Not champs, but still a special season

^
After a mild ice storm that forced the conference to re-schedule the championship game to Tuesday, my Eagles finally got to play the most anticipated girls basketball game in Scholars Academy history. Unfortunately, we didn't play very well, we didn't coach very well, our opponent did both extremely well, and we came up short.

It's never easy to smile while holding the 

Conference Runner-Up trophy

just minutes after a tough loss, 

but most of the girls managed to do it.

Despite the final outcome, it is impossible to call our season anything but a huge success. We finished 15-4 - recording more than twice as many victories as last season, my first as a head coach. All five returning players improved, and our five newcomers for this season - none of whom had ever played competitive basketball - got so much better from the first practice to the final buzzer that it's hard to describe in words.

We reached the championship game for the first time in the school's 15-year history and had a season filled with memorable moments --  some of which I'll chronicle in a later post, after the sting of Tuesday's loss is a little less fresh in my mind.

I'll wrap this up by saying I am so proud to have been associated with this group of dedicated, hard-working, smart and fun ladies. These last four months have been special, and I'll never forget them.
^

Radio Shack is kaput, but my memories are not

^
When you get to be 106 years old like me, you sometimes get wistful when you hear certain news.

So it was last week when I heard that Radio Shack was going out of business.

I haven't stepped inside a Radio Shack store in years -- a fact that obviously doesn't make me unique, seeing as how the company has been bleeding red ink for years. And though I was a bit of a nerd as a kid, I wasn't really the kind of geek who frequented Radio Shack. My father was the electronics guy; my eyes glazed over whenever he talked about such stuff.

So what about Radio Shack's demise brought about my wistfulness?

Well, I credit the company's little TRS-80 Model 100 laptop computer with saving my sanity. Had it not come along when it did, I might be in a loony bin right now.

I first saw a TRS-80 in 1984 when I was a 23-year-old reporter in Madison, Wis. My AP colleague, Rich Eggleston, had just bought one with his own money -- more than a thousand bucks for the little 8-line device with precious little memory and limited editing capabilities. The machine had just been introduced a few months earlier.

When I covered a Wisconsin football or basketball game back then, I had two choices: dictate my story to an editor in the Milwaukee bureau or use a Teleram Portabubble unit when the Milwaukee folks made it available.

The Portabubble was an evil device that regularly ate copy and couldn't handle crowd noise. It weighed a ton but had a tiny screen that was difficult to read. It had no memory. I hated that freakin' thing! So the few times Rich let me borrow his TRS-80, I was in heaven. Unfortunately, he needed it both for work (he was one of AP's political reporters) and for personal use, so I rarely had it. I actually preferred dictating stories off the top of my head than using the Portabubble.

When I was promoted to AP Minnesota Sports Editor the following year, I was issued a Portabubble to use at Vikings, Twins, North Stars and Gophers games. It was the source of much consternation. The cord was frayed and the device sometimes would shut off, which instantly made the work go away forever. When I managed to get an entire story ready to transmit to the Minneapolis bureau or to AP Sports HQ in New York, I had to attach the phone into holes on the top of the machine. If the crowd noise was too loud, it would result in garbled text -- if the story managed to make it at all.

By 1986, AP had been issuing TRS-80s to many sportswriters but I still had the Portabubble. I was working the state high school hockey tournament at the old St. Paul Civic Center, about 12 hours into what would be an 18-hour day, when the machine ate a story just as I was ready to transmit it. I called my boss and demanded we buy one of the Radio Shack laptops. I told him that if I lost another story, I was going to hurl the Portabubble out of the press box onto the ice below!

My boss probably could have fired me for insubordination but instead, nicely, talked me off the ledge. He also promised he'd seriously look into getting me a TRS-80. Sure enough, within about a month, he made it happen.

And I lived happily ever after. The End.

OK ... not quite The End. The TRS-80s had their own issues, including having to send through "accoustic couplers" that also could be sensitive to crowd noise. Within a couple of years, though, I was upgraded to a TRS-80 Model 200, which had a flip-up screen and more memory, and it came with a "direct connect" cable that made accoustic couplers unnecessary. Wow!

Eventually, AP started investing in "real" laptop computers for all of its reporters. More than a decade later, however, many sportswriters -- especially those at smaller newspapers -- were still using TRS-80s. Those little suckers were durable!

So although Radio Shack soon will be gone forever, I always will have fond memories of its little laptop that saved my sanity -- and very possibly saved the life of a high school hockey player who might have been killed by the Portabubble I'd have thrown out of  the press box.

---

And speaking of wistful memories of bygone days ...

Remember when Tiger Woods was good at golf? Now he chips like me ... and believe me, that's no compliment.

But I digress. That's a different blog post for a different time. Like maybe when he's shooting an 86 at Augusta National.

I sure hope his career doesn't go the way of the TRS-80, because golf needs Tiger a lot more than the rest of us need Radio Shack.
^

One wonderful week guarantees that there will be another

^
All I wanted was one more week with my fun, fabulous Eagles ... and I'm thrilled to say they gave it to me!

We won two tournament games this week, including Thursday's victory over a team that had beaten us just 16 days earlier, and now we are the first Scholars Academy basketball team ever to reach the league championship game.

My girls -- 8th-graders Sienna, Margaret and Susanna; 7th-graders Ruta, Malika, Sholeh, Olivia, Celeste and Beijul; and 6th-grader Ritika -- are peaking at just the right time. Until a couple weeks ago, we had been struggling a little on offense. We made a few tweaks to our attack and we haven't lost since, playing progressively better each game.

We take a 15-3 record into the title game next Thursday (2/19). Two of our losses were to the team we will play for the championship, including a gut-wrenching 2-point loss in our most recent meeting. They haven't seen our new offense, which should do well against their defense. I am not worried about our defense -- it is the best in the league, IMHO -- or our effort. Nobody out-works or out-hustles my Eagles.

As satisfying as it was to win our semifinal game, I now find myself mostly thinking about other stuff.

Like how much fun we have together. And how much the girls love and support each other. And what nice kids they are. And how much they have improved since January and December and November ... not to mention since early last season, when I honestly wondered if we would win a single game!

My daughter Katie is visiting from Seattle this week and she served as my assistant for both games, as well as two practices. As we drove to Thursday's game, I confided in her that I was more nervous than I had been in a long, long time. I also told her my primary motivation for wanting to win so badly was this:

I wasn't ready for the season to end!!!

And thanks to Ruta, Ritika, Malika, Margaret, Susanna, Sholeh, Sienna, Olivia, Celeste and Beijul, the season has one more wonderful week to go.
^

On Donald Sterling, Jewish bigots, free speech, privacy and consequences

^
Not long after my Bar Mitzvah, I stayed at the home of an orthodox rabbi on a Friday night to see how ultra-religious Jews celebrated the Sabbath. I bunked in the same bedroom as the rabbi's son, who was about my age, and we talked for a little while to get to know each other. About a half-hour into the conversation, he was discussing the neighborhood his school was in ... and he used the n-word twice. I asked something like, "Did you have problems with them?" His response: "Nah, I just don't like (n-words)."

That pretty much ended our conversation. I wasn't confident enough in myself back then to admonish him on the spot or to tell his parents what he said, but I wasn't going to get swept up into this world. As the only Jewish kid in my grade school, I had heard plenty of taunts; as a guy who had befriended the few black kids in my neighborhood, I knew that racism existed and was ugly. I tried to go to sleep but tossed and turned until finally drifting off some time later.

The episode did affect my Jewishness. As a newly minted teenager, I already was questioning my faith (among other things). And now here came this son of a rabbi, and he was filled with hate. He didn't even have a reason for it. I remember thinking, "This is somebody who professes to be Jewish, somebody who claims to believe in a benevolent God?"

Which brings us to Donald Sterling. His real name is Donald Tokowitz. And, as we all know by now, he is a Racist with a capital R.

I'm always amazed when a person whose lineage traces back to a long-persecuted people can be so hateful and bigoted toward another long-persecuted people. You'd think Jews would have empathy for blacks and other racial, ethnic and religious minorities. When the Jewish person instead is filled with bile, it is, in my mind, a little tragedy. It certainly doesn't speak well for how God supposedly oversees us all.

I won't go into Sterling's transgressions because we've all heard them by now. His punishment? He eventually will be forced to sell the L.A. Clippers, reaping a mere $1 billion or so on his original $12 million investment.

See? Jews are good with money!

Some are trying to make this a free-speech issue. It isn't. Sterling is free to say whatever he wants. And the private organization to which he belongs -- the NBA Board of Governors -- is free to punish him. If you work for a private company and you are overhead saying the exact same things Sterling said, hopefully your company will ban you for life, too.

Because Sterling was recorded by an angry girlfriend, who might have goaded him into showing his hateful self, some are trying to make this a privacy issue. It isn't. Just because those comments came out in such circumstances, it doesn't mean Sterling's peers should have ignored them. He DID say them. He obviously believes every word he said. If you send what you think is a private email to a co-worker belittling your boss, your boss has every right to fire you. You will not be protected by any kind of right to privacy.

Were this a court of law, he couldn't be convicted. But it isn't a court of law. He doesn't have the protections of speech and privacy. He signed a league constitution binding him to rules of order and he violated those rules of order.

Some have equated this to hateful comments that black NBA players have made against gay people or putdowns of white players. In the future, will the NBA also ban players for life for insensitive or bigoted remarks? Well, no.

For one thing, players are protected by a union. The NBA couldn't even make stick a year-long suspension of Latrell Sprewell, who famously choked his coach in front of witnesses. A player might get a slap on the wrist for racist comments, but there is no way he will be banned for life.

But that's a double-standard, isn't it? Perhaps, but the two situations are far more dissimilar than they are similar. A player has little power. He doesn't hire and fire coaches, he doesn't decide if a department manager should be promoted or demoted, he doesn't establish a pay scale for secretaries and janitors. His bigotry is distasteful, but he doesn't have the power to use it for evil.

Long before this incident, Sterling left a trail of discrimination lawsuits, allegations of mistreatment and the like. His NBA peers have long wanted to rid themselves of him. This latest incident gives them an "in" to do it -- kind of like Al Capone finally getting nabbed for tax evasion.

Well, how about those who worry that this is a slippery slope? Will every owner who is caught on tape saying something disparaging that he thought was private be forced to sell a franchise he worked so hard to build?

Certainly, precedent now has been set. But let's not get overly dramatic here. Maybe people actually will start thinking before they talk. Now there's a crazy notion. We can't answer the broader question until we see how it plays out.

Finally, given Sterling's history, one person who comes out looking particularly bad is recently retired NBA commish David Stern. While his replacement, Adam Silver, has come out of this looking golden for the swift, strong stance he has taken, Stern has the smell of an enabler who turned a blind eye toward Sterling's longstanding racist acts.

Stern certainly wasn't afraid to ruffle feathers. He fined Mark Cuban so much and so often for ripping referees over the years that the Mavericks' owner might as well have set up direct deposit from his bank account to the NBA's coffers.

Here's hoping Stern wasn't giving Sterling a pass because they share the same religion.

Being Jewish never has been easy. Beyond the overt and covert bigotry that has persisted for thousands of years, entire nations and religions want nothing more than to eliminate all Jews from the face of the earth.

So it's especially sad and disheartening when Jews are guilty of narrow-mindedness, intolerance and hate.
^

Coach Mike's favorite season (so far)

^

After taking a couple of weeks to let it all sink in, here is a look back at my first year as a head basketball coach. My season at The Scholars Academy in Charlotte was amazing -- one of those rare life experiences that actually exceeds expectations.

I don't know if folks remember any of the things I posted months ago, but it was a rocky start back in October. And that was before the girl who was supposed to be our best player decided on the eve of our first practice to participate in Mock Trial instead of basketball. My wife said after I read that email from the girl's mother, all the color drained from my face.

I knew I had taken a job at a charter school for gifted students, but did I really lose an All-Conference player to Mock Trial? "What have I gotten myself into?"

Our Fine Nine

That left us with 9 girls, including four 6th-graders and one 5th-grader, to play in our 7th/8th-grade league. Four of them had never played basketball at any level. Several were soccer players, not accustomed to using their hands in sports. Our center, Celeste, was shorter than the guards on several teams in our league. Our guards were smaller (often significantly so) than their counterparts.

That being said, the improvement from the first day of practice to the end of the season was absolutely mind-blowing. Our little 5th-grader, Ritika, a tennis-playing basketball neophyte, turned herself into a good outside shooter. She had just 10 points in the first 13 games but was our leading scorer the last three games. Schuyler, who had trouble hitting the backboard on layup attempts -- I am not kidding! -- became a valuable contributor who made two big free throws in one game. Olivia, a soccer-playing 6th-grader who hadn't played hoops in three years, developed a nice short-range jumper. Margaret, who came into the season with some guard skills, took her game up several notches. She hit the winning shot in the final seconds of our next-to-last regular-season game and followed that by scoring 14 points, our season high for any individual.

We had incredible captains, Maddie and Sienna, and they set the tone for a group that was willing to work. If I told the girls to run, they ran hard, and they did so without complaint (mostly). They loved competing against each other in practice. They willingly dove to the floor when the situation called for it. Charlotte, one of our "littles," fearlessly stole the basketball from girls twice her size -- plays that thrilled her teammates (and her coach). Hannah was willing to mix it up with anybody, and our opponents had the bruises to prove it. Celeste and Sienna never got tired, and that's saying something because we used our 1-2-1-1 press almost every minute of every game.

Kids at Scholars are motivated, well-parented -- and smart. They loved to correct my grammar, and Maddie once raised her hand at practice to say, "I have an anecdote I'd like to share." You know, the kind of thing all athletes say. They like each other and have a great collective sense of humor. Also, and this is big, these girls care. A lot.

"AGGRESSIVE!"

Despite our improvement and our team chemistry, the Eagles had severe limitations. We had trouble rebounding because of our size. Our players rarely looked up when they dribbled. We often panicked when pressured, leading to lots of bad passes. And to say we shot poorly would be doing a disservice to the word "poorly." Still, we were able to compete because we played good defense -- and because we scrapped and clawed and out-hustled every team we played. 

Once I saw the makeup of our team, I thought we could be more aggressive than our opponents and force the refs to make difficult decisions; as a guy who officiates this age group myself, I'll say most refs don't want to call everything so they let a lot go. I told the girls that I didn't care if half the team fouled out -- I wanted our opponents to know they were in for a battle. These girls are really tough and competitive, and they loved pressing full court. Coming out of huddles, we often would yell, "Aggressive!"

We played a double-round-robin schedule against the other seven teams in the league. A couple were superior and defeated us decisively. Another team was better and beat us twice, but the games were closer. We were more skilled -- and far more physical -- than three of the teams, and we won both games against each. The other team, St. Michael's, beat us in two nail-biters. 

So we went 6-8 during the regular season, and I felt pretty darn good about it considering I had once worried we might not win a game. More than that, the joy that the girls got out of playing together trumped where we finished in the league standings.

A Game To Remember

In the first round of the playoffs, we met St. Mike's again. Margaret, who by that time was sharing point guard duties with Maddie and otherwise playing the 2 or 3, was out of town with her family. So I had to use Sienna, our 4, at the point quite a bit. She did well and we battled hard, but we barely made any shots (even layups) and we trailed by 5 with less than three minutes to go. Those familiar with girls middle-school hoops know that is like being down 15! Plus, our aggressiveness finally caught up to us; the refs were calling everything, and four of our eight girls had four fouls apiece. (St. Mike's also had trouble, and one of their best players fouled out.)

It didn't look good for us, but our press kept forcing turnovers, and finally a couple of shots fell. Sienna hit a layup. Celeste made a free throw. Ritika swished a sweet 17-footer from the baseline to tie it with about a minute left. She then stole an inbound pass and hit a layup to put us ahead, and we held on to win by 2. 

Afterward, during our celebratory meeting, the girls gave me a bunch of carnations they had brought to the game. They denied it, but I'm pretty sure they thought we were going to lose and our season would be over!

Battling Right to the End

Two days later, we did fall in the semifinals to the eventual champion. St. Anne's was better than we were, and we were still without Margaret, but we cut a huge deficit to 7 in the third quarter. We made them sweat a little before they pulled away from us. 

When it was over, I got a little choked up as I told the girls (for the zillionth time) how proud I was of them. Hannah said: "I think Coach Mike needs a group hug!" It was a special moment, but the actual execution of the hug was so funny we all couldn't help but laugh.

I already had decided I was going to return to Scholars -- as long as Mock Trial would return to school hours (where it had been in previous years) instead of after school (where it was at conflict with basketball). After all the hard work we put in, I didn't want to lose half of next year's team! I was assured that the decision already had been made to move Mock Trial back into the school day. 

We had our team party two weeks after the season. (The gathering was at Charlotte's house, and she and her family did the amazing chalk mural that is displayed at the top of this post.) When I announced I was coming back, I got a loud ovation. Parents thanked me for everything I did, and the girls gave me a gift card to a sporting-goods store. I presented each of the returning players with a pair of "dribbling glasses" -- specially designed plastic frames that force players to look up when they dribble. 

Roberta, who wasn't able to make it to any games because of her work schedule, was at the party and said "there was a lot of love in that room." I have to admit it was nice to feel so appreciated.

More To Come!

Had I decided not to return, could I have gotten a better coaching job?

Well, I'm not sure how one should define "better." Could I be a high-school assistant coach or maybe a JV head coach? Could I go to a private middle school that pays good money and has top facilities? 

I don't know, and I won't know next season because I'm not looking. My players are awesome, the parents are wonderful and the administration is supportive. Though I'm an old man (OK, maybe only an old-ish man), I am a young coach, and Scholars is a great spot for me to keep growing.

Just as all of the girls became better players, I like to think I improved as the season progressed. Still, I can recount a couple of exact instances in which I was out-coached, and I hate that feeling! After every game, I wrote down things I could have done differently, and those hard-learned lessons will help me in 2014-15 and beyond.

Bottom line: I am psyched about next season. We're losing two valuable players in Maddie and Hannah, but we should be returning seven. That includes both of our All-Conference picks, Celeste and Sienna, and a good supporting cast that figures to get much better. Hopefully, the girls will "recruit" some classmates to try out for the team. (A couple of tall classmates would be nice!) It looks like I'm going to run a week-long basketball camp in June, and there might be opportunities to get more involved at the school down the line. It's all good!

So what started with me asking myself, "What have I gotten myself into? ended with me realizing that I got myself into something pretty special.

Before the season, the girls were assigned to state their goals in writing. In my welcome note to the team, I stated my goal, too:

I want this season to be such a great experience, both on and off the court, that each of us will look back months and years and decades from now and say, "I'll always remember the 2013-14 basketball season at Scholars Academy. It was one of the best times of my life."

Well, I can't speak for the girls, but I know that will be the case for Coach Mike.

^

Getting ready for a major sporting event, and saluting a great man

^
By next week, one of the most important sporting events in the world will be in high gear.

Yes, that's right ...

My Scholars Academy Eagles will be competing in the quarterfinals of the Charlotte Gastonia Athletics Association girls' basketball tournament.

Unlike the Olympics, our event doesn't have to pretend to be about sportsmanship, character and the spirit of pure competition. Because, unlike the Olympics, our event actually is about all of those things -- as opposed to being about the pursuit of big-money endorsement contracts and about the host nation trying to prove it is more than one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

With the Eagles, what I say goes, so I guess that makes me kind of a dictator. Nevertheless, I have yet to go shirtless while riding horseback and I have yet to threaten to jail people just for being who they are.

I also have yet to use my kids to make a political statement ... unless asking them to pass to their teammates instead of to the girls wearing the other uniforms is the equivalent of taking a stance against redistribution of wealth.

OK, enough about the trivial event taking place in Putinville this month. Back to an All-American event featuring the Eagles ...

After last week's massive 1 1/2 inch Snowmageddon, which closed school for 2 1/2 days and resulted in two games being postponed, we had a nice dry week and were able to make up those games.

In the first, we took a big lead but foolish coaching strategy contributed to a near collapse. I thought the game was in the bag in the fourth quarter and tried a lineup combination I hadn't used all season -- for one thing, it didn't include either of our two experienced point guards. We promptly gave up most of the lead, and by the time I rectified the situation, we had lost all momentum. Our opponent tied the game with about a minute to go and we were reeling, having scored only one point in the entire quarter. But with about 15 seconds to play, one of our captains, Sienna, stole the ball near the top of the key. Her 15-footer didn't go in, but her teammate Margaret grabbed the rebound, drove and made the tiebreaking layup with 5 seconds left. Our opponents were so dejected, they didn't even attempt a desperation shot.

I later apologized to the girls and explained that just as they make mistakes and referees make mistakes, coaches make mistakes sometimes, too. It is a coach's job to put every player in the best position to succeed, and I did the opposite of that! We were fortunate to come out with a victory.

The next day, things went much better. We got a big lead early and kept adding to it. We typically have at least one very good quarter and one very bad quarter every game, but this time, we scored 9 points in the first quarter, 9 in the second, 10 in the third and 10 in the fourth. It was nice to see.

With that two-game winning streak, we take a 6-8 record into the tournament. Given that on the first day of practice I was worried that my debut season as a head coach would be a winless one, I'll take it.

Our opponent Tuesday has beaten us twice -- by 4 points and by 6 points. The first time, we had a small lead but gave it away during a poor third quarter and couldn't quite pull even again. The second time, we fell behind 14-0 but used our intense full-court press to rally like crazy before falling short. If we somehow could combine the first game's first half and the second game's second half, we'd be in great shape!

We will have to play well to defeat this opponent, but we know we can do it. We will outwork them and outhustle them and badger them and battle them ... all the while hoping that a few more shots fall than in each of our losses to them.

I have to admit to being a little nervous going into my first ever playoff game. At least I know that this time, I won't use a lineup without a point guard! Wish me luck.

+++

Today is the birthday of the greatest man I've ever known -- my dad, Jerry Nadel. If he were still alive, he'd be 95 years old.

Dear Dad:

You were such a warm, loving, intelligent, hard-working, funny, passionate, caring, talented man, and you set an incredible example for me and my brothers. Every time I think of you, I ask myself if I'm being as good a person as you were. It's an almost impossible standard for me to live up to ... but believe me, Dad, I'm trying.
^

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.
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Really? Three years in N.C. already?

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It's been three years since Robbie and I moved from Chicago to Charlotte. Here are the questions we get asked most often:

Do you like it there?

Mostly. The weather generally is better. The cost of living, especially real estate, is very good. The people are nice, but most folks we ran across in Chicago also were nice. It's been mostly good being homeowners again, and we never could have afforded a place like this in Chicago. I enjoy playing 12-inch softball again and really like the guys on the team. We have made some good friends. The traffic is a gazillion times better here -- and folks here think it's bad. I'll show 'em bad!

It sounds like there's a "but" there ...

Yeah, and even I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe "but we're so far away from our kids and our long-time friends." Or "but we miss the vitality and urgency of Chicago." Or "but the food here, in general, pales in comparison to that of Chicago." I mean, it's pretty common to miss things about a place where one lived for 16 years, right?

Any "buts" that have nothing to do with Chicago?

Politics. When we decided to live here, North Carolina was considered the centerpiece of the "New South." It was a so-called "purple state," with almost an even split between parties. The big cities leaned left, the outlying areas leaned right and there was a lot of moderation in between. Sadly for this registered Independent, it has become far-right politically. Republicans won huge here in the 2010 midterm election. And even though more people voted for Democrats than Republicans in 2012, Republicans won more statehouse seats because of gerrymandered districts from the 2010 elections. The new governor ran on a ticket of moderation, but he mostly has followed the tea-partiers and other hard-liners.

N.C. has been "featured" -- how's that for a nice word for "ripped" and "ridiculed"? -- by national publications and pundits for the incredible, 180-degree turn.

Bills were bullied through in the last hour of legislative sessions. Anti-abortion legislation was inserted into a motorcycle-safety bill and then signed by a "moderate" governor who had campaigned on the promise of never signing such legislation. A voter ID bill was a smokescreen for over-reaching, obviously anti-Democrat legislation that severely restricts voting (fewer days for polling, no same-day registration, etc.); it's supposed to fight voter fraud but doesn't address absentee balloting, where voter fraud actually takes place. Our elected officials enacted a mean-spirited law that deprives long-term unemployed people federal benefits; it's the worst such piece of legislation in the entire country. Teachers AGAIN received no raises, and assistant teachers were canned even as bureaucrats and friends of the governor are getting 35% pay hikes. "Tax reform" was enacted that gives well-to-do folks large tax cuts while making a family of four earning median wages pay more. While GOP governors in many states reluctantly accepted federal funds for Obamacare, ours has chosen to let hundreds of thousands go without healthcare. Why not? After all, he and his family have it. All that campaigning on jobs to get elected? Precious little has been done in that regard and, in fact, the latest numbers saw unemployment actually climbing.

But at least it's now legal to bring loaded guns into bars, so we have that going for us!

Yes, it's been good stuff for Colbert and Stewart ... but it's real-life stuff that hurts real people. Even moderate Republican friends of ours are embarrassed by what's taken place here in just the last few months.

How are the jobs going?

Robbie is working far too hard and far too many hours. When she was hired for the outpatient clinic at the children's hospital, she was, of course, the newby. Within a year, she was the last one standing. She has seen so many colleagues come and go, and each time she has to take up the slack and then train the newcomers. I feel really badly for her. The doctors truly appreciate her, as do the administrators there; in her most recent review, she received the highest grades possible. But it's still no fun to work from dawn to dusk and be dead-tired at the end of every day. We're hoping it improves.

My part-time job at the country club is going fine. I get to play free golf at a great course during the week and my co-workers are fun to be around. Sometimes it's tough to have to work every weekend, because that's the only time Rob is off. We actually like each other and want to spend time together -- imagine that after 30 years of marriage! I also have enjoyed the coaching, officiating, volunteering and other stuff I have done. I do miss having the opportunity to write about major league baseball on a freelance basis, as I did in Chicago. In addition to missing out on the money, I'd at least like the choice of continuing that part of my career.

What's been the best part of living there?

Well, after we got a house we then got our dog, Simmie. She's an absolute joy and we love her so much.

Do you think you'll live there as long as you lived in Chicago -- or at least as long as you lived in Minneapolis (9+ years)?

Difficult question. Right now, I'd have to say that's doubtful. Between Rob's job situation and the politics here and being so far away from Katie and Ben, those are three pretty big factors.

Having said that ...

Rob's job situation certainly could improve. She has had some very good stretches when it's been fully staffed.

And politics change. It had been a century since there was a Republican governor and a GOP statehouse. If these clowns don't stop pushing the public around, they'll get voted out of office just like the Dems did.

And who knows where the kids will be 2, 5, 10 years from now? One or both of 'em might even move down here.

OK, fat chance of that last thing happening. The point is, things change.

Where would you go?

I have no idea, though we might not be opposed to someday trading "y'all," for "aloha"!
^

Back to Chicago for family, friends, fun, food and just a little frustration

^
We live in Charlotte, Ben lives in Chicago and Katie lives in Seattle ... so having a family reunion quite an undertaking.

Thankfully, we undertook it! We met in Chicago last week for several days of family, friends and fun.

On the way to Chicago, Roberta and I stopped in Lexington, Ky., to visit our first Chicago next-door neighbors, C.J. and Alan Hatter. Here I am with their grand-daughter, Jamaya:





Then, it was on to Chicagoland. We spent a couple of nights with Roberta's dad and also got to visit with some of our favorite people: Dave and Michelle Pangallo and Jim and Kristi Johnson.

Dave is my "little" from when I was in the Big Brothers program in college. He's now in his 40s, a high-school guidance counselor, married and has three kids. We remain very, very close; I see him at least as often as I see my "real" brothers, and I'm very proud of everything he's become.

Here is Katie with two of Dave's kids, Molly and Connor:

Of course, we couldn't leave Milwaukee without grabbing a butter pecan cone at the greatest gastronomic establishment in the world, Leon's Frozen Custard!

From there, we went back to the northern Chicago burbs and caught up with the Johnsons. Jim ran my softball team in Apple Valley, Minn.; he, Kristi and their kids now live in the far north Chicago burbs. Roberta and I laughed so much during our visit with them, our jaws actually hurt afterward.

Then it was on to Chicago. We stayed three nights at the Marriott downtown and reacquainted ourselves with the vitality of the city.

On the first night, Katie and Ben met us at Millennium Park, as did our former across-the-street neighbors, Darcia and Mike Brundidge (and son Troy, who is Ben's age). It was too much fun!

Not long after waking up the following morning, Katie called with some bad news: Some clown smashed in the back windshield of our car. (It was parked near her friend's apartment.) Nothing was stolen, so we're not even sure why the perpetrator did it. What we are sure of: The new windshield cost us $323. Oh Chicago ... sometimes you make it so hard to love you!

After getting that squared away, the kids took us out to dinner at the delicious Wildfire downtown. Good thing they, unlike their dad, are gainfully employed! Afterward, we went to the dueling-piano bar Howl At The Moon, but it was howlingly cheesy and we didn't stay long. (Although, for the record, I was pushing for us to hang out awhile because the people-watching was hilarious.)

On our last full day in our former hometown, I went to lunch with my former AP co-worker, the recently retired Rick Gano. Roberta lunched with her former marathon partner, Laura Garza. And that night, we had dinner and gelato with our longtime Chicago friends, Linda and Gary Mark.

I know, I know ... it seems like all we ever did was eat! In our defense, we also drank!!

On Saturday, after saying goodbye to the kids, it was back to Charlotte. We arrived on July 28, less than one month away from our three-year anniversary as North Carolinians.

Jeesh! Has it really been that long since we called Chicago home?
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Salty dog makes Outer Banks super fun

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Our first trip to the Outer Banks was a smashing success.

Robbie and I had a great time with our forever friends, Elizabeth and James.

The weather was mostly excellent, though windier than Chicago x 2. (Great for kite flying!)

And in the most shocking development ...

Simmie swam!!

Two years of fun with Simmie; hours of frustration with golf

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Big day in the Nadel household.

It was two years ago today that we brought our beautiful pup Simmie home from the Humane Society.

That was Simmie then as a cute little girl. Here she is now as a mature young lady!

Simcha (her given name, which is Hebrew for "happiness") is smart and funny and crazy and adorable and curious and sweet. She'll chase a ball or a stick until we get tired of throwing it. She's got a real bark, not some kind of yippy sound, and she lets us know when something's going on in the neighborhood.

We love her so much, even more than we thought we would!

Of course, she can't completely replace Katie and Ben in our empty-nest home ... but then again, she never talks back or rolls her eyes at us!!

*****

In unrelated news ...

I played golf the other day and, after an unremarkable bogey-par-bogey start, I went par ... birdie ... par ... par. I was keeping the ball in play off the tees, hitting my irons better than I had all season and striking my 3-wood superbly. I dropped tricky putts on 5, 6 and 7 to go birdie-par-par on arguably the most difficult three-hole stretch at Ballantyne Country Club.

I was 1-over through 7, on my way toward the best round of golf in my life ...

Until reality reared its ugly head.

Triple-bogey on 8. Quad on 9. Doubles on 10 and 11.

Oh well ... it was fun while it lasted.

Stupid game. And stupid me. I went back out and played the next day, too.

How did I do? Well, I wasn't 1-over through 7, that's for sure!
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No close loss this time for SOPs

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The Sons of Pitches were peppier, the beer was quenchier and the wings were zingier.

Ah, victory.

Yes, softball is fun. The camaraderie, the physical activity, the competition, the challenge. All of it is fun, win or lose.

But as long as they keep score, "win" is always the better alternative. Even for old farts like us, winning still matters.

After losing our first two games of the season, each by one run in our opponents' final at-bat, the SOPs emerged victorious last night. We fell behind 10-3, rallied to make it a seesaw affair, led by one run going into the last inning and then made sure we wouldn't suffer another close loss. We scored seven times to blow open the game and finally give ourselves some breathing room. The big cushion seemed to relax us, as we held our opponents scoreless in their final at-bat to win 25-17.

It was fitting that our sensational shortstop Tom, who took a bad-hop grounder to the face a week earlier, finished this one by turning his second double play of the night.

Yours truly snapped out of a mini-slump with a single and two walks, but I was a footnote in this one. My teammates spent the night bashing the ball all over the park, proving true the adage:

Even SOPs have trouble losing when they score 25 runs!
^

Time again for this old hack to play ball

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There was a point between wanting to be a comedian and wanting to be a veterinarian that I actually wanted to be a basketball player when I grew up.

Then, as now, I wasn't very smart. But even I was smart enough to know a not-quite-6-foot Jewish kid with the speed of a plow horse and the leaping ability of a sumo wrestler probably wasn't going to be able to hang with the likes of Bob McAdoo and Jamaal Wilkes.

So I gave up on that dream -- and, soon enough, would give up on the idea of being a veterinarian when I discovered to my horror that I'd actually have to take science and math while going to college for something like eleventy-zillion years -- to become a writer.

No regrets ... but that doesn't mean I'm still not a wannabe jock. And these days, that means doing the few active things I can do and hopefully not get maimed in the process.

That was a long introduction to say this:

It's softball time again!

Yes, for the second straight year, I'm playing in the Charlotte Senior Sports softball league. The season just started but already I've seen my share of excitement. Believe it or not, the Sons of Pitches actually traded for me a couple of weeks before the opener. Hey, if Babe Ruth, Nolan Ryan and Jeff Bagwell weren't too good to be traded, neither was I!

Our manager, Pat, and his first-round draft choice, Tom, were major contributors on my championship team from last year and decided they wanted me as a teammate again.

For comic relief, I assume.

In reality, I'm pretty sure Pat acquired me because he and I had been among the only folks who regularly went out for a beer after games last season. I'm an OK ballplayer who is willing to play anywhere the manager wants, and I'm a team-first chatterbox who makes wise cracks to keep everybody loose, but really, all Pat wanted was his drinking buddy back.

So anyway, we played our first game of the season Tuesday. It was a back-and-forth affair that we lost 19-18 in the final inning. I played catcher and batted 10th, both of which were absolutely fine by me. A lot of people don't like catching, but I think it's fun to handle the ball on every play and maybe be on the receiving end of a huge play that can decide a game. As for where I bat in the lineup, I'd be worried about my team if I was placed too high in the order.

I was fine at the plate, with two singles, a walk and three runs. As one might guess looking at the score, we had several players who did as well or better than I did. We struggled some in the field, though, which will happen in a season opener. The other team didn't exactly flash a bunch of Gold Gloves, either.

Aside from the final result, it was a fun night -- even if I had to disappoint Pat and opt out of postgame libations. I've been battling a cold and I decided that NyQuil, not Stella Artois, should provide my alcohol for the evening.

Hopefully, next week will be a different story, both on the scoreboard and afterward.
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From golf balls to snowballs in 24 hours

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On Friday afternoon, I played my first 9 holes of 2013. I wore shorts and a polo shirt on the sunny, 64-degree day.

By Saturday afternoon, it was about 30 degrees colder. It was flurrying when Roberta and I went into the grocery store to buy a few items. When we finished about 15 minutes later, the snow was falling fast, in huge, wet flakes.

A few hours later, there was an inch or two of snow on the ground. The kids next door, who had seen snow only a couple of times in their lives, were outside playing. Roberta and Simmie joined them, with my wife building a snowman and the puppy running around enjoying the first measurable snow of her young life.

See? Just when I started missing Chicago a little bit, it came to visit me.
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2 years in N.C., y'all!

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Sunday marks our second anniversary as North Carolinians (and ex-Chicagoans).

Love the weather in the winter, spring and fall; miss seeing all those sailboats on Lake Michigan in the summer.

Love the year-round golf; miss teeing it up with the Chicago buddies who used to take my money on the course.

Love getting away from Chicago and Illinois politics; hate North Carolina politics.

Love hearing folks say "y'all"; miss hearing folks say "da boata dem."

Love having an affordable house on a quiet cul de sac; miss living in an apartment in the heart of Lakeview with lake and city views.

Love having gotten in with some local Marquette alums; miss being close enough to Milwaukee to go to games.

Love that a 30-minute rush-hour commute is considered "long"; hate that we pretty much have to drive everywhere in a pedestrian-unfriendly city with lousy public transportation.

Love playing 12-inch softball again; miss covering big-league baseball.

Love the cheesy grits; miss the pizza -- and most other Chicago foods.

Love the friends we have made here; miss the friends we left behind there (and really miss Ben and Katie there).

Will we spend the rest of our lives in the Charlotte area? Who knows? Will we ever move back to Chicago? Who knows?

Life is an adventure, and our journey has taken us here. Why fight it, y'all?
^

Heimlich Maneuver, please!

I've witnessed many chokers over the years. Now I know how the Cubs -- and the rest of them -- felt.

My softball team, the Blue Thunder, lost in the playoffs Tuesday night. That's bad enough. We had become a really good team, as good as any in the league, so it sucked to have our season come to an end.

You know what sucks even more? Being the goat. A choker.

We were down 6-5 going in the top of the last inning. I was in right field. There were two outs, bases loaded. The next guy hit a line-drive between me and the right-center fielder. I got a late jump but I was there. Got my glove on the ball. Couldn't make the catch. Three runs scored. 9-5.

We got the final out and came to bat. You know how announcers always say, "It always seems like the guy who made the great play leads off the bottom of the inning"? Well, sometimes, the guy who choked and committed a three-run error also leads off the bottom of the inning. And then that guy gets to choke all over again, grounding out to shortstop.

We ended up scoring one run so we lost by three. The difference was the three-run error by the choking right fielder. 

When he blew Game 7 of the NLCS against the Marlins, Kerry Wood looked a roomful of reporters in the eye and said: "I choked." He was man enough to admit it, and so am I.

I know I'm being awfully hard on myself. As many of my teammates later said as they tried to console me: If you only score six runs in softball, you can't win. I suppose that's true. We had been hitting the hell out of the ball, but just about everybody struggled in this one.

Still, if the right fielder makes that catch ...

OK. I've bloodied myself enough. It's a great group of guys and we'll be teammates again in the Fall League. In a day or three, I'll shake this off ... I think.

Until then, I'll wallow in self-pity a little. That's what chokers do, no?

The eyes didn't have it

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Why haven't I been posting lately? Two reasons:

1. Eye-eye-eye, have eye had problems!

I developed what the doctor termed an "ulcer" on my left cornea. It went from being a little uncomfortable to feeling as if somebody was poking my eye with a rusty nail. I lived with it for a few days, thinking that I just had something in my eye or that I had a small scratch. Finally, tired of hearing me whine, Roberta convinced me to go to the doctor, who made the diagnosis and prescribed some drops.

The drops have been working; at my follow-up exam today, the doctor said he was very pleased with my progress. I have no more stabbing pains and only a little discomfort, and my acuity is slowly returning in my left eye. (Thankfully, I have 20-20 vision in my right eye.) My dose has been reduced from 9 drops per day to 5, and I hope to be fully healed in a week.

The eye woes cost me an entire weekend of work at the country club, which obviously sucks. The situation also kept me from spending much time at the computer or in front of the TV, because the light from each bothered my eye greatly.

2. Straight cash, homey..

What little time I did have in front of the computer, I used to write something that actually will make me a little money: another financial article for Seeking Alpha.

It's about my desire to buy stock in oil companies. If you care a little about the subject, click away. If you don't care, still click away because I earn $$$ (or at least cents) per click!

---


I hope to post again sometime during the All-Star break with some baseball observations. No doubt, you'll be holding your breath in anticipation the entire time.

Today's High 5: College football's unimpressive playoff. Also: vacations for me ... and Erin Andrews

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5. Four teams? Please.

The college football playoff needed to accommodate at least eight teams to make it a true national tournament -- as well as to keep cronyism at bay. You know the selection committee will be filled with big-money-conference types who will protect their golden geese. 


The bloated bowl system remains intact, too, which is nice for fans of the Beef O'Brady's Bowl.

As satisfying as it was to hear the powers-that-be finally admit that the BCS was a huge failure, this is barely progress. And for some head-scratching reason, college honchos felt the need to lock this new system in place for 12 years.

Wake me when we have a real champion, please.

4. White Sox GM Ken Williams gets criticized often, but I always have admired the way he swings for the fences. His latest move, getting Kevin Youkilis from the Red Sox for spare parts, bordered on brilliant.

3. I took some time off from TBT while Roberta and I visited Chicago. We drove up from Charlotte with our beautiful pup, Simcha -- who was in the car, not strapped to the top in an air-tight cage.

We spent most of our time with young'uns Katie and Ben, who are doing wonderfully, thanks for asking. We also got to visit our dear friends, the Marks, the Pellikans and the Brundidges.


On Friday, I golfed with sportswriter buddies Rick Morrissey, Teddy Greenstein, Mike Imrem, Lindsey Willhite and Adam Rittenberg. That's right: a Sun-Times guy, a Tribster, two Daily Herald dudes and an ESPN.com scribe; that's about as diverse a group as a bunch of lily-white males can be. It would have been even more diverse (and more white and more male) if the Southtown Star's Phil Arvia had joined us as planned. He wimped out with the lamest of excuses: his wife broke her leg. Two days later, I hit the links with my two best Marquette friends, Tom Chodzko and John Lamich. I shot a pair of 93s, so it's a good thing the company was great!


One of the trip's highlights took place Saturday night, when my wife and I saw our favorite band, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, rock the Cubby Bear. Katie and Ben joined us and a fantastic time was had by all.


Oh, and of course, we ate at Pequod's, the best deep-dish pizza on earth.

All in all, it was a super fun Chicago visit before we returned to Charlotte -- just in time for it to be 100-plus degrees all weekend. Pass the deodorant, please.

2. I have yet to decide if I love HBO's newest series, The Newsroom, but I'm pretty sure I don't hate it.

And I must admit that I laughed out loud upon hearing that Jeff Daniels' character, combustible newscaster Will McAvoy, spent a vacation in the tropics canoodling with Erin Andrews.

You know ... I had wondered why I hadn't seen her lately.

1. After winning our previous three games, including our playoff opener, by double-digit slaughter-rule scores, our 45-and-over softball team, the Blue Thunder, suffered a tough defeat Tuesday night.

Yours truly had two line-drive hits, scored a few runs and had an RBI ... but I also messed up: Playing catcher, I failed to scoop a low throw that would have cut off a run; I also got thrown out at the plate trying to score. As a team, we played a little too loose in the field, walked a few too many batters and didn't have quite enough hits, all contributing factors to us blowing a late lead and losing by two runs.

We're not done yet, though. It's a double-elimination tournament, and we already have scored decisive victories over the next two teams we'll face (if we win our next game, that is).

Why am I boring everybody with my softball team's exploits? Well, because I can. It's my blog!

Besides ... our playoffs, unlike major college football's, will produce a true champion.
^

What a lucky schlub I've been

^
It's a big year for personal anniversaries ...

50 YEARS AGO

I first cultivated my sense of adventure ... as captured in this Aug. 1, 1962 story in my hometown Milford Citizen:

Little 20-month-old Michael Nadel decided to go for a walk this afternoon at 5 o'clock and wasn't missed until the family saw his chair empty at dinner time.


Just as the family of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Nadel, of 59 Wheeler Avenue, went out to look for the boy, he rode up to the house a proud passenger in a police car.


Sgt. Frank Polizzi, who lives about a half mile away from the Nadels, explained he saw sun-suited Michael walking along Milford Point Road and didn't recognize him as being from the neighborhood. A few youngsters nearer the Nadels' home told the policeman where the boy lived.

My parents should have been soooo embarrassed. I mean ... a sunsuit?

40 YEARS AGO

The fall of '72 was incredibly thrilling as my team, the Miami Dolphins, became the first -- and still the only -- NFL squad to go through an entire season (including playoffs) unbeaten and untied.

How did a kid from Connecticut come to like the Dolphins instead of the Patriots, Giants or Jets?

Well, I was a late bloomer when it came to sports. In fact, I kind of hated them. But as I approached adolescence, I got to be good friends with a kid named Dave Kirschner, who was a huge sports fan. He convinced me to like his favorite basketball team, the Knicks, but I wasn't about to like the Jets because, well, they pretty much sucked.

No, I was an impressionable kid and I wanted to root for a great team, and the Dolphins were coming off a Super Bowl season (they lost to the Cowboys). Plus, they had the coolest aquamarine and orange uniforms. Larry Csonka was my favorite player.

So I became a Dolphins fanatic. Eventually, a Knicks and Yankees fanatic, too. And I started keeping scrapbooks on those teams, as well as the Rangers in hockey. Which, in turn, made me fall in love with writing.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

35 YEARS AGO

Marquette won the '77 national basketball title in Al McGuire's final game as coach.

Not long after that, I went to a college fair and the Marquette representative was very persuasive. She had to be to get a Jewish kid from Connecticut who had never been east of Lancaster, Pa., to agree to freeze his keister off in freakin' Milwaukee. Why I didn't go to Arizona State or Miami or Hawaii or UCLA, I'll never know!

There are those in academia who claim that the success of athletic programs doesn't really help a university's profile. Well, I wouldn't even have known Marquette existed if not for the Warriors -- and I'm guessing thousands of others who chose to matriculate there say the same thing.

After becoming a professional sportswriter, I gave up my allegiances to the Dolphins and Knicks and Yankees and Rangers. But I always will root for Marquette hoops.

Bottom line: I was never a Dolphin or a Yankee. I'll be a Warrior forever.

30 YEARS AGO

I graduated from Marquette and began my career with the AP in Milwaukee.

These days, it's tough for graduates to get a job. How difficult is it? In article after article, the authors almost always write something like: "This is the most difficult job market for college graduates since 1982."

Yep, the 1982 recession was a rough one. I was one of only a few Marquette J-school grads to get a job in the profession. I'd love to say it was because I was the best, but I know better. It was at least 75 percent luck.

How I got that first job with AP is a great story ... and maybe you'll read about it someday if I ever write that book!

25 YEARS AGO

I covered my first Stanley Cup Finals in 1987 -- Oilers vs. Flyers -- beginning a long stretch as AP's de facto national hockey writer.

Was I chosen because I was a hockey expert? Hardly. I was working in Minnesota, so I simply was closer to Canada than anybody else. "Hey, they have lots of ice in Minnesota, right? Let's send Nadel to Edmonton."

The association with hockey worked nicely for me, as I went on to cover seven more Stanley Cups and four Olympic hockey tournaments for AP. The only two national writing awards I received were for hockey-related stories.

These days, I'm not sure I could name a dozen NHL players. Is Chris Chelios still in the league?

20 YEARS AGO

I covered my first NBA Finals -- Bulls vs. Trail Blazers.

One of my favorite keepsakes is a Portland newspaper photo of a media session. Michael Jordan is looking up at me, answering one of my questions.

Someday, one of my grandkids will ask: "Who's that guy in the picture with grandpa?" That'll be cool.

I still had hair in 1992, though it was thinning rapidly. I also had my trusty Bic 4-color pen in hand ... and I still buy them by the multi-pack.

15 YEARS AGO

Jordan had his incredible "food-poisoning game" against the Jazz in the '97 NBA Finals.

It was the only playoff game during the Bulls' Jordan Era II that I didn't cover.

While in Utah for Game 4, I got the word that my mom had died. After that game, I flew to Philadelphia for the funeral. I watched Game 5 -- the sickness game -- while sitting on my brother's sofa a few hours after we buried my mom.

10 YEARS AGO

As a freshman, my daughter Katie helped her high school team win the city championship in its division. She was the leading scorer in the playoffs and made the title-clinching steal.

Katie would go on to be the first athlete in Walter Payton College Prep history to win four varsity letters in one sport.

I still display a great framed photo, snapped by a Chicago Tribune photographer during her freshman year. The one time in her life she drove left, it was captured for all eternity.

Obviously, I was proud of Katie's exploits ... and equally proud of my boy Ben's many, many athletic triumphs. Today, both are in their mid-20s, employed and on their own -- which also makes me very proud.

For a guy who never rooted for the teams he covered, being able to cheer on my kids' teams was huge. After Ben played his last high school baseball game in 2006, I went through withdrawal. Seriously. It took me a year to get over that void.

If you have young kids and they are into sports or acting or music or whatever, enjoy the hell out of it, because the time will go by far too fast!

5 YEARS AGO

GateHouse Media bought the Copley newspapers in Illinois.

That was the beginning of the end for me, because I knew it was only a matter of time before the weasels there deemed me a luxury they no longer could afford. After all, they needed to have plenty of money on hand to give themselves bonuses and double-digit raises. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Thankfully, 2007 also was the year we sold our last Chicago home, an overpriced condo that we never should have bought in the first place.

Despite its glorious rooftop deck that provided a sterling view of the skyline, the condo didn't sell easily. It took six full months and the process caused lots of angst. Little did we know that the housing market was in the early stages of a total freefall and we were lucky to sell at all.

We moved into an apartment with the idea that we'd buy a house, maybe in the suburbs. But the market just kept getting worse ... and then I got laid off. It sure was nice knowing we didn't have a house we couldn't afford. That "temporary" apartment ended up being home for 3 1/2 years until we moved to Charlotte.

Wow. Lots of anniversaries. Next year's the biggie, though: 30 years of wedded bliss to my wonderful Roberta. Who'da thunk a schlub like me would be lucky enough to land and keep a babe like that?

You know, despite a bad break or two, I really have lived a charmed life.
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