't on deadline, I would read, re-read and re-re-read my column until I didn't find even one comma out of place. Sometimes, I would be 3 or 4 hours into a column and say, out loud, "This is complete crap." I'd delete the whole freakin' thing and start over. Not only was my name on my column, but so was my ugly mug. I put a lot of myself in most of what I wrote. It was only a story about a jock or a game, but it still mattered, and I had to do it right.
Now, I live a mostly stress-free existence. Maybe one of the things I like about coaching, refereeing and umpiring is the immediacy of each moment, a non-journalism way to get a little stress back into my life.
The Travel.
I got to see the world, all on somebody else's dime. Many of the trips were mundane -- flying into Detroit for a night game and then going back home the next morning was far from exhilarating -- but I also got to go to some amazing places.
AP sent me to five Olympics (Calgary '88, Albertville '92, Lillehammer '94, Atlanta '96, Nagano '98) and dispatched me all over North America covering hockey, basketball, baseball and football.
During the first three years I was Copley's columnist, I got to manage my own travel budget, and my only restriction was that I shouldn't go over budget. I took full advantage, giving myself some great assignments. In the process, I learned how to stretch a dollar when making travel arrangements, a skill that still serves me well.
After Copley sold its Chicago papers and I became more aligned with the fine folks of Central Illinois, I still had a lot of input into where I traveled. A few times, I even got to fly on David Copley's private jet to the California desert resort town of Borrego Springs for editor meetings. I felt like a VIP, even though I wasn't one.
The Writing
Every once in awhile, I got to write something that actually touched readers. When I wrote a column after my dad passed away, I received more than 100 condolence letters -- not email, mind you, but actual hand-written letters, including one from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin. When I wrote about my daughter getting ready to graduate high school and leave home, lots of people told me the column made them shed a tear.
One time after covering a Cardinals-Cubs game, I ran into a guy outside Busch Stadium, and he pulled from his wallet a folded, tattered copy of the column I had written years earlier about Darryl Kile's death. That's right: The guy actually carried it around with him.
I got paid to express myself through my observations and my words, and that was pretty damn cool.
As a reporter, I occasionally got a scoop, and watching my peers have to play catch-up for a day or two always was an amazing feeling.
One thing I really used to love was sitting in the media room after a huge event, the only sound being thousands of fingers banging away at laptop keyboards.
The Paycheck.
Let's not sugarcoat things: We work for money. In addition to being able to buy things we needed and wanted, that regular paycheck helped me and Roberta sock away money for the future.
Who knew the future was going to arrive -- with a thud -- just a few months after I turned 48?
The Press Box.
Basically, sportswriters are a bunch of adolescent goofballs. As we watch the Cubs collapse, the Bears fall apart and the Bulls implode, anything that enters our warped minds somehow finds its way out of our foul mouths. The amount of crapola we spew about the jocks we cover is topped only by the amount of crap we give each other.
I miss debating my peers about important issues such as our Hall of Fame ballots, which Chicago coach or manager would be the next to be fired, and whether Jay Mariotti was the worst human being we ever had encountered or just one of the bottom two.
Sadly, even before I was sacked, many of my best friends in the industry had been sent packing or been reassigned by their employers, so the press box wasn't what it used to be.
The Prestige.
I never considered my job to be particularly glamorous, but others did. I could be in a room filled with million-dollar lawyers or doctors ... and all of them thought I had the best job.
On its good days -- and there were many -- they were right.
As is the case with folks in most professions, my job gave me an identity. Five years later, I still struggle a little when asked, "And what do you do?"
Am I retired? Semi-retired? A freelance writer? A coach? A part-time golf ranger? An ex-journalist? All of those things are true, none rolls off my tongue like: "I'm a sports columnist, and you?"
As stressful and frustrating as it occasionally was, I never lost sight of the fact that what I did for a living was considered a dream job by many.
You know what? It was considered a dream job by me, too.
^
Monday, May 14, 2012
They aren't all winners, but this one's OK
^
A kind reader posted a comment at the end of a recent blog asking where he could find the column I wrote for newspapers of Nov. 3, 1999. The column, written after the death of the great Walter Payton, was about living life to the fullest because none of us can know when it's our time to go.
I did a quick search and was able to find the column in a couple of paid-archive sites but wasn't able to find it for free. So I scanned the hard copy of the column I had saved and am making it available here. I apologize if the print's a little small. You might need to magnify it in your window.
One might say it was fortuitous that I happened to have in my possession a column that a reader wanted to see nearly 13 years later.
Well, I saved a hard copy of every one of the nearly 2,400 newspaper columns I wrote over the years. I always wanted to have something to show my kids and my grandkids that represented what the old bald dude did for a living. As it turns out, my bound volumes serve as kind of a history of the most important sports stories from my time in Minneapolis and Chicago. Not sure why, but I think that's cool.
When I was AP's Minnesota sports guy from 1985-94, I used to write a weekly column. My goal was to be a daily newspaper sports columnist, so even if I was in the middle of a 12-hour work day and a 60-hour work week, I made time to write that column. And I knew I'd need examples of my work -- we used to call them "clips" -- to land the kind of gig I wanted.
Every few weeks, usually late some night after having covered a Twins or Vikings or Gophers game, I'd go into the bureau's back room and look through the stacks of newspapers from around the state. I'd find the best presentations of my columns, carefully clip them and then Xerox them. Then I'd punch holes in the page, put them in one of the binders and number them.
One night, my colleague Jimmy Golen -- a young'un then but now an award-winning sportswriter for AP Boston -- saw what I was doing and asked: "Why do you number them?"
I said something like: "I want to know when I match Cy Young with No. 511."
Not missing a beat, Jimmy said: "Hate to break it to you, Mike, but all of Cy Young's 511 were winners."
^
^
A kind reader posted a comment at the end of a recent blog asking where he could find the column I wrote for newspapers of Nov. 3, 1999. The column, written after the death of the great Walter Payton, was about living life to the fullest because none of us can know when it's our time to go.
I did a quick search and was able to find the column in a couple of paid-archive sites but wasn't able to find it for free. So I scanned the hard copy of the column I had saved and am making it available here. I apologize if the print's a little small. You might need to magnify it in your window.
Well, I saved a hard copy of every one of the nearly 2,400 newspaper columns I wrote over the years. I always wanted to have something to show my kids and my grandkids that represented what the old bald dude did for a living. As it turns out, my bound volumes serve as kind of a history of the most important sports stories from my time in Minneapolis and Chicago. Not sure why, but I think that's cool.
When I was AP's Minnesota sports guy from 1985-94, I used to write a weekly column. My goal was to be a daily newspaper sports columnist, so even if I was in the middle of a 12-hour work day and a 60-hour work week, I made time to write that column. And I knew I'd need examples of my work -- we used to call them "clips" -- to land the kind of gig I wanted.
Every few weeks, usually late some night after having covered a Twins or Vikings or Gophers game, I'd go into the bureau's back room and look through the stacks of newspapers from around the state. I'd find the best presentations of my columns, carefully clip them and then Xerox them. Then I'd punch holes in the page, put them in one of the binders and number them.
One night, my colleague Jimmy Golen -- a young'un then but now an award-winning sportswriter for AP Boston -- saw what I was doing and asked: "Why do you number them?"
I said something like: "I want to know when I match Cy Young with No. 511."
Not missing a beat, Jimmy said: "Hate to break it to you, Mike, but all of Cy Young's 511 were winners."
^
^
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Today's High 5
^
5. Donovan McNabb ... benched by Redskins genius Mike Shanahan ... and replaced by Rex Grossman ... with the game on the line. Hell hasn't merely frozen over; it has entered the cryogenics lab, right next to Ted Williams' head.
4. A ripple in the Journalism Force: The Charlotte Observer, now my hometown paper, didn't send its Bobcats beat reporter to Milwaukee for the third game of the season. A short AP story on the game appeared on Page 4 of the sports section. Again: This was only the third game of the season and the newspaper of record for one of the city's only two major professional sports franchises is pinching pennies instead of covering the story. That ticking you hear is the Newspaper Doomsday Clock.
3. Given Mike Fontenot's star power, it's stunning that so few people are watching the World Series.
2. While demonstrating a passing drill during my first practice as an assistant basketball coach, I tripped myself and went sprawling to the floor. The only thing with a bigger bruise than my right hip is my ego. This just in: Chevy Chase aside, it is impossible to look cool while falling.
1. Once upon a time, the Cowboys' biggest concern was that, before a playoff game, the quarterback was distracted by his pop-diva girlfriend. Now, the Cowboys are 1-6, the playoffs are an impossible dream and the QB is hurt. Yes, the Cowboys are a bigger disaster than Jessica Simpson's acting career.
^
5. Donovan McNabb ... benched by Redskins genius Mike Shanahan ... and replaced by Rex Grossman ... with the game on the line. Hell hasn't merely frozen over; it has entered the cryogenics lab, right next to Ted Williams' head.
4. A ripple in the Journalism Force: The Charlotte Observer, now my hometown paper, didn't send its Bobcats beat reporter to Milwaukee for the third game of the season. A short AP story on the game appeared on Page 4 of the sports section. Again: This was only the third game of the season and the newspaper of record for one of the city's only two major professional sports franchises is pinching pennies instead of covering the story. That ticking you hear is the Newspaper Doomsday Clock.
3. Given Mike Fontenot's star power, it's stunning that so few people are watching the World Series.
2. While demonstrating a passing drill during my first practice as an assistant basketball coach, I tripped myself and went sprawling to the floor. The only thing with a bigger bruise than my right hip is my ego. This just in: Chevy Chase aside, it is impossible to look cool while falling.
1. Once upon a time, the Cowboys' biggest concern was that, before a playoff game, the quarterback was distracted by his pop-diva girlfriend. Now, the Cowboys are 1-6, the playoffs are an impossible dream and the QB is hurt. Yes, the Cowboys are a bigger disaster than Jessica Simpson's acting career.
^
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Perfection!
^
The Bald Truth
I love the term "perfect game." I don't know who coined it and I don't really care. I just love it.
Because it takes perfection to do what Mark Buehrle (and only 17 big-league pitchers before him) did Thursday. Perfection by the lead actor, and perfection by his supporting cast.
The Rays rarely hit the baseball hard against the White Sox ace all day. There were a couple of foul line drives and a couple shots hit right at perfectly-placed infielders. Buehrle only faced five 3-ball counts all day. The game took just 2 hours, 3 minutes to complete.
"Those last three batters, I'm like: 'It's not gonna make or break your careers - just swing!' " - Jamie Buehrle, Mark's wife.
THE BALDEST TRUTH
This was the first perfect game I ever covered but my second no-hitter. The first no-no was a real stunner: Minnesota's Scott Erickson, who the previous season had given up more hits than any pitcher in baseball, tossed one on April 27, 1994, at the hitter's paradise that is the Metrodome. (Back then, before my column-writing days, I was the AP sports guy in Minneapolis.)
Actually, I only kind of covered Buehrle's. I'll tell you what I mean by that and, in the process, share with you how the world's largest news gathering organization deals with such things.
The Bald Truth
I love the term "perfect game." I don't know who coined it and I don't really care. I just love it.
Because it takes perfection to do what Mark Buehrle (and only 17 big-league pitchers before him) did Thursday. Perfection by the lead actor, and perfection by his supporting cast.
The Rays rarely hit the baseball hard against the White Sox ace all day. There were a couple of foul line drives and a couple shots hit right at perfectly-placed infielders. Buehrle only faced five 3-ball counts all day. The game took just 2 hours, 3 minutes to complete.
Pretty damn perfect.
When it looked like the perfection might end, DeWayne Wise made a perfect play in center field, scaling the wall to rob Gabe Kapler of a ninth-inning home run.
Ozzie Guillen had just made a perfect managerial move, getting Wise into the game, moving Scott Podsednik from center to left and putting lumbering Carlos Quentin on the bench. Podsednik doesn't make that catch. Period.
Josh Fields, who has been perfectly awful pretty much all year, picked the perfect time to hit a grand slam. His second-inning shot ensured that Buehrle never really had to worry about the outcome, just the perfect game.
And Ramon Castro, who as A.J. Pierzynski's backup rarely plays, caught perfectly, too. Buehrle never shook him off all day - which is especially amazing given that the two had never before been batterymates.
There are so few perfect performances in sports - or in any walk of life. It was an honor to have been in the ballpark to witness this one.
Good Guys Finish First
Mark Buehrle is Everyman, so when he does something special - and he's done a lot of special things in his fine career - you have to appreciate it even more.
He's not a hulking dude with a 100 mph heater, not an intimidating character with a wild mustache, not a nervous Nelly, not a me-first yahoo. He's just a regular guy - a 38th-round draft pick, for cripe's sake - who happens to be capable of getting big-league batters to make outs.
He's a clubhouse cutup, a fun-loving fool, a self-depricating guy who often is described as "the perfect teammate."
His body? He looks more like a sportswriter than a multimillion-dollar athlete. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
When it looked like the perfection might end, DeWayne Wise made a perfect play in center field, scaling the wall to rob Gabe Kapler of a ninth-inning home run.
Ozzie Guillen had just made a perfect managerial move, getting Wise into the game, moving Scott Podsednik from center to left and putting lumbering Carlos Quentin on the bench. Podsednik doesn't make that catch. Period.
Josh Fields, who has been perfectly awful pretty much all year, picked the perfect time to hit a grand slam. His second-inning shot ensured that Buehrle never really had to worry about the outcome, just the perfect game.
And Ramon Castro, who as A.J. Pierzynski's backup rarely plays, caught perfectly, too. Buehrle never shook him off all day - which is especially amazing given that the two had never before been batterymates.
There are so few perfect performances in sports - or in any walk of life. It was an honor to have been in the ballpark to witness this one.
Good Guys Finish First
Mark Buehrle is Everyman, so when he does something special - and he's done a lot of special things in his fine career - you have to appreciate it even more.
He's not a hulking dude with a 100 mph heater, not an intimidating character with a wild mustache, not a nervous Nelly, not a me-first yahoo. He's just a regular guy - a 38th-round draft pick, for cripe's sake - who happens to be capable of getting big-league batters to make outs.
He's a clubhouse cutup, a fun-loving fool, a self-depricating guy who often is described as "the perfect teammate."
His body? He looks more like a sportswriter than a multimillion-dollar athlete. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
It's refreshing that Everyman can pitch two no-hitters, including a perfect game, and be part of a rotation that delivered Chicago's only baseball championship in the last 92 years.
One of my favorite things about Buehrle: He's jinx-proof.
One of my favorite things about Buehrle: He's jinx-proof.
In both Thursday's game and in his 2007 no-hitter, he laughed at the entire idiotic notion of jinxes.
You know how teammates aren't supposed to go anywhere near a guy pitching a no-no? Well, on Thursday, Buehrle was going up to his teammates and asking them, "So, you think I'm gonna do it?" He and Pierzynski talked about what was happening between just about every inning.
If the perfect game was going to happen, it was going to happen.
And it happened.
How perfect.
You know how teammates aren't supposed to go anywhere near a guy pitching a no-no? Well, on Thursday, Buehrle was going up to his teammates and asking them, "So, you think I'm gonna do it?" He and Pierzynski talked about what was happening between just about every inning.
If the perfect game was going to happen, it was going to happen.
And it happened.
How perfect.
The Balder Truth
Aside from his family and perhaps his teammates, Buehrle's biggest fan Thursday was a guy who hadn't stepped foot in U.S. Cellular Field since 2002: Jim Parque.
Why? The former mediocre Sox lefty had written a first-hand piece for Thursday's Sun-Times in which he admitted to taking HGH in an effort to overcome what proved to be a career-ending injury. (Click here for the account I wrote for AP.)
Several media types, including my good buddy, Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey, were at the ballpark expressly to write about Parque.
Personally, I find it hard to blame Parque for trying to save his career. It's not as if he was jabbing himself with needles full of anabolic steroids hoping to get bigger, stronger and faster. I have a bigger problem with him lying after he was named in the Mitchell Report, blaming others for his own actions.
Anyway, Parque was going to be the big headline in Friday's newspapers and the big story on Chicago's TV and radio broadcasts. Instead, he's barely a footnote.
If I'm Buehrle, I'm sending Parque a note saying: "Hey, dude ... YOU'RE WELCOME!"
The Quote
"Those last three batters, I'm like: 'It's not gonna make or break your careers - just swing!' " - Jamie Buehrle, Mark's wife.
THE BALDEST TRUTH
This was the first perfect game I ever covered but my second no-hitter. The first no-no was a real stunner: Minnesota's Scott Erickson, who the previous season had given up more hits than any pitcher in baseball, tossed one on April 27, 1994, at the hitter's paradise that is the Metrodome. (Back then, before my column-writing days, I was the AP sports guy in Minneapolis.)
Actually, I only kind of covered Buehrle's. I'll tell you what I mean by that and, in the process, share with you how the world's largest news gathering organization deals with such things.
As you might imagine, no-hitters are big deals to AP because they are so rare. Perfect games, obviously, are HUGE deals.
When a pitcher has held a team hitless after five innings, the writer at the ballpark - be it an AP staffer, such as Chicago's Rick Gano and Andrew Seligman - or a freelance "stringer" (such as yours baldly), must call the AP baseball honchos in New York and let them know what's going on. The same drill is repeated after the sixth and seventh innings.
If a pitcher still has a no-no going after seven and if a stringer is covering the game, AP tracks down one of its sportswriters and summons him or her to the game. It doesn't matter if the writer has the day off or is working on something else; AP wants him or her there.
Why? Because a no-hitter story - and especially a perfect-game story - will be used by just about every newspaper and Web site that subscribes to the AP wire. Understandably, the folks at AP want one of their sportswriter's names - a "byline" - on the story. (As a stringer, I don't get a byline.)
And so it went Thursday. When I called to let them know Buehrle was still perfect after seven, the New Yorkers called Seligman, who got in his car and started driving from Chicago's far North Side to the South Side.
Meanwhile, I kept working on the story, getting facts lined up in preparation for the big event. If the no-hitter got broken up while Andy was en route to the park, we would have dealt with it.
After the eighth inning, I sent everything on my computer screen to Ron Blum, AP's outstanding baseball writer/editor in New York. As Ron edited it, I stayed on the phone with him, feeding him whatever additional info he needed as he put together the story.
Seligman arrived at The Cell just after Wise made his catch. Andy got caught up with everything as Blum and I stayed on the telephone through the final two outs.
Perfect game! AP had the story on the wire within moments.
While Seligman told Blum about some of the on-field celebration and eventually worked his way to the press conference featuring Buehrle and Guillen, I went to the White Sox clubhouse to talk to the players. Our able assistant stringer, Seth Gruen, went to chat with the Rays.
Upon our return to the press box, Seth and I e-mailed the quotes we had gathered to Andy, who was busily putting together an updated version of the story. Andy's piece was edited by Blum and others in the New York office and came back looking nice.
I was asked to do a "sidebar" on Wise's catch - click here - which I happily did.
Was I bummed that I got "nudged" aside for Andy, whose name was on the main story? Not at all.
When AP was my full-time employer, I reported to the ballpark for several in-progress no-hitters. I was the nudgee, not the nudger. It's kind of like Wise going into the game, Podsednik getting told to take left field and Quentin getting sent to the bench. We all have our roles in life; I like to think Pods and Quentin were just fine with theirs Thursday.
In the end, Buehrle got his perfect game, Andy got to the ballpark just in time, AP got its stories (which means millions of readers got them, too) ... and, well, I guess I got the right to say I covered a perfect game, after all.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Reporting to duty for Year 28
^
Indulge me and my memories, folks. It was the week of July 4, 1982, that I began my journalism career.
During my rookie year in the business (with AP in Milwaukee), I was lucky enough to help cover the Brewers' only run to the World Series. I didn't have a laptop computer to use - hardly anyone did back then - so I had to dictate my stories via telephone to an editor.
Given what we know has happened technologically, it's hard to believe that things were so primitive barely more than a quarter-century ago. I mean, we might as well have been using chisels and stone tablets, right?
But you know what? No matter what method I had to use to submit my stories, it was absolutely thrilling to be a just-turned-22-year-old kid who was part of such a big event. My heart still races whenever I recall that feeling of urgency I experienced in October '82.
Later that year, I covered a Marquette Warriors game in which coach Hank Raymonds and point guard Glenn Rivers (you know him as Celtics coach Doc now) got into a shouting match. Actually, it was a one-sided argument, with Rivers basically telling Raymonds to sit down, shut up and leave the players alone.
Sure, Hank was semi-deaf and might not have heard what Glenn was saying. But can you imagine one of the Celtics saying such a thing to Rivers now and getting away with it? (That was one of the few times during these last 27 years that I covered anything involving my alma mater. I've become far too big a fan to attempt it again.)
After Milwaukee, my career took me to AP stops Madison, Minneapolis and Chicago and then to my dream job as columnist for the Copley Newspaper chain, which was bought two years ago by GateHouse, which decided in January that the only way it could survive the recession was to eliminate the Chicago sports columnist's $88 million salary.
Even though I'm now unempl ... um, between jobs ... I wouldn't have changed a thing. It's been a fun, fulfilling 27 years, with incredible assignments, travels to faraway lands and vivid memories.
Back in 1982, I was at the dawn of my career and didn't mind that I lacked a computer to use. Now, I have all the techno toys at my disposal but not so much of a career. I'm not sure if that's irony or just a kick in the crotch.
Still, as hard as the business seems to be trying to eliminate its workforce, it can't get rid of this stubborn clown so easily.
I thank AP for taking me back (as a freelancer this time) and my readers for keeping The Baldest Truth relevant.
I probably don't have another 27 years in me, but I'm not done yet.
Monday, March 30, 2009
A blow, but not a fatal one
^
Gotta be honest with you: I wanted to blog over this past weekend about as much as I wanted my boxers set on fire (with me in them).
Why? Another slight setback on the road to my big journalistic comeback. I won't name the company, but I thought I had a pretty cool freelance gig set up only to discover that I didn't.
For the first time since I became a free agent, I felt really down. As a result, the last thing I wanted to do Friday or Saturday was write TBT or anything else, so forgive me for my brief absence.
But, human Superball that I am, I bounced back and posted Sunday. And now, taking a page out of the Benjamin Button book, I'm going back to my youth as I age.
I'm returning on a freelance basis to the AP, my employer for my first 16 years of adulthood, and mostly will be writing game stories about the Cubs and White Sox once or twice a week.
I'm also toying with finally writing my first book, though I've said that before. We'll see if I follow through now that I've called myself out publicly!
The urgency of working on "a deadline every minute," as the old AP mantra goes, should be an interesting change for me. And it will keep me writing professionally until I decide what I want to do in the event I ever grow up.
As for The Baldest Truth, I'll keep on keeping on for the foreseeable future. In fact, starting Wednesday, I'll be previewing the baseball season in my own warped way.
Thanks for sticking with me, everybody.
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