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INTRODUCTION

“You should write a book.”

That’s what I heard from numerous friends and colleagues in October 2015 when I found myself unemployed for the first time in 43 years.

Those five words don’t exactly evoke opening sentences upon which classic books have been constructed.

“Call me Ishmael.” (Moby Dick).

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a  fish.” (The Old Man and The Sea).

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” (The Great Gatsby).

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” (A Tale Of Two Cities).

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

It may come as a surprise, but that opening line is from a real novel (entitled “Paul Clifford” and written in 1830). Those of my generation remember seeing that phrase in Charles Schulz’s iconic comic strip “Peanuts.” Sitting on top of his doghouse, Snoopy the beagle could be seen at a typewriter starting what he hoped to be the next Great American Novel.

Those were one of the cliched terms that were often heard in the stadium press boxes and media work rooms where I spent much of my career. Some of us would be staring at blank pages or blank screens after witnessing a compelling game. We were awaiting a visit from the Sports Writing Muse to provide us with a “lead.”  In the newspaper business, the “lead” is the opening paragraph. For news scribes, a lead is a just-the-facts summation of what’s to come. For sportswriters, a killer lead is the gold standard, a major way to define ourselves and impress our peers. A clever lead invariably made the rest of the story much easier to write.

Inevitability the chatter would begin, a verbal delay game for those of us battling writer’s block. “Ivan, I’ll give you $20 bucks for your second-best lead.” … “It was quiet in the village, and then the soldiers came.” … “It was a dark and stormy night.” And eventually someone would pipe up, “If you can’t write this one, get out of the business.”

I never voluntarily “got out of the business” until I was let go/dismissed/fired by my last full-time employer. Fortunately, our family didn’t suffer economic damage when Loving Husband and Dear Old Dad was kicked to the curb. The suggestion of writing a book wasn’t far-fetched or crazy. Except for the facts that …

  • I had written only one “book” (it wasn’t much more than a pamphlet and didn’t make any money);
  • I didn’t care to write a book unless it was a profitable endeavor;
  • I understood the challenge and difficulty of writing a “real” book;
  • I was at the point in my life I didn’t want to labor that damn hard working on a book that few were likely to read and fewer were likely to buy

Now, Dear Reader, you’re about 400 words into this and no doubt asking, “Hey, isn’t this a, you know, book?”

Guilty. And, congratulations for taking the free ride to this point. I intentionally posted this so it could be read at no cost. I have no expectation that more than a few dozen people might plow through 56,000 words. This book is dedicated to my wife Paula and our son Brooks. If they’re the only two who complete the reading assignment, for the author it will be mission accomplished.

A solid piece of advice for young writers is “write what you know.” The problem for young writers, is that they don’t know what they don’t know. Sports (starting with baseball) was part of my Wonder Years, starting at age five. Fate lent a hand along the way and I wound up with a newspaper career of over four decades writing about sports.

This is a memoir. Definition: 1, A historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. 2, An essay on a learned subject.

So, this is about my life, a life neither special nor extraordinary. What follows will be a meandering collection of chapters that will touch on a variety of topics, not necessarily in chronological order. I’ll empty my buckets of knowledge, my bags of experiences and the anecdotes that are reasonably interesting.

What I’ve discovered after six-plus decades is that my brain’s memory function has diminished. I liken it to worn Velcro. Another analogy: like the wreckage or cargo from a sunken ship, a thought or recollection occasionally breaks free and floats to the surface.

Writing this partially is an exercise in recording what I know and remember. Thankfully I have enough collected mementos and story scrapbooks to help fill in some gaps and correct/confirm details. It has been personally enjoyable to set straight some memories that had been tangled up by the passage of time.

Is this a “passion project?” Yes. Is it egotistical to think any of this might be perhaps slightly interesting? Yep.

I have not been subpoenaed nor am I writing under oath. This will not be a tell all. I have tried to make details as accurate as possible. There will be some honesty that some might find painful. There will be a few people who will be thrown under the proverbial bus. I will do that only because they belong there.

I have done my best due diligence to recall and research my hazy memories and remembrances. If by chance you are mentioned and you whistle me for an accuracy foul, so be it. My apologies in advance.

My life, my story, my book, my rules.

CHAPTER ONE: Dates And Decades

My rules. So, screw the bit about ignoring chronological order. Chapter 1 of “David Copperfield” was entitled “I am born.”

Before I begin at the beginning, an informational note. I started this writing project in March of 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year later I’ve updated a few chapters and edited more thoroughly. Anyone reading this is experiencing/has experienced what is arguably the greatest crisis of our lifetimes. In the final chapter I’ll revisit, review and opine on these once-in-a-lifetime events.

I have lived in eight decades – 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, the “aughts”, 2010s and the modern version of the Roaring Twenties. (I also acknowledge there’s an argument that 2020 is not the beginning of a “new” decade. I survived a mild case of the ‘rona in December 2020 so making it through to 2021 settles any debate on the subject.

Mom, Dad and baby Wendell.

I was born on Feb. 10, 1954 at 10:31 a.m. at Community Hospital in Grinnell, Iowa. Weight: eight pounds, three and a half ounces. Length: 21 inches. How and why my parents – Harold and Dorothy – were living there, I have no idea. (In terms of family history, I was rarely an inquisitive child; nor were my parents forthcoming story tellers.) My parents grew up during the Depression and World War II so they were members of The Greatest Generation.

The decades that transpired are hereby chronicled with the highlights/events that I recall.

1950s: Not surprisingly, my toddler years hold few memories. I know that after Grinnell we lived in St. Louis for a time … at some point we moved to DeSoto, Mo., which is southwest of St. Louis. … I remember hitting self-tossed rocks with a baseball bat … My dad, who was drunk, chased me up the street with a switch one time with some neighbors watching (more on that later) … I went to kindergarten. … I started “playing” baseball.

1960s: We moved to a farm 10 miles south of Columbia, Mo. We rented our house and basically were modern-day sharecroppers. A man named Mr. Woods owned the farm and lived in town. My dad worked the farm, growing corn, tending to cows and pigs, baling hay; my mom helped when needed. … I remember at age 6 driving a tractor pulling a flatbed wagon as my dad tossed hay bales and my mom stacked the bales. … Attended first and second grade at Rock Bridge elementary. … Cried telling my mom the kids made fun of me when I got off the bus. “Don’t break yourself, Window.” … Vaguely remember watching the Nixon-Kennedy debate with my parents. … We moved to town and I attended Eugene Field elementary for third and half of fourth grade. … Walked a little less than a mile to and from school. … Latch-key kid. … We moved midway through my fourth-grade year. … Was put in class with the “smart” kids at Robert E. Lee elementary. … Spent most of the time playing catch up and was intimidated by Mrs. Whitted, an imperious, commanding teacher. … Before junior high (seventh, eighth, ninth grades) we moved again, and I attended Jefferson Junior High. … Experienced assigned lockers and memorizing the combination, moving from class to class and cliques, becoming a true meek geek. … One of my teachers, Mr. Larry West, gave me a new nickname – “Outhouse” – he blurted it out to the entire class. (I hope Larry West is burning in Hell.) … In 1964 and 1967 experienced the thrill of victory as “my” team, the St. Louis Cardinals, won the World Series and the agony of defeat as they blew a 3-1 lead and lost the ’68 Series to Detroit. … My sister Linda was born on Feb. 24, 1968.

1970s: We moved our final time as a family before I started my sophomore year at Hickman High School. We lived at 400 Texas Avenue (a bit of foreshadowing there). … As at Lee and Jefferson (opposite sides of the political/historical spectrum, huh?) got off to a slow start. … Before sophomore year started at Hickman, there were the usual rumors that seniors would lock us in our lockers, de-pants us and raise the garment on the flag pole or make us push a peanut with our nose across the nearby four-lane street … My sports interest doubled as I started getting involved with basketball as a student manager for the sophomore/junior varsity. I would be a manager for the varsity as a junior and senior. … My graduating class in 1972 had just over 700 students; the combined enrollment was just over 2,100 in three grades. … Started working at the Columbia Daily Tribune (much more on that and the newspaper career in subsequent chapters) … At age 19, was hired as sports editor of the Hannibal Courier-Post. I was also the sports staff. … Newspaper jobs eventually led me to Quincy, Ill., Tucson, Ariz., and Atlanta.

1980s: Moved from the Atlanta Constitution to the Dallas Morning News in September 1981. At the time, the Morning News was engaged in a last-paper-standing “war” with the Dallas Times Herald. … After 18 months of high-pressure work as an editor, I turned down a promotion to Sunday editor. I was burnt out and disillusioned and thought I wanted to get out of the business. After a few months of half-assed job searching, was hired by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1983, starting a 25-year-run. … Met Paula Wyman and we dated on and off for five years. Asked her to marry me and we did the deed on June 25, 1988. … Career at the Star-Telegram shifted from editing to writing in the fall of 1985 when I was assigned to cover college basketball (the Final Four was in Dallas in 1986). … Paula is a Dallas native and we bought a house in Dallas in 1989. … Thanks to computers and email, I was able to work from home.

Happy son, happy dad.

1990s: Our son Brooks was born Nov. 15, 1993. … Later that year I added covering national college football in addition to my national college basketball beat … In 1995, I served a one-year term as president of the United States Basketball Writers Association. … The Star-Telegram had a yearly paper-wide contest honoring best stories in different categories. In 1998, I was given the best feature award for a story on TCU basketball coach Billy Tubbs. … “Survived” Y2K; was in New Orleans to cover Sugar Bowl (national championship game) and spent New Year’s Eve in my Hyatt Regency hotel room in case the world devolved into chaos; (the only chaos was the typical drunken debauchery on Bourbon Street).

2000s: The “aughts” were full of challenges. In January of 2000 Brooks was diagnosed with an egg-sized brain tumor. Thanks to God, it was benign, removed surgically and he was in the hospital for only a week. Other than the scar on the back of his head, he had no side effects. … In the summer of 2004 I battled and dealt with a bad case of stress-induced depression; counseling and medication helped turn things around … In November 2006 Paula was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Thanks to God, again, medication has kept it under control and the effects have been relatively minor. … About that time, Paula took an opportunity to move up from her high school counselor position to become director of counseling in the Irving Independent Schools system. The salary boost helped us send Brooks to private school after going K through 6th in the Dallas public schools. … The first half the decade was successful as the Star-Telegram (then owned by Knight-Ridder) fought off competition from the Dallas Morning News by expanding coverage. That meant more work covering college football and basketball, but it was satisfying to see the sports section rise to the same level as the DMN. … It was relatively short-lived. After a change in ownership and the newspaper business beginning a slow decline, I decided it was time for a change. After 25 years at the paper, in July 2008 I left to join the Big 12 Conference as its web site correspondent. … Brooks began his high school years at Dallas Jesuit Prep, a wonderful and outstanding school where he became a young man and was fully prepared for college. … The decade’s news included the 2000 presidential election ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, 9-11, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan plus Barack Obama’s election in 2008. … So, yeah, just 10 years of boring insignificance.

2010s: Brooks graduated from Jesuit in 2012 and was accepted at the University of Texas, majoring in architectural engineering. He pledged and was accepted into Sigma Chi. That eventually led to him becoming a member of Silver Spurs, a prestigious organization that oversees handling Bevo, the Longhorns’ mascot at football games. … The first half of the decade was business as usual for Paula and I in terms of our jobs. My work at the Big 12 evolved into more video work than writing; when I joined the conference office, I had a weekly gig on “Big 12 Showcase” a 30-minute show on Fox Sports Southwest and I’m proud to report I improved as an on-camera “talent.” … The highlight of the second half of the decade involved Brooks graduating from UT in December 2016 and landing a job with Turner Construction. He’s worked in Chicago since August 2017  … Brooks graduated about a year after the Big 12 decided to dismiss me (more on this later). For the first time in 43 years I found myself out of work. … The rest of the decade found me doing a lot of freelance work (again, more on this later). The best gig was during the 2017-18 basketball season when I wrote for The Athletic during its first season of hoops coverage. Thanks to that and another web site I was working for, I was able to cover the 2018 Final Four in San Antonio. In 2008, I had covered my last Final Four for the Star-Telegram, also in San Antonio, so it was a nice nostalgia trip. … Paula retired in 2016; thanks to the state’s Teacher Retirement System and her 40 years on the job, her annual pension is close to her final yearly salary. Yes, I am a kept man. … I started drawing my newspaper pension in 2019 (adding in Social Security a year later). … The sports writing business will be discussed in future chapters but as the decade ended there were few opportunities to write. When the Big 12 cut me loose, I was compelled to find ways to generate income. With Brooks going off the payroll, that was no longer needed. A career that started with my first full-time job in November 1973 is finished and I consider myself retired.

CHAPTER TWO: Sports

Or as the great sports scribe Blackie Sherrod called it, “The Perspiring Arts.” Sports, as a participant and an observer, has played a huge role in my life. I can’t explain why. There is no epiphany in evidence.

From what little I know of their backgrounds, neither of my parents had any time or inclination to play a sport. My first sport was baseball. Living in DeSoto, about an hour southwest of St. Louis, there would be an occasional Cardinals game on television to take me away from cartoons, the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers.

One of my earliest memories (and, well, just a damn cute story) involves being in the yard as a five-year-old, my mom pitching “batting practice.” I described the situation: “Ken Boyer is on first, Curt Flood is on second and Stan Musial is on third.”

My mom asked, “Who am I?”

“You’re mommy.”

Of course, she was. And I was a real-life little rascal.

When we moved and lived two years on the farm outside of Columbia, I was mostly my own playmate. We had a big yard that I could convert into a couple of different “diamonds” and I would toss up and swat tennis balls. I broke at least one window with a liner “off the wall” (the side of the house). CBS’ “Game of the Week” with Dizzie Dean and PeeWee Reese was a Saturday afternoon must watch and I didn’t wonder (I figured it out later) why every telecast featured the New York Yankees.

I didn’t play organized baseball until we moved to town. As a third grader, for some reason my mom restricted me to softball, not baseball. Starting the summer after fourth grade, I played baseball each summer.

Growing up as an only child, a lot of my ball playing involved me, my glove, a ball and a wall. I would throw at the wall and catch the grounders that came back. I would pitch to a strike zone marked on the wall. One house we lived in was three stories (we rented the top two to college kids) and I would throw the ball off the roof to catch “fly balls.”

I also loved to practice sliding. I’d run and hook slide or bent-leg slide. I’d practice “stealing bases,” taking a lead and then breaking for second. My mom was never happy trying to get the grass stains out of my jeans and patching the holes I’d rip in the knee.

Through the perspective of age and years, I think that being an only child shaped my average athletic skills. I could run with above-average speed, I had good hand-eye coordination, but I was scrawny and lacked confidence when I started playing team sports. Confidence comes with competition, proving to yourself that you can compete, getting up after being knocked down, moving on from defeat. Siblings, in particular older ones, provide that type of competition. Growing up as an only child might have hindered my competitive drive.

Those words would shock those who know me. My urge to compete came later in life and that highly competitive nature often became part flaw, part driving force. Mostly through high school, though, my athletic dreams were never fueled or fortified by a “hell, yes, I can do that” belief.  Had I possessed more confidence and swagger, would I have been a starter on the baseball team my senior year? Probably not. With all the “what happened” in every life there’s as many “what ifs?” Too often knowledge is learned and experience is gained too far after the fact.

I grew up loving the St. Louis Cardinals. I spent the summer of 1964 listening to games on the radio as the Cardinals staged a thrilling run over the last two weeks and won the National League pennant on the final day of the season. They then beat the dynastic New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series.

The last Sunday in August of 1964, my father took me to St. Louis for my first game at Old Busch Stadium. As we walked to our seats, my first glimpse of the playing field through a ramp to the stands is a forever memory – the grass was the greenest green, the infield dirt a complimentary brown, the chalk lines and first base a dazzling white. The Cardinals beat the Dodgers, 5-1, behind crafty southpaw Curt Simmons. I still have the team program my dad bought me that day.

My city league games each summer were too few, the season too short. I wanted to play every day. On the day of a scheduled game, I was impatient and always worried about a rain out. We didn’t have many practices. The current competitive level of youth sports had yet to develop. We were truly “playing” ball.

As a seventh grader at Jefferson Junior High, the sports options were basketball and track. I tried out for the basketball team which was limited to 12 spots. I had not played much basketball and being cut after the first tryout practice wasn’t a surprise.

In eighth grade I tried out for track. Before one scheduled meet, I finished first in a 600-yard qualifier during practice. The meet the next day was held on the track at Hickman High School, which was just a few blocks away. There were a couple of other junior high squads competing and probably about two dozen guys in the 600-yard race. I finished back in the pack. What I remember is deciding before the first curve that I was in the middle of the pack and resigned myself to merely finishing. I didn’t go all-out, didn’t run my ass off. I believed I wasn’t supposed to win so I didn’t try to win.

We had football in ninth grade. Over the summer, a few friends and I worked out, following instructions the coach had handed out. The summer workouts fizzled out, for me at least. When the first day of practice rolled around in August, I had not gotten the required physical checkup from my doctor. I missed what was probably my only chance to experience helmet and pads and blocking and tackling. I was about 5-foot-8 and weighed maybe 125 pounds. Considering my scrawny physique, maybe missing that experience was a good thing.

Despite failing the seventh-grade tryout, I took up basketball as an “off-season” alternative to baseball. Watching the Harlem Globetrotters on Wide World of Sports, some NBA and some college basketball national championship games further intrigued me. There was an outdoor court at the grade school near where we lived. “Shooting” – my two-hand form was awful – was another solitary sport I could enjoy.

As a ninth grader I attended one of the Hickman High basketball games. I had gotten to know the local radio play-by-play guy, Chris Lincoln, and he let me sit near his broadcast table on the top row of the stands. In addition to the game action, I noticed the team managers helping with towels, warm ups and keeping stats. The next year when I got to Hickman as a sophomore, I volunteered to be a manager, a job I had each year in high school.

The varsity coach was Jim McLeod. Hickman won the Missouri large schools state championship in 1962, finished runner up in 1968 and was third in 1969. McLeod won 299 games coaching at Hickman and was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association hall of fame in 2009. He passed away in 1975, three years after I graduated.

Coach McLeod lived in our neighborhood and often gave me a ride home after practice. (Typically, my mom dropped me off at school in the morning and I walked home.) I don’t recall any memorable conversations, but I think his kindness is illustrated by his taxi service. He and his wife, who coached girls’ physical education, never had children. I think he had parenting instincts when it came to me.

In the spring of my sophomore year, I tried out for the baseball team … along with about 40 to 50 others. We were split into two groups and I was in the group assigned to morning practices before school. Because of weather issues, we often practiced in the gymnasium. That involved fielding grounders that skidded at high speed on the hard wood court and taking batting practice trying to hit tennis balls thrown by the sophomore coach.

It was obvious that most of the morning group was made up of scrubs. Athletes who had played football and basketball were in the after-school group. Only a couple of guys from the morning group made the cut. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.

Again, based on the perspective of years, I think the coaches chose the guys for the afternoon group based on familiarity. Jerry Whitesides, the baseball coach, was also an assistant football coach. Ken Ash, the sophomore coach, was an assistant basketball coach. It made perfect sense that they would lean toward those they had coached and observed in practices and games in those sports.

My preferred position was second base. The guy who “beat me out” for that spot was Dan Devine, Jr. He played football and his father Dan had been the University of Missouri’s head coach. Dan Junior, also known as “Tiger,” stayed in Columbia when his dad became coach of the Green Bay Packers in 1970. (After the Packers, Dan Devine Sr. was the Notre Dame coach who didn’t want to let walk on Rudy Ruettiger dress out for his final game in South Bend, the main story line in the movie “Rudy.”)

My junior year, I tried out for the golf team. I was less prepared and skilled for that endeavor than I had been for seventh grade basketball. Golf, however, became a summer day-time activity. I was able to cobble together a set of clubs and many summer days mom would drop me off at A.L. Gustin, the university’s golf course, and then pick me up on her way home. A $5 greens fee provided unlimited play. I often played 36 holes – 18 in the morning, 18 in the afternoon and spend extra time hunting for golf balls.

Coach Whitesides oversaw my study hall my junior year. I had gotten to know him from hanging around with coach McLeod and the other coaches in their small office adjacent to the locker room. One day in the spring while I was leaving study hall, Whitesides asked why I hadn’t tried out for the baseball team. I told him I assumed that after not making the cut as a sophomore that I was ineligible to try out again. He explained my assumption was incorrect. (That might well have been one of my first “what the f*ck?” moments.) Had I tried out again, would I have made the team? Who knows?

My senior year I heeded his advice, tried out and made the team, a 5-foot-9, 140-pound force with which to be reckoned. (There was a rumor that Whitesides didn’t cut seniors; I never asked.) There was no backup third baseman, so I spent my practices there or sometimes filling in at first base. (I had one memorable play at that position when I fielded a grounder hit by senior Dale Smith, the star of the football team who went on to play defensive end at Missouri. I won the race to the bag a step before colliding with Smith, who outweighed me by about 60 pounds. I landed in short right field.)

Most of my time during games was spent on the bench freezing (spring didn’t always come to mid-Missouri until mid to late April). I played in a few junior-varsity games and at least one varsity game (the second of a double-header after we had clinched the conference championship.) My hazy memory recalls that I never reached base and had only two or three fielding chances. As I write this, I’m surprised to think back and wonder why I wasn’t keeping a written account of even meager accomplishments; perhaps I thought keeping a diary was a feminine endeavor.

I received a letter in baseball because every senior lettered. That went along with letters for my junior and senior years as basketball manager. I never, though, owned a letter jacket. (Is that even a thing these days?)

During basketball practices my junior and senior seasons, I spent my free time improving my shooting form. There were a couple of practices when guys were sick or injured where coach McLeod had me play zone defense in a half-court set. I’ve often wondered if I had worked at it before my senior season and asked for the chance if I could have tried out and made the team – something like a manager-player. It would have been a nice memory to dress out and go through the layup lines at home games. (A line from a famous Sinatra song … “regrets, I’ve had a few.”)

In the summers, I continued to play city league baseball (you could play until the age of 16), maybe a dozen or so games each summer. We filled out an “application” card and the managers drafted teams that were sponsored by local businesses. It was entirely random which team you’d wind up on, but it always seemed I was chosen by teams that resembled the 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team that lost a record 120 games (an expansion team that lost a record 120 games.)

Nevertheless, I got to play ball. The summers after my sophomore and junior years were the most memorable.

My hitting efforts as a younger player often involved trying to bunt for hits. I lacked confidence swinging away and hated the failure of striking out. Plus, because I loved to run the bases. I just wanted to reach first.

The summer after my sophomore year I started to feel confident at the plate. In one game I went 4-for-6, including two doubles. One was a drive into right center where I hit a curve ball for the first time. When the bat’s sweet spot connects flush with a baseball it produces a special and satisfying sound and feeling. After that game I calculated my batting average at .425. Again, I find it hard to believe I failed to keep a detailed account and I have no idea what my final average was. Sigh.

Our original coach that summer was nicknamed Puddin’ Head (swear to God) and at our first practices and games he was drinking beer and smoking on the bench while introducing us to colorful language favored by adults who drink and smoke. I wasn’t pleased to have a coach who was an asshole. I rode my bike to the Parks and Recreation department and filed a complaint about his behavior. Much to my surprise, Puddin’ Head was replaced.

That season also involved a career highlight.

We were playing a team that featured a friend since fourth grade, Jon Jouret. He was one of the best players on the Hickman team, the starting center fielder.  In this game, Jon was pitching, and he could throw hard.

In the bottom of the seventh, the final inning, we were trailing 4-2. I was 0-for-3 but I led off with a single. Getting a hit off Jon Jouret was quite an accomplishment for your Scrawny Story Teller. I stole second as the next hitter struck out. I stole third as Jouret chalked up another strike out. The grouchy field umpire who called me safe at third said, “Why ya wastin’ your time? Your run don’t mean nothin.’”

The next hitter was one of our younger players and was likely to be Jouret’s third strikeout victim. However, he worked the count full. As Jouret started his wind up, I broke for home.

Running on a full count with two outs is a good strategy … unless you’re the only runner on and are starting from third base. About halfway down the line, I realized that I had made a questionable decision. I had stolen a couple dozen bases in my career but had never – never – tried to steal home. I think I was assuming a game-ending strikeout and that a sprint toward home would add some flourish to the loss.

Fortunately, I never broke stride despite what concerns might have been bouncing around my brain. Jouret’s pitch to the right-handed hitter was low and outside, ball four. I was a “live” runner who could wind up making the game-ending out.

The catcher backhanded the pitch and swiped his tag. My right foot reached a corner of the plate first. The umpire called me safe. (The umpire, by the way, was Jon Staggers, who was making summer money. He played three seasons at Missouri as a running back/slot back and six seasons in the NFL for the Steelers, Packers and Lions).

When I got to the bench and was greeted with handshakes and back slaps, I sat down next to teammate Ken LaZebnik, who like Jouret had been a good friend since I started attending Lee School. “What in the world,” he said quietly, “were you thinking?”

Had I been as witty as Ken, I might have answered, “I wasn’t.”

Side note about Ken LaZebnik. He and his older brothers Rob (a producer on “The Simpsons”) and Phillip (screenplays for movies Pocahontas, Mulan, The Prince of Egypt, among others) have done quite well in Hollywood. Ken’s writing has appeared in films, television, and theater. For nine years, he was a writer and producer for the CBS drama “Touched by an Angel” and was a writer for Robert Altman’s film “A Prairie Home Companion,” a behind-the-scenes musical comedy about Garrison Keillor’s public radio show. The ensemble cast included Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Lily Tomlin.

I had one more season of City League baseball in 1970. I was one of the older players on the team and did some pitching. The lasting memory was the coach. He wasn’t a Puddin’ Head clone, thankfully, but he was not one to inspire confidence. After our first practice he told us, “It’s gonna be a looooooong season.” Unfortunately, he was accurate with his assessment.

After high school, I transitioned my bat and ball efforts to slow-pitch softball. In the summer of 1972 I joined a team made up of “adults” (not recent high school grads) and played left field. In addition to city league games, we played in some tournaments. Once, we drove the 30 miles south to Jefferson City to play a team at the state prison – an eye-opening experience for a skinny 18-year-old. We won and made it out alive.

When my newspaper career led me to Quincy, Ill., I enjoyed three summers filled with softball.  During the summers of 1976, 1977 and 1978, I played a total of 142 games. For those seasons, I was meticulous in tracking my game stats. The summer of ’77 was a high point, playing in 64 games. I played mainly for Central Welding Supply and the newspaper team but also hooked on with three other teams to play in tournaments. My 3-year totals: 526 at bats, 225 hits, 157 runs, 37 doubles, 12 triples, 2 HRs (not over the fence) and a .428 average. (Look, if you can’t hit in slow pitch …) Those three summers of softball were my glory days filled with lots of memories.

I played second base, shortstop, and a few games at third, batting leadoff or second in the order. The CWS team won the league championship in 1977 and in the final game, we had a two-run lead with two outs. An easy grounder came my way at second; I went down to one knee to make sure it didn’t go through my legs. My throw to first was high, but our first baseman was able to reach up to make the catch. (While I am hyper competitive, my clutch gene is in remission, as evidenced by nearly blowing an easy play.)

We also played in some weekend tournaments. In one of them, I experienced my first injury. We were in a double-elimination tourney and lost our second game on Saturday. That meant playing in the loser’s bracket on Sunday and grinding through several games. In the fourth game, scoring from second, I felt my left hamstring pop. It was probably a strain. We lost in the championship game as I limped around as best I could. With the tying run on second and two outs, I lined out to second. (See: “Clutch gene” comment in previous paragraph.)

I played mostly shortstop for our Herald-Whig team – and we were awful and played in the lowest division in the city league. In one game I went from first to third on a hit to the outfield. The other team’s shortstop was frustrated; when he caught the throw in from the outfield, he spiked the ball off the rock-hard dirt, and it bounced about 10 feet above his head. I had rounded third by a few steps but as soon as I saw what he did, I took off and scored standing up (it’s 60-feet between the bases, by the way.) I was far from an Olympic sprinter, but I had good “wheels.”

Mr. Softball on duty at shortstop.

Nearly a decade later, when I was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, we had a team that played in a media league (the teams came from television stations and the three newspapers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area). We were known as the Rats (Star spelled backward). The games were on Sundays and we probably played a total of 10. The last year we played, I think maybe 1987, we won the season-ending tournament, beating the Dallas Times-Herald team. I played shortstop. My honest assessment is that my consistent play anchored the infield. (In slow pitch, most of the action on the infield happens at short.) One play in the tournament is a forever memory. I ranged to my left to grab a grounder behind second, whirled and threw to first for the out. (The picture illustrates how serious I was about softball. Full freaking uniform while playing for the Star-Telegram team. I was a bad-ass pretend big-leaguer.)

Pick-up basketball also consumed my competitive urges. After high school, I spent a lot of time working on my game solo. Before I left Columbia, I was often at old Brewer Fieldhouse (it had been converted into an intramural facility) on the Missouri campus. I would play half-court games – 3-on-3, 4-on-4, 5-on-5. There were lots of students trying avoid studying so there were always games.

When I was working in Hannibal, I sometimes drove the two hours to Columbia to visit on weekends. One Saturday at the Hearnes Center, Missouri’s new multi-purpose facility, I played pickup for about 6 hours. That night, my feet cramped so bad I couldn’t walk.

Until I was 40 – or about the time I became a father – I tried to play pickup when I could. The local YMCA has noon games Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I tried to make those as often as possible. My skills had improved; I was a decent ball handler and a competent shooter with 3-point range.

Over the years, as I played more, I was more self-critical and got frustrated at missed shots and bad passes. That led to being more and more competitive. (Remember the Younger Wendell didn’t compete because he lacked confidence. The Older Wendell made up for that by too often being hyper competitive.)

About 20 years ago, I returned to playing golf. I consider myself a “bogey” golfer which means I can break 90; about 30 percent of hackers can score 90 or lower. Despite the fact that I’m better than an average golfer, I get frustrated by poor shots. When I come back from the course, Paula always asks me if I had fun. My sarcastic answer is usually, “No, I was playing golf.”

Playing sports provided an undercurrent for my life and professional career. Developing confidence and a competitive drive certainly helped my newspaper career. My bitching about errors in softball and missed shots in basketball carried over to my work. Mistakes in competition and at the keyboard brought angst and pushed me to improve and avoid making the same mistake twice.

CHAPTER THREE: School Days/Daze

I have zero memories of kindergarten and few about first grade at Rock Bridge Elementary when we lived on the farm south of Columbia. Our teacher was Mrs. Daly. I remember at recess thinking I was the fastest kid in my class until I raced James Jennings. I was chosen as the Valentine King. Diane Jose was elected as the Valentine Queen. (We went to high school together and remained good friends.) As a reward for the class vote, we were each given an engraved friendship bracelet. They misspelled my name (“Windle”).

After first and second grade at Rock Bridge, I attended two different elementary schools. Switching in the middle of fourth grade was a bit traumatic. We moved from a small house to a larger, 3-story house on the edge of the Missouri campus. My mom wanted to rent out the top two floors to college kids to make some extra cash. The move meant switching from Field to Lee elementary.

Because it was close to the Mizzou campus there were several kids in the class whose parents taught at the university. There were also two classes in each grade. They weren’t designated as “smart” and “not smart” but it was obvious that the brighter kids were in the class into which I parachuted.

The teacher was an imperious battle ax named Mrs. Whitted. Part of the math work involved timed tests. When I arrived, my classmates had already drilled on multiplication problems up to 12×12. The time had been reduced from five minutes to four minutes to three minutes. When I showed up, the tests were 100 problems in three minutes.

In my career in newspapers, deadlines never bothered me but my first experience with time-sensitive work was disastrous. I knew the answers but working that many problems with the clock ticking froze my brain. Too often I didn’t even finish all the problems. Despite being correct on most of the problems I finished, every incomplete answer was marked incorrect. I dreaded every timed math test.

I told my mom about the trouble I was having. She had me ask Mrs. Whitted for a sample test to bring home so I could practice. My mom counted the number of problems and it turned there were … 112, not 100. (Mrs. Whitted, you duplicitous b*tch.)

The second half of fourth grade improved as I got more at ease. The math switched from multiplication to division and starting even with the class made things easier. I even accomplished a perfect score which earned a piece of candy from Mrs. Whitted. (She treated the students in a Darwinian fashion.)

Apparently, I wasn’t alone in the pressure that I had felt as a newcomer. One day in class as we were going over vocabulary words and Doug Hall was struggling with a simple word. Mrs. Whitted stood, towering over him at his desk and in a loud firm voice said, “tar, tar, TAR.”

There was a pause and a defeated Mr. Hall quietly said. “I’d like to tar and feather you.”

Mrs. Whitted recoiled like she had been slapped. She then escorted Hall to the principal’s office, leaving a stunned class to sit and wonder if we’d soon hear a gun shot.

Doug Hall and his family moved; I don’t think the move was connected to The Great Tar and Feather Incident. They left town before I could return a sleeping bag I had borrowed. (If memory serves, I believe I heard that because parents complained about her “bedside manner,” Mrs. Whitted eventually was reassigned.)

I grew more comfortable at Lee; fifth and sixth grade were solid years as I made more friends and enjoyed my teachers (after Mrs. Whitted, any teacher was an improvement).

Our family moved again before I started seventh grade. Jefferson Junior High was less than a mile from where we lived so I usually walked back and forth. But the comfort I had gained as a sixth grader was lost to a new environment. Assigned lockers, moving to different classes each period, not having the same people in each class – I quickly felt lost. I started sitting in the back of classes and goofing off with other losers and misfits.

I’m not quite sure why, but one of the electives I selected was “speech.” I think I had heard some friends were taking it. Nonetheless, I was ill-prepared to stand in front of the class and read parts of plays out loud or make speeches.

The teacher was Larry West, a rather bombastic and dramatic sort. One day, as I was sitting in the back row and pretending to be elsewhere, I heard his voice.

“Barnhouse, I’ve got it,” he boomed as the class turned its attention my way. “I’ve got a nickname for you. Outhouse.”

I swear to God.

It was a hateful gesture that put the spotlight on a kid who wanted to be invisible. It was mean and spiteful. As you might imagine, the name stuck for the rest of a miserable seventh grade year.

My grades suffered because I didn’t give a damn. Because my academics slumped in seventh grade, in eighth grade, I found myself in several classes with classmates I didn’t know and guys I considered to be hoods. It was a wake up call. I sat closer to the front in classes, figuratively and literally putting my classmates behind me, I applied myself and raised my grades.

In eighth grade I was again in a speech class. This time, the teacher wasn’t a jerk. That fall, she announced the class was participating in a state-wide speech contest. There were several categories to enter, but only one that appealed to my limited level of confidence – radio announcing. Basically, the requirements involved preparing and then reading a 3-minute report. My plan was to deliver a sports report.

KFRU (Kind Friends Remember Us) was the local AM radio station. I asked my mom to drive me there and walked in cold. Chris Lincoln was the station’s sports guy. He was attending Missouri and working at the station while doing sports updates and doing play-by-play for Hickman High games. I asked for his help.

He went to the Associated Press wire machine and tore off a script that previewed that weekend’s college games. He offered to coach me up. After practicing it a few times at home, I returned to the station to read it for him and he gave me some tips, suggesting which words and phrases to emphasize.

At the speech contest, I read my script alone in a room, for two different sets of judges. There were two “grades” – excellent and superior. I was awarded “superior,” the best of the two. That was certainly a confidence and an ego boost that gave me the idea about a potential career.

In ninth grade my improved grades landed me back in classes with more of my friends from Lee school. Our speech class entered another contest that year but there was no radio category. Instead I did a “humorous reading” of two columns by Art Buchwald. No “superior” rating but the fact I memorized my performance and delivered it in front of judges and other contestants was another small milestone. I remember one of my judges laughing her ass off; I think she was a Buchwald fan.

I missed six weeks in the spring of ninth grade. One weekend our family had driven to Kansas City to visit one of my adult cousins and his family. I started to feel sick to my stomach on the drive back. Later that night at home, I threw up and it was mostly blood. It turned out I had a bleeding ulcer. After a few weeks of medication, a bland diet and rest, I was back at school. A 15-year-old is not supposed to get a bleeding ulcer.

Between Jefferson Junior High and my sophomore year at Hickman, we moved to the final dwelling we would occupy as a family. By now, my sister Linda was two years old and my mom was doing her best to keep things together as my father continued his weekend drinking that sometimes led to verbally abusive behavior.

Becoming a high school student wasn’t as traumatic as my transition to junior high. However, the first week of my world history class, I could tell I was in with some ne’er-do-wells. I visited my counselor and asked if I could change classes. She looked at my junior high transcript and proclaimed I could indeed handle a higher level, so she moved me into an honors world history class. It was challenging – we started studying the Ming dynasty. I also got the first of several unrequited crushes – a blonde who drove a red Mustang convertible. Her father was a lawyer. It was the first of many “she’s outta your league, dude” experiences.

Also, that year I signed up for typing; don’t remember why, but it was fortuitous. While it was difficult to pass the words-per-minute standards banging away on the old manual typewriters, learning the home keys and the QWERTY keyboard was a huge help once I started a career where typing was a basic skill.

Over the summer, I had been hanging around KFRU on the weekends, talking with the deejays, the announcers and Chris Lincoln. He offered me a chance to be his spotter in the radio booth during Hickman football games.

Chris also wrote stories on Hickman games for the local paper, The Daily Tribune (he was a far better announcer than a writer). But “knowing” someone whose byline was in the paper and reading his accounts of the games was sparking my interest in newspapers.

That led to me taking journalism as an elective my junior year at Hickman. We were taught about writing stories (inverted pyramid style, the most important info at the top, least important at the bottom), how to write headlines and design pages. The purpose of all that was preparing us to produce the school paper, The Purple & Gold, as seniors.

Early that year, one of our assignments was to submit a story about something going on at Hickman. I decided to write about the most recent football game, cribbing a lot from one of Lincoln’s stories. The teacher had us trade stories and to volunteer to read one if we thought it merited.

Cindy Hudson read mine to the class and the teacher was impressed. “That sounds like someone who could be sports editor of the school paper next year.” Another feather in the ego cap.

A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, my mom woke me up saying I had a phone call. I was in my room in the basement and picked up the extension. It was Cindy Hudson and she asked if I would be her date to a dance at Stephens College, an all-female school in town. (It was known as $tephen$ College because of its tuition.) Groggy, half awake and unsure of what to say, I mumbled a “yeah, sure.”

After I hung up the phone and started to wake up, I wondered what kind of suicide mission I had volunteered for. I had yet to be on a “date.” And a girl I barely knew had called to ask me out. I didn’t have a driver’s license; it was pointless to have one when we couldn’t afford the insurance for the family car. And what exactly was this dance at the local women’s college?

I asked a couple of my friends and my panic abated; a few of them were also going. My mom bought me a sport coat and tie. In subsequent conversations with Cindy at school I told her I didn’t drive so she drove. We had a nice time. Afterward, she drove me home and we had a good night kiss. Bottom line: A successful first date.

I had reached the point where social status in school meant you had a “girlfriend” and you were “dating.” Cindy and I went out a couple of times but for whatever reason (I honestly don’t remember) it ended. Gina Jennings, a girl I knew who lived down the street, was briefly a “candidate” but she wanted to “just be friends.” (We still are.)

That dark declaration (“let’s just be friends”) came at the same time I was hit with another disappointment. The assignments for senior year in journalism were made. I assumed I would be named sports editor. But in addition to the paper, the class had another position to be filled. KFRU gave the school a 15-minute time slot each Sunday night for a taped show called “Hickman Highlights.”

Because  I had been hanging around the station and helping with the football broadcasts, my assignment for my senior year was hosting the radio show. Keith Ballenger, a good guy but a below-average candidate (in my opinion) was selected sports editor.

System failure, recorded interview lost and the Hickman Highlights host is pissed.

The position I had assumed would be mine went to someone else and I had a girl friend but not a girlfriend. Life sucked. (By the way, the picture at right was taken in the journalism room my senior year. I’m unspooling a roll of tape that had failed to record an interview. My expression is familiar to all who have witnessed one of my “pissed off” moments.)

Going into my senior year, the school underwent some changes. A few of my classmates – including Ken LaZebnik, my baseball teammate and friend since fourth grade – led a movement to alter student government. Instead of a student council, our class elected a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer and established student committees to oversee different areas. One of those committees was “communications.” I ran for a spot on that committee, was elected and was named chairman.

I put together the weekly radio show, using a studio at KFRU to tape. Sadly, no copies were ever kept, and those 15-minute classic segments of radio gold are forever lost. I wrote stories for the Purple & Gold, including a regular feature called “The Bomb Column” where I interviewed students and rated their cars.

Mostly, I enjoyed a serious case of senioritis. One of my elective courses was economics but I soon realized that I wasn’t interested in the subject matter. I asked my counselor if I could drop the course and be assigned to coach McLeod. Along with physical education, which alternated days with study hall, I basically had two free periods. Also, because of my communication chair “responsibilities” I was able to sign out of classes almost at will. Seniors rule.

Social life and the dating scene never materialized. I didn’t have a date for homecoming, and I didn’t go to senior prom.

At graduation ceremonies, I was awarded the Sylvia May Hansen journalism scholarship, a whopping $150 that I planned to use my freshman year at Missouri. Our commencement speaker was the dean of the journalism school; his daughter was a junior at Hickman. I took his appearance as another example of the stars aligning. Here I was, ready to attend my hometown university with one of the finest journalism schools in the country. That summer, I had a part-time job in the kitchen at a local grocery store to earn money to help pay my college tuition.

As fate and life’s twists would dictate, a high school diploma turned out to be my educational ceiling.

CHAPTER FOUR: How A Career Began

My high school baseball “career” led to my start in newspapers.

My senior year, Hickman had a conference double-header on a Saturday at Sedalia, about a 60-minute bus ride; I made the traveling squad. We split the two games with me watching, as usual, from the bench. My good friend Ken Scruggs had a pinch-hit double to key a four-run extra-inning victory in the opener.

In Sunday’s edition of the Daily Tribune, the story and the two box scores were inaccurate messes. The paper had not staffed the games. I’m guessing that maybe one of the team managers or an assistant coach called the paper to provide the info but there was a failure to communicate of “Cool Hand Luke” proportions.

Being a high school senior weeks from graduating and thus fully informed and equipped with all manner of worldly knowledge, I decided that the local paper’s sports coverage needed a major upgrade that only someone with my skills could provide.

The last month of my senior year, after school, I walked the two miles to the newspaper office. Armed with my clip book (stories that I had written for the school paper) I planned to offer my obvious talents and vast experience.

This bold endeavor illustrated two things. One, it showed how I had grown in self-confidence. Two, it showed how freakin’ naïve I was.

I had made no appointment. Don Kruse, who served as the paper’s de facto sports editor, was gracious enough to take the time to hear my pitch and look through my meager collection of stories.

The paper’s sports department was oddly staffed. Bill Clark held the title of sports editor but was also a major-league scout who spent most of the spring and summer on the road. Clark would file stories when he could, but Kruse handled the day-to-day production of the sports section along with writing.

At the end of our short interview, Kruse said I could work as a part-time “stringer” that summer and cover the American Legion baseball team. The next day at school, I was spreading the word that I had been hired by The Tribune. To my knowledge, Kruse didn’t consult Clark until after he gave me the gig. After all, it was a part-time job and it could be taken away at a moment’s notice (which I would soon learn).

The American Legion baseball team was mostly made up of my high school classmates/teammates. The first story I wrote was about a victory in Jefferson City. The story had a dateline but not a byline.

While I knew how to type, I had yet to develop the knack of writing/composing at the typewriter. I wrote my stories by hand, then typed them and delivered the pages to the paper in the morning. The Tribune was an afternoon paper so there was no deadline pressure.

The Legion team’s coach was Ken Ash, who had been an assistant basketball and baseball coach at Hickman (he had thrown indoor batting practice using tennis balls when I tried out as a sophomore). My senior season was Jim McLeod’s last as basketball coach; he moved to El Paso for health reasons. Ash had been named as McLeod’s replacement. His elevated status as a hometown boy made good collided with an 18-year-old “reporter” writing what he saw and heard.

After a loss by the Legion team, Ash chewed out his players who were standing near the dugout, telling the players “they lacked guts.” It was easy to hear what he said, and I quoted him in my story. The guy in charge of the next day’s sports section edited for style and spelling and not content. The “guts” quote made it into print.

The story caused quite a stir. Had I misquoted Ash? No. Should I have interviewed him for the story and asked for calmer comments? Yes. Did I know how to be a reporter? Nope.

My newspaper career was in peril. The managing editor wanted to fire me; Clark came to my defense and suggested I be suspended for two weeks and that I would no longer cover the American Legion team. Clark wrote a “clean up” commentary praising Ash as a standup young coach while mentioning (not by name) a young reporter who had made a mistake. Columbia was a small town (about 35,000) and even a minor “scandal” like a coach calling his players “gutless” was not meant for public consumption.

(This was not my first disciplinary incident as a Tribune employee. In seventh grade, I had a paper route delivering the afternoon paper. The papers for my route were delivered to our house and I had to roll ’em and secure each with a rubber band. If there were advertising inserts, those had to be placed inside each paper. One time, instead of including the inserts, I threw ’em away. Also, the carriers had a circulation contest where you got a prize if you contacted the people on your route who weren’t subscribers. I hated knocking on doors to collect from subscribers. Making a sales pitch was worse. Still, I wanted the prize so I falsified the contact reports by just filling in addresses of houses on the route that didn’t take the paper. The circulation staff contacted all those “wannabe” subscribers who reported they hadn’t been asked about subscribing. I think I either volunteered to end my carrier career or they asked me to turn in my paper bag.)

The paper filled out the sports staff by hiring students attending Mizzou’s journalism school to fill in as writers and desk editors. When I returned to active duty, I was eventually entrusted with a byline and started writing a weekly column on local golf, “Down The Fairways.”

That summer, Kruse left to take a job in Waterloo, Iowa. Clark hired Jack Guthrie to cover Missouri football and oversee each day’s sports section production.  Over the summer, two of the college guys who had been part-time writers/desk guys found full-time jobs and left. I had learned page layout and headline writing at Hickman so I spent time helping Guthrie put together the two to three pages of sports each morning, often putting out the pages on my own.

When Clark was around, he put me through sports writing boot camp. Even if it was a three-paragraph item, he invariably handed it back to me covered in blood – edits made with his red pen. He hammered style and consistency. One of the rules I learned was “time before date before place.” For instance, I might write, “Hickman will play at Jefferson City Friday at 7 p.m.” and it would be corrected to “Hickman will play at 7 p.m. Friday at Jefferson City.” It might seem minor; the information is correct and the same no matter which order. But in the newspaper style book, it was “time before date before place.”

Bill Clark: mentor, writer, baseball scout, bird watcher, weight lifter. A man for a lot of seasons.

“Readers Digest” regularly featured a “My Most Unforgettable Character.” William Clark would have to be mine.

The “sports department” was basically three desks pushed together. My spot was across from Clark’s. He had a squat, weight-lifter’s build … because that’s what he was. A few years after I left Columbia, he opened a weight-lifting gym and went on to record several national records for his weight class. His various life experiences included a stint in the Army, a career umpiring/officiating a variety of sports and a scouting career that took him to spots around the Western Hemisphere.

His presence and appearance were intimidating, as was his two-finger hunt and peck typing style that was so forceful his typewriter bounced. When the Tribune underwent a major production change, copy had to be typed on IBM Selectric typewriters (the pages were scanned, shortening the production time.) The manual typewriters we had used required blunt force trauma to strike the keys; the electric typewriter keys would strike if you breathed on them.

That finesse befuddled Clark, who often found that “the” would come out as “theeeeeee” because his finger had abused the “e” key. One morning as I was working across from Clark, I saw his face reddening as he was back spacing and x-ing out typing errors. Finally, he smashed his fist down on the machine and it recoiled a few inches off the desk. “There,” he said. “Do we understand each other now?”

What Clark looked like and how acted defined the cliché of not judging books by their covers. The man who refers to himself as “Ye Olde” was a kind soul who enjoys theater, bird watching (he wrote a book A 100-Year History of the Audubon Society of Missouri) and has visited over 40 countries, most on baseball scouting trips. He also stood up for a high school graduate whose newspaper career nearly ended before it began. Bill Clark became my journalism/sports writing mentor.

As fall approached in 1972, I was ready to begin my college career at the University of Missouri. Clark went against previous practices by hiring three incoming freshmen to work part-time as writers – Joel Bierig, Mickey Spagnola and David Vogels. I was a “townie” living at home and I felt threatened by the newcomers, who had the camaraderie of dorm/campus life. Chicagoans Joel and Mickey had gone to high school together.

Toward the end of the summer I had become more involved with laying out the daily sports pages. I arrived at the office around 6:30 a.m. and the pages were usually finished by late morning so that the paper could be printed for afternoon delivery.

My earliest classes were at 9:30. Guthrie was available to finish up when I needed to leave for class, but I found myself skipping my first and sometimes second classes to finish up or to write. When I left work to ride my bike to campus, I felt like a visitor instead of a student. I just wasn’t all that thrilled with the classes I had selected. The first two years of college involve basic subjects, not the specialty studies that lead to careers. Because I was living at home, I felt out of place among the 20,000 or so students who were living in dorms or getting ready to pledge fraternities/sororities.

(The concept of a “gap year” hadn’t come about but I would have been a perfect candidate. Most of my friends were going to college. That’s what you did – graduate high school, go to college. Had I decided to just spend a year working, perhaps my desire to pursue higher education would have been rekindled.)

I also was being teased by the “big time” aspects of my job. In September, I found myself in the press box at Memorial Stadium to write a sidebar on Missouri’s second football game of the season. (Ironically, it was against Baylor, a school I became quite familiar with when my career led me to Texas.) That day I was in the same press box with Bob Broeg, Mizzou grad and sports columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; I certainly felt big-time.

During September and October, I was covering junior high football games some afternoons, writing my golf column and spending mornings in the office. It was more interesting than attending class. Only one of my high school friends shared a class with me, and that was a biology lab that included about 100 students. I found myself skipping classes. The professors, unlike high school teachers, didn’t care if you showed up or not.

When it came time for mid-terms, I was woefully unprepared. That was apparent when I got a letter from the dean of students. My grade-point average would have made a great ERA – one point something. The letter informed me I had flunked out. Missouri would only allow me to re-enroll if I attended another school for a year to prove I could pass college-level courses.

As my three freshmen colleagues took classes and wrote for the paper, I kept working as a flunked out drop out. I had concerns about my future without a college degree. There was talk that some papers wouldn’t even interview a candidate who didn’t have a degree.

When basketball season arrived, I covered Hickman’s season opener – and the coaching debut of Ken Ash. He had survived and I had recovered from the ill-fated story printed earlier that summer.

I also drove to St. Louis and covered a couple of NFL games (the original Cardinals), covered an Oklahoma-Missouri Big Eight basketball game and the state high school basketball tournaments held in Columbia. In the spring, I interviewed (by phone) a couple of young Missourians on the St. Louis Cardinals roster, including Bake McBride, who would go on to have a solid major-league career. I also covered the Cardinals 1973 home opener at Busch Stadium. At 19, I was far more a fan than a reporter/journalist.

I filled one clip book and started another. In the spring of 1973, I added a local tennis column (The Tennis Scene) and produced a four-part series on the growth of women’s sports in the local schools. (My senior year, some of my classmates had petitioned to start Hickman’s first girls’ tennis team.)

The Tribune published morning editions on Saturdays and Sundays. One Saturday night after I had the sports pages wrapped up, some severe weather hit town with a couple of tornadoes (no injuries or serious damage). Because I was available, the city editor sent me to the police station a few blocks away to monitor reports. I dictated info that turned into a couple of paragraphs in the story, the city editor added my name to a double byline with the main writer. It was a front-page story in Sunday’s paper and mom was proud.

In the fall of 1973, Columbia opened its second high school. The city was growing and University High, a small prep school connected with Mizzou, had closed. Rock Bridge High School (about half a mile from Rock Bridge Elementary that I attended in first and second grade) opened. I was assigned that beat and wrote game stories and feature stories on the football team’s first season.

In my research to write this book, the memory lane stroll through the scrapbooks from my Tribune days is full of cringe-worthy reading. Too many stories lacked nuance or anything beyond play-by-play descriptions and facts. I main skill I developed was being able to compose at the keyboard.

The Tribune was undergoing changes as it prepared to move into a new building. A new managing editor had taken over and she didn’t like how the department was set up with Clark often out of town. Guthrie had become frustrated at the end of Missouri’s 1973 season when the team made the Fiesta Bowl but the paper didn’t send him to cover the game (all of the correspondence for the game he would toss in his “Fiesta Bowl File” – the trash can). Earlier in the season, the Tigers staged one of that season’s biggest upsets by winning at Notre Dame, but the paper didn’t send Guthrie to South Bend.

Guthrie left to become sports editor in nearby Jefferson City (the state capitol) and Jimmy Gentry was hired as his replacement. He started to drop hints that I had reached my ceiling at the Tribune and it was time for me to either go back to college or move on.

(In addition to the three guys who Clark recruited – Bierig, Spagnola and Vogels – another Missouri student, a senior, did some work at the Tribune. John Rawlings eventually became executive editor of The Sporting News and hired me to write some freelance college stories in the 2000s. Joel, Mickey and David all graduated from Mizzou. I lost track of Vogels but kept in touch with the other two. After a few small-town stops, Joel was hired to cover baseball for the Chicago Sun-Times. Like me, Mickey eventually wound up in Dallas. After covering the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Times-Herald through the end of that paper’s life, he’s now working for the team’s web site.)

As would seem to be a regular occurrence throughout my newspaper career, when it was time to move on or move up, opportunity knocked, and doors opened. I got word that the Hannibal Courier-Post was looking for a new sports editor as the current man in that position was retiring. This job application was much more formal than when I walked into the Tribune about 18 months earlier. I sent an application letter and some clips. I drove to Hannibal and interviewed with Bob Ross, the managing editor.

In November of 1973, Ross called to tell me I had the job. He had chosen me over a college graduate who had lost an arm in a car accident. So, I beat out a one-armed sportswriter. The only proviso was that, because of my age, I would be on a three-month trial basis before I would get the title of sports editor. My first day on the job was Nov. 26, 1973.

I was also the staff, what’s known as a “one-man shop.” The “sports department” was my desk. Like the Tribune, the Courier-Post was an afternoon paper that published Monday-Saturday and sold for one thin dime. My starting salary was $120 a week. In addition to laying out the 2-3 pages of sports each day, I covered the local high school, some area high schools and the basketball team at the local junior college. Ross encouraged me to start taking photos at games I covered, so I added that to my skill set.

For the first time, I was living on my own. I rented an “apartment” that was in the second story of a house – one room furnished with a bed, a dresser plus a small kitchen and bathroom (shower only). $37 a month.

Ross didn’t wait the full three three months. On Monday, Feb. 11, 1974, the day after I turned 20, I was officially named sports editor. This is the story making the announcement along with the picture that would accompany my column:

Sports editor at age 20.

Wendell Barnhouse, The Courier-Post’s sportswriter since late November, has been named sports editor effective today.

Barnhouse came to Hannibal from The Columbia Tribune where he had been a sportswriter for 18 months.

In Columbia, he covered local and area prep and college athletic activities, as well as contributing weekly columns in golf and tennis.

Born in Grinnell, Iowa, Barnhouse moved with his family 13 years ago to Columbia and was graduated from Hickman High School in 1972 where he lettered in baseball.

He will continue to cover the local sports scene in Hannibal with photos and stories and will begin Tuesday an opinion column of sports at all levels.

With his experience in covering the Columbia area, he expects to bring to the Hannibal area expanded coverage of the sports scene in Northeast Missouri.

My first official, full-time newspaper job just happened to be in the town on the Mississippi River that was home to Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain and there are reminders everywhere of the great American writer – Becky Thatcher’s Restaurant, the Fourth of July Tom Sawyer fence painting contest, a Mark Twain museum.

The only Twain book I had read was “Tom Sawyer” as a high school assignment. The great man had been dead for over 70 years and just because I was working in his hometown, I didn’t feel haunted by the ghost of a legend. Other than a frog-jumping contest, Mr. Twain avoided sports coverage.

I did, though, feel some pressure. I started keeping a journal and reading those thoughts 45 years later reminds me of the yin and yang of trying to be a mature professional living on my own two years after graduating high school. Hannibal was a small town and while I was busy with the job, the evenings were often lonely. I wrote letters to friends (waiting impatiently for them to answer). I also called friends in Columbia just to talk. (My first month’s phone bill was $113, almost a week’s salary. Gulp.)

Soon after I was named sports editor, a friend at the Tribune mailed me a column that Bill Clark had written. It was a “catch-all” piece that focused on a lot of topics. Part of the column was a “where are they now?” section. There was one paragraph each on Don Kruse and Jack Guthrie. Then Clark wrote this:

Wendell Barnhouse, who did double duty all last year as the tennis and golf columnist, has also moved on to greener pastures as the sports editor of the Hannibal Courier-Post.

Wendell, only 19, is an unusual young man. He graduated from Hickman High in 1972 and caught on at the Tribune as a part-timer during the summer of ’72 to cover the American Legion team and promptly was relieved of the assignment when he became involved in a controversial quote.

He stayed on the staff doing the menial tasks of a cub reporter and in the next 18 months developed into a functional and talented young writer.

He took a shot at higher education at the University of Missouri and quit before the end of a semester, becoming a full-time reporter for the Tribune.

Remember Roger Kahn? He’s the man who wrote “Boys of Summer.” Roger dropped from Columbia University at 19, worked as a copy boy for the New York Herald Tribune and by the time he was 24 was headed south to cover the Brooklyn Dodgers – team about which he wrote in “The Boys of Summer.”

Roger Kahn is still short a college education, but he ranks as one of America’s most talented and sensitive writers of the 20th Century.

Wendell Barnhouse may not be another Roger Kahn, but there’s a lot of each in the other. One of the joys of working with the young men on the sports staff here is seeing a Wendell Barnhouse mature into a solid journalist and writer. Makes the long hours and meager pay worth it all.

I had read Roger Kahn’s book because it was about baseball. I didn’t particularly make the connection that Kahn had started covering the Brooklyn Dodgers at a young age. Plus, the poignancy and theme of the book was catching up with those players years after they had retired. The boys of summer had become the old men of winter but the sentiment of that transition was mostly lost on a 20-something.

Clark was correct; I did not become another Roger Kahn. However, his kind words were as much curse as blessing. I kept a photocopy of the article above my desk and would read it often. It became a carrot and a stick, a tease of what someone who had mentored me thought I could become. At that point, my career goals were vague. I suppose my dream job was becoming the Cardinals beat writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (thankfully, that never happened; I had no idea about the daily reporting grind that job required).

At that age and point of my professional career, I was lacking a basic understanding of time, the constantly changing measurement of life. I lacked the wisdom that the passage of years provides. Conjugating verbs – past, present, future – isn’t like conjugating life. You live in the present, your past is permanent and … to quote The Doors’ Jim Morrison “the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” (Dark, I know, but the previous line is “I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.”)

Back to spring, 1974. Basketball seasons ended. Hannibal High lost in the first round of the state tournament to my alma mater. (Several heavy snows that winter had postponed/canceled some of the basketball team’s games and they didn’t play for almost a month. Hmmmm. That would have made a good story, rookie.) Hannibal La-Grange JUCO ended its season with a short-handed roster and a 2-29 record. Spring brought high school baseball.

I “wandered off the reservation” with a couple of non-sports stories. I wrote a short reviews of “American Graffiti” (the movie was far better than my review), “The Way We Were” and “Joe Kidd.” That was the spring when streaking became a national pastime on college campuses. I heard yelling about a streaker cavorting across campus. I ran outside to observe – from a distance – and then wrote a story for the front page about the local streaker, including info about the fad from around the country.

I also made several trips to St. Louis for Cardinals games. I was granted a season press pass (yeah, back then, they would let anyone in) so whenever I could get away, I’d make the two-hour drive to Busch Stadium. I covered the season opener and my game story included no quotes; I was too scared to interview players I had grown up watching and still worshiped. Through July, I wrote about a dozen stories on Cardinals games and eventually I overcame my fear and started interviewing players in the locker room and including quotes in my stories.

In early July, a Cardinals game provided a fateful/fortuitous meeting that rerouted my career. I met Chuck Brady, sports editor of the Quincy Herald-Whig. Quincy is about 20 minutes north of Hannibal on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. Brady mentioned they had an opening for a sportswriter.

I interviewed for the job. It was a slight pay increase and the paper would offer tuition help if I wanted to attend Quincy College. I retained the nagging urge to work toward a college degree. Also, Quincy was maybe twice the size of Hannibal. In late July I bailed on Mark Twain’s hometown and took the job at the Herald-Whig. (The writer I was replacing was Ray Compton, who had become a local favorite/semi-legend for his coverage of high school basketball.)

The next four years in Quincy turned out to be a substitute for four years of college. During my time there I attended a couple of semesters at QC. The rest of my time in the “Gem City” (one of the town’s nicknames) I spent drinking beer, playing slow-pitch softball and hanging out with a dozen or so staff members who were also in their 20s. I was in the slow and painful process of trying to grow the f*ck up. When I took the job, I had yet to turn 21 and I often acted like a douche bag prick. I had some incidents that might have deserved dismissal (sound familiar?)

For instance, when I moved into my new apartment (again, in the second story of a house but larger than the Hannibal abode), I decided against installing a phone. I wanted to avoid the temptation of long-distance calls and high bills. One morning when I was supposed to lay out the sports pages I overslept, and Brady had no way to get in touch with me.

In my journal and in short diatribes I would hammer out at work, I railed at what I perceived as the paper’s “corporate bullsh*t.” (It was family owned, so it was hardly “corporate.”) Brady and Jim Binkley, the other sportswriter, were Cubs fans and they had no trouble giving me a hard time about my love affair with the Cardinals. Instead of growing a thicker skin and giving as good as I was getting, I took it personally.

While it would take me years (and, some might say, a decade or two) to become a mature male, the four years in Quincy helped develop my work ethic. In Hannibal, I basically could do what I wanted in terms of stories. The Herald-Whig’s coverage area not only included two local high schools plus Quincy College (an NAIA school with a powerful soccer program and a basketball team), the paper covered a region that stretched for a 60-mile radius that included dozens of high schools.

Funny how the reporter is taking notes but his notebook is closed.

My main beat was Quincy Catholic Boys (soon to be renamed Quincy Notre Dame). I also wrote stories about Hannibal High and schools in four different conferences, often covering three games a week.

The H-W also had a unique publishing schedule. The afternoon edition, which Brady, Binkley or I produced each morning, was delivered in town. The Sunday paper went to all our subscribers, in town and around the area. Monday through Friday nights, we had a night editor who put together some updated news and sports pages from the afternoon edition for morning editions that were delivered to our regional subscribers.

That meant I often wrote a basic game story for the regional morning edition (dictated over the phone to a part-timer who typed up what I called in) and then a story for the afternoon edition that I would write after driving back to the office.

Binkley and I kept track of statistics and standings for the high school conferences we covered. The football and basketball seasons flowed together and overlapped. Also, during football season, I wrote advance/preview stories on the Quincy CB team (which in my first season on the beat reached the semifinal of the inaugural state high school football playoff that fall) plus previews and recaps of games in the smaller conferences. My writing style improved via repetition and volume; what was lacking was a critical editor like Bill Clark. Practice wasn’t making perfect, but it was making me a better writer.

Basketball at Quincy High and Catholic Boys was a big freakin’ deal. Illinois had divided into Class AA and Class A levels, with QHS in the larger and QCB in the smaller. Both had a history of success. My interest and love of basketball was nurtured.

Starting in the fall of 1975, I began writing a regular high school sports column called “Prep Talk.” Brady wrote columns – a Sunday notes column called “Chuck’s Clipboard” (which consisted of newsy notes and news he had gathered) and a bowling column called “Chuckin’ at The Headpin.” Ray Compton, my predecessor, had pioneered the idea of a “catch-all” high school column that was designed to inform readers of basketball happenings around the state. I took on that challenge with “Prep Talk.”

Later in my career, especially when I was covering college sports for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I often tried to get the most bang for the buck out of road trips. Budgets were always tight. I was a “cheap date” when it came to expenses and I always looked for trips where I could see the most games or cover a game and snag interviews for a feature story while on that trip.

One three-day stretch in November of 1975 foreshadowed this type of planning. It also illustrated how I had become hooked on the job and its often-hectic game coverage schedule.

Quincy CB was playing in an eight-team tournament in Collinsville, Ill, about 30 miles east of St. Louis on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. On turkey day, the Buffalo Bills (and O.J. Simpson) were playing the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. That Saturday, Indiana was scheduled to play defending national champion UCLA in a made-for-TV late-night game at the Checkerdome in St. Louis. Diane Jose, my first grade “Valentine queen” and high school classmate, was living in St. Louis, so I had a couch on which to crash for a few nights.

I covered the NFL game on Thanksgiving. The next day I covered QCB’s high school game and made it to the Checkerdome to hear Indiana coach Bob Knight talk about the game. I wrote an advance on the UCLA-Indiana game. Saturday QCB played two games. After covering and writing about both, I made it to the Checkerdome. Indiana had two players with Quincy connections – Jim Wisman and Bob Bender. I talked to both after the game for a feature I wrote the next day when I got home. Three days, an NFL game, three high school games and a college basketball blockbuster.

There was always something to write about and there was always somewhere to drive. In Missouri, I traveled to St. Louis, Columbia, Hannibal, Ewing, Canton, Kirksville, Shelbina, Shelbyville, Edina. In Illinois, the towns included Mendon, Madison, Venice, Pittsfield, Collinsville, Lewistown, Galesburg, Champaign, Carthage, Concord, Hamilton, Payson, Granite City.

By the end of the school season in 1977, I was approaching what I considered to be a burn out level in terms of writing. That was about the time the paper hired a new executive editor. Ted Findlay’s charge was to modernize the newsroom. He hired several young and talented writers and he moved my fellow sportswriter Brian Cooper to city editor.

I was interested in taking more classes at Quincy College that fall and taking a break from 60-hour work weeks. Findlay agreed to let me work part time and put me in charge of laying out the sports pages most mornings during the week. He also asked me to help organize the department and make story assignments. He hired two new sports writers – R.B. Fallstrom and Steve Key. The college classes I took were insignificant compared to how I evolved as a newspaperman.

Much like Bill Clark,  Findlay was a mentor. He treated the young staff like they were all promising minor leaguers and he was there to help them reach the Big Leagues. Cooper and Vicky Gowler, an outstanding reporter, each went on to become executive editors at two different papers. Fallstrom has been working for the Associated Press covering St. Louis sports for decades. Key became a lawyer and worked in the Indiana state legislature.

Findlay’s advice to me was to concentrate on becoming a “desk man” – specializing in page design, headline writing, editing, organization. I had the experience and had gained enough maturity to step into a management role. Findlay encouraged me to convince Brady to evolve from his old-school ways. We started producing improved sports sections with eye-catching page designs and solid writing.

“Writers are a dime a dozen,” Findlay told me. “You want to get out of Quincy and move up, your best path is on the desk.”

His counsel was wise. Concentrating on desk work helped me move from the minors to the majors in just over three years. And never mind the fact I spent the last 25 years of my career as one of those dime a dozen writers.

CHAPTER FIVE: Can’t This Guy Keep A Job? 

I put together a resume, with Findlay’s help, and sent letters to about 20 major papers – Miami, Dallas (Times Herald), Seattle, San Diego, St. Petersburg, Phoenix. After a couple of brutal winters in Q-Town I had the urge to move to some warmer climates.

A photo from my portfolio in my short-lived modeling career for polyester 3-piece suits.

(My resume picture is displayed at the right. I had needed glasses starting in about 1975 and I had also grown a beard. The Afro look? I started getting my hair permed – hey, it was the ‘70s and it was a popular look. I also started to dress “professionally.” The finest in polyester 3-piece suits from J.C. Penney. In this photo, I look like a business manager for a soft-rock band.)

As the calendar flipped to 1979, I had two job opportunities. One was in Moline, Ill., about 150 miles north of Quincy. It was an offer to become assistant sports editor. The sports editor, I was told, had terminal cancer and they expected me to take over when he passed.

I also had an interview with the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. They offered to fly me there for an in-person interview. I had never traveled by air. I arrived on a Sunday in January and when I walked down the steps from the plane, it was about 70 degrees. I figured if I got the offer, I was taking the job. Screw those 18-inch snowfalls. Plus, I didn’t like the ghoulish idea of watching the man I was supposed to replace waste away and die.

I started at the Daily Star in February 1979. It was quite the transition – Midwest to the desert, a two-hour time change, working for a morning paper (a typical desk shift was 4 p.m. to midnight) and … working on a computer system. It was my first experience with modern newspapering.

Page layouts were still done with pencils and pica poles (newspaper rulers) on paper “dummies” (scaled down 8×11-inch sheets that displayed ad placements for inside pages). Everything else flowed through a computer system and our desktop terminals. It was intimidating at first but once I got the hang of it and overcame the fear of somehow crashing the entire newsroom system, I grew comfortable working in the new “digital age.” I edited stories, wrote headlines, and eventually took over laying out the sports section on a regular basis.

My in-person interview was with Richard Gilman, the managing editor who was in his late 20s, not much older than me. Out of curiosity, I did a Google search to learn whatever happened to Richard Gilman. I was gobsmacked to learn that he had gone on to Harvard business school, the worked at the New York Times and in 1999 was named publisher of the Boston Globe. He was in that position when the paper earned a Pulitzer for its investigation into the widespread sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Boston Archdiocese. That was the basis for the movie “Spotlight.”

The fact that didn’t interview the sports editor should have clued me in regarding the sports department’s dysfunction.

Bob Sherwin, a nice guy, was the lead sports columnist and was a “writing” sports editor. That means he had the title but wasn’t involved that much in the day-to-day details of producing the sports section or managing the department.

Richard Kramer, a desk guy who had been around for a while, was angling behind the scenes to take over more of the inside operation. It wasn’t a nasty dispute, but it was a tug of war that created disorganization. It was a sports department without a leader.

It was the biggest staff I had been a part of. There were two other main desk guys. One, John Henry, was a track and field fanatic with a long beard and unkempt hair. He was a tad husky and occasionally would were mesh t-shirts; the mesh was more like fish net – let your imagination run wild (if you dare).

One of the writers wrote as if English was his second language. He covered the local minor-league baseball team and once filed a game story without the final score. Another time, he remembered to include the final score. We caught the fact that it was the wrong final score.

My adjustment to working nights meant that I stayed up late – usually drinking a couple of beers in my apartment and watching television – and sleeping late. That meant the five days I worked were basically days where the highlight was going to the office. On my days off, there wasn’t much to do. There were a couple of women in the newsroom who caught my eye but I only asked one out for a date. My days off I didn’t have much to do. Other than the summer heat, the memories from Tucson involved working.

Dancing on the tight rope between Sherwin and Kramer, I managed to wrangle the job of laying out the sports section every night. The two desk guys didn’t mind; they were content to do the minimum and the young punk work his ass off.

The writers were receiving no guidance and tended to write whatever length story they wanted. If it was filed on deadline, it was my responsibility to adjust the space I had allowed for their stories. It was frustrating but adjusting on the fly was great experience.

Frustration and impatience were a bad combination for me. It was obvious with the workload that the section needed another desk editor, but management wasn’t interested in adding a position. Writers rotated during the week to work a 3-to-12 shift to help answer phones, but they rarely pitched in to help and spent their office shift watching the clock.

After my three months of “probation” I received the first written job evaluation of my career. The “points to improve” category included “Your aggressiveness should be tempered with a degree of patience… getting along with and adjusting to fellow employees’ idiosyncrasies.” In a memo from Sherwin, the managing editor, recommended I receive a $20 raise instead of the standard $10 bump. “He is becoming the most important desk man in sports.”

I still have a 4-page, single-spaced memo I wrote for Sherwin recommending how the department could be improved in terms of story assignments, planning, etc. Nothing ever came of it. I wrote several letters to Findlay bitching about the situation. He usually offered good advice about different methods of working with the writers, but I didn’t have the negotiation or communication skills to follow through.

One of the journalists whose career Findlay had boosted before arriving in Quincy was John Smith. I sent Smith sections I had designed for him to critique. He “bled out” with his comments but was still supportive. Smith was highly critical of a couple of the writers and suggested I needed to work with them and “coach ’em up.” That was not, as yet, part of my skill set.

The best professional relationship I forged was with Bob Moran, who covered the University of Arizona football team. We collaborated to dress up his pre-season top 25 college football preview and we also worked together on the football section previewing the season. (When I started covering college football in the mid-1990s, I had the great pleasure of seeing Bob at several national championship games. He died too young of cancer in 2008).

My impatience with the progress of “fixing” the sports department evolved into a grass-is-always-greener wanderlust. Moving to Tucson had opened my eyes to the fact there were opportunities in the world of sports journalism. My correspondence with Findlay and Smith (who was working at the Chicago Tribune) only increased my desire to move on and move up. Paul Bodi, who had worked with Findlay and Smith, was at The Atlanta Constitution. The “Findlay Network” informed me there was a desk opening and in March 1980 I moved from Tucson to Atlanta.

I started out working the “rim” which meant I edited stories and wire roundups as assigned. The best copy editor we had was Art Brooks and he’s the best I’ve ever worked with. Art’s biggest lesson was that wire copy was not sacrosanct. The Art Brooks Method involved killing all sports clichés.

Our main layout guy was Eric “Flea” Girard. He was a Florida guy who often walked in like he’d spent the morning at the beach – a neat vibe to acquire in land-locked Atlanta. Girard’s flair was designing a front page with an eye-catching main design. His layouts started with him sketching an idea and then making it reality.

I learned from him, but it was challenging to capture his artistic flair for designing a front page. Still, I learned to think outside the box (sorry about the cliche, Art), take chances and push the envelope. Fortunately, nothing I tried crashed and burned. We never busted a deadline because my front-page design was a disaster.

I became good friends with a great writer about my age, Dan Barreiro (who would become the best man at our wedding). In the summer of 1981, he left for a job at the Dallas Morning News. I had worked my way up to assistant sports editor at The Constitution, but Dan called to recommend that I try to get hired in Dallas. The Morning News had hired Dave Smith, a legend in the business, to remake the sports section. The Morning News was in a high noon showdown newspaper war with the Dallas Times Herald.

Would you buy a used car or life insurance from this man?

I liked living in Atlanta and I was happy with my job. It was a difficult decision, but I decided to make yet another move. In late August 1981 I started work at the Morning News. (The photo is from my updated resume I was using at the time; not much had changed. However, it’s one of the last pictures snapped while I was wearing glasses; I started wearing contact lenses not long after moving to Dallas.)

In less than three years I had gone from Quincy to Tucson to Atlanta and then to Dallas. Findlay had been right about desk work. I was also fortunate to be in newspapers when it was possible to move around. Writers typically moved up for better beats. Good desk people were valuable. They were like left-handed relievers in baseball – if you were a competent, hard-working desk guy, there were always a spot on some paper’s roster.

CHAPTER SIX: Transplanted in Texas

Born in Iowa, raised in Missouri, little did I know in September of 1981 that I was starting the process of putting down roots in Texas. I’ve lived nearly four decades in the state, two-thirds of my life. Paula and I have lived in our house for 32 years; that’s by far the longest I’ve called one structure home.

My friend Dan Barreiro had been hired to cover the NFL. He was one of the first “Yankees” that Dave Smith hired. Smith also brought in Bruce Raben and Jim Colonna as assistant sports editors. Many of the holdover writers and desk editors resented Smith’s aggressive and abrasive style. The newcomers he hired were distrusted.

To win one of the last great newspaper wars waged in this country, the Morning News had hired Napoleon-sized Burl Osborne, who had been executive editor at The Associated Press. He started hiring the best section editors money could buy. Osborne’s battle plan to win the war was to improve the entire paper, but to focus on sports and business coverage. The Times Herald was owned by the Times Mirror Corp., which had bought it about a decade earlier. In the late 1970s, the DTH and the DMN were equals. The DTH was geared at blue-collar, middle-class folks while the DMN was considered more high-toned and in lock step with big business.

Dave Smith was considered one of the most innovative sports editors in the business. He had first made a name for himself at the Boston Globe in the late 1970s, transforming sports coverage and section design. He came to Dallas from the Washington Star, which was far behind the august Washington Post.

Smith was a former Marine and he drove his troops like every day was storming the beach at Okinawa. He was particularly hard on desk editors. Every morning, he would mark up the section with a red grease pencil, pointing out any typos, questioning writers’ phrases, failures to adhere to his style guide, critiquing how the front page looked. If you were in charge of putting out the sports section and got 99 of 100 things right, Smith would want to know about the one thing that was wrong. The 99 things that were right? That merely met his expectations.

Smith liked to say that we were the paper of record; if it happened in sports, it should be reported in his sports section the next day. Most papers had an “agate” page – agate is small type used for box scores, statistics, etc. Smith was obsessed with agate. The Associated Press, at Smith’s urging, started offering an expanded agate package to newspapers that wished to subscribe. Given every resource he asked for, Smith hired dozens of new writers and our daily sports section was as large or larger than many papers’ Sunday sports sections.

I started by splitting my time between working on the rim and laying out the section. After about six months, Smith put me in charge of the Friday section, which was a big weekend preview with a variety of elements and information. The Friday sports section was often at least 18 pages, several of them without ads. The page dummies weren’t available until Thursday afternoon around 2 p.m.

(A “dummie” is an 8×11 page that is specially designed to be a small-scale size of a newspaper page. A dummie with ads show the space available for stories and pictures. An “open” page was a dummie with no ads. A layout editor designs his pages on the dummies, designating headlines, stories, pictures and any other elements. The dummies are used by the workers in the back shop as a guide for where to place everything on the full-size pages before they go to press.)

As soon as the dummies were available each Thursday, I’d meet in Smith’s office with Colonna and Raben. We worked off the “budget” – a list that showed all stories/columns written by staffers along with schedules of all games and whatever else was scheduled to go in the paper. We “packaged” content, keeping stories for various sports together on one or two pages. Page by page, we would break down what would go on which page. The budget was my guide for what was supposed to be in the section. If it was on the budget, Smith wanted it in print.

About half the time, the section came together as planned. The other half of the time, breaking news would require changes. There were several afternoons when I walked out of Smith’s office knowing we had a “full boat” – a section where all the space had been allocated. And with our reporters competing with two other papers, inevitably there would be a breaking story or stories that were unexpected. That would mean scrambling to re-draw pages.

The first edition was due off the floor by 8 p.m. That meant each Thursday I had about five hours to layout the pages, select photos, assign stories to the desk editors for headlines, make sure the special elements were completed and assigned to the proper pages. For game stories that wouldn’t come in until the later editions, we would use “plugger” stories to take the place of what was to come.

Wrapping that first edition was a weekly game of beat the clock. After designing the pages, I spent the last hour or so in the back shop (also known as the “pit”) overseeing the guys who pasted up the stories and placed the photos. The stories were printed on a film, as were the pictures. They were waxed on the back and placed on the page before it went through the printing process. A finished page looked exactly like what it would look like in printed form. I oversaw the back shop workers and made adjustments/edits – trimming a picture to help a longer story fit or cutting the final sentence or two so the story fit in the planned space. I moved from page to page to make sure it was being pasted up correctly.

After the first edition, there were two more editions; because most of the early edition pages were finished, I only needed to worry about the “live” pages that had deadline staff stories/columns or game roundups. However, sometimes the early edition pages needed adjustments that would require some minor tweaking or a total reworking. On the nights when there was a load of late stories, clearing the decks of pages with non-live content was imperative.

We finished the final edition around midnight, but there were always some “chaser” pages that we had to update to get West Coast results in the section. After that, I had to compose a report to leave for Smith that detailed any problems we had encountered. I usually left the office around 1 a.m.

The best part of being the Friday editor was that I worked Tuesday through Friday, four 10-hour days. Typically, on Tuesday I would lay out Wednesday’s paper, then spend Wednesday working on elements for Friday’s paper while helping on the desk. After surviving Thursday night, I would again help on the desk Friday night or help the Sunday editor as he prepared his section – which often was between 24 and 30 pages.

My Friday sections always got the red grease pencil treatment from Smith. The folks I worked with on the desk, the ones working the rim, weren’t always the sharpest knives in my drawer. Quite a few were holdovers who knew how to do their jobs but were content to put forth the minimum effort. I often felt like I was busting my ass by myself, the little Dutch boy trying to plug holes that kept appearing. Of course, I could have communicated better and tried to work with the uninspired desk folks (that still might not have made a difference) instead of playing “hero ball.” The goal each night was to finish the section and that drove (and often, frustrated) me. In that respect, it was similar to my time in Arizona.

Everyone who worked on the desk dreaded checking our mailboxes each time we came to the office. Invariably there would be either a red grease pencil note on a story with the words “see me” or a staff memo. That memo would be about a new style directive or an additional item to be included in our agate package (horse racing results from tracks in neighboring states, ski conditions in Colorado and Utah, English soccer results). The style directives were granular in detail. An example of spacing and rules for a front page included over three dozen directions; think Ikea assembly instructions.

Smith put me in charge of the 1982 football section. It was a 72-page monster with sections on the Cowboys, the NFL, the Southwest Conference, college football and high schools. The Smith regime had barely started for the 1981 football section, so this endeavor was its first showpiece section. The fact that I was selected to produce it was a major compliment. But make no mistake – my job was basically putting the section together and making sure it came together. The assistants oversaw story assignments.

Even though I had been at the Morning News for less than a year, Smith granted my request for two weeks of vacation. I had my 10-year high school reunion in Columbia and Jim Kubat, one of my best friends, was getting married in Tulsa and I was one of his groomsmen. Smith wasn’t pleased that my absence came when I should have been working on the football section, but it shows he wasn’t a complete S.O.B.

I got back to work with about two weeks before the football section was published on Sept. 2. That sounds like a lot of time, but there were many loose ends to tie off. Some of the photography assignments wound up being rush jobs.

A special section has a high percentage of advertising. That means figuring out where to plug in stories, graphics and photos is time consuming. Once we received the page dummies Colonna and Raben, the assistant editors, helped map out where the content would go. From there, it was my job to finish designing the pages, assign headlines specs to desk editors, give each story a final look and then send each story to the back shop. The final page wasn’t finished until around 4 a.m. and the section started rolling off the presses as a “pre-print.” About 10 a.m., I was woken by a phone call from Smith congratulating me on “delivering a beautiful baby.”

(Two years later, the 1984 Republican National Convention was held in Dallas. It was also the 25th anniversary of the Dallas Cowboys. The Morning News football section checked in at 104 pages and was published the Friday of the convention. It was the height of the Dallas newspaper war. The DMN’s football section came out a week earlier than normal, to coincide with convention and to impress all the “bold face” names. NBC news anchor David Brinkley mentioned page count of the Morning News football section in the context of “everything’s bigger in Texas.”)

Through much of Smith’s time as the executive sports editor, writers and editors called the sports department the “meat grinder.” Personnel came and went, some lasting a year, others just six months. Smith was hardest on his assistants. One said being an assistant sports editor for Smith was like working in a coal mine.

In the spring of 1983, the guy who had been running the Sunday section took another job. The Sunday section was the section’s weekly showcase. In season, the writers who covered baseball, the NFL and the NBA got a full page for their notebooks. There were full-page feature stories, a page of game previews during NFL season, a Cowboys preview page, pages of college football coverage. Every Saturday, it was a monster to master.

Smith wanted me to become the Sunday editor. I had occasionally had my schedule adjusted so that I worked Saturdays in the “pit” overseeing the guys pasting up the pages. The layout guy had no time to get to the back shop to supervise. Working the pit was a low-pressure job, but I witnessed how challenging it was to put out the Sunday paper.

Becoming Dave Smith’s Sunday editor was a plum assignment that could lead to becoming an assistant sports editor at the DMN or snagging a sports editor gig somewhere else.

I told Smith I didn’t want it. I was enjoying my schedule that gave me Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. I also wasn’t interested in the extra workload and the extra pressure. I preferred to remain on the Friday section. To some extent, the frustration and pressure of producing that Friday section had worn me down.

Reflecting on that now, I was still lacking confidence. My self-doubt kept me from seeing the reality that I was being offered a coveted spot in the starting lineup of what was to become the New York Yankees of sports sections. Smith thought I was capable and ready to run the Sunday sports section. Hindsight being so clear, it would have been worth the heat and hard work.

Smith was dumbfounded. I had been in his farm system being groomed for the big time and I was balking at his call up. He didn’t exactly give me an ultimatum, but he told me to think about my future. The next day I talked with him again and told him I might start looking for a change in careers. I had no plan, no clue how to go about that. Smith was fine with letting me go back to working on the desk during the summer of 1983. My newspaper career was in neutral and its future uncertain.

CHAPTER SEVEN: Another Move, A Major Change

Bud Kennedy, who had been working at the Morning News when Smith took over, had left to work for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Dallas and Fort Worth (aka “Cowtown” and “Where The West Begins”) are separated by about 40 miles. Dallas is considered “big league” and Fort Worth “minor league.” That difference in terms of the newspaper landscape was being emphasized thanks to the DMN expansion in battling the Times Herald.

The Star-Telegram had a desk opening and Bud called to ask if I was interested. At the time, it was the best of no alternatives. I had done little in terms of looking for opportunities outside of newspapers. In August of 1983, I started at the S-T and moved to an apartment in Arlington, a huge suburb between Big D and Little FW.

In many ways, the sports department resembled what I had experienced at the Arizona Daily Star. Sports editor James Walker had a casual attitude about managing the department. Kennedy was his assistant and focused mostly on high school coverage. I was put in charge of producing a weekly NFL section and was often scrambling to find content and make last-minute adjustments. The writers tended to do what they wanted. We had one college writer who would routinely file game stories that were, as the old, politically incorrect desk editors liked to say, “Longer than a whore’s dream.”

The paper’s overall attitude was parochial. The Texas Rangers were in Arlington, so they were considered the Star-Telegram‘s “team.” The Cowboys, of course, were a big deal even though they had “Dallas” in their name. If it happened outside of Tarrant County or didn’t have a “local” connection, it didn’t matter.

My first performance reviews praised my initiative and productivity. Under “Job Attitude” one review stated: “Sometimes sullen and non-communicative. Easily frustrated. Frequent thunderstorms.” Another review’s suggestion for improvement: “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You have talent and ambition. You will be a success if you just let it happen.”

In April of 1984, Kennedy moved to the news desk. Tom “Lefty” Leferink were named assistant sports editor. Leferink was in charge of the desk and I was put in charge of the writers. They were mostly veterans who had more writing experience than I did. They were all accustomed to having their way. Another shortcoming I had was diplomacy, plus I avoided confrontation. There are no memorable incidents regarding arguments with a writer but I’m sure there was cussing when I sent memos hammering on story lengths and deadlines.

While Lefty and I tried, there wasn’t much substantively we could change in the sports section. The Star-Telegram sports section was third in the “Metroplex” (the nickname of the developing and expanding North Texas sprawl) behind the Morning News and the Times Herald. The DMN was starting to pull away from the DTH in the newspaper war. And in that war, the “Startlegram” was Switzerland.

That started to change in 1985. Walker Lundy, an excellent newspaperman, was hired as managing editor with the intent of shaking the paper out of its doldrums. In August, he hired Bruce Raben from Smith’s DMN staff as our new sports editor. I had worked with Raben and he had similar qualities as Dave Smith, just not quite as demanding. Lundy wanted Raben to make the Star-Telegram competitive in sports coverage and was willing to give him the necessary resources.

One of Raben’s first “roster” moves came as a complete shock and total surprise. He wanted me to write about national college basketball. The Final Four was scheduled to be held in Dallas in March of 1986.

With ESPN’s debut in 1979 and with my schedule leaving me free on a lot of Saturdays, I had become hooked on college hoops. I visited a friend living in New Orleans and was able to attend the 1982 Final Four (thus witnessing the birth of The Michael Jordan Legend). Also, for grins, in 1981 I started mailing a newsletter to friends before each NCAA Tournament where I assigned numerical ratings in various categories to the top four seeds in each regional. While working at the Morning News, I had distributed copies to staffers, including Raben.

Raben’s decision changed the course of my career. For about six years, I had been chasing desk/editor jobs. I had never considered a return to writing. Without realizing it, my knowledge of writing had improved as I had edited writers’ stories. By osmosis, I had come to understand flow and phrasing – mostly by improving both in the stories I worked on.

I assumed Raben knew about my passion for the sport but one reason I thought he changed my assignment was because he didn’t want me as one of his assistant sports editors. As I was writing this book, I decided to email him for clarification. Here’s what he wrote:

I wanted someone who could cover a game with insight, develop a good trend story, hone a player feature and offer intriguing, thoughtful notes columns. It was important to have someone who could produce all of that.

Two factors were most important, and they are what I was most sure about with you. One, you had to be and were self-directed. Two, you had to want to be better than you were … you wore it on your sleeve for everyone to see.

It’s humbling when someone sees something in you that you don’t. Raben had observed my talents and abilities. I knew I was a hard worker but Raben saw other qualities that I didn’t think I possessed.

Raben’s strengths were planning, scheduling and organizing. I had Clue Zero about covering a national beat but Raben looked ahead with clear vision.

My first writing assignment for Raben was the first week of October; he sent me to St. Louis to cover a key three-game National League East series between the Mets and the Cardinals. That was a bit of a time-traveling experience. I returned to a stadium and a press box that a decade earlier I had visited dozens of times representing a small-town paper. I felt “all growed up.”

In addition to writing game stories on the series, Raben had instructed me to “pick up a feature on the Cardinals.” That became a familiar phrase that I sometimes mocked (privately). That instruction is akin to being told to run to the store and “pick up” some groceries. Nonetheless, during my time in St. Louis I did interviews and wrote a solid feature that ran before the National League East champions opened the playoffs.

The 1985-86 basketball season was mostly a blur. Blurs happen when you write 116 stories in just over five months. I kept a scrap book of the stories I wrote and I was one prolific S.O.B. In addition to game stories, I did a weekly notes column and wrote half a dozen features. Raben assigned me to cover some Southwest Conference games in addition to national games.

Here’s the travel schedule, which included a few assignments other than college basketball, for the first 10 weeks: Houston Nov. 21; Houston Nov. 25, Beaumont, Texas Nov. 26 (defending champion Villanova was playing Lamar on its way to the Great Alaska Shootout): New York City Nov. 29; Springfield, Mass. Nov. 30 (Hall of Fame Tipoff Game), New York City Dec. 1, Houston Dec. 5, Lexington, Ky. Dec. 7 (Indiana-Kentucky game with a 5:30 a.m. wake up call the day before); Cincinnati Dec. 8 (helped cover Dallas Cowboys-Bengals game); Lubbock Dec. 9 (Memphis at Texas Tech); Austin Dec. 10 (Texas women’s game); Houston Dec. 12; Dallas Dec. 13; (begged off covering Oklahoma-Texas on Dec. 14, Sooners won in OT); Austin Dec. 17; Lawrence, Kans. Dec. 21; El Paso Dec. 27 (Georgetown at UTEP); Oklahoma City Dec. 28 (All-College tournament; flew from El Paso to Dallas to OKC); Waco Dec. 30; Fayetteville, Ark. Jan. 2; Los Angeles, Jan. 5 (Patriots-Raiders AFC playoff game); Austin, Jan. 8; Lawrence, Kans. Jan. 11; Fayetteville, Ark. Jan. 15; Chapel Hill, N.C. Jan. 18; Atlanta Jan. 21; Chapel Hill Jan. 25; Lubbock Jan. 29; Waco Feb. 1. The travel was scaled back in February as I worked on features stories mixed in with a few games.

I covered the Pre-Season NIT in Madison Square Garden that featured, Duke, Kansas, Louisville and St. John’s (all but St.John’s would reach the Final Four). I was at the Indiana-Kentucky game in Lexington. Memphis, a ranked team, played at Texas Tech. I spent a week on Tobacco Road working on a feature story and covered Duke-North Carolina (the opening of the “Dean Dome”), Duke at Georgia Tech (also a top team at the time) and Maryland at Duke.

I interviewed Dean Smith in his office for my feature on Tobacco Road basketball. I was nervous as hell. Thankfully, Rick Bozich of the Louisville Courier-Journal was in town for a similar story and we interviewed Smith together. Bozich had gone to college with my friend Dan Barreiro; Rick and I would cross paths dozens of times on the hoops trails.

I learned how to spell K-r-z-y-z-e-w-s-k-i. By chance, I watched Duke play a dozen times (the Blue Devils opened the Pre-season NIT with two victories in Houston). Coach K had a dry sense of humor and his players, including a senior forward named Jay Bilas, were thoughtful and quotable.

When the NCAA Tournament rolled around, there were opening weekend games in Greensboro (Thursday-Saturday) and Charlotte, N.C. (Friday-Sunday). It’s about a 3-hour drive between those cities so Raben had me “shuttle cover” both. Duke was a No. 1 seed in the East Regional in Greensboro; Kentucky was the No. 1 seed in the South Regional in Charlotte.

The first NCAA game I covered was almost one of the biggest upsets in tourney history. Mississippi Valley State, from the Southwestern Athletic Conference, was the 16-seed and faced Duke in the first game in Greensboro. The Delta Devils, coached by the colorful Lafayette Stribling, kept the outcome in doubt until the final minutes before losing, 85-78. My game story was OK, but I didn’t capture the tension of the near upset; I also made a mistake in judgment. The story was not about the Blue Devils’ survival. It should have been about the Delta Devils and their gallant near-miss. I’ll never know how good that yarn could have been.

After covering 12 games during the first weekend, the Sweet 16 found me headed to back to Atlanta, my previous home. The Southeast Regional had a distinctive Southern accent, with three SEC teams. Kentucky, a No. 1 seed, and Georgia Tech, a No. 2 seed and playing in its home city, were the favorites to advance. The Yellow Jackets had been my preseason No. 1 team. The anticipation and expectation was that the Wildcats and the Yellow Jackets would meet in the regional final.

So, of course, No. 11 seed LSU upset Georgia Tech in the semifinals and then beat Kentucky (which advanced by defeating Alabama), 59-57 to advance to the Final Four. LSU became the first team seeded 11th to reach the national semifinals.

By the time the Final Four arrived in Dallas at Reunion Arena (a venue that no longer exists), I was running on fumes. I remember columnist Gil LeBreton slipping me a “hang in there” note after Friday’s news conferences when I was cranking out several stories.

Louisville beat Duke in Monday night’s championship game as 18-year-old freshman center Pervis “Never Nervous” Ellison scored 25 points with 11 rebounds. My lead was a wide-open layup: “And a child shall lead them.” I didn’t have the time or brain power to ponder and fortunately the Sports Writing Muse was on duty.

The next day, Raben  complimented my game story by noting that Dave Anderson, an award-winning columnist for the New York Times, had started his column about the championship game in the same manner. He also left me this note that certainly helped boost my spirits after the long haul.

Perhaps I had not thrived, but I had survived. My career was back on a writing path. I wasn’t as witty as Twain, as succinct as Hemingway or as verbose as Faulkner. My experience as an editor had provided me with a “tight and bright” style and my “writer’s voice” tended to cater to what I thought a reader would enjoy. I also understood the process of producing a section and how one writer’s selfishness and scorn of his deadline can put the entire operation on hold.

Football is king in Texas. The paper’s emphasis and expenditure on college basketball during the 1985-86 season had been influenced by the Final Four being played in Dallas. Raben assigned me to cover football games in the fall but we had beat writers covering TCU and the Southwest Conference so I was more of a pinch hitter. I was still going to be covering college hoops, but there needed to be other writing assignments to fill my time from April to November.

I volunteered to invent a beat and write twice a week about television and radio coverage of sports, nationally and local. Both the Morning News and Times Herald had regular sports TV columns. USA Today had a TV/radio columnist named Rudy Martzke who had become a force thanks to his news breaking, commentary and national profile. (Minor trivia: While working in Quincy, I covered an ABA playoff game featuring the Kentucky Colonels and St. Louis Spirits. I still have the pass from that game. It’s signed by Rudy Martzke, who was the Spirits’ public relations man.)

Additionally, I stayed on top of NCAA issues, attending the organization’s annual conventions in January and writing stories about Title IX, academic requirements and issues regarding the Southwest Conference, which was in its last decade of existence.

Raben was a great point guard in terms of “seeing the floor” and looking for opportunities to get the most out of a trip and producing timely stories. That vision and planning led me to an encounter with Michael Jordan (before six titles, before “Space Jam,” before Be Like Mike.)

In November of 1987, ESPN started its Sunday night NFL telecasts. The Cowboys were scheduled to play the Dolphins the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Raben sent me to Bristol, Conn., for a live feature for Monday’s paper on how the network puts together its preview shows. (Back in those days, ESPN was happy for coverage and open to “intruders.”)

The next day, the Bulls were playing Boston in Hartford, Conn. The Friday after Thanksgiving the Bulls were scheduled to play the Mavericks in Dallas. Raben had me attend the Bulls-Celtics game to gather info for a feature to run in Friday’s paper to preview Chicago’s visit. Jordan was in his fourth season and the previous year had led the NBA in scoring with a career-high 37.1 per game. Chicago had drafted Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant and those rookies were expected to help take the burden off Jordan; indeed, those two became key players in future championship seasons.

In those years, I followed the NBA closer than I do now. The Mavericks were usually in the playoffs and I often helped with coverage of home games. Heading into an NBA locker room wasn’t intimidating and at that point, Jordan wasn’t surrounded by 50 reporters.

The NBA allows pre-game access that is often more relaxed than post-game situations. There were probably about two dozen reporters covering this game, but several were in the Celtics locker room doing interviews because future Hall of Famer Larry Bird was injured and wasn’t scheduled to play. The Bulls’ locker room was manageable.

Eventually I found myself in front of Jordan. He was seated on a chair and talking with maybe five other reporters. I asked him about Pippen and Grant, his opinion on the team thus far (at that time, the Bulls had won eight of their first 10 under first-year coach Doug Collins).

I can’t remember if I identified myself as being from Fort Worth or if I mentioned about the upcoming game in Dallas, but I suddenly found myself being interviewed. Jordan’s North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins was also going into his fourth NBA season with the Mavericks and also playing for a new coach, John MacLeod.

Jordan asked me something like, “How’s Sam liking (either the new system, the new coach) it?”

I’ve often felt a sort of goose bumpy nerve pulse when I feel like I’m connecting with an interview subject. Typically, there’s just the feeling of being a pest, the person I’m interviewing knows I’m being a pest and we’re both willing to get on with the job at hand and be done with it before another pest shows up. But here I’ve got Michael Jordan asking me for info on a former teammate.

I followed the Mavericks and I knew a bit about how their season was going but all I could offer was the typical Captain Obvious surface knowledge that anyone who watched NBA games would know. I stumbled through an answer and then Jordan asked a follow up, “You think they’re gonna be good this year?”

WTF? Michael Freakin’ Jordan is asking me to assess an NBA team? Again, I managed to string some words, clichés and several ya knows together. Then another writer jumped in to ask a question and I went off to interview Jordan’s teammate John Paxson.

As it turned out, that Mavericks season was the best to date in franchise history. Dallas made the Western Conference finals and I helped with coverage for both home and road games. The top team in the NBA Western Conference was the Showtime Lakers and the Mavericks couldn’t overcome that fate as L.A. won Game Seven in The Forum (which to be honest, as a facility, wasn’t fabulous). That worked out well. Had the Mavericks reached the championship series, Game Seven (if needed) was scheduled for June 21 – four days before Paula and I were to be married in Dallas. My nervous fiance was relieved.

Paula is a Dallas native and we bought a house in a great Northwest Dallas neighborhood in the summer of 1989. As a writer for a paper whose office was a 45-minute drive from home, I was able to work remotely and file my stories electronically. We made of one our three bedrooms into my home office so my work commute was down the hallway.

The only thing constant is change and change soon came to the sports department. Lundy, who worked at over half a dozen papers, left Fort Worth and Raben was moved to another department before leaving the paper. Ellen Thornley (now Alfano), his assistant, took over as sports editor. Small World Department: When I was at the Columbia Daily Tribune, she had worked as a typist and often was inundated by us sports guys with sheets of bowling scores that had to be typed up.

Ellen, though, soon left to work at The National that debuted in 1990 For those unfamiliar with journalism history, The National was a great concept doomed by reality. It was a national sports section backed by a media millionaire from Mexico and helmed by Frank Deford, the brilliant writer for Sports Illustrated. The staff was an all-star lineup of writers and columnists who were paid six-figure salaries. It faced distribution and printing issues and lasted just 18 months. Had it made its debut a decade later as the Internet started to boom, it could have been a digital success.

In December 1991, the Dallas Times Herald lost the newspaper war and folded. The Star-Telegram hired Scott Monserud from the DTH as an assistant sports editor and he oversaw college sports coverage for most of the next decade. The sports editors during that time were Mike Perry and Kevin Dale. My relationship with both were lukewarm at best.

In late February 1993, Monserud floated what I thought was a crazy idea. The Monday after the NCAA Tournament bracket was announced, he wanted a two-page spread that featured a capsule preview on each of the 64 teams. The Associated Press and a few other major papers would produce team-by-team capsules but typically those were printed in Tuesday editions. Scott wanted them produced on deadline and printed Monday.

It was a huge and hellacious project and one that became part of our NCAA Tournament coverage for the next 15 years. (I’ll elaborate on the annual capsules project in Chapter Eleven.)

Starting in the fall of 1994, I added national college football to my assignments and cut back to just one television-radio column a week. Monserud decided that since I was focusing on college basketball and NCAA issues that it made sense to have me cover the college football national scene. Our son Brooks had been born a less than a year earlier so becoming a father became Job One and added to the juggling act of a packed work schedule.

Being at every Final Four starting in 1986 enabled me to meet a number of national writers and important media folks. That led to becoming involved with the United States Basketball Writers Association. After serving as a district representative, I was appointed to the executive board, starting as second vice-president and then moving up to president for the 1994-95 season.

The work during that season involved several conference calls, speaking at the National Association of Basketball Coaches banquet during the Final Four in Seattle and presenting Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson with the USBWA coach of the year award on a taped segment that aired on CBS.

Knight-Ridder, the last great newspaper company, bought the Star-Telegram in 1997. Wes Turner, an excellent newspaper man, took over as publisher; the paper had a great run in his 11 years in charge. Ellen returned to become sports editor. The paper was about to embark on a rocket ride.

A year earlier, Belo Company, the owner of the Dallas Morning News, decided to start publishing a paper in Arlington, the huge suburb midway between Dallas and Fort Worth. The South started the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter. Arlington, which straddled Dallas and Tarrant counties, was considered Star-Telegram territory. Knight-Ridder regarded Belo’s incursion as firing on Fort Worth.

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Best Of Times

The best newspaper boss I worked for was the last newspaper boss I worked for. (The worst boss I worked for was the last boss I worked for; more on that in the following chapter.)

Ellen Alfano was promoted to assistant managing editor and was still overseeing sports. In May of 1999 she hired Celeste Williams to be Senior Editor for sports. For the next nine years under Celeste’s leadership, we kicked ass.

Knight-Ridder owned several outstanding newspapers around the country. When the Morning News opened its Arlington edition in 1996, it laid down a gauntlet. When K-R took ownership of the Star-Telegram, its main goal was to establish the paper’s superiority in Tarrant County and to beat back the challenger from the East. The Star-Telegram was given marching orders and the resources to be the best. We had the right leadership, particularly in sports, to make that happen.

Arlington and the areas northeast of Fort Worth were booming in terms of business and population. The Star-Telegram had for years produced zoned editions, with pages of the paper targeted for specific areas. To combat the DMN incursion in Arlington, that strategy was placed on steroids. The paper opened and staffed bureaus for Arlington and Northeast zoned editions. Those bureaus were staffed by about two dozen writers and editors who focused only on their editions.

The seriousness of our intentions was displayed in 1998 when the Star-Telegram hired Randy Galloway, the Morning News’ top columnist. Galloway had become a major player in the Metroplex sports scene since becoming a columnist at the DMN in 1982 and then adding a nightly sports talk radio show on WBAP, a 50,000-watt AM station. Galloway was having a dispute with DMN management when Jim Witt, the Star-Telegram’s executive editor, offered him a five-year, $1.5 million deal. Galloway’s drive-time by then had moved to the local ESPN affiliate, which enhanced our sports section’s clout.

Damn right we were serious.

I had known Randy during my time at the Morning News. He had been promoted to columnist from the Rangers beat when the Times Herald shocked the Dallas media world by hiring Skip Bayless, the DMN’s “star” columnist, at the height of the newspaper war. Despite his huge contract, he didn’t “big time” the Star-Telegram staff. He always treated me as an equal and tipped well when I delivered his dry cleaning. (Just kidding.)

Once Celeste came on board as editor we had the perfect person to guide and direct us. She had the experience and understanding of how a sports department needed to function. She loved great writing and she supported the folks who labored on the desk. Trust me, that’s a rare combo.

Here’s what Galloway said about Celeste: “The bottom line is she was not just a damn good newspaperwoman, but just a damn good person. There were many times in my column writing that I made some people mad, some people in high positions, ownership positions — I can think of Rangers owners in particular — and Celeste would have to meet with those angry Rangers people.

“I never asked what went on in the meeting, but Celeste would call, she would say they explained their side, we explained our side, and by the way, I loved the column. That was Celeste.”

Celeste also loved college sports. It soon became evident to me that starting with college football media days in July of 1999, I was going to be going pedal to the metal, full speed covering my football and basketball beats. Once the season started, we would meet in her office each Monday to talk about upcoming coverage. Celeste was great with ideas, but she also listened and collaborated. I had learned how to look ahead and so that my road trips produced the most bang for the buck. (Recall Bruce Raben’s “pick up a feature” directives.)

Ellen and Celeste had worked together before and they made a good team. We were probably the only newspaper in the country with two females overseeing a sports department. While there might have been some resentment from a few males on the staff, Ellen and Celeste knew what they were doing, and they were empowered by management to “go for the gold.” They were respected and they earned that respect.

From 1999 to 2008, we did something I never thought would be possible. We were the equal if not superior to the Dallas Morning News. The work produced by our sports staff – writers, page designers, editors – was prolific and stunning.

Ellen and Celeste decided that in the annual Associated Press Sports Editors contests for best writing and best sections, we would “play up” and compete in the largest circulation category even though our circulation qualified us the category that was a step lower. From 2001 through 2007, the Star-Telegram earned Top 10 status six times for its daily sports section, five times for special section and twice, in 2002 and 2005, it won Triple Crown recognition for daily, Sunday section and special section.

Celeste was supportive of my ideas no matter how crazy – like attending and covering two football games featuring four top 10 teams in cities 475 miles apart.

On the first Saturday in November in 2000, No. 2 Virginia Tech was playing at No. 3 Miami at noon EST. That night, No. 10 Clemson was playing at No. 3 Florida State in Tallahassee at 7:30 p.m. EST. The Hokies were led by sophomore quarterback Michael Vick, a Heisman Trophy candidate who the previous season had led Virginia Tech to the national championship game. The Tigers-Seminoles game was Bowden Bowl II – papa Bobby Bowden against his son Tommy for the second time in their careers at each school.

There was a Delta flight to Tallahassee that departed Miami at 5:30 with a flight time of just over an hour. I calculated that I should be able to get post-game quotes from the first game, make the flight and arrive at Doak Campbell Stadium for the kickoff of the second game. Three hours before game time in Miami, I timed my route (about a 15-minute drive) from the old Orange Bowl to the airport. I paid $40 to park in a yard near the stadium so that I wouldn’t have to worry about any delays exiting a stadium lot. (Miami’s sports information staff had been unable to provide me with a parking pass.)

The Hurricanes won by 20 as Vick was limited due to an ankle injury. Following quick post-game interviews, I made the flight and worked on my column during the flight; I also wrote a short game story. The Seminoles also won easily so I didn’t have to pay much attention as I finished up the column on the early game and started putting together the game story on the late game. I finished the story on the Florida State victory, made it back to my rental car and drove 90 minutes to my hotel.

For Monday’s paper, I wrote a “tick tock” story that recounted the events and observations of covering two games in one day. Those were the type of unique stories that Celeste craved and helped make us a great sports section.

Those concocted self-made challenges/assignments during my newspaper career were probably what it’s like for the adrenaline junkies who skydive, scuba, climb mountains or street race. I enjoyed the planning and the challenge of executing the plan. It was satisfying when it worked but there were dozens of times scrambling to make a flight, making long and/or late night drives or a hotel wakeup call after four hours of sleep that I thought, “What the hell were you thinking?”

During each football season, the quantity and quality of what the department produced was arguably the best in the country. Ellen and Celeste understood how important football was and our sections in September, October and November revolved around the sport. Looking back at what our staff produced, it’s quite remarkable.

In addition to producing a daily sports section that was often 12 to 16 pages, four days a week the Star-Telegram produced bonus sections.

  • Friday was an 8-page weekend kickoff section previewing high school, college and NFL games. Typically, that would include a feature story from me on that weekend’s big college game or a hot-topic trend piece.
  • Saturday was an 8-page section devoted to Friday night high school football coverage. And in Saturday’s main sports section, I had a full-page on college football – a column on the big game that day or a trending topic, a 400-word spotlight feature on a player, plus quotes and notes. My guesstimate is that I wrote between 3,000 to 3,500 words for that page each Saturday during the season.
  • Sunday was an 8-page section covering Saturday’s college football action. That typically featured game reports on TCU, top Big 12 games, SMU, North Texas and my story from the biggest national game.
  • Monday was an 8-page section with stories on the Cowboys game and wrapping up the NFL. (In Monday’s main sports section we had an open page on college football with follow up/look ahead columns on the national scene, the Big 12 and TCU.)

Considering the incredible shrinking newspapers that exist now, it’s hard to believe that just two decades ago the Star-Telegram sports department basically produced 11 sections a week in September, October and November. The combined page counts of those four days of bonus sections would equal or surpass the weekday total sports sections printed now.

I often wonder if subscribers who enjoyed reading about sports wonder what happened to all the sports coverage.

Knight-Ridder was a company and companies have stockholders. In the mid-2000s, the rise of digital publishing started to overtake print. While major newspapers around the country remained highly profitable, their profit margins started to shrink. That meant newspaper companies had to start cutting corners. Eventually, K-R couldn’t tighten its belt anymore.

In 2006, a small fish swallowed a whale. McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder, taking on debt and selling off several newspapers. The Star-Telegram was among the papers it kept. However, it soon became obvious that McClatchy not only cared more about the bottom line than about bylines and deadlines but it also had bit off more than it could chew.

The writing was on the wall. Wes Turner left as publisher. Ellen and Celeste continued trying to fight the good fight, but we had less space for stories and a tighter travel budget. The Bowl Championship Series title game for the 2007 season was in New Orleans, a cheap and easy trip. When I was told that only Gil LeBreton, one of our columnists, would be going to the game and that I would miss my first national championship game since the 1994 season, I started to strap on my parachute.

CHAPTER NINE: Farewell To Newspapers

With the Internet and web sites becoming distribution models for sports coverage, I had noticed several writers leaving newspaper jobs for websites. Most of them wound up at ESPN.com, which was one of the first outlets to embrace outstanding writing and talented writers.

I was still in my mid-50s and thought I had lots of gas left in the tank. I had always thought that newspapers would outlast me. Turns out I was wrong and, thankfully, way too healthy.

In December of 2007 when I was told that I wouldn’t be covering the BCS national championship game, I fired off a shot-in-the-dark email to Big 12 Conference commissioner Dan Beebe. I asked if the conference had any interest in hiring a writer to write about the league for its web site. The conference office was located in the Metroplex; I was interested in a possible exit from newspapers but had no interest in moving in pursuit of employment.

I was the beneficiary of good timing. The Big 12 was in the process of redesigning its web site. By the mid-2000s, most of the major conferences had web sites but the content was mostly static, with the same content remaining on the “front page” for weeks. Most of the content was news releases. The sites were basically a portal to post updated statistics and rosters. There was little to no original content.

The Big 12 planned to switch to Neulion, a company that wanted to help conferences and schools provide their websites with the resources and ability to create content and make their websites more dynamic. Kiron Andersen, a hard-working and talented guy, was hired to program and run the Big 12 web site while coordinating with Neulion.

“There were other leagues that had people in my position, but no league had taken the idea of bringing on a content creator of your caliber, or any caliber, for that matter,” Kiron told me. “Nothing like that had ever been done. It really laid the foundation for us doing some things that a lot of leagues asked us about and were honestly jealous that we had you.”

As part of the interview process, I met with Bob Burda, the Big 12’s assistant commissioner for communications. The conference’s vision was to have a web site that was, in his words, “half newspaper, half television station.” I have a face made for radio, but I was eager to learn the skills needed to be in front of the camera. Also, I understood that whatever content I produced would be more rah-rah and promotional than journalistic.

As the 2008 basketball season wound down with the Final Four in San Antonio, I was convinced that I was going to be offered the job with the Big 12. In early June, McClatchy was in a down-sizing phase and was offering buyouts. I met with Celeste and she told me that my national beats were going away. She offered me the “safe” beat covering Texas A&M. It was difficult to tell her I was leaving for the Big 12. (Celeste died of cancer in 2017. I miss her.)

Because this is a book in the “digital space,” I can include this link. SportsJournalists.com, a website I used to visit often (when there were, ya know, more sports journalists) had this thread about my career change, which for that website was gossipy and newsworthy.

I was 54 and should have been way past naïve, but my eyes were wide shut. I was convinced I was making the right decision to leave newspapers for a new opportunity.

My first hint of trouble was when Burda officially offered the job and a salary of $38,000 a year. That was about $25,000 less than what I was making at the paper. I realize how stupid this sounds now, but to that point we had not discussed salary. I told Burda I needed more, and he bumped it to $40,000. Fortunately, my buyout from the Star-Telegram made me “whole” for the rest of 2008. Also, the Big 12 asked Fox Sports Southwest to have me on “Big 12 Showcase” each week as a “Big 12 Insider.” Fox paid me $300 a week for that gig so that added about $13,000 a year.

I embarked on a new career earning a reduced salary, about $10,000 a year less than my final Star-Telegram salary. Another writer I knew had gone to work for a Power Five school and told me his salary was similar to mine. We commiserated on how “valuable” we were. It was my first lesson that the writing skills that had earned a good salary in the newspaper world were not valued in the “outside” world.

The Big 12 has spent a lot of money over the last decade on buzz-word branding. One slogan that hasn’t been used is “We Work Cheap.”

The Big 12 is the product of a shotgun wedding. The mid-1990s saw massive changes in conference alignments as television money grew and the networks wanted leagues with the most eyeballs. The Big Eight Conference and the Southwest Conference (by then an eight-team all-Texas league) each needed more TV sets.

The Big Eight (based in Kansas City) and the SWC (headquartered in Dallas) operated their offices on shoestring budgets. The schools in both conferences wanted to maximize their revenue shares. The less money spent running the conference offices, the more money for each school.

In 1994, the Big 12 was formed when the Big Eight schools joined with Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor to form the Big 12. The DNA from the Big Eight and the SWC lives on as the Big 12 office operates on the cheap. I was well aware of that fact before going to work there and I was reminded of that reality dozens of times as the web site tried to grow and improve. I’m not a business expert, but you gotta spend money to make money. Burda and his fellow executives in the office didn’t understand that producing content – especially video content – could be time consuming and expensive.

My start date was July 1, 2008. It became quickly evident that the folks in charge had no experience or idea how to create a dynamic and productive web site. As the site’s official launch neared, it was evident the “plan” was to build the plane as it was flying.

Kiron’s hiring process prevented him from getting on the scene until late August. The Big 12 planned to hire an intern to work with Kiron and I to handle video editing and production. Kiron would be in charge of that hiring but he came on too late to hire anyone for Year One. Deputy commissioner Tim Weiser’s daughter had completed her college career and was versed in video editing. By default, Melanie Weiser became our video intern.

Tim Allen, an associate commissioner who had previously worked for the Big Eight, wanted to resurrect a relic. In the 1970s, the Big Eight Skywriters Tour was a group of writers and radio reporters who traveled to the eight campuses in August to meet with football coaches to preview the season. It was legendary for stories of drunken debauchery. Allen didn’t want to recreate that, but he envisioned a Big 12 Skywriter (singular) Tour.

The plan was for Melanie and I to visit all 12 campuses for interviews to produce video previews for each team. It also had to be cost effective. That meant we hit Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa State and Missouri on one Midwest swing (starting with a flight to Kansas City), drove to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, drove to Baylor, Texas and Texas A&M while flying to Texas Tech and Colorado. Several schools had on-campus media days, but it was impossible to sync the travel to be in town on all of those days. So, at certain schools we had to beg the media relations guys and the coaches to make time for us.

In the ensuing years, putting together the preview tour was always a challenge of logistics, scheduling and budget. We needed the first two weeks of August to travel to each campus, then had the final two weeks to edit and produce each preview. Those previews were posted on a one-a-day schedule and we needed the last one to be posted before the season started.

To defray costs, I floated the idea of finding a corporate sponsor for the tour – (Fill In The Blank) Presents the Big 12 Skywriter Tour). According to Burda, the Big 12’s media contracts prevented that type of sponsorship. Also, the conference marketing department was run through ESPN. Unlike the other top conferences, the Big 12 didn’t have its own marketing person or department because that, you know, costs money. In my view, we were exerting a lot of time and energy to produce the Skywriter Tour, but the in-house support, promotion, and enthusiasm was tepid, at best.

During my first year at the Big 12, I wrote stories to preview the weekend’s football games, previewed the championships of the Olympic sports, and tried to cover as many games as possible. Kiron and I worked together to try and develop video content with Melanie editing packages.

Starting in Year Two we produced a weekly “Big 12 Report,” a magazine-type show that typically ran about 15 minutes. After a few years, we replaced that with the “Big 12 Minute,” a daily update that was recorded each morning and focused on conference news. Fox Southwest let us use a studio to tape the Big 12 Report. It took five years before the Big 12 accommodated the web site with a small studio located in the office.

Before Kiron and I were hired, the Big 12 had purchased two cameras worthy of a television station. It was a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. They were cumbersome, had to be packed in special crates for travel and had large tripods. For Internet video, all we needed were small digital cameras; after about four years, Kiron was allowed to purchase one. It was so simple to use, I could film videos myself.

A Big 12 player laughing at my football knowledge during a conference media day.

From the beginning, I made it a point to try and provide sunshine to the “minor” sports. When we made our trips for the skywriter tour, if possible I tried to set up interviews for the fall sports at each school. Any chance we had to get on a campus, we tried to snag some video content for the men’s and women’s sports that didn’t get a lot of attention.

It would have helped had we been able to convince each school to have their own video departments help out by providing video that we could edit and use for Big 12-produced packages. The schools’ reaction to any requests ranged from ambivalent to animosity. I also learned that not all video formats are compatible so sharing wasn’t simple.

Each year, we tried to produce more content and improve what we did. We started covering football media days, streaming the coaches’ news conferences. I anchored the coverage and did interviews with players between the coaches’ interviews.

Interviewing FOX college football analyst Joel Klatt at Big 12 media day.

The idea caught on and eventually Fox Sports Southwest took over and turned our amateur coverage into a professional production. During basketball, we covered media day and during the men’s tournament did a live segment between games. (My running joke was that the only people watching were shut-ins and/or inmates.)

Kiron, who was let go from his job a few months after my dismissal, heard from his counterparts who noticed and recognized the sort of ground-breaking coverage and content we were producing with limited budget and personnel. He made it clear that the praise didn’t come from anyone inside our office.

“That is what I am proud of,” he told me. “We did a lot of stuff that no one was doing.  No one was covering football media days like we did … and now that exact format has turned into a national television audience and done by every league.”

Discussing defending the pick and roll with ESPN’s Jay Bilas at Big 12 men’s basketball media day.

When I made the career change, I planned on it being my final job move. That turned out to be true, but it almost came sooner than expected.

Just over a decade after the last seismic shift in conference alignments and membership, it happened again. In June 2010, Nebraska left the Big 12 for the Big Ten, Colorado joined the Pac-12, and Texas A&M and Missouri bailed out for the Southeastern Conference. There were multiple reports that the Pacific-10 Conference was going to add six Big 12 schools to become a “super conference” with 16 members. I spent the second weekend of June wondering if I was working for a conference that would be dead in a year. I figured that my next job might be as a greeter at the nearest Wal-Mart.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. It did cost Dan Beebe his job. Bob Bowlsby was hired as the next commissioner and the Big 12 soldiered on with 10 schools, adding TCU and West Virginia after Colorado and Missouri joined the exodus.

Partially in reaction to the near-death experience and after Bowlsby’s hiring, the Big 12 decided its in-house staff wasn’t capable of the messaging and branding it needed/wanted. The conference hired LDWW, a Dallas firm run by Ken Luce. His group started improving the presentations at media days along with advertising, development of brand content, brand management and design, media relations, and creative brand strategies to “position the Big 12 as a leader in athletics.”

The other four Power Five conferences have in-house employees that handle those areas but that, ya know, costs money. (Not that LDWW worked for free, but keeping the number of full-time employees at a minimum level is the Big 12 way. There’s an unofficial roster-cap for Big 12 office employees. Talk of “conference expansion” always involves schools, not hiring more Big 12 staffers.)

I was a year-to-year contract employee with the Big 12 so each June/July required me to re-up. One year, Burda went on vacation before signing off on my new deal and I spent two weeks wondering if I was going to be employed the next year.

In 2014, Burda and Luce offered me more stability. Luce would hire me at LDWW, but I would be “embedded” (one of Buzz Word Bob’s favorite terms) with the Big 12. Burda said that I wouldn’t need to worry about the year-to-year contracts and Luce said there might be opportunity to work on other projects with his company. (LDWW, by the way, stands for Leo Durocher Was Wrong. Durocher famously said “nice guys finish last” – Luce considers himself a nice guy.)

I was hesitant; perhaps my instincts were whispering that the arrangement was fishy. But, I took the deal and signed up with Luce’s company. The biggest change was working more with Luce on special projects for a series of videos that the school presidents and chancellors wanted. Also, thanks to the conference acquiring new software for my laptop, I learned how to edit video so that I could help our intern produce video packages.

In late October 2015, I got a text from Luce asking me to see him the next morning in his office in downtown Dallas. I figuratively walked into a brick wall. I sat down and his first words were, “The Big 12 has decided to go in another direction with your position. This is your last day. You don’t need to go to the office. Your personal items will be boxed and delivered to your home.”

So much for more “stability.”

I had never been fired. I had never been out of work. I was too stunned to think or ask why the Big 12 had “decided to go in another direction.” To this day, I don’t know the reason why. I was out. I asked Luce about those “other potential opportunities” at LDWW but he said that there wasn’t anything available.

I mentioned in the previous chapter that my last boss was my worst boss. During my seven years at the Big 12, Bob Burda was my boss. I worked for maybe two dozen bosses/supervisors, all of whom had various flaws. Burda combined all their worst attributes. He was in charge of the conference’s “communications,” but he struggled to communicate. No doubt this will be perceived as the opinion of a disgruntled dismissed employee. But casual conversations with other conference media professionals and other writers who covered college sports revealed they all consider Burda as an empty suit.

A few paragraphs ago, I referenced “Buzz Word Bob.” Our weekly communications staff meetings provided Burda a chance to verbalize a hot-topic term.

Second screeners.

Digital space.

Fan interaction.

Fan engagement.

Monetize.

Engage.

Value-add.

Actionable.

Incentivize.

Deliverable(s).

Even our interns, fresh from college campuses, figuratively rolled their eyes hearing these hot air terms.

Burda is a world-class delegator who basks in the glow of success achieved by his staff. Over the last five years I worked there, I never recall him sending out a group email on the success of a media day or basketball tournament. He specialized in showing up at an event, being the commissioner’s majordomo, and watching us minions work our asses off.

At the time I was hired at Big 12, I had assembled a solid combination of experience and skills. I’m a self-starter and certainly didn’t want to sit on my ass in a new job. Burda occasionally tasked me with projects but he rarely provided direction or ideas for the web site.

We had a weekly communications staff meeting in the conference room. There were 10 to 11 of us attending those meetings, which is about the size of senior staff meetings. That quickly became a sore spot with other departments who thought communications was overstaffed.

Burda wasn’t one to stand up for “his” people. He was a member of the senior staff and – this is guesswork on my part – I’m pretty sure he never went out of his way to defend our group or push any of our agendas. His ideas went up the line, ours didn’t. He was risk averse and concerned about covering his ass.

The Big 12 office was full of petty jealousies, rivalries and virtual backstabbing. Particularly in the last year or so, it became evident that the senior staff – the commissioner, the deputy commissioner, the associate commissioners – were the royalty. The rest of us were the peasants.

During the Kansas State season opener in 2015, during its halftime performance the school band had an off-color formation that made fun of rival Kansas. It was Labor Day weekend. Bowlsby was in the office Monday making calls to adjudicate the punishment for the K-State band.

Soon after, there was a staff meeting in the lunchroom (I was not required to attend). Bowlsby was unhappy that the office had been empty while he had been working to solve the band dispute. He read the riot act about people not working their full 40 hours, coming in late and leaving early. Bowlsby was painting with the broadest of brushes, but it was apparent that there was a set of “expectations” for senior staff and “rules” for everyone else.

That Monday, the holiday in question, the assistant commissioner in charge of football media relations was working at home moderating the coaches’ teleconference and I was working from home listening to the teleconference. I also had worked Sunday (as I did throughout football season) compiling notes from Saturday’s games.

During football season, Kiron worked Saturday from home until the last game was finished to make sure the web site was updated. I know of others on the communication staff who worked from home in the evenings. We all put in more than 40 hours a week. We were dedicated and cared about our jobs and that meant we didn’t count the hours.

That staff meeting was soon followed by a senior staff meeting where the issue of Personal Time Off was discussed. It was decided that there were three work shifts allowed: 7:30-4:30, 8-5, 8:30-5:30. Soon after, Burda was monitoring how long communications staffers were taking for lunch and what times they arrived and departed.

The peasants knew that deputy commissioner Tim Weiser arrived as early as 6:30 and left when he wanted. Burda often left for a workout in the afternoon and worked until 6;30 or 7 to avoid rush-hour traffic.

Weiser, the deputy commissioner, stored his boat in the basement garage of the Big 12 office. He certainly could afford to rent a boat dock, but he used the garage as his personal storage space. Raise your hand if you think someone who wasn’t a senior staff member would be allowed to store their boat on property leased by the Big 12. Rank has its privileges.

During a spring meeting in Kansas City, Kiron’s hotel room was next to the Big 12 hospitality suite. At 3 a.m. he was awakened by yelling, screaming, and laughing. He recognized the voices: Ed Stewart, the associate commissioner for football, Burda, and the commissioner’s executive assistant. Kiron called the front desk to complain and a hotel clerk showed up to shut down the party.

Kiron and I had scheduled an on-camera interview with Stewart the following morning at 7:15 a.m. We both got up at 6 a.m. to get ready and to get the camera set up in the lobby outside the room where Stewart was scheduled for a meeting at 8 a.m. We had to do the interview before the meeting because Stewart was scheduled to fly back to Dallas right after the meeting was over.

Stewart never showed up for the interview. We saw him walking quickly with his head down and slipped into his “required” meeting at 9:45 a.m. We never got an apology. We taped the interview back in the office, but Stewart never mentioned standing us up.

Leaving the Big 12 left no permanent scars and exiting a work environment that was becoming increasingly toxic was probably best for my long-term mental health. My spite toward Burda is generated not from personal affronts but from how my colleagues were treated.

  • On the final Saturday of the 2011 baseball season, the tournament seeds were being set after the final games. An intern had been promoted to fill in for the full-time assistant who had left for another job. Burda oversaw the baseball tournament and the intern needed his approval before announcing the pairings. She called his cell phone numerous times Saturday afternoon and got his voice mail. The baseball media relations folks at the eight schools that had qualified were calling her so they could announce their school’s opening game match ups and start making plans. In desperation, she called Weiser, the deputy commissioner. They finally located Burda. He was enjoying the third round of the PGA Byron Nelson golf tournament. His cell phone was dead, and he left a young intern to twist in the wind.
  • At communications staff meetings, the interns were always encouraged to come forward with their thoughts and opinions. That practice ended a few years after I had been there. At a staff meeting one spring, an intern offered an opinion that Burda disliked. After the meeting, he called the intern into his office and told him that if he didn’t like his job, “there’s the door.” The intern only had a month or two remaining and had done outstanding work.
  • The next year, an intern was traveling with Burda to the Big 12 wrestling championship at Oklahoma State. They were flying to Tulsa. Burda arrived at DFW Airport and realized he had forgotten his wallet. He told the intern to stay on the flight and that he would catch the next flight. The intern had to sit and wait in the Tulsa airport for two hours for Burda to arrive. Burda didn’t apologize about the inconvenience he caused.
  • At a staff meeting in the spring of 2015, the topic of social media and other coverage at the baseball championship was being discussed. Burda was sitting next to Kiron, the web site coordinator; the staffer in charge of baseball was not in the room. When Burda asked Kiron about the coverage plans, he didn’t want to speak for the baseball person. Kiron gave a vague answer but assured everything was under control. Burda proceeded to dress him down in front of the staff. “I’ve said over and over that we need to communicate. This is unacceptable.” Burda’s voice was quivering with anger. It was reported to the deputy commissioner as a bullying incident, but nothing was done.

Burda complaining about communicating was ironic considering his failure to communicate effectively with his staff. Sending an email to Burda was like sending it to a spam folder.

My seven years at the Big 12 provided many different wonderful experiences and exciting opportunities. Had I remained at the Star-Telegram, there’s a good chance by 2015 I would have been offered a buyout or been involuntarily “down sized.”

The time I spent at the Big 12 was eye-opening. Working with newspaper staffs always included frustration from others not meeting my expectations. When my fellow staffers bitched about the boss, mostly it was because we felt equal in how we were treated.

The bottom line in my disgust with the Big 12 is the class-system hypocrisy and that Bob Burda treated my colleagues and friends like they were peons.

CHAPTER TEN: What Now?

Throughout my professional career, I had been fortunate in terms of job searches. When I had wanted to make a move during the 1970s and early 1980s, there were jobs available. Never had I been in a situation where I needed to find a job because I didn’t have one. After being fired for the first time, I found the employment prospects limited.

Brooks was in his final year at the University of Texas. Paula still had a good job that paid well. Losing my $50,000 a year salary was a setback, but it wasn’t going to send us into bankruptcy. Still, I needed income.

Starting in the fall of 2015, for the next four years, I tried a few gigs that had nothing to do with writing or sports. I drove for Lyft for about three weeks. I answered a want ad for a job delivering medical samples between labs and hospitals. That was a night job that paid a salary not worth the time or the gasoline; I quit after less than a month. I worked for a company that security screens teams that fly on private jets. I took a job with Panera Bread when it started delivering orders which helped me learn about the corporate greed structure. The idea that I might earn a $5 tip per delivery dissolved with the reality that Panera charged a $5 delivery fee. If I got a $3 tip, I was lucky.

Working in communications, public relations or teaching journalism courses at a local college would have been a good fit based on my experience and skills, but my age and the lack of a college degree were immovable impediments.

I chased a lot of opportunities where I could put my writing skills to use. My theory was that I could write about anything. What I found was that writing is not considered a valuable skill.

Through a mutual friend I connected with a guy whose company provides content for various web sites. Perfect, I thought.

The payment was $25 for 500 words. I wrote maybe five stories about sleep apnea for a company that deals with that medical problem. Researching to write 500 intelligent and meaningful words took more time than it did to write the 500 words. The company didn’t need/want more than one story a week so it was not a windfall.

I found a company that produces community newspapers that serve some of the large suburbs north of Dallas. I wrote some stories about local businesses for $100 a story. The papers published monthly so that wasn’t a huge influx of cash.

For a few months I wrote some stories for Avgeekery.com. It’s a site that specializes in aviation stories; aviation has always been an interest. I’ve also had a life-long interest in World War II and I wrote a few stories for the Commemorative Air Force’s web site. CAF is an organization that preserves and restores WWII-era aircraft. I hoped that might become a full-time gig but they hired someone else.

I subscribed to several job newsletters. I attended local workshops to “network.” I checked Craigslist and other websites for writing jobs. With all the websites in all the world that need content, what I found was that words are cheap. A few descriptions of “jobs” that were available:

  • 2,000-word articles pay $40 and take 2-3 hours to write, depending on speed and skill. We have “steady content” for you 7 days a week, 365 days a year!
  • Writers for Coalition Technologies have the chance to earn between $8 and $150 on a single assignment. Average pay rates for 500-word pages range between $20 and $30 for writers who consistently earn high ratings according to our KPIs (key performance indicators).
  • Pay starts at $10 per 100 words for writers and $3 per 100 words for editors.
  • I am seeking a writer interested in pursuing a long-term biographical writing project. I have a unique story to tell and need help telling it. Please send me an email if you are curious about this project and would like to learn more. I look forward to hearing from you. No pay.
  • We are in need of readers for our service. We provide authors with reviews for their books, posted by regular readers such as yourself. We pay $8 plus the cost of the book plus tax.

I joined LinkedIn to look for jobs and to “connect” with possible employers. That produced one job that was my best non-sports freelance gig. A quarterly magazine called “Who’s Who in Building & Construction” needed writers for feature stories. They paid about $1,000 a story and I wrote about 10 stories during 2017.

When I left the Big 12, there were limited opportunities to write about sports. The Dallas Morning News did have an opening for a writer to cover SMU but at 61 I wasn’t in the demographic they were seeking.

In late January 2016 I came across a posting about a freelance gig. A website called FanRagSports.com was looking for someone to write about the Big 12. Yowza, yowza, yowza.

The website had a terrible name but a noble cause. While many websites were cluttered with videos and pop-up ads, Fan Rag’s site was all about written content. At a time when several sites – FoxSports.com in particular – was “pivoting to video” and dumping its writers, Fan Rag was going in the opposite direction.

I started out earning $25 per story and eventually got boosted to $50. However, writing about something I knew was simpler than researching sleep apnea. Also, they wanted/needed stories and I could provide them. That gig lasted for 18 months before financial realities caught up with the owners and they had to close the site. In my time as a freelance free agent, I’ve contributed to about half a dozen different sites. Coincidentally or not, those sites have all closed.

One of the last sites I was involved with was Fansided.com, which is affiliated with Maven, which owns and has gutted Sports Illustrated. Fansided paid their contributors based on the page views (hits) a story generated. I wrote about a dozen Big 12 basketball stories for the site in 2019; the paycheck was just over $7 – seven dollars.

The digital game is based on hits/clicks/eyeballs. While those stories I wrote for Fansided were solid efforts, none of them were viral-worthy. I told the editor that I didn’t need the work and put Fansided in my review mirror.

While newspapers are dying and sports writing is undervalued, one site has been succeeding. In 2016, The Athletic launched a website based on subscriptions. It has attracted some of the best writers and editors in the business. For a yearly subscription of $59.99, there’s access to every story posted and those stories are high quality. Plus, the site itself is clean – just the stories, no pop-up videos or advertising. If sports journalism has a future, it’s The Athletic.

After starting with college football coverage, it launched college basketball coverage in the fall of 2017. I contacted Seth Davis, who was running the basketball coverage, and he brought me on as a freelancer, writing feature stories and doing a weekly Big 12 notebook. I was sent to Kansas City to help CJ Moore cover the Big 12 tournament. Dallas was one of the opening weekend sites for the NCAA Tournament, so I was assigned to cover that and wound up with two great games to write about, the start of Loyola-Chicago’s Cinderella march to the Final Four.

I had been contributing to TheOpenMan.com, a web site run by Kyle Kensing and I was a bit surprised when the NCAA approved me for a credential for the Final Four in San Antonio. I found out from David Worlock, the NCAA’s media relations czar for college hoops, that because I had covered over two dozen Final Fours, I could get a credential any time I wanted. So many papers have cut back on coverage, the demand for Final Four credentials isn’t what it used to be. For instance, the Dallas Morning News didn’t staff the Final Four in San Antonio. That would have been unheard of a decade ago.

A decade earlier, I had covered my last Final Four (also in San Antonio) as a full-time newspaper sportswriter and the 2018 Final Four provided a perfect end game. I filed one story for The Athletic and several for TheOpenMan.com. I found myself courtside, in interview and media work rooms, hanging out with writers I had known for decades.

As The Athletic headed into its second season of basketball coverage, it added writers and no longer needed me as a freelancer. In 2019, I filed about two dozen stories for a local website but it shut down in the fall of 2019. That convinced me it was time to stop chasing work.

By this time, Brooks was firmly established (and off our payroll) working for Turner Construction and living in Chicago. We had made our last mortgage payment on our house. I started drawing my newspaper pension and a year later began receiving my Social Security. Paula retired in 2016 and thanks to Texas’ Teacher Retirement System, she is well-compensated for her four decades. We are indeed fortunate that money is not a concern.

By the start of 2020, with no opportunities to write and no need to seek work, I considered myself retired.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: March Madness Memories

Even if you’re not a die-hard, dedicated fan of college basketball, each March you likely catch a slight case of madness. The NCAA Tournament started to become more of a national sporting event thanks to several factors that occurred during my newspaper career.

The 1979 national championship game matching Magic Johnson and Larry Bird was a Monday night, prime-time, must-see event.

On the Saturday of the opening weekend in 1981, three buzzer-beating baskets knocked out the nation’s top two teams (Oregon State, DePaul) plus the defending national champion (Louisville). NBC, in its last year of covering the tournament, was fortunate that the dramatic endings happened as if dictated and the network switched viewers from game-to-game-to-game to capture the endings live. A decade earlier, Gil Scott-Heron had stated “the revolution will not be televised.” The madness was.

In 1982 in New Orleans, North Carolina’s Michael Jordan became a star when his jumper beat Georgetown. That was also the first Final Four I attended – as a paying customer.

While college football evolved into a driving force in my work responsibilities at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the third month of every year was always a frenetic high point.

Football provided a weekly writing rhythm for three months leading to bowl previews and the national championship game. March Madness is just that. It’s about 30 days of games, stories and travel. For about 15 years covering both sports, the Final Four national championship game ended nine months where every day involved work. Starting with football media days in July, I had something to work on nearly every day. Some days were just a few hours of work, other days maybe 10-12 hours.

It’s quite likely I’m finished in terms of attending NCAA Tournament games for professional purposes. Here are the final numbers:

  • 343 NCAA games.
  • 26 Final Fours.
  • 2 women’s Final Fours (plus one other women’s championship game).

Each March promises so much and always over delivers. For me, one of the best days is the Sunday bracket announcement. The excitement and anticipation of staring at a clean, blank bracket and then filling in the teams as each is announced – it’s like a curtain pulled back slowly to reveal a work of art. While there is always time for deep-dive analysis, there’s an immediate charge of seeing each region and considering possible match ups deeper in the bracket.

Planning post-season coverage for college football was simple. We knew where the college football championship game was to be played so we could book cheap airfares in advance. When the title game was at the Fiesta Bowl, there was always the possibility of a quick one-day trip to Pasadena to cover the Rose Bowl if that matchup was worthy of coverage.

The NCAA Tournament is the exact opposite. By 6 p.m., you know where the teams have been assigned and those assignments determine travel plans. News conferences for Thursday first-round games are held on Wednesday. That means covering a Thursday first-round site requires a Tuesday departure – unless you wanted to gamble on a Wednesday early morning flight being on time.

Last-minute flights are expensive. Not only were fares costly, just booking a flight was an issue. The first weekend of the tourney often coincides with spring break. Flights to regionals in Denver or Salt Lake City (skiing) or Florida (beaches) were often booked or super pricey.

There were teams that we needed to cover – Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU (which rarely made the bracket). No matter the cost, we had to book the flights to cover those schools. Some years I could make an educated guess on a first-round site that would be worthwhile covering and we could book a cheap flight ahead of time.

During the early years when I was on the basketball beat, we occasionally had difficulty securing a credential for first-round sites. The NCAA could be strict about access; if a paper didn’t cover the early rounds in one of the four regions, it balked at approving credentials for the second week regionals. To assure we had access, I would send requests (by mail or fax) to all eight first-round sites asking for credentials in my name. Then all we needed to do after the bracket was announced was call and change the name to another staffer. It was a pain in the butt. The last years I was on the beat, the NCAA made it easier with credential requests made on-line.

When Mike Perry and Kevin Dale were my bosses, the frustration pot often boiled over on Sunday night when I was anxious to get the word on assignments and travel. This was before e-mail. I would contact them by voice mail or send them a note (via our filing system that an editor would print out and leave for them) Sunday nights suggesting first-round destinations including airfare. In my mind, it was paramount to make quick decisions to buy the tickets and finalize plans. If I was working late on Sunday night, I expected them to at least be able to decide either that night or early Monday morning. Often it would be noon on Monday before I got the final word.

Also, during various regimes at the paper, we had a travel coordinator who booked all flights. That often slowed the process. Thankfully, the last 10 years or so, after getting approval for trips, we could book our own flights and hotels.

Also, following Bruce Raben’s “double up” plan from the 1986 NCAA Tournament, three times we decided to book early trips so I could cover two first-round sites. In 2000, I drove between Cleveland and Buffalo (3 hours). In 2002, I flew back and forth between Chicago and St. Louis; Texas Tech wound up in Chicago and Kansas was a top seed in St. Louis, so that early booking proved fortuitous. In 2003, I drove between Nashville and Indianapolis (4 hours). I think it was that last drive between Indy-Nashville that I questioned why it had seemed like such a great idea.

In 1987, 1992, 1993 and 1996, I was able to book three-stop flights to cover Saturday-Sunday regional finals. In ’87 I was in Louisville as Providence upset its way to the Final Four and on Sunday was in Cincinnati to cover top-seeded Indiana’s narrow victory over LSU. In ’92, I was in Philadelphia for the classic all-timer Duke-Kentucky contest, flew to Cincinnati and then drove to Lexington for the South Regional where Michigan’s Fab Five made their first Final Four by defeating Ohio State. In 1993, I was in Charlotte for the Southeast Regional championship on Saturday and then East Rutherford on Sunday for the East final. In 1996, I was in Atlanta to cover Texas Tech’s Sweet 16 loss to Georgetown and then covered Massachusetts’ win over the Hoyas on Saturday. I then flew to Lexington to cover the Southeast Regional where Mississippi State made the Final Four by beating Cincinnati.

Each Sunday, an hour or so after the bracket is announced, the chair of the basketball committee is on a teleconference with the media. It gives reporters a chance to ask questions about seeding (this team too high, this one too low), at-large teams that got snubbed or teams who were selected but perceived to be undeserving.

When the NCAA was headquartered in Kansas City before moving to Indianapolis in 2000, the basketball committee was sequestered on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency. The Big 12 men’s tournament also was in Kansas City and there were a few years when I was there helping with coverage. Along with a few other writers and local TV reporters, we could be in the conference room with the committee chair as he conducted the teleconference. Afterward, we could also ask a few in-person questions.

After moving to Indianapolis, the NCAA held its post-bracket news conference at its HQ. When Celeste Williams was our sports editor and we were striving for expanded/aggressive coverage, I often flew to Chicago to write about the Big Ten tournament’s Friday and Saturday games, and then on Sunday would drive the three hours to Indianapolis to be on-site for the bracket announcement.

There were a few occasions when I extended my road trip with a post-bracket drive from Indy to Dayton, Ohio. When the NCAA bracket had 65 teams, there was a Tuesday “play-in” game hosted by the University of Dayton where the winner got the honor of advancing and losing its next game to a No. 1 seed. There was always a compelling story line in Dayton. Writing a 25 to 30-inch story about a team happy about its one shining moment also illustrates how complete Celeste wanted to make our sports coverage.

The University of Dayton does a wonderful job (since the bracket expanded to 68 teams, it’s now the site of the “First Four”). One year when I was there, I had the Writer’s Worst Nightmare – my laptop stopped fully functioning (I could read existing files but couldn’t create new ones or access the Internet.) The sports information director at Dayton loaned me a laptop so I could write my game story. Thanks to FedEx the paper shipped me another laptop to get me through the rest of the trip.

On another Dayton trip, after interviews on Monday I ate at Joe’s Crab Shack. A few hours later, I was spewing from both ends. I spent much of Tuesday in bed at my hotel but was able to wobble into the arena to write about Tuesday night’s game. (Coincidentally it’s the last time I dined at Joe’s Crab Shack.)

During March Madness, the three most challenging, work-intensive days were the Sunday the bracket was announced, the regional semifinals and the Final Four semifinals. What follows is some insight about those hours that kept my heart pumping and my fingers tapping my laptop keyboard.

The regional Sweet 16 games are either on Thursday or Friday nights. If the Basketball Gods were against me, I would be at a regional semifinal where the second game was the latest game scheduled. With four games to telecast, the networks stagger the start times hoping to be able to telecast the final minutes of each game. The game that was considered the highest profile of the four would tip last each night.

Writers root for great games and good stories. At regional semifinals, I rooted for two blowouts. The nightmare involved overtime or some unforeseen delay (serious injury, clock issue, etc.).

The best-case scenario was to have the outcome of the first game become obvious at least midway through the second half. If one team built a double-digit lead, I silently rooted against a rally. Why? It would allow me to craft a lead and start writing parts of my story (during timeouts). I was always playing beat the (ticking) clock.

There’s about 30 minutes between the end of the first game and tip of the second game. The losing coach and players always appear first in the interview room and while quotes from the losing side help balance the story, I needed comments from the winners. Usually by the time the winners arrived for interviews, it was almost time for the second game to start. I got as many quotes as time would allow before hustling back to my courtside seat.

During the second game, at each media or called timeout, I’d work on my story on the first game. If all was going well, I would be finished and able to send my story by halftime of the second game. That way I could concentrate on paying closer attention to the second game.

If that night’s sports section had enough space, I would write a notes sidebar that might lead with something newsworthy that happened in the first game or perhaps be angled to look ahead to the regional final. I’d try to work on that story during second half timeouts while also trying to put together my story about the second game. Again, it was preferable to have a game that didn’t come down to a final shot.

My deadline was always around 11:30 CT. If I was covering the late game, it often would finish around 11 p.m. It usually takes about 10 minutes for the losing coach and players to appear in the interview room so I would use that time to work on the story that was pending. Again, getting quotes from the winners was most important. If all had gone well, I might have 15 minutes to finish writing. I was never one to “push” a deadline unless it was unavoidable. If I finished writing by 11:20, I’d try to send ASAP. I knew from experience that any time I saved for the desk editors was valuable.

One of the greatest advancements for this type of deadline writing was wireless Internet. When the NCAA wired each of its tournament sites for connectivity, it was a boon and a luxury to be able to file a story while sitting in the interview room. Before that, I would have to hustle to the media work room to connect my laptop to a phone line.

One of the greatest spectacles in sports is the Final Four semifinals. For me, it presented one of my greatest challenges.

For Semifinal Saturday I approached writing two game stories in the same way that I covered the regional semifinals. The difference was that each winner had moved within a victory of the national championship, and I felt compelled to write stories that fit those accomplishments. I tried to avoid the frenetic slap-dash approach of the regional semifinal stories, but the time crunch was similar. The difference was that I could spend much of the second game writing about the first game.

At most of the Final Fours I covered, the first semifinal game typically started just after 5 p.m. CT. That means the second game might start at around 7:45 and be over before 10. With an 11:30 pm. deadline, that meant there was time to write about Game Two after it was over. Also, I usually was writing a notes sidebar and that work I squeezed in whenever I could.

However, at least 10 of my Final Fours happened the weekend that Daylight Savings Time went into effect. That meant while most U.S. citizens lost an hour’s sleep, this citizen lost an hour for his deadline. DST meant our Saturday deadline was 10:30 p.m. CT.

This never made any sense to me. I would beg for an extra 15 or 30 minutes. “Why does it have to be an exact 60 minutes early? Couldn’t the delivery folks just bust their butts and move faster? And so what if a dozen or so people called about their papers being a few minutes late?” (No joke, there was a time when humans would arise at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday and expected to be reading the paper by 5:35 a.m.) I loathed Daylight Saving Time when it happened on Final Four weekend.

For Monday night’s championship game, I created my own special hell. Most of the time, columnist Gil LeBreton and myself were the only writers from the Star-Telegram. I was never asked to provide more than just a game story on the title game, but starting with the 1992 Final Four, I volunteered to provide as much copy as time would allow.

Sometimes there was a newsy sidebar that I could chase down during the day and file before the game. In addition to the game story, I would write a 350-400-word sidebar on the Final Four’s most outstanding player. Depending on how the layout person designed the page, I would supply some “bullet” notes – one paragraph items. Some years we would have a “notes package” that contained maybe 10 items ranging in length from three to six paragraphs. I would contribute to that while an editor in the office would compile other items from the wire services.

For the most outstanding player story, I would “cheat.” Based on the semifinals, it was fairly simple to narrow down the candidates from each team. I would pick at least three players from each and work up background info, interesting anecdotes and maybe some quotes from Sunday’s news conferences that would fit. Also, I could always snag a “live” quote from the losing coach. In order not to swamp the desk with late copy, I’d usually file that story before the winning coach and players arrived in the interview room. After sending the story, if all went well and there was time, I could type up one or two “live” quotes from the winning coach, MOP and send that an editor could add to the story.

Some of my one-paragraph bullet notes were also pre-manufactured. I’d go through the game notes and put together five or six of notes I had written based on each team winning/losing. Also, during some title games there would be an interesting stat or happening during the game. Plus, if time permitted, I could add post-game notes that became available (though typically those were the last items to get distributed in the media room.)

The tip off for the championship game is around 8:20 p.m. CT. The best-case scenario was the final buzzer before 10:30 p.m. An hour to write was luxurious. Still, there are obstacles. The on-court post-game celebrations, television interviews, trophy presentation and the “One Shining Moment” video keep the winning team away from the interview room until around 11 p.m. CT, but often later. I would typically write most of my story while waiting for the winners. Sometimes I was able to snag a quote from a TV interview or eavesdrop when the winning team’s radio crew interviewed a player. When the winners arrived on the podium, I’d type the quotes and plug in what best supported details in my story.

After filing my game story, I would head to the winner’s locker room. I might have 15 minutes to interview players and assistant coaches for quotes I would use in a follow story that I would write Tuesday. Often, those quotes would have been perfect for my game story that had already been filed and by then was about to go to press.

As with any endeavor, experience builds confidence and proficiency. Each March, I became more familiar with the process and how to best cover the tournament. The NCAA, which can be a tad stringent with its rules and regulations, also made certain aspects more media friendly.

While almost all college football and basketball teams close their locker rooms for media access, the NCAA (thankfully) is the opposite. Post-game locker rooms are open and on days before games the rooms are also available to the hordes of intruders. Access to interviews is to writers as flour is to bakers.

John Feinstein, the noted best-selling author, broke through on the national scene with his best-seller “Season on The Brink.” He chronicled Indiana’s 1985-86 season (the same season I was a rookie on the hoops beat) and exposed many of Bob Knight’s imperfections.

Feinstein was a vocal advocate for more access at NCAA Tournament events. As a columnist at The Washington Post, he campaigned (some would say complained) for greater access and more time to peel back the layers via questions that are best asked in the more personal environs of the locker room.

The Final Fours I covered from 1986 through 2008 offered abundant interview opportunities. A teleconference with the four coaches (30 minutes each on either Monday or Tuesday) started the Quote Fest. On Friday, all four teams were at the arena/stadium for practices and interviews. Each would get their podium time in the interview room (coach, three or four players) and the locker rooms would be open to interview other players (and assistant coaches, unless they were off limits.)

The Sunday before the championship game, each team would be at the podium in the interview room with the coach and five starters taking questions. After 30 minutes, the players would be excused while the coach remained on the podium to take more questions. The starters were assigned to individual “break out” rooms. Those sessions would also last about 30 minutes. And again, the locker rooms were open.

Your Veteran Scribe believes the current Final Four media access has evolved to the point of overkill. The teleconference with the four coaches remains. The teams, however, arrive at the site on Wednesday and on Thursday there are podium interviews with coaches and players with locker rooms open. The Friday format remains the same but the Sunday breakout sessions for the players have been expanded. There is basically enough time to research and chronicle a player’s life story.

Documenting all those words spoken at Final Fours presented a challenge. My methods evolved from scribbling in notebooks (then trying to decipher my nearly indecipherable handwriting) to tape recorders to digital recorders.

Often the challenge was choosing between the interview room and the locker room. My paranoid solution was using two micro cassette recorders. I’d leave one recording in the interview room if I decided to visit the locker room. If I got wind of a good quote from the interview room, I could listen to what I had recorded (time consuming). After I got to know more reporters, asking them for help on a missed quote, often trading a couple of quotes or tidbits I’d culled in the locker room, helped fill in any blanks.

Progress and technology created a wonderful cheat code that has made writers’ jobs much easier. A company called ASAPSports developed a transcribing service that it offers to several pro and college organizations. ASAP provides stenographers who transcribe every word at news conferences and within 15 minutes after the talking is finished a printed transcription is distributed. The NCAA started using ASAP in 1995 at the Final Four and has since expanded to use the transcription service at every tourney site. Most major conferences also use the service for their big events – media days, football, and basketball championships, etc.

Transcriptions of quotes are a luxury in a profession where that term is rarely used. At NCAA Tournament venues, it allows a writer to work the locker room (where quotes aren’t transcribed) with the knowledge he/she is not missing anything said in the interview room. ASAP quote sheets were also helpful on those frenzied regional and Final Four semifinals.

As mentioned in an earlier chapter, in February of 1993 assistant sports editor Scott Monserud proposed a project that I considered as borderline insane/impossible. In the Monday sports section after the bracket announcement, he wanted small capsule previews for each of the 64 teams in the men’s tourney. I think I countered with, “Great idea but could we publish those in Tuesday’s edition?” I embraced the concept of “added value” but I wasn’t sure about executing that concept.

At that time, the Dallas Morning News, with its seemingly limitless space and budget, was staffing each of the eight NCAA sites on the opening weekend. We lacked the manpower and the budget for that but credit to Monserud for deciding that a capsule preview of every team would be something the DMN lacked.

For the next 15 seasons, it was an annual project that I doubt any other paper attempted each March. At first, the capsules took up two pages. Over the years, our coverage expanded thanks to the leadership of Ellen Alfano and Celeste. In Monday’s paper, we started printing a separate March Madness section, eight to 10 pages. A page was devoted to each of the four regions and in addition to capsules I’d provide other copy on those regions.

A sample of one of the capsules is pictured. They were brief and basic.

Producing 64 capsules on deadline is an impossible task. As John Wooden liked to say, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” About two weeks before bracket Sunday, I would start filling in the basic info for teams that were “locks” to make the field. I erred on the side of preparing too many capsules.

As conference tournaments started, I would rely on ESPN coverage to help educate me on teams from the smaller one-bid conferences. As those teams won their league automatic bids, I would complete their capsules. I kept a master list of which capsules were completed, separating teams with automatic bids and those that would earn at-large bids.

In in the final week of conference tournaments, I would track “lock” teams as they would lose, updating their won-loss record and listing their bids as “at-large.” As I completed a batch of capsules, I would send them to the editors to start the editing process and reduce the deadline crunch.

During the first few years, the Internet had yet to become a “thing” and there were no school web sites. Conferences and teams printed releases for the media that included information and statistics; the only way to access those was via a fax machine. There was a service called “FaxBack” that the conferences and teams utilized to distribute their info. By dialing the FaxBack number and punching in a code, the requested release would be faxed.

Pain. In. The. Ass.

I had dozens of rolls of fax paper for my home office fax machine. Some conference releases were 30 or more pages and could take 20 minutes or more to transmit. I had a separate land line for my office phone but if I was getting a fax and a call came in, it would break the connection and I would have to redial FaxBack and start over. My choices were to block incoming calls – and maybe miss an important call – or spend nights getting faxes after hours. Some of the smaller conferences/schools didn’t have up-to-date releases. Finding just a few tidbits to write the “outlook” was sometimes challenging.

After the bracket was released, I checked my list of capsules to make sure the number of automatic bids were correct and that we had capsules on every team. Sometimes there was a team or two I had missed but putting those together wasn’t a problem.

The capsule process got easier thanks to the internet and web sites, but the workload increased.

The South Regional preview page from the 2008 NCAA Tournament section.

When we went to special sections that had a page for each region, the capsules would take up maybe two-thirds of the page. I was responsible for added elements – an overview of the region (about 300 words), a spotlight on a top player (300 words), a list of “bests” – top coach, top upset possibilities, top dark horse teams, top offensive player, top defensive player, etc. – and a list of quick-hit notes (one to two sentence items separated by ellipsis).

Again, that extra copy involved working ahead. For the spotlights on top players, I collected quotes and stories on a dozen or so players and hoped that I had enough info on one of four stars in each region. Some of those player profiles I would either write ahead of time or at least partially write. The same with the quick-hit notes. I kept a file with tidbits that I had collected over the previous two weeks. Depending on where teams were assigned to regions, I could separate those notes for the proper regions. The region overview and the “bests” I could only write until seeing the bracket.

Also on my assignment list was a tournament overview story for the front page of the section. Some years we had a theme or feature angle that was mostly complete and only needed some updating based on news of the bracket announcement. Other years, I was starting from scratch cranking out 800 words.

My deadline added to the mad dash. The special section had to run as part of our first edition and that deadline was 10:30 p.m. Translation: I had less than four hours write/organize about 3,500 total words.

When I made the Chicago-Indianapolis trip and was on-site for the bracket announcement, the frenzy produced fond memories. There was a different feeling working from the road. I stayed at a Marriott Courtyard in downtown Indy about five minutes from the NCAA headquarters. When I got to my room, it was typing time.

The editors wanted the capsules completed first, so I made sure the last few from Sunday’s conference tournaments were updated and completed. Then I’d start to work on a region at a time, finishing the player spotlight, gathering the tidbits, coming up with the bests/worsts and writing the regional overview. I’d try to finish all the regions and then write the bracket overview story. If I had a few minutes, I would check the Internet to make sure my deep-fried brain wasn’t missing any important angles.

There was no time for food. The first year I filed from Indianapolis, it was nearly midnight local time when I went searching for a late fast-food dinner. There was nothing to be found. My dinner was a bag of chips and couple Snickers bars from the hotel vending machine.

Now you know why I developed Type-2 diabetes.

CHAPTER TWELVE: History Class

For much of the last 150 years, newspapers were a consistent part of American life, a mainstay in delivering news and information. Newspapers serving as a primary source for delivering the news has been slowly whittled down by radio, then television and then the Internet. However, several factors leading to the decline of newspapers are self-inflicted. I’ve often said that the tombstone will read: “Who killed newspapers? Newspapers.” Here are my thoughts/opinions on why:

  • When the Internet became a “thing,” most of those in charge of newspapers regarded it as a fad and disregarded it as a threat. Many papers created their web sites to be part of the fad and posted stories for free. Only a few created paywalls from the start. Papers could have made their web sites a “value-added” part of their subscriptions by charging for “bonus” content. (“Want to read more about this? Visit our website.”) In recent years, when papers wanted/needed their web sites to make money, charging for access was met with understandable resistance. “Hey, this used to be free. Now you want $9.99 a month?”
  • A classic example of how/why newspapers failed to embrace and understand the digital world happened in 2000, when web sites were first gaining a toehold. A tech company invented the CUECAT, which was a bar code scanner that connected to a PC. The idea was that magazines and newspapers could include bar codes in stories and advertising that CUECAT readers would scan to lead to digital information, coupons, etc. Belo Corporation, owner of the Dallas Morning News, invested $40 million and mailed out CUECAT kits to subscribers. Bar codes started showing up in Belo’s newspapers and even in their TV stations’ newscasts. It’s no huge shock that CUECAT is considered one of the biggest failures/boondoggles of the 2000s. Belo invested in an impractical gadget. The corporate suits who signed off on torching $40 million apparently believed people sitting at their PC keyboards would be happy and efficient juggling a device to scan a newspaper bar code while reading a newspaper or watching a newscast.
  • Combined with the growth of the Internet was the impact of Craigslist, which went from an email service to digital in 2000 and became a juggernaut. It killed classified advertising in newspapers. Classified ads were “tiny type” listings that people could buy (“three lines, 10 days, $10”) to sell things. Classifieds had sections for job listings, apartments, homes for sale, used cars, etc. The daily classified ad section of a major paper could be as large as 20 or more pages. Classifieds provided a steady and reliable revenue stream. Craigslist is free and has the greater reach of the world-wide web. Plus, there are now web sites that specialize in jobs, housing, car sales. Pick up a newspaper in a big city today and you might find half a page of classified ads.
  • Guttenberg invented the printing press in 1440. It took another 400 years before the invention of the telegraph. Daily newspapers started to thrive in the late 1800s. Since the start of the 20th century, consider the years between the following advances – radio (1920), television (1950), personal computers (1980), laptops (1984), Internet (1990), smart phones (1996), social media (2004). What was once a 24-hour news cycle is now a 24-second news cycle. When the Metroplex had three competing papers in the 1980s, beat writers (especially on the Cowboys and the Rangers) would pick up the competing papers on their driveways each morning quaking about seeing a scoop in one of the other papers. And the paper with the scoop owned it until the next day’s editions. Plus, the rush is to be first, not to be right. That leads to inaccurate social media posts that further erodes the public’s faith in journalism.
  • At their peak, newspapers could offer readers local stories with depth and perspective written by beat writers with institutional knowledge. Competing in the “digital space” is considered a young person’s game. Now reporters need to report on a story, write it, record a one-minute video to tease the link and Tweet updates on their beat(s). A scoop posted to social media is considered more valuable than the 500-word story written on the scoop. We subscribe to the Dallas Morning News. My wife often reads a story and tells me about it. I often respond, “Oh, yeah, I read that yesterday; they Tweeted the link.” The DMN is pushing its digital presence. But scooping yourself on-line seems to defeat the purpose of printing a paper (not to mention the waste spent on newsprint and delivery drivers). And, yes Dear Reader, I am a dinosaur.
  • Newspapers of 20 years ago produced outrageous profit margins of 20 percent or more. I’m far from a business analyst or expert, but my research indicates that most huge companies would turn cartwheels for a yearly profit margin of 10 percent. The decline of newspapers started when many of the larger papers went from being family/locally owned to being owned by corporations beholden to stockholders. When profit margins started to fall to 15 percent from 20 percent, stockholders complained to corporate. Bottom lines were sharpened. For a newspaper, that started with a reduction of the space given for stories. That was followed by RIF – reduction in force (a corporate term for firing.) Smaller paper, smaller staff, same subscription price. Recall the earlier chapter about the Star-Telegram and its hefty sports sections and staffs? Now, the paper’s daily sports section is four to six pages. At one point, its full-time writers could hold a staff meeting in an SUV. How could readers not notice the watered-down soup? If newspapers were auto makers, they would sell cars without doors, wind shields or back seats.

Newspapers were likely doomed because they stayed the same while the world changed, especially in terms of technology. The worthiness of a printed product is old school but still has value – a web site link to a story is not the same as keeping an historic front page or a clipping of your child accepting an award. Newspapers are a throw away product; typically, they’re headed for the bottom of a bird cage, box stuffing for mailing a gift or a recycling bin. The costs of newsprint, ink, printing presses and a delivery method are negative costs that must always be countered by a flowing profit stream.

Many like me who spent most of our careers in “the business” lament the decline of newspapers. We can poetically and romantically recall the good ol’ days even though there are fewer of those than we like to remember. The reality of the daily newspaper grind required those who spent decades meeting deadlines to embrace the love and the hate.

Dave Kindred, one of the great sportswriters of the last 50 years, wrote a book about 10 years ago. Titled “Morning Miracle,” it chronicled a year at The Washington Post as it went through the “most chaotic revolution in 500 years.” Kindred quoted this passage from a novel called “Arizona Kiss.”

I can tell you what it’s like to work for a newspaper. Imagine a combine, one of those huge threshing machines that eat up a row of wheat like nothing, bearing down on you. You’re running in front of it, all day long, day in, day out, just inches in front of the maw, where steel blades are whirring and clacking and waiting for you to get tired or make one slip. The only way to keep the combine off you is to throw it something else to rip and digest. What you feed it is stories. Words and pictures. Ten inches on this, 15 inches on that, a vertical shot here and a horizontal shot there, scraps of news and film that go in the maw where they are processed and dumped out on some pages to fill the spaces around the ads. Each story buys you a little time, barely enough to slap together the next story, and the next, and the next. You never get far ahead, you never take a breather, all you do is live on the hustle. Always in a rush, always on deadline, you keep scrambling to feed the combine. That’s what it’s like.

I spent most of my career working with “cold” type, a process that was developed in the late 1970s and coincided with newspapers incorporating computer technology. Writers and editors worked on video display terminals (VDTs). They had typewriter keyboards but also included extra keys that included various type-setting commands read by the newsroom’s main computer.

When a story was edited and given a headline, the “file” was sent to the photocomposing machine where it was produced on a strip of special film-like paper. The story appeared exactly as it does in the newspaper. All the stories, headlines and photographs (which were processed in a different machine but on the same film-like paper) were then pasted on individual sheets that accounted for each page of that issue. Those finished pages were then photographed and went through a process that produced a flexible plate that attached to the printing press.

As computer technology evolved, most newspaper pages are now designed by editors on their desktop computers, with each completed page sent directly to the equipment that produces the plates that go on the presses.

A linotype machine used during the “hot type” era.

When I first got to the Quincy Herald-Whig, it was in its last weeks as a “hot type” operation. That was the old newspaper production that had been in use for 100 years with huge Linotype machines (seen at left) operated by type setters. Working off typewritten stories and headlines, they would punch keys that would put together letters like those on a typewriter that strike the ribbon. As its name suggests, it would produce a “line” of type based on the column width being used. Those lines would be placed in trays would be arranged on pages that then, via ink and newsprint, produced a printed page.

For the first six years of my career, I wrote my stories on typewriters. There was a lot of backspacing and x-ing out of words or phrases I didn’t like. Now, it’s just the delete key on a laptop. Also, moving paragraphs or sections of stories around meant cutting the paper – we typed on copy paper that was manila colored and cut from rolls of scrap newsprint – and pasting the story together with rubber cement. We typed in double space to allow space for hand-written copy-editing notes.

To lay out/design pages, it was necessary to have an estimate regarding story lengths. Our typewriter margins were set to parameters and we then used a special ruler to measure the length of a typed story. It was rudimentary at best.

We measured stories in inches to fit it on the layout “dummies.” You might have a page with ads that left room for 40 inches of stories. Combined with pictures, headlines and type, the layout guy would figure out what could fit in that news hole.

Now, most digital sites measure stories based on a word count. Old-style journalism recommended that most paragraphs contain no more than 35 and 35 words was considered equal to an inch of type for a standard story.

My rule of thumb to convert a story length to column inches is dividing the total words by 35. A 500-word story is just over 14 inches, which is about the typical size for a basic news story. Most game stories I wrote ranged from 16 inches (550 words) to 22 inches (770 words). In the digital age, where the “news hole” is unlimited, 1,000 words (just under 30 column inches) for a game story is commonplace. During my newspaper career, if I filed a 30-inch game story it would be cut (butchered, hacked) to fit the 22-inch space the layout editor had allowed for it.

There were some games I covered worth only 500 words and some that were worth twice as much. The challenge and the frustration in newspapers often involved the great game worth 1,000 words where the most an editor could spare was 750 words.

During my time in Quincy as a writer, there were no transmission methods for stories when we were covering road games. We had to dictate our stories over the phone to a part-timer in the office. Because of deadlines for the morning edition, there were many times when I didn’t have the time to write a story on my portable typewriter.

I learned the trick of dictating a story off the top of my head (and often there was the challenge of finding a pay phone; Google it, kids). I might quickly write out my lead and then riff from there, working off my notes and self-kept box score. Here’s what part of that might sound like:

The Raiders took control midway through the second quarter with a 17 to 3 run (that would be typed 17-3). Period (I would need to dictate punctuation.) Curt Hogge (I would spell the name if needed) sparked the spurt with 10 points as his perimeter jump shot started falling. Period.

(Open quote) “Curt got into a rhythm and he did a good job of working off the screens we set for him (comma, close quotes) QND coach Phil Conover said (period. (Open quote) “That run in the second quarter settled us down (period) I thought we started out playing tentative but then we started to take control on both ends (period, close quotes).

In the latter part of the 1970s, papers used fax machines and reporters could fax in their typewritten stories. Those fax machines often took 3-5 minutes to transmit a single page. Writers would have to factor in the transmission time when working on deadline. Faxing a 3-page game story meant adjusting for 15 minutes of transmitting.

As computers became more prevalent in the 1980s, reporters started using primitive computer devices that allowed them to transmit their stories electronically.

A Teleram, also known as a “Portabubble.”

One portable device was called a Teleram or a Portabubble. It was the size of a small suitcase with a keyboard, a small screen and on top was a coupler. To transmit a story, the reporter would dial the newspaper’s computer system and then place the phone’s handset in the coupler. It was finicky and sensitive to sound. In a noisy arena, a reporter often would put is coat or jacket over the unit to try to help with transmission. It also weighed about 20 pounds and was a pain to log through airports. One of our reporters once checked it as baggage for a flight. He was surprised to learn after he reached his destination that it no longer functioned. The IT guys at the paper placed him on their permanent sh*t list.

The other popular device for reporters was made by Radio Shack. The TRS-80 Model 100 was also known as the Trash 80. It was about the size of a large book, so it was much more compact than the Teleram. Its screen, as can be seen in the photo, was so small it displayed only four lines of type at a time. It also had a limited memory and could store only 40 inches or 1,400 words. To transmit a story, a reporter had two options. One was plugging in portable couplers and then inserting a phone handset.

A Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100. Also known as the Trash 80.

That method rarely worked. The most reliable option was a phone jack cord. Plug one jack into the computer and the other into the back of the phone. The bane of our deadline existence was a phone that was hard wired with no access for a plug. How primitive was the TRS-80? It had a power plug but unplugged it ran on 4 AA batteries. Reporters never traveled without a baggie full of AAs.

I used the Trash 80 for most of my first five years at the Star-Telegram over the second half of the ‘80s. I bought my first home computer in 1989 and was able to file stories from it to the paper. Soon after I bought my own laptop, which probably weighs twice as much as the one I’m currently using. Eventually, the Star-Telegram provided reporters with laptops.

The ability to adapt to the times and the technology was march or die. Bill Clark had to adapt to a finicky electric typewriter. As I moved from Tucson to Atlanta to Dallas and then Fort Worth, at each stop I had to learn how to navigate a new computer system. At each stop, it got easier; familiarity breeds competence and technology advancements forced me to adjust and learn.

My first two VWs were stick shifts and I learned how to use a clutch. When I started taking photos at the Hannibal Courier-Post, I learned how to develop the film and print black and white photos. I’ve driven automatic shift cars for decades and can take photos on my iPhone. Could I go back to driving a clutch? Yes. Could I relearn photo developing skills quickly? Probably. Are the modern ways easier? Rhetorical question, Dear Reader.

When I started in newspapers, even the latest breaking news that made into print was at least six hours old by the time a reader saw it. Now, that time lapse can be as little as six minutes thanks to social media. Printed news can’t compete with that speed and that’s a big reason why newspapers are dinosaurs trapped in tar pits.

Newspapers’ only hope of surviving is adhering to journalism – a profession that’s also beaten and battered. Instant updates provided by social media often sacrifices accuracy and perspective. Being first is becoming more important than being correct. Editors are among the first employees to be fired at newspapers and are rarely hired for web sites. Those professionals served as gate keepers, reading stories for accuracy, and questioning a reporter’s facts.

Posting a scoop even a few seconds before the competition is Job One. That rush often tramples through reporting and can lead to mistakes that require corrections/retractions. The problem, though, is that in the social media delivery system, too often you can’t un-ring the bell. The first clang, even if incorrect, is what is spread and remembered. A favorite saying of the great John Wooden was “be quick but don’t hurry.” These days, everyone is running a hurry-up offense.

In 1920, New York City had 19 newspapers. Forty years later, it had seven. Now it has three. I was fortunate to work during the last 40 years when the newspaper business enjoyed its last glory days.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Write Stuff

Two centuries ago, the basics of education were developed as the “Three Rs” – Reading, Writing, Arithmetic (never mind that the “Three Rs” involved misspelling/mangling two of those words). I always preferred the first two disciplines. Perhaps it was Mrs. Whitted with those timed math tests in fourth grade, but I topped out by barely passing Algebra I in ninth grade (thankfully, the only math credit I needed to graduate).

Much like the puzzlement as to why I was drawn to sports, I can offer no insight as to why my career involved writing. My best guess is that reading often leads to an interest in writing. In the latter part of my grade school years, I often spent my summers alone while my mother was working and my dad was truck driving. I had a lot of free time during the day. Unless I was hanging out with friends, I lacked entertainment/activity choices. Reading helped fill the void. I also think I had a bit of a genetic disposition. My mother wrote well when she had the time to write me letters after I left home.

Next to baseball, my grade school years involved a lot of “playing army” and I became interested in World War II. The summer between fourth and fifth grade, a student who rented one of our upstairs rooms gave me a paperback about the aircraft carrier Enterprise and its missions in the Pacific. I quickly devoured it and started visiting the public library to check out WWII books.

As I was reading those books, at no time did I think, “Wow, it would be cool to become a historian and write books about World War Two.” But I believe that reading helped me understand at an early age how words are supposed to fit together.

Writing for newspapers is a specialized discipline. There are style rules to be followed. Space is limited so a writer must be succinct while keeping the story interesting. How long a story was written depended on the assigning editor. The politically incorrect old school editors would say a story should be “like a woman’s skirt – long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep it interesting.”

The incessant grind of a daily newspaper helped my writing improve. The repetition and output to feed the beast sharpened my skills. These following advice from two prolific authors explain the connection between repetition and reading.

Ray Bradbury: “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”

Stephen King: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others – read a lot and write a lot.”

The readership for my stories could vary from double to triple to quadruple digits. One story is unlikely to appeal or please all who read it. My goal was to interest readers and please my editor(s). Unless a reader sent me a comment (a rarity), I was never sure of the former. My performance reviews and occasional “attaboy” notes from an editor provided feedback and affirmed my desire to remain employed.

Writers are often urged by their mentors to find their “voice.” For me, that discovery was selfish. I put myself in the reader’s place and wrote what appealed to me. As a sports fan, I tried to write what I thought other sports fans would enjoy. I developed a mental playback, silently reading the words that appeared as I typed, trying to find a flow and a flair as I strung together details and quotes. Most of the time, I didn’t have a grand plan for how a story would come together. I started with what I thought was a good lead, kept writing and then tried for a graceful dismount.

I have never considered myself a “great” writer. That’s my honest assessment. Particularly in the realm of sports writing, I have read hundreds of stories and books by my predecessors and peers that qualify me to judge great writers. I was a good writer who enhanced my talents through hard work, efficiency and responsibility.

I consider myself a craftsman who honed his trade. In school, I abhorred diagramming sentences but by reading I learned the basics of how words flowed and fit together. The simple basics of subject-verb agreement and punctuation provided a valuable foundation. My experience editing other writers’ stories helped me understand that more than a few had missed or forgotten the basics. At the Herald-Whig, I had to make up a note card for one of our writers to remind him how to use there/their, you’re/your, it’s/its. And he had a college degree.

Writing this book has shattered my personal record for most words slapped together in one place. This book has also produced more self-editing. Most newspaper stories I wrote never went beyond first drafts. The process was write, send, what’s next. That process was necessary because there’s precious little time to contemplate or rewrite.

I finished and posted the first draft nearly a year ago. Because it’s a digital production, I have the opportunity to edit and revise. In polishing the second draft, I have made hundreds of edits and rewrites. A good piece of writing advice that I’ve rarely been able to follow is to write, wait and then read what was written. Rewriting and reworking has improved this book, and, perhaps ironically, this chapter.

In newspaper (and non-fiction book) writing, great reporting often produces great writing. The more information a writer has, the more illuminating his/her writing can be. Writing for newspapers can be a balancing act. More data can help explain. For a long feature, doing a few more interviews can produce interesting quotes. In both cases, the writer’s challenge is deciding what to leave in, what to leave out. Sometimes that extra data point or pertinent quote involves extra paragraphs to support or explain. A seven-pound story doesn’t fit in a five-pound bag.

My writing about sports involved three categories – game stories, features, and columns. Over the last half of my career, columns were the easiest to write. I had more experience and knowledge, which led to more opinions. When I had a “hot take” on a current event involving my beat, I would rip and roar.

Game stories were typically on deadline and that adrenaline often made those stories easier to write. As I gained more credibility (especially with my editors) I could at times insert comments/observations that would have been more appropriate for a column. Writing about a game involved trying to explain why and how one team won and the other lost. That explanation was best when supported by statistics. Game stories were greatly enhanced if a coach or a player provided a quote that went beyond the mundane. Marshalling those elements in the assigned space and beating the deadline often qualified as a good “gamer.”

There’s a great exchange in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Watterson that explains how some writers deal with deadline writing.

Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your story yet?
Calvin: No, I’m waiting for inspiration. You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic.

Feature stories – 1,000 to 1,500 words – involved interviews and gathering information on the topic or subject. When I was writing a feature, I would usually have an estimated length agreed upon with the editor. That length (let’s say 40 inches or about 1,500 words) would be somewhat negotiable. What was non-negotiable was overshooting the runway. If I filed a 60-inch feature story what was supposed to be 40 inches, it had to be the greatest 60-inch story in the paper’s history. Otherwise, the editor would instruct me to rewrite and trim.

My first long-form story was for a monthly magazine, the “Illinois Prep Revue.”  It was during my time at the Herald-Whig and I was asked to write a feature about the basketball rivalry between Quincy and Galesburg high schools and two legendary coaches. The opportunity to write a freelance, long-form story for a magazine had me fantasizing about those types of stories I was reading in Sports Illustrated. I still have a copy of the “Prep Revue” magazine, and I must admit the story I wrote was admirable for a young writer who didn’t know what he didn’t know.

In those days, I took all of my notes by hand, scribbling in reporter notebooks. Capturing most quotes word-for-word was impossible. Once I started writing from my notes, I basically was reconstructing the gist of what had been said. Some writers are blessed with memories that function like tape recorders and have total word-for-word recall.

Two of my “back in the day” tape recorders and the cassettes they used.

In order to capture accurate quotes, I resorted to using a crutch. In the early 1990s I started using cassette recorders that were about 4 inches long, two inches wide. They recorded on small cassette tapes. The tapes could record 30 minutes on each side. A slightly larger size tape could record 45 minutes on each side.

The biggest problem with the cassette recorders was having fresh tapes and keeping track of what got recorded on which cassette. Far too often I found that I had recorded over part of an interview. Plus it was time consuming searching through cassettes for a specific interview. In addition to specific interviews, I recorded most of the coaches’ teleconferences in which I participated. I developed a system that involved labeling and numbering the cassettes and then noting the order of interviews I recorded on each side of the cassette. Being an anal pack rat, over the years I filled a small box with over 100 cassettes from that era.

I closed out my career relying on digital recorders. They have plenty of memory and automatically separate and number each new interview. A digital recorder also can be hooked to a laptop to transfer and store interviews. The playback function I installed on my laptop allows slowing or speeding the sound, which is a convenience most digital recorders lack. Many reporters use their iPhones/smart phones to record interviews.

The disadvantage of recording interviews is the resulting need to transcribe those interviews. The transcription process is particularly challenging when writing a long feature story. A 30-minute interview might take 90 minutes if transcribed word-for-word. Many writers including this one regard “transcribing” as a four-letter word.

There are many methods for writing long-form stories. Some writers transcribe their interviews, print them out and then go through highlighting the quotes they want. Some use notecards to organize their story like a director story boards a movie.

I used a variety of methods and applied them in a haphazard manner. As I was transcribing, I might write parts of the story that involved the quotes I was transcribing. Other times instead of transcribing a lengthy interview, I would just listen to the play back and cherry pick the quotes I wanted. Often I would write a long feature like putting together a puzzle, writing several paragraphs built around a good quote and then finding the best spot to plug those in the story. That’s where my time as an editor paid off.

The curse of writer’s block has never been an issue. I think that tends to be a problem more for fiction writers who are inventing stories and developing characters to fit their narrative. If I could formulate a good lead for a game story – often those ideas would develop during the game – then writing the story was made easier. If I had a week or two before writing a feature story, I would often come up with that lead and/or the story’s structure while driving, taking a shower or before I would fall asleep. I paraphrased the “Glengarry/Glen Ross” always be closing to always be writing – even if it was just writing in my head.

Thanks to the Internet Age, I’ve had limitless access to stories written by other writers that I admired. Way too often after a Big Game, I would be in my hotel room surfing the net and reading their stories. I would be dazzled by their brilliance and dumbfounded by my failure approach or develop the story as they had. “#&^@*! I wish I had written that.”

There are aspects of sports – designing plays and calling those plays in football, strategy and execution in baseball, preposterous talent, and determination in basketball – that have always fascinated me. The same goes with writing. I doubt most readers will note spot-on phrasing or a clever sentence that to my eyes glow like a neon sign. I admire the ability to turn a phrase, make the words sing and dance, describe something mundane in a unique way.

Here are thoughts on writing from some great writers:

  • “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway.
  • “Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper, you can lose an idea forever.” – Will Self.
  • “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” – Elmore Leonard.
  • “If you’re using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.” – John Steinbeck.
  • “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson.
  • “The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.” – Raymond Chandler.
  • “This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” – Neil Gaiman.
  • “Nothing any good isn’t hard.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  • “I hate writing, I love having written.” – Dorothy Parker.

True dat, Ms. Parker. True dat.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Knight, Knight

There was some internal debate regarding whether to devote a chapter about Bob Knight. The stories/anecdotes are worthy of recounting and outweigh devoting space to someone whose greatness was countered by his long list of outrageous acts. Robert Montgomery Knight, a college basketball coaching great, is a double A (abusive asshole) personality. My random encounters with him over the years left no physical or mental scars, just a few stories worth telling.

As mentioned in Chapter Four, in November of 1975 I found myself in St. Louis for a blockbuster college basketball season opener. Nationally televised games were still a novelty. Preseason No. 1 Indiana was facing defending national champion UCLA in its first game since John Wooden’s retirement. The Saturday late night time slot had just six weeks prior been taken over by “Saturday Night Live.”

The Friday before the game at the Checkerdome, the arena where the St. Louis Blues played, I attended Knight’s news conference to discuss the game. I was 21 and totally clueless regarding Knight’s disdain for the media. I remember him breaking out a favorite joke. “All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.” Mr. Naïve here thought it was worth a chuckle. (“He’s not really talking about us … is he?”)

I didn’t write a story about the game; it ended well after our deadline. My assignment was to interview two players with Quincy connections – sophomore guard Jim Wisman and freshman guard Bob Bender. After the Hoosiers ran the Bruins off the court, I was able to talk briefly with both players. Then I found myself in the large backstage hallway. I was walking in one direction and here came Bob Knight, leaving his post-game news conference, walking in the other direction toward the Indiana locker room.

I wanted to ask Knight about both Wisman and Bender. He was just a coach, right? I stopped and asked high school coaches for interviews all the time. So, that’s what I did.

Knight stopped. I asked my questions. He answered. I said thanks.

A classic case where ignorance was bliss. Had I known about Knight’s reputation for being tough and dismissive with members of the media, I probably would have never stopped him for a one-on-one. If that happens now, the one-on-one turns into 20-on-one as lurking reporters and cameramen descend like sharks on chum. Perhaps the Hoosiers’ 20-point victory had left The General in a forgiving and gracious mood. Plus the brief interview didn’t draw a crowd.

Because Wisman had been a star at Quincy High, he was revered and his presence on a great Indiana team led many in town to become Hoosiers’ fans. (His high school girlfriend was also at IU and was a cheerleader.) The Wisman Connection led to an interesting Saturday at the Herald-Whig.

The officials missed this obvious holding call by Bob Knight on Jim Wisman.

Jim Binkley, my fellow writer, was a bit of a bomb thrower. He liked to be edgy, push the envelope. On the last Saturday in January, Indiana was playing Michigan in Bloomington. Wisman was in the game and facing the Wolverines’ full-court press he committed three consecutive turnovers trying to inbound the ball. Knight was furious and yanked Wisman’s jersey as the sophomore was calling a timeout.

In this day and age, that would be considered a viral moment with the photo sparking a Twitter storm. The Hoosiers won in overtime and there were plenty of other pictures to choose from to use on Page One of the sports section. Binkley was giddy and made the photo of Knight yanking Wisman’s jersey as large as possible. I was certain the Herald-Whig offices would be stormed by locals waving pitch forks and torches.

Sports irony moves in mysterious ways. Indiana won the national championship that season and is the last team to finish with an undefeated record. The Hoosiers beat Michigan in the title game, the third time the teams had played. When starting guard Bobby Wilkerson suffered a concussion in the first half, Wisman stepped in and played well in Indiana’s 86-68 victory.

My second season covering college basketball at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was Knight’s third and last national championship. In 1987, Knight was two seasons removed from having tossed a chair across the court at Assembly Hall and was an angry man in full. I was covering the regional final in Cincinnati where Knight was upset after receiving a technical foul and expressed his anger to the NCAA tournament committee members sitting court side. He slammed a telephone on the scorer’s table, just another of Knight’s temper tantrums.

The Hoosiers advanced to the Final Four by edging underdog LSU, 77-76, in that Midwest Regional final. LSU coach Dale Brown, an outspoken critic of Knight, thought the Indiana coach should have been ejected for his phone abuse. The week of the Final Four, Brown was quoted as calling Knight a “school bully. His thing is fear and intimidation.”

Dale Brown was not wrong.

My second Final Four, this one at the Superdome in New Orleans, had a bigger feel. A year earlier, I was in a fog and felt pressured to hit home runs writing about a big local event. In 1987, my goal was to make sure Knight didn’t turn into Mount St. Helens answering my question(s). At the Friday news conference, when I was called on and handed the microphone, seated with 100s of fellow sports journalists, my question for Knight was thoughtful and flawless. It should have been – I had written it out and rehearsed it.

After winning his third national title in 1987, Knight made waves and headlines with several famous flareups during NCAA news conferences. Knight was becoming meaner and more curmudgeonly. He was daring the Indiana administration and/or the NCAA to challenge him.

His last Final Four came in 1992. The Hoosiers lost to defending national champion Duke in the semifinals. Mike Krzyzewski had played for Knight at Army and had been an assistant on Knight’s Indiana staff. Coach K was now a rising star, about to have back-to-back titles. In the post-game handshake line, Knight blew past his star pupil, offering a drive-by handshake. The fading mentor was jealous of the surging pupil.

Knight’s time at Indiana ended when the school hired Myles Brand, a president who wouldn’t be bullied. Knight was fired in September 2001 when he violated a zero-tolerance policy instituted by Brand. At the time, Knight was on an Ahab quest to pass Dean Smith for most Division I victories. His need to harpoon the whale landed him a job at Texas Tech – one of basketball’s outposts – in the spring of 2001.

When Knight was hired, I pitched a story that I believed was worthwhile. A famous recording of a profane locker room rant had been floating around and I had a copy. In late January of the 1991-92 season Knight had cussed out his players in the locker room. Even with the “expletive deleted” editing, the editors declined to include the story in our coverage. (It was not the first or last time I disagreed with a decision by my bosses.) Here’s the word-for-word transcript of the 90-second “pep” talk:

“If you don’t wanna play then I’m gettin’ the fuck outta here. I mean, if you’re not gonna recover Greg Graham, if you’re just gonna let him drive by ya, if the rest of ya gonna let him catch the ball outside the 3-second lane and drive all the way in here without one guy challengin’ him, then I’m leavin’ and you fuckin’ guys will run until you can’t eat supper. Now I’m tired of this shit. I’m sick and fuckin’ tired of an 8-10 record. I’m fuckin’ tired of losin’ to Purdue. I’m not here to fuck around this week. Now you may be, but I’m not. Now I’m gonna fuckin’ guarantee you that if we don’t play up there Monday night you ain’t gonna believe the next four fuckin’ days. Now I am not here to get my ass beat on Monday. You better fuckin’ understand that right now. This is absolute fuckin’ bullshit. I’ll fuckin’ run your ass right in the ground. I’ll fuckin’ run ya … you’ll think last night was a fuckin’ picnic. I’ve had to sit around for a fuckin’ year with an 8-10 record in this fuckin’ league and I mean you will not put me in that fuckin’ position again or you will goddamned pay for it like you will not fuckin’ believe. Now, ya better get your head outta your ass.”

Most coaches yell at and curse at their players. The reason I felt it worthwhile to transcribe and print Knight’s tirade was it illustrated his anger and selfishness. The pronouns “I” and “me” and “you” were used over 30 times and “we” just once. That distinction between the coach and the team tells more than the X-rated language. It was all about Knight and it explained the type of coach Texas Tech had hired.

Knight’s move to Texas coincided with the Star-Telegram hiring Danny Robbins. In previous stops at the Dallas Times Herald and Houston Chronicle, Robbins had struck fear into college programs with his investigative reporting that exposed NCAA violations. If there was dirt to be dug, Robbins had the biggest shovel.

Robbins started an excavation site in Lubbock. A few weeks after the end of the 2002 season, the Star-Telegram published a story based on open-record requests. Knight’s son Tim, an assistant athletic director at Tech, had sent school merchandise to The General’s Store in Indianapolis, operated by his mother. The school determined that Tim Knight had not broken any laws, but he had violated policies and procedures; he claimed it was a swap of merchandise, not a monetary transaction.

Robbins’ story was thinner than two-ply toilet paper. The facts were there, the reporting was solid but at most Tim Knight had been guilty of jaywalking. It was a non-story but for the fact he was Bob Knight’s son.

The story was published on Friday, April 12. Glorious timing. Bob Knight – who had led the Red Raiders to an NCAA Tournament bid in his first season – was speaking to a group of Texas Tech boosters Friday afternoon in Dallas and then that evening was scheduled to be at a book signing event in Denton (a town about 30 minutes north of Dallas) for his autobiography “Knight: My Story.” I was planning to attend and interview people who showed up to meet The General.

At the alumni event, Knight trashed Robbins’ story. The Associated Press quoted him as saying “You can’t find a better example of more inaccurate information being put in a newspaper.”

That comment challenged our reporting. My story assignment changed from a mundane exercise into a high-noon showdown. I was instructed to ask Knight to clarify his statement and explain what he thought was inaccurate in Robbins’ story.

When I arrived, the bookstore was empty to prepare for the event and a line was already forming outside. The store employees let me in; apparently, they had no idea that Knight’s hatred of reporters would be turned up to 11.

I was told Knight was in a back room and pointed to an entrance where he would appear. When I saw him coming, I was in one aisle of books and he started walking in the next one over. Unlike our first face-to-face encounter in November 1975, this promised to be a contentious confrontation.

I quickly moved to intercept him. Knight was about halfway down the aisle, walking with his head down, ambling like John Wayne. Then he looked up and saw me.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growled. “Don’t even think about talking to me about that crap that was in the paper this morning. I’m just telling you that.”

I didn’t try to take the charge and Knight walked past me. I asked him what parts of the story were inaccurate and he answered, “That’s the worst piece of garbage I’ve seen in my coaching career.”

My editors had told me that Texas Tech officials had not questioned the accuracy of the story, so I fired my last shot by asking him to comment on that fact.

By this time, Knight was behind the table where he would be signing books. He turned to one of the bookstore employees and said, “I’d like to do this privately or we’re not going to have this signing.”

I certainly didn’t want to ruin everybody’s fun. I left the store, went to my car and called Robbins to dictate my quotes. He and I shared the byline for the story that appeared in Saturday’s paper.

My duty was done, and I had served admirably. I also had a copy of Knight’s book. I decided to get in line with the other autograph seekers. Once I got closer to the signing table, I could see that Knight was being handed a book, signing it, then handing it back to the owner.

When it was my turn, the helper took my book, then passed it to Knight. He signed and then looked up and saw me, mumbling, “Yeah … fuck, whatever.”

There was an option for those who wanted it personalized. They were handing out sticky notes and you could write the name you wanted Knight to dedicate with his signature. I still regret I didn’t put “Myles” (for Myles Brand) so that Knight would have signed “To Myles. Bob Knight.” That might have fetched a bit of legal tender if posted on eBay.

Knight finally chased down Smith’s all-time victories record and then midway through the following season retired. But isn’t it ironic that Mike Krzyzewski, the student who surpassed the teacher, has blown past Knight and has won more games than any coach will ever win?

There’s no doubt that Bob Knight was a great basketball coach but had difficulties functioning as a human being. He was petty, abusive, selfish and boorish … just to name a few shortcomings. Knight finished with 902 victories in 42 seasons but for over half of those seasons, Knight’s teams were known more for their coaches’ tantrums and tirades than for basketball success.

Bob Knight, the coach, chased the perfect game. He demanded his players play with precision and discipline, to respect the game. Bob Knight, the man, failed to exhibit the self-control he asked of his players. For all his basketball accomplishments and all the praise that engendered, any honest assessment of Robert Montgomery Knight is that he is a myopic hypocrite.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Tales, All True

A collection of short stories, anecdotes, information and tasty tidbits.

+++

After we left the farm outside of Columbia, my father spent most of his time as a truck driver. One of his employers was in Sedalia, about an hour west of Columbia. After he returned from long-haul assignments, my mom and I would often drive there to pick him up.

Behind the headquarters building was a small grass airstrip and the company had a single-engine Piper Cub. On trips to pick up dad, 8-year-old me would often walk out to look at the plane. I was fascinated with flying. On one trip to pick up my dad, the plane’s pilot was in the office and I bugged my dad to ask him if he would give me a flight. My dad gave the pilot $20 for what was to be a takeoff, half circle and landing.

When we climbed in the plane, the pilot asked me to “help” him with the pre-flight check list. Right after takeoff, I told him I recognized (from seeing it in my encyclopedia) the instrument called the attitude or horizon indicator. It shows if the plane is turning, climbing, or descending. He apparently was impressed because after we leveled off, he asked if I wanted to take the control yoke in front of me and “fly” the plane.

I couldn’t see over the top of the control panel but by watching the horizon indicator I followed his instructions to bank left, right and then climb (slightly). He had me make a turn that brought us back over the airstrip. What was supposed to be a couple of minutes in the air ended up being a 15-minute flight.

I started dreaming about becoming a pilot but that never came close to happening.

+++

With no car to drive (my parents couldn’t afford to add me to the insurance for the family car), I didn’t get my license until I was 18 the summer after I graduated. I passed the driving test in our Buick, an automatic. Then I had to learn how to drive a stick shift after I bought my first car. I paid Mitch Moore, a junior at Hickman, $150 for a 1967 red Volkswagen “beetle.”

The picture is not of my car but of a 1967 VW that closely resembled the clunker I bought.

In December of 1972 I decided to make a road trip. Jim McLeod, our basketball coach, had left Hickman after my senior year. He had been a smoker and had developed a bad case of emphysema. He and his wife moved to El Paso for the warmer, drier climate.

From Columbia, Mo., it’s just over 1,000 miles to El Paso. I drove to Tulsa and spent the night in a cheap motel. The next day, I drove 13 hours and over 800 miles to complete the journey.

That second day of the trip I had my first car incident. The VW has its engine in the back and its gas tank was under the front hood. I got gas that morning at a full-service station and the attendant didn’t completely latch the hood. Soon after pulling on to the Interstate, as I was passing a slow-moving semi, the hood snapped open and back, blocking my view through the windshield. I had enough vision to let the semi pass and get off the road. The hood’s hinges were sprung but I was able to close it and wire it shut.

The second “incident” occurred on my trip home. I was zipping along I-44 in Oklahoma when the VW’s engine seized up – oil leak. It was dead. I managed to find a tow truck guy who was willing to haul me and the VW home. He was a typical Okie and the conversation in the truck’s cab was limited – especially after he picked up his “girlfriend” about 40 miles into the trip. My mom was able to withdraw the cash to pay him and we were able to get a new engine installed.

Perhaps the VW was cursed. In the fall of 1973 when I was driving back from covering a high school football game, I was on a two-lane highway. I could see a couple of school buses approaching. After the first bus passed, sparks flew from the back left wheel assembly of the second bus and one of its tires popped off.

The tire took two hops and then bounced off my front hood, leaving a big dent. Six inches higher and it might have crashed into the windshield. I was shaken but unhurt.

The VW died shortly after starting my first job in Hannibal. The clutch blew out. My mom and I decided that it wasn’t worth another big repair. She co-signed on my first new car, a yellow Volkswagen “super” beetle. I recounted the purchase in my daily journal and wrote about the pressure of making good in a new job.

Over 20 years later, I had my most serious automobile incident. It happened on Sept. 10, 2001 (an easy date to remember considering what happened the next day).

I was driving my Toyota Camry and headed to the office in Fort Worth for a weekly meeting to discuss college football coverage for that week. I was driving about 70 mph in the far-left lane on I-635. A tanker truck was entering LBJ off south-bound I-35. I didn’t pay much attention until it started skidding across three lanes toward me. It was like an action movie scene.

I slammed on the brakes, but the semi bumped me into the cement median wall. I bounced off that and my car started swerving right. I was headed under the tanker trailer, which by now had straightened out, but then the back tires of the trailer smacked the front of my car and it bounced off that collision. Somehow, I completed a near 360 and my car ended up facing the concrete media wall.

Airbag: deployed. Car: totaled. Injuries: Slight scrape on left forearm from the air bag.

+++

If you know who Skip Bayless is, you have my sympathies. Over the last 15 years, Bayless has become a regular on ESPN and FOX Sports “debate” shows (aka “yell fests”). In 2016, Bayless signed a four-year, $25 million contract with FOX to co-host “Undisputed.”

(If the show’s name is “Undisputed,” then why the hell do Bayless and Shannon Sharpe argue about everything?)

When I came to Dallas in 1981, Bayless was the Morning News’ star sports columnist. He had been hired in 1979 at the age of 26.

My friend Dan Barreiro had joined the DMN before me and we had played a lot of pickup basketball together when we worked in Atlanta. His apartment complex there had an outdoor court and on weekends there were half-court games when the weather allowed.

A few months after I had moved to Dallas, Dan called me. Bayless had access to Moody Coliseum, SMU’s basketball court, and liked to play 3-on-3 on Sundays. Dan told me that Bayless was obsessed with making the games competitive and balanced. He told me Bayless had asked for a scouting report on my game before he would allow me to participate.

I played Bayless Basketball one time. There was a radio guy named Chris Arnold who matched up with Dan and a couple of bigger guys whose names I don’t recall. Bayless and I ended up guarding each other.

According to his Wikipedia page, Bayless was on the junior varsity at Oklahoma City’s Northwest Classen High where he averaged 1.7 per game. I had been a basketball manager for three years at Hickman High School. Advantage: ?.

We played about 3 hours of half-court 3-on-3, games to 15, make it, take it. Bayless and I were about the same age, about the same height and our skills were about equal. We were above average pickup players. The afternoon produced more sweat than memorable anecdotes, but every game was a battle royal cage match.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be in a waiting room somewhere when Bayless is blathering on “Undisputed,” just remember this: Before he consented to allow a work colleague play in a pickup game, he demanded a scouting report to ensure a balanced contest.

+++

One of my “accomplishments” in my time at the Columbia Daily Tribune was acquiring a pseudonym.

Back in the days when readers would write letters instead of sending email screeds or posting Twitter rants, I received a letter addressed to Weldon Barnhouse.

One of my smart aleck young colleagues saw the envelope. I became “Weldon.” My “new” first name then developed into a saying. After one of my stories or columns was published, one of my colleagues would say, “Well done, Weldon.”

A few weeks later a letter arrived addressed to Wendell Bainbridge.

From then on, I was “Weldon Bainbridge.”

+++

Noting unusual or lyrical names became a hobby. My old Columbia Daily Tribune colleague Jack Guthrie, who was from Iowa, loved to talk about the unbelievable name of an Iowa all-state girls basketball player – Fonda Dicks. Damned if it wasn’t a true story. Google Fonda Dicks, if you like.

In the early 1980s, I started keeping a list of names I liked and my research was enhanced when my college basketball interest led me to reading the “Street & Smith” preview magazine. I started included a page of “All-American Names” I had compiled for that season when I did my annual NCAA Tournament rankings. David Casstevens, one of the Morning News’ sports columnists, saw my list and wrote a column about it in March of 1983. My list grew to 100s of names. A random selection of favorites:

Anicent Lavadrama … Cornelius President … Minus Adams … Ivan Minus … Haskell Stanback … Bubba Bean … Alphonso Flyingcloud Jr. … Northern Shavers … Razor Shines … Denormus O’Kain … Guppy Troup … Shooty Babbitt … Orlando Six … Fair Hooker … Dexter Feaster … Fennis Dembo … Memo Reyes … Spencer Sunstrom … Ollie Hoops … Enndy Basquiat (sounds like “in the basket”) and, of course, the immortal Dick Trickle (a race car driver).

+++

A case of mistaken identity once led to an embarrassing locker room encounter. While working in Quincy, I traveled to Hannibal to cover an ABA pre-season game between the St. Louis Spirits and the Memphis Sounds. These were two pro basketball teams playing in a high school gym, a wild scene that got weird after the game.

I had read that the Spirits had a rookie forward named Gus Gerard who had been impressive in practices and pre-season games. After the game, I went into the locker room intending to interview Gerard. I “found” my interview subject and start asking him questions about how he had impressed the team with his rebounding, hustling, diving for loose balls, taking charges. He answered the questions politely but as the interview went on, I got the impression something was wrong.

Then he stood up and he wasn’t much taller than me, maybe about 6-foot-4. Gus Girard was 6-foot-8. I had been interviewing the wrong player. I mumbled “uh, thanks for your time” and withdrew. I wound up talking to the Spirits’ coach and writing a generic “team” feature.

I can’t remember the mystery player’s name but the next day the team cut a 6-foot-4 guard. I’m pretty sure his last interview as a St. Louis Spirit was with a young sportswriter who didn’t know who he was.

+++

In 1974 when I was living in Quincy, I purchased a paperback book. The cover was an illustration of a buxom cheerleader straddling an oversized football as if it was a horse. The name of the book was “Semi-Tough” and I thought it was about, ya know, football.

A few pages into reading, I realized I had entered a fictional sports world that soon captivated me. It was the first book written by Dan Jenkins, a legendary sportswriter who had grown up and started his newspaper career in Fort Worth. His humorous writing style led him to Sports Illustrated, where his prose helped reinvent the profession and move it from its somewhat staid and often hero-worshipping rut.

“Semi-Tough” was a revelation for a young man starting his career and his understanding of life. Jenkins’ take on the NFL was truer to life that I could imagine, featuring sex, drugs and profanity. He would go on to write dozens of books. I read them all even though many were derivative. Jenkins played a lot of the same music, but it was like listening to Sinatra sing the same five songs. Whether the topics were life, football, or golf, no one was better than Dan Jenkins.

Jenkins profiled Joe Namath for Sports Illustrated when the Jets quarterback was at the height of his Broadway Joe stardom. His opening paragraph describing a most-eligible bachelor scoping out the young lovelies in a bar deserved a chef’s kiss.

Stoop-shouldered and sinisterly handsome, he slouches against the wall of the saloon, a filter cigarette in his teeth, collar open, perfectly happy and self-assured, gazing through the uneven darkness to sort out the winners from the losers.

A toast – his favorite libation, a “young Scotch” – to the great Dan Jenkins.

One of life’s ironies is that I spent most of my career in Fort Worth, the hometown Jenkins often wrote about in his novels. Jenkins, who passed away in March of 2019, moved from Florida back to his hometown in the early 2000s. Knowing the likelihood that he would be reading my stories in the Star-Telegram became a specter peering over my shoulder as I wrote. At times, I found myself trying to imitate Jenkins’ style. Fortunately, that only lasted for a couple of stories as I realized my efforts were pitiful at best. It wasn’t the first time I’d emulated Jenkins.

Soon after I had read “Semi-Tough,” I was covering Quincy Catholic Boys’ football team as it made a run in the inaugural Illinois high school football playoff. The Raiders reached the semifinals before losing. The two main characters in Jenkins’ book, Billy Clyde Puckett and “Shake” Tiller had lost their state championship game and Tiller had described that defeat: “Hell, we all cried. You can take your wars and your starvation and your fires and your floods, but there’s no heartbreak in life like losing the big game in high school.”

No doubt there were some puzzled Herald-Whig readers when I started my story about the game with that quote. (Jenkins’ characters also frequently used the Texas term “sumbitch” and I received strange looks from my friends and colleagues when it popped up in conversations.)

Early in his career, Jenkins started writing about legendary golfer Ben Hogan. Colonial Country Club became the home course for Hogan and Jenkins (an above-average golfer himself). The venue hosts a PGA Tour event each year and the Colonial likes to schmooze local media by hosting a scramble tournament a month or so before the pro tour comes to town. I was able to play in it a few times and on one of those occasions Jenkins was at the club for lunch. He was in the buffet line next to me, and I introduced myself.

“Yeah, I know who you are. You’ve got the best job there is, covering college football. You do good work.”

I would have been perfectly happy had my career ended on the spot. The great Dan Jenkins knew who I was and approved what I was writing. He then asked if I had seen the Colonial’s new “Hogan Room” and proceeded to give me a private tour. We had lunch once at the club. Now that he’s gone, I cherish those few moments with him and wish there had been more.

This is from Jenkins’ book, “Baja Oklahoma.” What writer wouldn’t envy the wit and wisdom displayed in The 10 Stages of Drunkeness?

  • Witty & Charming.
  • Rich & Powerful.
  • Benevolent.
  • Clairvoyant.
  • F*ck Dinner.
  • Patriotic.
  • Crank up the Enola Gay.
  • Witty & Charming, Part Two.
  • Invisible.
  • Bulletproof.

+++

To honor the 150th anniversary of college football, ESPN.com asked several writers (including me) to vote on a number of categories. One was the top 150 games in the sport’s history.

In ESPN’s final tally, I covered No. 7 (Texas-USC in the BCS title game in the 2006 Rose Bowl), No. 19 (Oklahoma-Boise State in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl) and No. 25 (Ohio State-Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl), No. 34 (USC-Notre Dame, the “Bush Push” game in 2005), No. 66 (Nebraska-Texas 2009 Big 12 Championship), No. 69 (Nebraska-Missouri 1997 “Fleakicker”), No. 72 (Texas Tech upsetting No. 1 Texas in Lubbock, 2008), No. 101 (No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Michigan, 2006), No. 102 (No. 1 Florida, No. 2 Florida State, 1996), No. 105 (No. 2 Kansas State beating No. 11 Nebraska in 1998), No. 116 (No. 1 Florida State vs. No. 2 Virginia Tech in the 2000 BCS title game in the Sugar Bowl).

In about 20 years covering college football, being at 11 of what are considered the top 150 games is a decent percentage.

+++

This is the first of two yarns involving two of those games. In 1998, Kansas State had a magical season and came within an overtime loss in the Big 12 championship game of playing in the first Bowl Championship Series title game.

The second-ranked Wildcats’ 40-30 victory over Nebraska, the defending national champions, boosted K-State to No. 1. Quarterback Michael Bishop, who was a Heisman Trophy finalist, had a marvelous game, but coach Bill Snyder didn’t allow Bishop to attend the post-game interview session.

However, Snyder allowed Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated access to interview Bishop. When I heard about that, I decided to file an “official” complaint. The following Monday, I wrote a letter to Snyder. My main theme was that the coach had a right to withhold Bishop from interviews but that it was unfair and a double standard to allow a national writer to have the access but bar others – especially local and regional writers who had been covering the team for years.

About 30 minutes after faxing the letter, my phone rang. “I have coach Snyder for you,” a voice told me. “Great,” I thought, “here it comes.”

Instead the tirade I expected, Snyder calmly told me that he appreciated what I had written and that I was correct. He said he realized he had been wrong and unfair and that for the remainder of the season, Bishop would be available for post-game interviews.

Bill Snyder had a great career at Kansas State, taking over the worst program in the nation and building it into a consistent winner. What impressed me the most was how he handled my “letter to the editor.” For the next 20 years, we had a professional relationship of mutual respect.

+++

Yarn No. Two: Boise State’s overtime upset of Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl is legendary. The Broncos’ opportunity for a massive upset and an undefeated season appeared gone when the Sooners scored 15 points in 24 seconds, with a pick six giving OU a 35-28 lead with 62 seconds remaining. Boise State tied the game with seven seconds to play on a 50-yard hook-and-lateral and then won in overtime – the TD was a halfback pass, the winning 2-point conversion a Statue of Liberty hand off.

I was covering the game, which was a week before the Florida-Ohio State BCS title game. Oklahoma junior running back Adrian Peterson was playing what was expected to be his final game before declaring for the NFL Draft. I was writing a story on the game and a column about Peterson’s career.

With the Sooners’ trailing late in the game, I made my way from the press box to the field. I was hoping to catch Peterson for a quick quote or two before he headed to the locker room. As I was stepping on the field, Oklahoma took the lead with the interception return. My game story, which had focused on David stoning Goliath, needed a rewrite.

I needed a flat surface to deploy my laptop so I could work. The best I could do was the top of a large trash can that was about waist high. Bill Hancock, who is now the executive director of the College Football Playoff, still chuckles when he recalls seeing me standing next to a flat-topped garbage can, typing away.

The story needed yet another rewrite when Boise State emptied its bag of tricks for a “can-you-believe-it?” victory. Neither my column nor my game story, both deadline rush jobs, had any quotes and were just above – you guessed it – garbage level.

+++

The relationship between writers and the desk editors who would read and edit their stories is often a rocky marriage; any slight can lead to heated, um, discussions. Mix in some deadline pressure and the conversations regarding an editing change can result in raised voices and sailor language. When writers gather to chug adult beverages, the stories of these writer-editor conflicts are a frequent topic.

Mark Blaudschun, who has spent five decades writing about college sports, was at the Dallas Morning News in the 1980s. The DMN, in an effort to improve itself, had hired a “writing coach” named Paula Larocque. She produced a regular newsletter in which she expressed her opinions and critiques about writing and word usages. (As you can imagine, most of the sportswriters developed vision issues from their eyeballs rolling.)

Blaudschun had covered an Oklahoma football game. The Sooners were in one of their stretches of dominance and Mark decided to make his lead a takeoff on a song from the Broadway hit about the state: “Oklahoma, where the wins come sweepin’ down the plain …”

Larocque had decreed that “win” was a verb, not a noun, and shouldn’t be used as a noun. The editor working on Blaudschun’s story had read the memo.

The next morning, Blaudschun picked up his Sunday copy of the DMN to read his story. “Oklahoma, where the victories come sweepin’ down the plain …”

In 1996, I was in Lexington, Ky., to cover the NCAA Tournament Southeast Regional final. Mississippi State had surprised Cincinnati to reach the Final Four. After writing a game story, I was rushing to put together a regional wrap up/Final Four preview column.

Mississippi State’s Final Four opponent was Syracuse (nickname then, Orangemen, now Orange). Jackie Sherrill, the former Texas A&M coach, was then coaching the Bulldogs’ football team. Four seasons earlier, before his team had played former rival Texas, Sherrill had his players view the castration of a bull. That was Sherrill’s way of telling his players they were gonna castrate the Longhorns.

This was one of my “clever” bullet-point items riffing on Final Four story lines: “Perhaps Mississippi State football coach Jackie Sherrill can provide a pep talk before Saturday’s semifinal with Syracuse. He’s familiar with all sorts of motivational techniques. Maybe he could fire up the Bulldogs by castrating an orange.”

After filing my story, I was packing up and ready to leave an empty media work room at Rupp Arena. I called the office to make sure all was good (this was before cell phones, and it was always good to check in, especially in this case considering I had a 90-mile drive to my hotel). “Any questions for me?”

I then found myself on the phone with an editor who had worked on my column. He didn’t agree with my Sherrill comment, arguing that “you can’t castrate an orange.” While that is a true statement, I was flabbergasted that he wanted to remove it because it wasn’t “accurate.” We argued for five minutes about humorous writing and literal vs. figurative. In the end, I successfully defended my case and the clever(?) paragraph survived.

+++

Newspapers live forever with the archives either digitized or on microfilm. Printed mistakes live forever; one advantage of the digital age is that stories can be updated, and mistakes corrected online.

In the back shop at the Hannibal Courier-Post, there was a large front page headline that was supposed to read “Throngs cheer leaders.” The guy pasting up the page had removed the space and made it “cheerleaders.” Luckily it was caught by the editor before printing, otherwise there would have been a “Throngs cheerleaders” headline for a story about Nixon visiting China.

At the Quincy Herald-Whig, we hired a young guy named David Bruns as a sportswriter. He turned out to be a great news side reporter, but he came to us with limited sports knowledge and was a bit naive about how the world worked.

One Saturday, Bruns had been assigned to layout the Sunday sports pages. In June of 1976, Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley, a man who lived by his own rules, sold two of his best players to Boston and another one to the Yankees, gaining about $2.5 million in revenue. Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn blocked the deals, sending Finley into a frenzy. (Bowie Kuhn’s name was pronounced “Boo-ee Kyoon” but his last name was often mispronounced “coon.”)

I happened to drop by the office and saw the partial paste up of one of the sports pages. Bruns was running a wire story about Finley’s flap with the commissioner. His headline was “Oakland’s Finley to go Kuhn hunting.” I explained why he needed to rewrite the headline. David was a country boy who thought hunting (ra)coons was no big deal and not in the least bit racist.

Writers love editors with sharp eyes and sharper minds. The advent of computers and spell check plus the downsizing of staff has led to fewer editors editing more stories resulting in more “slap your forehead” mistakes.

An excellent editor reads for meaning and content, not just to correct spelling and punctuation. Spell check fails if a writer’s brain freeze leads him to type “won” when he should have typed “one.”

Some examples of printed errors that an experienced editor might have caught:

  • The commencement program for the University of Texas had this unfortunate mistake on its cover page: “The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Pubic Affairs.”
  • In a newspaper story, this sentence appeared: “Butt cracks appeared in Lamb’s public persona.”
  • A music review reported on a band’s performance with the phrase “Eric Lyday was on drugs.” Maybe so. Who knows? But he was playing drums.
  • A correction was printed regarding a recipe with the wrong ingredient. “The correct ingredient is 2 tsp of cilantro, not 2 tsp of cement.”
  • Another correction involved a bloody Mary recipe. The original print version called for 36 ounces of vodka, 12 ounces of tomato juice. The correct ratio was 36 ounces of tomato juice, 12 ounces of vodka. No doubt some folks were happy to go with the first version.
  • In the august New York Times: “Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the given name of President Trump’s first wife. It is Ivana, not Ivanka.” (An honest mistake? Or an intentional dig at The Donald?)
  • An incorrect headline is one of the most egregious errors because the mistake is big and bold. One of the most infamous headline errors occurred when the Chicago Tribune, facing an early deadline and going off incomplete results, printed its front-page, banner “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline in the 1948 Presidential election.
  • And sometimes there’s just that unfortunate combo of two headlines on different stories that when placed next to each other elicit a laugh or at least a chuckle. The Dallas Morning News stumbled into that trap in its sports section when a story about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones having surgery ran next to a story about the NFL considering the use of new footballs. This can’t be entirely blamed on an editor, but the final product provided a classic for the archive.

+++

Of all the mistakes, of all the poor taste, of all the need for an editor to say, “Nope, not on my watch,” the following hard-to-be-believe example wraps up this chapter.

On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1963 – six days after President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas – No. 1 Texas played at underdog Texas A&M. The traditional rivalry game was always played on turkey day and went on as scheduled despite the recent national tragedy. The Longhorns, who went on to finish 11-0 and win the national championship, avoided a historic upset with a 15-13 come-from-behind victory.

Lou Maysel was sports editor of the Austin American-Statesman. This his game story’s opening paragraph:

COLLEGE STATION – Tommy Wade, anonymous as a secret service agent this season, stepped in and foiled an assassination plot that almost took the life of another of America’s No. 1 citizens, The University of Texas football team, here Thursday.

Too soon? Uh, yeah. How about never?

Wade was UT’s third-string quarterback and he put together the game-winning drive that produced the go-ahead touchdown.

It wasn’t just Maysel’s lead that was wildly inappropriate. Later in the story he referred to the Aggies’ game plan as an “assassination plot” and that Texas A&M’s quarterback drew the “sniper’s role” and he “needed only three shots before he apparently had the Longhorns mortally wounded.”

My guess is that the American-Statesman sports desk might have had its third-string editors on duty (it was Thanksgiving, after all), plus editing – or, in this case, significantly changing – the sports editor’s copy takes cojones. But this highly inappropriate story will live in the archives forever.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Family Matters

Perhaps there are subliminal and/or psychological reasons why I’ve waited until Chapter 16 before diving into family history. Amateur shrinks can analyze and conclude what they wish based on why I wrote about my career and my profession before tackling this.

I don’t consider my childhood and upbringing as particularly traumatic or dreadful. It also wasn’t Beaver Cleaver. My sister Linda was born when I was 13. I suspect that my parents’ decision to have another child was a final attempt to salvage a marriage that was worn and frayed. Despite having a sibling, I grew up as an only child. I would have had an older sister, but my parents’ first child Patricia Ann died soon after birth. It’s just another of life’s “what ifs.” Would an older sister have changed my childhood and our family dynamic?

Dorothy and Harold Barnhouse.

How you’re raised and how you grow up plays a huge role on the person you become. My upbringing asserted itself in different phases at different times of my life. My journey to becoming a man has been ongoing, with typical twists and turns often influenced by the experiences of my childhood.

Because I was on my own with a full-time job at 19, in many ways that classified me as an “adult.” I was far from being a “grown up,” I spent most of my life “growing up.” I don’t think I fully qualified as an adult male until I married Paula. Under oath, she might testify that designation didn’t apply until the last decade or so.

My parents didn’t divorce until I left home; I credit my mother with keeping the family together until I could fast break into my career. I wasn’t raised in a “broken home,” but there were pieces and jagged edges in our family that kept me on alert and stepping carefully.

Harold Barnhouse was an alcoholic; he mostly hit the bottle on weekends. Sometimes he’d get drunk and sleep. Sometimes he’d get drunk and raise hell. One of my earliest memories occurred in DeSoto. I was five and playing down the street. My father wanted me home. He chased me, swatting my behind with a “switch” while some neighbors watched. The switch incident ended in our living room with my mom arguing with my dad and Harold threatening to pour gasoline on the couch and set it on fire. There weren’t any “Leave It To Beaver” episodes like that.

My father’s inconsistent behavior wasn’t easy for his son to decipher. During the week when he was at home and sober, all was well. Over the last dozen or so years I lived at home, most of his jobs involved truck driving; he would be gone maybe half the time. The absence offered peace, quiet and relative normalcy.

The summer when I was eight, I accompanied him on one of his driving trips in his company semi. I remember writing down the towns we passed through as we moved through eastern Missouri, then Illinois and Indiana. That’s all I recall from should have been a memorable trip. Harold wasn’t big on talking and I was left to my imagination as the miles rolled by.

When he was home, one of his favorite hangouts was a bar/pool hall in downtown Columbia. More than a few times he’d take me with him. I’d sit at the bar and eat a hamburger with a glass of chocolate milk while he drank beer and shot pool.

When I was at the Star-Telegram, I went to Columbia to write a story on the Missouri basketball team when Norm Stewart was the coach. After our late-morning interview, Stewart and his staff took me to lunch. “Ever been to Booches?” No, I answered. When we walked in, I realized Booches was my dad’s old hangout. It has become a well-known Columbia gathering place featuring their griddle cooked greasy-but-delicious burgers. That lunch was one crazy flashback.

Harold Barnhouse at his last job in Columbia.

His last job when we lived in Columbia was making deliveries around the state for the Missouri Farmers Association. Occasionally on Saturdays I’d go to the office/warehouse with him and help fill orders to make a few bucks. He would make two trips a week, usually being at home on Wednesday night.

In my high school years as his weekend drinking became more consistent and his moods more inconsistent, I was fortunate to have an escape. One of my best friends was Ken Scruggs, who lived across the street on Texas Avenue. Ken’s mom, dad, older brother and younger sister always welcomed me in their home, offering stability and normalcy. If my dad was home ranting, I never felt guilty that I was leaving my mom and younger sister to face it. It was self-preservation on my part.

Despite his drinking, Harold did at least provide a steady income that was supplemented by my mom’s hard work. My father’s drinking didn’t lead to violence or physical abuse (at least any that I witnessed). He favored yelling empty threats. As I got older, there were times when I felt the need to step in when the arguments got heated. One time I was holding a baseball bat and shaking with rage as he yelled at my mom. He backed down so I didn’t have to take a swing.

His favorite whiskey was Seagram’s 7 Crown. I can remember the brown bottle and the embarrassment when a friend and I would be in our garage looking for something and find a bottle he had hidden. Finding one wasn’t hard; there were always several bottles. He liked to mix it with Squirt, a soft drink that came in a green bottle. Harold also drank beer; he gave me my first sip, probably when I was about six.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, one Friday night my mom and I went to the grocery store. When we got home, Harold had locked and blocked the doors so we couldn’t get in the house. He had gotten a head start on another lost weekend of drinking and was in one of his “moods.” My mom didn’t have any choice but to drive to her mother’s house in Unionville in northern Missouri, just over a 140-mile drive. I was in the back seat in the dark with my own thoughts. We didn’t go back home until Sunday.

There were occasional Sunday afternoons when he was sober, and we’d drive about 15 miles south of Columbia to the Missouri river bottom. My dad had bought a bolt-action .22 rifle and he’d let me shoot at targets. The fact that an alcoholic who liked to make threats had a gun in our house is now a chilling thought. Again, though, I don’t think he was anything other than a blowhard when it came to violence.

I suppose I adhered to the old saying that “children should be seen and not heard.” Staying out of the way and limiting conversations was the best way to (hopefully) keep the peace. Mostly, we lived apart in the same house. I didn’t ask questions about my parents. I don’t know how or where they met, what their childhoods were like, what hopes and dreams they had while growing up, if my dad had a favorite sports team when he was a kid, what it was like for them before little Wendell showed up.

Harold’s parents were Claude and Mabel Barnhouse and they lived in a small town in north central Missouri. I never met my paternal grandfather. Mabel Barnhouse spent her golden years as a guest of whatever relative would take her in. She often visited us for a couple of months at a time. In the summer of 1969, I kept a diary for a few months. The entry for June 8: “My summer is now ruined, probably. Grandma Barnhouse is here.” While I spent a lot of summer days on my own and enjoyed my independence, my mom was more at ease knowing there was an adult present when Mabel visited.

Mary Dorothy Moore Barnhouse was born on April 21, 1925 in Unionville, a small town not far from where my father was born. Her parents were Sollie and Pansy Moore and she had two sisters and two brothers; I have probably a dozen cousins, none of whom I stayed in contact with. As with my father’s father, I never met my maternal grandfather.

Pansy lived alone in Unionville until her death and we would visit her at least once a year. Mom’s sister Clara Louise and Edwin had a farm a few miles outside of town and they were always part of the visit. My picky appetite – I would gag on vegetables – made the meals at their house uncomfortable. Edwin was a nice man with a growly voice and would always ask me why I didn’t eat my veggies.

I do remember one story from my mom’s youth. When her family was living on a farm outside of Unionville a tornado blew their house off its foundation. The way my mom told it, one second she was looking through the screen door at her mom walking toward the house and when she woke up, my mom was lying in a ditch and the house was gone.

My mom went by her middle name. Dorothy never had more than a high school diploma but nevertheless persevered. I inherited my work ethic from her. Despite the turmoil created by her husband, she worked hard and made sure there was food and the bills got paid. I’m sure there were financial burdens and concerns that she kept to herself. She was far from a saint; in her later years she could bitch and complain with the best, but she never wavered from her responsibilities.

Dorothy worked as a grocery store checker and when we moved from the farm into Columbia, she was hired at the city’s water department handling accounts. I often went to her office after school; the public library was next door, and I would do homework there until she was done with work.

The last two houses we lived in offered me some privacy during my junior high and high school years. First, on Paris Road, I had an upstairs room to myself. On summer weekends, I could climb out a window and sit on the roof listening to Cardinals games on the radio. Our final house on Texas Avenue had a full basement. There was a “playroom” with a television, my bedroom, and a separate half bathroom with a shower. There was a doorway access from my bedroom so I could come and go as I pleased. All my mom asked was that I let her know when I was leaving and when I returned. My last two years of high school, even without a car, I was independent – my mobility was my bike, my legs and getting rides from friends.

In retrospect that independence was self-centered. My mom and sister couldn’t get away if Harold was acting out. I look back and ask myself why I didn’t talk more with my mom, maybe allow her to unburden herself. My guess is she might have gone the stoic route to avoid sharing her troubles with her son. After my bleeding ulcer when I was 15, she was aware that had I known her troubles and doubts, I likely would have worried even more.

A week after I started my job in Hannibal, my dad took the family car and left home. At the same time, the clutch had gone out on my battered VW and we decided its time had passed. My mom and sister were supposed to drive to Hannibal to pick me up and drive me to Columbia to buy a new car. Without the family car, Dorothy had to buy a used car to make the trip. A few days later, Harold came home, humbled. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, but that was just a deal he made to allow him to stay.

Me and mom at Linda’s high school graduation.

A few weeks after that, my mom and Linda left for good, moving to Omaha where Dorothy had a sister. I’m hazy on the details but my dad either lost his job or had hit Linda; maybe both. My mom filed for divorce. She got a job and bought a house. Eventually she got her real estate license to make some extra money. They lived in Omaha until Linda graduated from high school and then Dorothy moved back home to Unionville in 1985.

The last time I saw my father was the night before I left for Hannibal. It was the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend and I just returned from a whirlwind four-day trip to Louisiana with a friend. I was due to start work the next day. My old VW was packed full and I was in a hurry to leave. I don’t remember any sentimental goodbyes, a handshake or a “Good luck, son.” I just drove off into the night.

After I had moved to Quincy, my father somehow got my home phone number and called. He was alone and broke, he was crying and begging for help. I wasn’t sure if he was sober or drunk. I was 20, barely had enough money of my own. I was in no position to help and was scared to do so and apprehensive about complicating my situation with his. That was the last time we talked.

At no point did I regret how the relationship with my father ended. As I advanced in my career over the next 15 years, there was no urge to reconnect. He was in my past and not in my present.

In August 1987, my mother called with the news that Harold had died of emphysema. Paula had to convince me to go to the funeral. He was buried on Sept. 2 in a cemetery near Unionville. The funeral program informed that he “returned to Grinnell (Iowa, where I was born) in 1973. While he was in Grinnell he was employed at Duffy’s Tavern.” Those 15 words are all I know about his final 14 years.

I don’t remember anything about my father’s memorial service. I don’t know if anyone talked to me or if I talked to anyone. The cemetery, which is about 10 miles outside of Unionville, was one we often visited on Memorial Day trips to my grandmother’s; it’s where my older sister and paternal grandparents are buried. The cemetery is located on a hill looking out over farm country. A Ponderosa pine tree stands like a sentinel. The country quiet dominates with only the sounds of cars on the nearby two-lane highway and the wind rustling through the pine. It’s both peaceful and eerie.

Once I was out on my own, friends became more important than family. I wrote and called my friends more than I did my mom. She never hesitated to remind me of the long gaps between communicating. After all, I was a writer who wrote more letters to friends than I did to my mother. I was working a lot, but I had plenty of lonely nights where I would record that day’s thoughts in my journal or write a “short story” about poor, poor pitiful me. Would it have been too much to type up half a page of Wendell News and drop it in the mail? (This clever post card arrived when I was living in Atlanta shows a bit of my mom’s spunky spirit and how she would try to playfully shame me into keeping in touch.)

Dorothy had heart trouble; she smoked for too long and even in her later years would sneak a “forbidden” cig every now and then. In December 1997, she was hospitalized in Columbia and needed heart surgery. I flew to Kansas City and drove to the hospital. I stayed there for a week and once she was cleared to return home. I drove her to Unionville and stayed with her for a few days. (And, of course, I completed the work assignments I had.)

Her heart finally gave out six years later. Linda, who was living in Kansas City, was with her at the hospital in Unionville. In conversations with Linda, it was clear our mother was fading. I chose work over seeing my mother a last time.

I was scheduled to cover the NCAA West Regional in Anaheim which was scheduled for Sunday. I chose work over family. My plan was that when I got back on Monday, I’d fly to Kansas City and drive the two hours to Unionville. My mother, with Linda by her side, passed away that Saturday evening, March 29, 2003 at the age of 77.

Perhaps it was our age gap of 13 years. Or maybe it was because I left home when she was a first grader. Linda and I were always disconnected.

I tried to be an absentee Big Brother when Linda was in high school and after she started college. When she started playing basketball in high school, I sent her a new pair of Converse shoes.

Going through my “archives” to prepare for this book, I read some of the letters she wrote praising me for being a good brother. Perhaps I was in her eyes, but the passage of time and our current status leaves me doubtful.

Linda was one of the bridesmaids when Paula and I got married. A few nights before the wedding, Linda told Paula and I that she was gay. That declaration was not an issue or problem for either of us but it was something that my sister believed she needed to confess or reveal. The timing, though, was odd and particularly distracting for Paul. It felt like Linda was seeking attention when the focus should have been on our wedding. Selfish us, right?

Grandma and Brooks in our den.

After Brooks was born, Paula and I took him to see my mom in Unionville at least half a dozen times and often Linda would drive from Kansas City. Linda and Brooks were a great pair and my mom loved having all of us at her house. We also paid for Dorothy to make trips to visit us in Dallas, but those trips became more difficult as her health deteriorated.

Linda was struggling to find steady work and we helped her financially if she needed it even though the margins were thin for our bottom line. When she and I would talk on the phone, I tried to encourage her but her side of the conversation was often negative and “woe is me.”

When Brooks was eight, Linda asked if he could come visit her in Kansas City. He was excited to make the trip solo trip. By all reports they had a great time. He had just started playing his first guitar and he took it with him so he could show off for his aunt. After Brooks returned home, Linda told us she would keep in touch.

What happened next is a mystery I haven’t tried to solve. When Brooks would email his aunt, they wouldn’t go through or be answered. He tried to call her but only got voice mail. Frankly, I had reached the point that I didn’t want any more sister drama. Neither Paula nor I were happy that Brooks was disappointed and unsure what had happened and why his aunt had “disappeared.”

I have not spoken to my sister in 18 years. I’ve not made any effort to reach out, nor has she. Much like I forgot and ignored by father, my sister has been similarly and figuratively erased. Perhaps there’s equal blame and responsibility but I totally understand if it appears that I’m a callous jerk.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Adulthood, Parenthood

If it’s not already obvious, I am my worst critic and I’ve been hard on myself for much of my life. I totally understand the psychology. My upbringing in a home where calm could be unexpectedly interrupted by a storm likely led me to thinking that it was somehow my fault when serenity disappeared. An urge to “fix” whatever was broken became pervasive.

I never aspired to be perfect, but I aspired to be better, to try not to make the same mistake twice. Inevitably I would repeat mistakes and then beat myself up. Being self-critical, self-analytical and a world-class second-guesser often created mind games where I would replay and overthink decisions and mistakes.

My upbringing also led me to rebel and seethe regarding authority figures, , be they editors, sports officials, or anyone I considered to be a bully.

Digging through some old papers, I came across a page-and-half, single-spaced screed that I had written when Bill Clark was my boss in Columbia. I can’t remember what led me to type out my anger. The summary of the memo explained how I thought that my hard work was unappreciated and that I felt I was being unfairly treated. It was a diatribe of epic proportions. I don’t know if I ever gave it to him. If I did, the fact he didn’t fire me explains how understanding he was.

Defying and blaming authority figures is easily traced to my impotence in dealing with my father’s sway over our household, how his drinking would produce unpredictable situations. Not being in control created a desire to be in control. Even though I often lacked confidence, for most of my career I had unwavering belief that I was right, and the boss was wrong. When the boss didn’t agree, I would simmer and often reach a boil. During my career, I wrote dozens of pointed memos that approached insubordination. I was indeed fortunate that my bosses were understanding and forgiving.

My Don Quixote complex has led me to tilt against figurative windmills for most of my adult life. I rail against figurative windmills. Bullies, unfairness, wrong winning over right, stupidity overwhelming common sense and the rule of law being trampled by crooked politicians are just a few of my trigger points.

With all that going on, the slow process of becoming an adult and a professional paralleled trying to mature emotionally. My early newspaper career accomplishments didn’t supply the emotional nutrients I needed. My independence was a solo performance. I didn’t realize it at the time, but hindsight reminds me the huge chasm between being alone and being lonely. Being on my own at home in Columbia was much different once I got to Hannibal and was truly on my own.

I was keeping a journal of those first few months and my stunted emotional development is evident in so many of the entries. Perhaps half of the writing dealt with work, but the rest involved a quest for female companionship – the painful process of inquiring about a date and then, if successful, leaping to the obvious conclusion … marriage. Reading those pages now, the description of a lovesick puppy dog was borderline pitiful. The exulting phrase “I think I’m in love” appeared way too often.

I was an adolescent seeking an adult-level relationship, about which I had no experience or knowledge. My parents had exhibited no love toward each other, so how the hell was I supposed to know about love? Hell, Forrest Gump knew more than I did.

I had no confidence playing the dating game. I was most definitely not a “playa” in terms of hanging out in bars and meeting women. Striking up a conversation with a stranger was an impossible challenge. I needed women who wore a sign that said, “I like sports.” Even then, I still might not have overcome my nerves and lack of poise.

The 1970s featured the debut of disco and I thought it was great dance music (apologies to the music critics who disagree). I liked to dance, even if I danced like a white boy. The times I spent in places with a dance floor, where pumpin’, thumpin’ music was blasting, I never – NEVER – asked a woman to dance. I feared rejection. The idea of being turned down should have been … so what? who cares? The quote attributed to Wayne Gretzky – “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take” – came along way too late for me.)

While living in Atlanta, I joined a dating service and met a few women. After moving to Dallas, I signed up for the next level – a video dating service. For a fee, you were videotaped answering some questions. The women who members would then be contacted about those men who might be a match. They would view the selected videos. If they OK’d it, the men they selected would come to the office to view that woman’s tape. Then the man would get the woman’s phone number. (“Match maker, match maker, make me a match.”)

That’s how I met Paula Wyman. We started dating in the summer of 1982. Paula had to deal with an immature male who didn’t know what he wanted. We broke up. We dated. We broke up. We dated. We broke up.

A happy couple.

In the summer of 1987, we weren’t dating. My single life still sucked. Women’s intuition led Paula to writing a letter (yeah, we did that in those days) explaining how she believed that we were meant for each other and that she hoped that I felt the same way. I realized that my heart and real emotions were being blocked by foibles and fears – none of which I could accurately identify. Realizing and admitting that I loved Paula was perhaps my first epiphany.

She was living in a duplex in Dallas that her parents owned. Other than a few months in Quincy when I had a roommate, I had been living by myself for nearly 15 years. Her parents weren’t thrilled, but Paula and I decided that if we were going to make our relationship work, the compatibility test would be living together. We cleared that hurdle and Labor Day weekend of 1987, I proposed. When we met with her parents … now, they were thrilled.

We were married on June 25, 1988. About a year later, Paula’s parents helped us with the down payment to buy a house in the summer of 1989. We’ve called 3627 Jubilee Trail home ever since. It’s the longest I’ve lived in one house.

Here’s my limited wisdom about married life. A man is most fortunate when his wife becomes his best friend. Paula and I smooth each other’s rough edges. There have been some rocky patches but usually those have been brought on by outside factors. We don’t deal with or react to situations in the same way. But almost all the time, it’s like a magnet’s positive and negative polls attracting. Sharing is caring and we share the challenges.

I was married at 34 and was on the glide path to landing on the adult runway. The plane didn’t land until Paula and I started talking about having a child. The process of conceiving was difficult and another bonding experience but when the zygotes finally connected, we were on our way to parenthood.

Brooks Alan Barnhouse was born on Nov. 15, 1993. That was about a week after his due date. Paula was in labor for over 10 hours before he deigned to honor us with his presence. His late arrival exhibited the first signs of being stubborn, which I’m sure came from the DNA I contributed.

Experienced parents advise/warn expecting parents how much their lives will change when their first child is born. They’re right, of course. What they can’t fully explain are the many definitions and factors involved with what that change entails.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: It’s Apparent When You’re A Parent

Perhaps because of her teaching background, Paula spent part of her pregnancy studying. One of the books was “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” (the book was made into a movie in 2012). The sequel is “What to Expect the First Year.” The books supplied her with good advice and knowledge. Dear ol’ dad prepared by working and watching sports.

It doesn’t matter how much you study and plan for the most life-changing of events. Experience is earned only by doing. The real-time experience of becoming a parent is like being barefoot in an unfamiliar dark room searching for a light switch and the floor is covered with Lego pieces.

What I came to understand – and cherish – is that there are understandable differences between motherhood and fatherhood and those differences are further emphasized depending on the sex of the child. Carrying a developing embryo in your body for nine months is a female-only experience. How that impacts a woman – physically, emotionally, forever – is something a man can only try to comprehend and understand.

My on-the-job training involved patience and observation. Even with her reading preparation, Paula often had bouts of self-doubt. My role of husband was to be patient, supportive, listen and help her talk through the problems of being a first-time mother. That helped me become a better man and a better husband.

The only guide I had for fatherhood was to not be like my father. Being a better dad than Harold Barnhouse was a low bar to clear.

Paula and Brooks dressed for Easter.

I’m grateful that Paula and I have had a balanced marriage; that meant sharing the responsibilities was not an issue. While I was technically a “stay-at-home” dad, with both of us working we needed childcare during the day. Paula felt more guilty about that than I did but we were able to find great situations for Brooks leading up to the time he started kindergarten. Paula would drop him off in the morning and usually I would pick him up. Paula’s work schedule as a high school counselor was more restrictive than mine. Unless I was out of town, I was available for unscheduled pickups or errands. My extended trips for the football national championship and during March Madness were always a challenge but Paula always managed to deal with my absences.

When Brooks had cholic and was awake in the middle of the night, I let Paula get her rest. I would walk around the house carrying Brooks, gently bouncing him. Sometimes I’d place him in his car seat carrier and set that on the dryer and turn it on so that the vibration might sooth him. I’m not describing examples of “hero ball” – I was being a father. I could sleep in later the next morning while Paula’s alarm buzzed at 5:30 a.m.

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The greatest crisis a family can face is a serious health issue. The bond Paula and I share, our mutual support system, helped us handle a parental nightmare.

Brooks was in kindergarten and for Christmas 1999 one of his presents was a GameBoy. Not surprisingly, he played it for hours, stubbornly trying to climb the levels in whatever game he was playing. He started to complain that he had a sore neck and we assumed that it was from being hunched over the hand-held game.

His pediatrician was Dr. John Foster, a wonderful man and and a better doctor. We had him check up on Brooks, but he found nothing out of order.

When school resumed, there were a few mornings when Brooks threw up. We attributed it to him being nervous about school. (Parents can be self-deceiving in the face of a crisis; Brooks loved school and especially his teacher. He had no reason to have a nervous stomach.)

The last Sunday in January, we got up and prepared for church. Brooks was up and dressed but as mom and dad were getting ready, he got back in bed and went to sleep. This was far from normal behavior. Paula called our pediatrician’s office and it was suggested we visit the emergency room. No more self-deceptions.

Once we got to the hospital, it was the typical long wait in the ER waiting room. Brooks slept with his head on Paula’s lap. When we finally got in the ER, Brooks played his GameBoy and never appeared concerned while sitting on a hospital bed. I called the office; I was supposed to file a college basketball weekend wrap for Monday’s paper. I started crying when I told the editor I wouldn’t be writing because our son was in the hospital awaiting tests.

We waited in a room outside the room where the CAT scan was completed. Paula was on high alert and she noticed the technician calling in some other white coats to look at the pictures. Then a woman in a lab coat came out to tell us that Brooks had a malignant brain tumor.

That news was numbing. Paula was near tears. I went into my “be a rock” mode. Thankfully, a few minutes later another doctor spoke to us and clarified that more information and tests were needed to determine if the tumor was malignant or benign. The CAT scan showed that Brooks had an egg-size mass in his brain but there was no way – NO WAY – to tell if it was malignant or benign. Perhaps the woman had misspoken. I assume she knew the difference between “malignant” and “benign.” Nevertheless, her initial information caused unnecessary panic and stress.

That night we checked into Children’s Medical Center. After an MRI the next day we met with Dr. Bradley Weprin, a pediatric neurosurgeon. He put our minds at ease. Yes, Brooks had a tumor, but he was fairly certain it was benign. Brain and surgery are two of the most terrifying words for anyone, but especially for parents. Benign tumor? OK, good. Brain surgery to remove it? Scary.

Dr. Weprin assured us that he had performed the procedure dozens of times. While there were potential scary side effects – the brain is largely a mystery for science and medicine – Weprin was confident Brooks would recover with minimum issues. The tumor had caused Brooks’ brain to swell and press on his brain stem. That had caused a buildup of spinal fluid. That had led to his stiff neck and nausea.

The operation took place on Wednesday and lasted about 3 hours; Brooks spent that night in recovery and the next afternoon, Brooks was transferred to a room. While groggy and sore, he was talking and nibbling on crackers. The nurses at Children’s are attentive angels. When they wheeled in an Intendo unit, Brooks smiled and started playing. The shifts changed but each nurse encouraged Brooks to return to normal, asking him to keep turning his head back and forth so his neck wouldn’t get stiff.

Sunday, a week after the nightmare began, Brooks was discharged and returned home. Over the next few months, we returned for regular checkups with Dr. Weprin and MRIs to make sure that the tumor had not returned and to assess our son’s recovery. Those visits never raised concerns and they became less frequent. By the time Brooks was 16, he went in the “tube” for the last time.

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Brooks, in a Duke shirt (what else?) working on his mid-range game.

Brooks was walking at seven months. Dad was certain that indicated future promise as an athlete. He was dunking on his first toy basketball goal. On a basketball trip, I made sure to buy him a Duke shirt (that no doubt fueled his current passion for the Blue Devils). Fortunately, when I signed him up for four-year-old soccer at the TownNorth YMCA, I found a team with addresses from our neighborhood. A couple of his teammates remain friends to this day.

Only parents who lack self-awareness lack regrets. Too often when I picked Brooks up from day care I let the television baby sit (thanks, Barney and Blue’s Clues) until Paula got home. We were fortunate that the nearest grade school was excellent and only a few blocks from our house. Through sixth grade at DeGolyer, instead of walking Brooks to school and then walking him home, I picked him up by car. A neighborhood stroll would have been better. Too often I was a push over and failed to use the word “no.”

Those regrets (and others I can’t recall) pale when compared to how I handled the sports/athletics/competition dynamics.

I didn’t become the complete definition of a “Little League Dad,” but I came too damn close. My desire for Brooks to have the support system and the opportunities I lacked overwhelmed my common sense. I forgot that playing sports at his age was about having fun. I never indulged in the fantasy of a college scholarship, but I wanted him to at least be on a team in high school.

Brooks was exposed to a wide variety of sports and opportunities. Tae-kwan-do when he was pre-kinder. Soccer, tee ball, flag football, basketball. When the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup, he got hooked on hockey but after some lessons he realized how challenging it was to skate, much less play the sport.

I coached his tee ball and machine pitch baseball teams. After fourth grade, I coached his team in the Chamber of Commerce league. It did not go well. Brooks had gained some weight and while his skills were solid, his confidence wasn’t. Coaching my son and him playing for his father was a lose-lose situation.

I know this now and I probably knew it then but I should have realized Brooks wasn’t playing for my enjoyment. No matter what sport he played or whatever success he achieved, it wasn’t going to rewrite my “Wonder Years.” My main regret is that I didn’t adopt this simple philosophy: Regardless of the outcome or his performance, after every game I should have asked: “Did you have fun?”

Basketball became his sport of choice. For three consecutive summers he attended a summer overnight camp just north of Austin. Many parents dropped their sons off and returned home. This helicopter dad stayed and watched the practices and the games.

In seventh grade, we found a private coach named Jack and he did wonders for Brooks. He motivated Brooks to improve his diet and lose weight while also sharpening his basketball skills.

His freshman year at Dallas Jesuit, Brooks tried out for basketball and made the “B” team. Again, I was hanging around too much, attending practices (as did some other parents) and helping the coach by keeping stats during games.

Basketball games were my biggest downfall. Remember that ingrained tendency to rail against authority figures? Referees fit that description. Covering hundreds of college basketball games and watching hundreds more on television had made me an “expert.” Intellectually I understand the split-second judgment calls the “zebras” are required to make, but that didn’t keep me from mumbling under my breath at the press table or yelling at the TV in the den.

Those emotions went ballistic when Brooks was playing. Amateur referees working for little pay don’t deserve to be yelled at. I can yell loud and everyone in the gym knew it when I thought there was a bad call against Brooks’ team. Whether he was on the court or on the bench, I’m sure Brooks could hear me. To be fair, I also shouted plenty of encouragement. But the ratio should have been 100% encouragement, 0% yelling at the refs.

That is my biggest regret/embarrassment is that too often I let my competitive fire, my desire to see Brooks and his team succeed, obscure the fact that he was playing a sport we both loved.

All was not negative. One special memory for me was a tournament game his freshman year. His Jesuit Prep team was down double digits. The coach called a play for Brooks to curl around a screen at the top of the key. He made the 3-pointer. The next trip down, the coach called the same play. Same result. Next possession, same play, swish. I was watching each play and as it developed, I knew Brooks was getting an open shot and seeing him make each one added to my goose bumps.

The Jesuit B team won the post-season district tournament, beating a team it had lost to by double digits. I, though, only caught part of the second half. I had gotten so angry and anxious during games that I had stopped attending. Jack, his personal coach, was at the championship game and texted that Brooks and the team were playing great, and I needed to get there.

After his freshman year, Jesuit’s varsity coach had a meeting to discuss the summer program and how hard the players would need to work. Brooks had been taking guitar lessons and becoming more interested in that skill. He and his high school friends were discussing starting a band. Brooks decided that the challenge of classwork, music and the work to keep pace in basketball was too big a load. He decided to drop basketball.

I was disappointed, but in hindsight it was the correct choice. While Brooks wasn’t a starter as a freshman, he was a solid contributor who knew how to play. He was an above average shooter, but he lacked the height to be a shooting guard and a half-step too slow to play point guard (he had the vision and court sense). He understood he would have needed to work his ass off with the best chance he would just make the junior varsity and maybe the varsity as a senior.

While now Brooks looks back and wonders if he could have worked hard and made the team, that hard choice at a fork in the road is part of the maturation process. His four years at Jesuit helped him become a young man much quicker than his father had. Brooks made the right choice. Like most choices, it will always carry the “what if?” question.

If I failed to control myself and my emotions while Brooks competed, my job did provide him with some worthwhile sports memories.

His first Final Four was in San Antonio in 1998 when he was four. Six years later, again in San Antonio, Brooks was in the Alamodome when Duke lost to Connecticut in the semifinals, leaving him in tears. Brooks and Paula made another Final Four trip in 2006 to Indianapolis. We had the time to visit my Quincy Herald-Whig friend Steve Key and his family. Sunday night before the championship game, Paula and I were having dinner with Star-Telegram columnist Ray Buck and his wife. We trusted our 12-year-old to stay in our hotel room. A strong storm/small tornado blew through town and they evacuated guests in the media hotel to the ground floor. We talked to Brooks on his cell phone and the report of his experience was calm and “no big deal.”

Also, at that Final Four, we were at breakfast in the media hotel when I noticed Bill Raftery in the restaurant. I told Brooks to introduce himself. Raftery waved me over and we chatted. Just to let you know what kind of a great man Bill Raftery is, when I saw him at the 2018 Final Four, 12 years later, the first thing he asked me was, “How’s Brooks doing?”

Matt White, Jay Bilas and Brooks at 2008 Final Four.

Two years later was my last Final Four for the Star-Telegram. Brooks and Matt White, one of his middle school basketball teammates, made the trip to San Antonio along with Paula and me. We got them a room next door to us at the hotel; when we checked out on Tuesday, the room service personnel were well compensated and relieved to no longer be trash collectors. Brooks and Matt got to meet Jay Bilas during Friday’s practices and on Monday during the news conference for Hall of Fame inductees, they collected autographs.

One of Brooks’ favorite Duke players was J.J. Redick. In January of 2005 I planned a trip to Tobacco Road to work on several stories. Brooks and I flew in on Thursday and that night sat court side in Raleigh as Duke ran over North Carolina State. I knew the N.C. State sports information director and she was wonderfully nice to give Brooks a credential so we could sit together courtside on press row (no cheering for the Blue Devils) and then attend the post-game news conference.

Jon Jackson, the Duke sports information director, had been a long-time acquaintance. One of the stories I was working on was a profile of Redick. After I interviewed him on Friday, Brooks got to meet his hero and got an autographed photo. Virginia played at Duke Sunday night. I paid for two tickets for Paula and Brooks. Jackson took care of the seats. They were at center court, right behind the scorer’s table, best seats in the house.

When Brooks was visiting prospective colleges the summer before his senior year, Duke was on the list. After the typical tour for prospective students, I got in touch with Jackson and he gave Brooks and I a tour of the new practice facility and trophy room next to Cameron Indoor.

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. Being respectful and building relationships with professionals like Jon Jackson was one of my proud accomplishments and it was gratifying those relationships paid off so Brooks could collect some special memories.

Nurturing and guiding Brooks has been a challenge – not because of him but because of me. The conundrum of growing up is that the only way to do it is … to do it. Wisdom and experience are not plug and play. My knowledge can’t be downloaded to a thumb drive and transferred. And even if I communicate what I know, 90 percent of that is useless unless Brooks experiences it himself. My life has been my life. His life is his life.

Paula and I are both “type A” personalities and early on we joked that Brooks was a “double A.” Raising a child is not raising a building. The blueprint gets erased and redrawn on at least a weekly basis. We’ve each been fortunate to contribute in different ways. Certainly, the road has been bumpy at times. The biggest challenge is watching a failure or a setback – which some of the time you might be able to prevent – because you understand that learning to get up is sometimes the best part of falling down.

Being a parent is part of life and life is an ongoing, unfinished product, a daily process of discovery, disappointment, and joy. We have a running family joke that Brooks is tired of hearing us say that we’re proud of him. But there are often sign posts that indicate we’ve done an acceptable job at the messy task of being parents.

Paula has had a mild case of multiple sclerosis since 2006. Not long after he started working at Turner Construction in Chicago, Brooks told us he was volunteering with National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) and its Associate Board. He’s been a driving force is organizing a fund-raising softball tournament and a winter silent auction gala. Brooks taking it upon himself to work for a charity to combat MS made his mom realize how caring he is regarding his mother’s health.

In the summer of 2020, Brooks was accepted to the Booth School of Management at the University of Chicago. He’s pursuing a masters in business management at Booth, one of the top three schools in the country. We were surprised he was accepted; even Brooks thought he had a 15 percent chance because his college grades were good, not great.

Brooks is continuing to work full-time at Turner. He is ahead of schedule in terms of promotions and is proving to be a valuable employee. He took a computer programming course at Texas and he has added to knowledge with on-line study. Brooks has developed computer programs that Turner has adopted to improve its scheduling processes.

Brooks’ starting salary at Turner was more than what I was earning in my last year at the Star-Telegram. He is well on his way to surpassing what I achieved in my professional career. Before he turns 30, he is setting himself up to have a variety of options for his professional life.

I’m far from an expert, but I’ve come to believe that as a child matures into an adult, what is often a Grand Canyon-sized gap is reduced between the parents and their offspring. As children become adults, they understand their parents might have imparted bits of wisdom along the way.

As Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

A couple of months ago, I had an email exchange with Brooks that included this passage that he wrote.

Brooks’ Turner Construction staff photo, August 2020.

“You once told me to control the things you can control and to hell (with) the rest, or something of that sort. Now granted you probably stole that quote from someone else but who cares. You are at your best when you’re being a father to me in panic or distress or crisis. That is amazing. I mean really, there are times when you can ramble and when you can over help, per say. But something kicks in when I truly need it. What an amazing trait as a father. I know you had some problems with your father growing up. I don’t know if you told me this or if I know it intuitively—probably both—but I have a feeling that your biggest standard for yourself is how you do as a father. That trait is all you need to know.

“I went through a phase where I really, really resented both you and mom as parents. I told myself I was gonna do this and that and the other differently when my time came. Rubbish. We’re not perfect and we all make mistakes and you certainly aren’t perfect and have certainly made mistakes. But you have been amazing parents to me.”

That was unsolicited, unexpected, and uplifting. It confirmed that as parents, we just might have passed the course. Parents are always worrying, although mothers are programmed to worry more than fathers. I will always have my regrets regarding my missteps and miscalculations as a father, but Paula and I have no worries about the kind of person our son has become.

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Final Thoughts

There’s a phrase of uncertain origin – some say it’s a traditional Chinese curse – that sums up our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic:

“May you live in interesting times.”

If it is intended as a curse, then it is a %$#*&-ing great curse. I think we’re overstocked on interesting and sold out of normal (however “normal” is defined).

Pardon me if I get all political up in here as I close out this book. I spent most of my life uninterested in political issues, didn’t vote in elections and was too busy to vet candidates. (My first presidential vote went to Richard Nixon; that didn’t turn out well.) The last few years I’ve read several enlightening books and I’ve had the free time to stay current.

Because journalism has been my profession, people assume I’m a Democrat. More than anything I hate the assumption I’m a liberal. I believe the labels of “liberal” and “conservative” are catch-all clichés that have deepened the divide in our country. My beliefs don’t adhere to labels and don’t fit in boxes. My beliefs are grounded in common sense – a problem because common sense is not common. My solutions to many problems is so practical and wise… yeah, well, I’m kidding. Sorta.

  • I believe the only thing that belongs in a woman’s uterus is an embryo. The discussion over when life starts is a highly charged emotional, moral and religious argument. And it’s for each woman to reconcile on her own. It’s nobody else’s business … especially a man’s business.
  • I believe in the 2nd Amendment but it was written in the late 1700s when single-shot pistols and muskets were the available firearms. We need common-sense legislation for gun control. I’m not against legally owning a firearm. I’m against solider boy wannabes parading around with AR-15s. There is no logical argument for a citizen to own that type of weapon. Guns should have a magazine capacity of 10 rounds. If you own a weapon for self-defense and you can’t take down a “bad guy” with 10 shots, the next event in your life is your funeral. A dozen recent mass shootings involved AR-15s, which have magazine capacities starting at 30 rounds. It’s a simple and chilling formual: more bullets, more bodies.
  • I believe the wage disparity in this country is disgusting. Jeff Bezos is going to be a trillionaire. He and his rich peers all have so much money that they, their children, their children’s children could never spend all of it. Bezos benefits from living in a country where inventing and developing a company like Amazon has made him the richest man in the world. Why shouldn’t he pay $5 billion, $10 billion in taxes? The rich should be taxed higher because they can afford it and they can get by with just one villa in the South of France.
  • I believe the middle class has all but disappeared. The top 10 percent of America owns 77% of the wealth and that disparity continues to grow. Many my age were born in a time when dear ol’ dad could have a solid job with good pay and benefits, work his way up the ladder with commensurate raises, hopefully pay for his kids to attend college, retire after 40 years. Those careers no longer exist. For the average family of four, both parents must work, sometimes more than just one job each, simply to come out even at the end of the month. Single-parent families face an even bigger economic challenge. Even if the minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour, do the math. A single man or woman making $28,000 a week – before taxes – makes enough to only get by. It’s not a livable wage, it’s a survivable wage. Rhetorical question: As a country, are we now accepting the concept that millions of our citizens can only hope to survive?
  • I believe immigrants seeking a better life in this country need a fair and equitable path to citizenship. The United States was built on that principle and this country was built by immigrants. The rise of white supremacists is why fear and loathing has led to abominable immigration policies. We should remember our history. We should be better.
  • I believe climate change is real. It might be too late to reverse what’s been put in motion but failure to act is not the answer. When “the former guy” was in charge, we rolled back environmental laws and turned our back on the world. It’s not too late to reverse course.
  • I believe that voting rights and our voting systems need far more attention. Voting fraud by American citizens is a myth. Our democratic system should be the envy of the world and we’ve grown complacent in its workings. There is danger ahead if we don’t patch the cracks. Sadly, the reaction to the 2020 election results has been state legislatures passing laws to restrict voting access – especially for minorities.
  • I believe that religion is personal. My faith, my god (or God) is my business. It’s personal and private. As long as the practice of religion doesn’t involve illegal activities, every person is entitled to their own thoughts and beliefs.
  • I believe our military personnel need much more care and respect. For the last 20 years, we’ve asked our troops – all volunteers – to accomplish impossible missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve been gallantly and bravely fighting ghosts, not knowing friend from foe. Too many have returned with broken bodies and broken minds and have been largely ignored. They fight, we forget. The Veteran’s Administration and its practices need a complete overhaul to make sure our military personnel have long-term assistance.
  • (I believe you’ve read enough about what I believe.)

Twitter is my social media outlet of choice. It is far from perfect. I’ve often said Twitter is like a loaded gun – in the wrong hands, it’s a dangerous weapon. I use it as my news feed (and it’s a helluva lot more useful and entertaining when there are live sports seasons to track). Thanks to Twitter, I’m far better informed.

Twitter, social media and the internet is like drinking from a fire hose on full blast – with the water often polluted and toxic. I consider myself reasonably competent to separate the wheat from the chaff in order to be credibly informed.

Only 42 percent of the country is on Twitter. My sense is it’s the platform most used by media and people who are interested in news. Nearly 75 percent of U.S. citizens are on Facebook, which is much more insidious in terms of spreading false flag “fake news.” I dropped my Facebook account because it had become too political with too much invective; I grew tired of arguing with idiots. (And oh how I wish the Winklevoss twins had turned Mark Zuckerberg into a grease spot when they had the chance.)

Twitter has created a news cycle measured in seconds, not hours or days. Inconsequential “controversies” trend for a day or two, capturing the nation’s attention, and then are mostly forgotten. The news media, which bases its business model on attracting eyeballs and generating clicks, is like a kitten chasing a laser pointer. Whatever is the brightest and shiniest object sucks up all the oxygen and attention. (Also, “news media” is not to be confused with “journalism.”)

The access to instant information creates knee-jerk reactions and incorrect, instant analysis. It’s a sh*t storm of daily outrage on the trending hot topic. Imagine the cacophony had Twitter been around when Kennedy was assassinated? Or 9/11? What about the constant drumbeat of protests during Vietnam? How would Nixon and his goons tried to spin Watergate coverage? Would Woodward and Bernstein had time to Tweet (and podcast) while they were assembling the puzzle pieces on a story that took down a president?

Donald Trump’s hell scape of a presidency was four of the darkest years this country has faced. The morbid truth is that it took his idiotic incompetent handling of a pandemic that killed over half a million citizens to make him a one-term president.

Trump’s election was the perfect (imperfect?) storm of events, a series of cosmic tumblers clicking into place:

  • Electing the first female president after electing the first African-American president was too progressive, too much, too fast for a nation that still believes in the fairy tale that “all men are created equal” and all of its citizens have equal rights. After eight years of Barack Obama, what was an undercurrent of racist hate was unleashed the moment Trump descended on the escalator.
  • Hillary Clinton disliked by many. Because the polls predicted a blow out and it was unthinkable (even to Trump) that Trump would be elected, too many failed to vote. Even if they wanted and hoped Clinton would be elected, they wanted it to happen without having to admit they voted for Clinton.
  • There is inarguable evidence that Russia interferred with the 2016 election. In the summer of ’16, Obama and intelligence officials presented the information to Mitch McConnell. Obama sought McConnell’s support for a bipartisan statement that would inform the nation of the Russian covert attack on our democracy. McConnell refused (an act of treason, in my opinion). Without McConnell’s support, Obama couldn’t make a statement about Russian interference without appearing to throw the election in favor of Clinton.
  • Media outlets were convinced that Clinton was going to win and without a competitive race to cover, they chased the bright, shiny object of Clinton’s emails and Trump’s bombastic rallies. The New York Times was obsessed with the Clinton emails while CNN was content to reap the ratings by pointing a camera at Trump. The email issue was a fraud while Trump’s campaign was a three-ring circus that attracted viewers like a five-car wreck on the Interstate attracts rubberneckers.
  • FBI director James Comey believed that in his role as top cop he couldn’t remain silent. His announcement of (another) probe of Clinton’s emails days before the election might have provided just enough influence on undecided voters to help Trump win narrow victories in key Electoral College states.

I’m convinced if Joe Biden had lost, a second Trump term would have been the beginning of the end to our democracy. The Capitol assault of Jan. 6, an attempted coup by insurrections trying to overturn a fair election, illustrated the fragility of our democracy.

Hyperbole? I think not. Through this country’s history, it has weathered and survived storms – slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, manifest destiny, a great depression sandwiched between two world wars, racism, Vietnam, JFK, Nixon’s resignation, 9/11. Persevering has bred confidence in our resilience while we’ve ignored consequences of those historical events. We should take solace in how we’ve made it through the tough times. I wonder. though, if we’ve come to expect our endurance and survival as an inevitable inalienable right. Hindsight shows that we keep patching the blown-out tires instead of not driving over the same stretch of nails and broken glass.

Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon – a decision made to “heal the country” – was a seminal moment. Instead of prosecuting a man for committing crimes, he was pardoned because he was the president. That, in my opinion, set a precedent – especially in government – that if you don’t have to do the time if you do the crime. The pattern has become clear that the rich and the powerful enjoy a different justice system compared to Joe and Jane Citizen.

The Trump Administration was the most corrupt and criminal in our nation’s history. Congress and the Department of Justice could spend the next decade chasing down and prosecuting the illegal activity and likely be unable to clear the dockets. The cynicism of Trump and his minions was that they could commit so many crimes that it would overwhelm the system. It’s not unlike a petulant child pestering a fatigued parent to the point the parent just gives in.

If there is not swift and complete justice regarding the coup attempt of Jan. 6, my fear is that the “we can get away with anything” theory will be applied during the next election if the GOP fails to regain the White House. If those who orchestrated Coup One don’t face exacting punishment, Coup Two might be successful.

A persuasive argument can be made that our two-party system has imploded. The Republicans and the Democrats, each in their own way, are consumed with fund raising, self-serving issues and constant campaigning instead of, ya know, governing the country.

When Obama was elected in 2008, I declared the GOP was a dead party walking. Its base was old and getting older while the country’s demographic was skewing younger. Because of immigration, Texas and Florida were trending to join California as blue states with game-changing numbers of Electoral College votes. If that theory was evident to a dumb sportswriter, you can be sure the folks in charge of the GOP could also see it.

Since 2008, the GOP has waged a campaign of lies, deceit and chicanery to retain power as a minority party. The Republicans have decided their only path to victory in many states is through gerrymandering legislative districts and voter suppression. It feeds its base with the red meat issues of gun control and abortion while avoiding and scoffing at issues like climate change and infrastructure. It is the most cynical and jaded of strategies.

Instead of embracing policies that could appease both its base and appealing to blacks and Latinos, the GOP understands it can only win elections by making it harder for blacks and Latinos to vote. Republicans are not only against Democrats, they are opposed to democracy.

The Grand Old Party no longer exists. It has been replaced by Greedy Old Politicians. Republicans once stood for law and order; they supported a rule-breaking, lawless Trump. Republicans once stood for fiscal responsibility; they pass tax cuts for the wealthy that empty the Federal coffers while spendthrift policies waste money and send the deficit soaring. Republicans once stood for small government; they fire the important people who help the country function while Big Brothering states and cities when it suits their policies. If the GOP continues to embrace Trump, its future as a viable political party is in danger. The Republican party needs to either reform or cease to exist.

Four years of Trump trampled truth. Starting with the inauguration crowd crap and bitching about fake news, our nation was illuminated by gas lighting. We have come to accept and expect politicians and  government spokes people to not tell the truth. What we cannot abide is having those people lie. There’s a huge difference.

In the HBO mini-series about the Soviet Union nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl, in the first minute actor Jared Harris, playing nuclear scientist Valery Legasov, says this: “What is the cost of lying? … The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories.”

It’s my opinion that my generation has f*cked up and frittered away what was fought for and earned by our parents, the Greatest Generation. Baby Boomers, take the blame.

In my lifetime, JFK was assassinated, his assassin was gunned down on live television, our government lied and perpetrated the Vietnam War which divided the country, we passed voting and civil rights legislation that has slowly been decimated by court challenges and revisionist laws, we put men on the moon, we saw a president resign in disgrace, we failed to march on D.C. in protest when Nixon was pardoned instead of prosecuted, we’ve allowed Big Business to produce billionaires while allowing the middle class to disappear, we got cynical and apathetic. We stopped voting because we thought everything’s gonna be OK, that “somebody else” would fix things.

My generation grew up during the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we got soft and privileged. Hardship became a video that didn’t load fast enough. We shrugged with indifference as fraudsters and law breakers either got away with the crime or received slaps on the wrist. We stopped getting angry and instead searched for something to watch on one of our 500 cable channels or devoted our attention to our hand-held toys.

Men and women our son’s age and those born in the 21st century are equipped and capable to be the change agents. There are too many selfish old white men who have lied, cheated, stole, and connived. Their time is done. We’ve trashed the economy, the planet, our government and created the biggest mess possible. All I can do is offer an apology to those young people who will fix it and clean it up.

Rather than conclude on such a negative vibe, let me be clear. I feel damn fortunate and blessed to have lived the life I have lived. I hope there are more years to come. I’ve stated some minor regrets over “shots not taken” but I have no complaints and no reason to complain about treading the path I’ve taken by choice and by chance. Friends and colleagues have passed too soon or had to deal with tragedies that leave scars. For whatever unknown reasons, I’ve been favored. The setbacks and stumbles and crises I’ve experienced have all been manageable. I’m grateful for that good fortune.

If you have reached the end of this reading journey, you have my sincere thanks, appreciation, and assumption that it was interesting enough to keep your attention. If you have any comments, feel free to email wendellbarnhouse@gmail.com. If we have mutual friends that you think might be interested in reading this, please pass along the link.

In the old days at the newspaper, each typed page had a “slug” in the upper left corner. Example: “Quincy Notre Dame advance, lead.” Page two’s slug would be “Quincy Notre Dame advance, first add” and so on. To alert the editor that the story was complete, the writer would “put a thirty on it” and type this: -30-.

I began by recalling some famous opening lines of books. I circle back to that gambit referencing these two dissimilar endings.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

Either would be appropriate if unoriginal conclusions. I wrote what I know so I’ll end this book this way:

-30-.

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Bylines, Datelines and Deadlines A Memoir of a Sportswriter’s Life Copyright © by Wendell Barnhouse. All Rights Reserved.

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