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This is the column I never wanted to write.
It’s my last one in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
I didn’t want to write it, because I’ve always hesitated to write about myself with so many better stories and fuller personalities out there. I also didn’t want to write this for the more obvious reason — it means a ridiculously fun chapter of traveling the world to watch big games, meet fascinating people and call it a career has ended.
Do I have to grow up now?
Maybe find a real job?
The truth is I’ve only had two real jobs in my life. One was with a tow-truck company, and I would come home covered in grease. The other was some variation of this one — in fact, it’s been this exact one from the time a good friend, Larry Dorman, pushed for me, and the great Sun Sentinel sports editor Fred Turner called me in the Candlestick Stadium press box in San Francisco at the 1989 World Series.
“Want to be our columnist?” Fred said.
The earthquake struck the next day.
I survived the earthquake. I didn’t survive layoffs at the Sun Sentinel more than 36 years later. It happens. There’s no boo-hoo crying over it. I’m one of the lucky ones, working with so many great people at this paper and making it to the doorstep of 65 years old in a business where good friends and great talents started leaving years ago. Save any sympathy for them, please.
Besides, what’s a real sports career where you don’t get cut? Don Shula, Dan Marino, Jack McKeon, Zach Thomas — go down the list of sports greats and the ending typically isn’t what they wanted. Worse, many had to read about it coming from someone like, well, me.
And now I’m writing my end, too.
It’s an odd column to write. It’s a goodbye — but I’ll be around if you look. It’s about me — but as I look back, it’s about others more.
It’s about great Sun Sentinel editors like Gene Cryer and Earl Maucker, who stuck with a young columnist with no idea what he was doing. It’s about a sports staff with Fred, Tom Christensen and Bonnie DiPacio helping him find his way.
My favorite story — flying blindly to Hawaii to find former Miami Dolphins great Jake Scott — only happened because a brilliant sports editor, Brian White, saw the potential if I found him. Jake became a friend to the end, even having his CTE records at Harvard opened up to me after his death.
Such relationships made the job fun. Watching excellence at work made it fascinating. Panthers general manager Bill Zito should be interviewed by any business needing a turnaround. Heat president Pat Riley has given a three-decade master class on how to run a championship business (His two rules — no complaining and no gossiping — became part of my family repertoire.)
The tension between media and athletes is a fun topic. There’s some of that. There’s also McKeon taking me to Mass during the 2003 World Series, the Marlins manager not breaking stride to put a cigar on a ledge while entering the church and sticking it back in his mouth on the way out.
There was Miami basketball coach Jim Larranaga waving me into his office a few years back as his staff watched video of Final Four opponent Connecticut. “See, we have to decide to play in front or behind their center …” he said, as assistants wondered why I was there.
That’s the world this job opened up on its good days. There were other days, like when I called home from the Nagano Olympics in Japan, and before I could say anything my wife said, “Your son broke his arm, the realtor is calling about the condominium sale and the dog is running wild around the neighborhood as we speak.”
“Wrong number,’’ I said.
All this me, me, me is why I hesitated to write a final column. The next thing you know I’ll be telling you my favorite event (any Olympics), favorite team (1996 Panthers), most complex athlete to cover (Ricky Williams), favorite personality (come on, I’ve been in the bag for years and wrote a book with Jimmy Johnson) and biggest regret (my harsh tone to Shula toward the end of his coaching career).
Shula, great man that he was, let it all go in retirement. He wrote the forward to my book on the 1972 Dolphins.
So now the big ending: The Dolphins’ great former public-relations man, Harvey Greene, called this week and asked if I saw a few letters to the editor in the Sun Sentinel. They were all nice about my leaving. One, from a reader named Barry Kaplan, said, “It’s a shame that he did not get the courtesy of a goodbye column.”
That’s ultimately why I wrote this. I wanted thank all of you who read along for so long and for so many of you who have reached out recently.
Here’s where I’m supposed to say I wrote for all of you. But that wouldn’t be true. I wrote about what I found interesting in sports.
I’m just thankful you also found it interesting enough to keep me going for 36 great years in this space.
Continue reading...
It’s my last one in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
I didn’t want to write it, because I’ve always hesitated to write about myself with so many better stories and fuller personalities out there. I also didn’t want to write this for the more obvious reason — it means a ridiculously fun chapter of traveling the world to watch big games, meet fascinating people and call it a career has ended.
Do I have to grow up now?
Maybe find a real job?
The truth is I’ve only had two real jobs in my life. One was with a tow-truck company, and I would come home covered in grease. The other was some variation of this one — in fact, it’s been this exact one from the time a good friend, Larry Dorman, pushed for me, and the great Sun Sentinel sports editor Fred Turner called me in the Candlestick Stadium press box in San Francisco at the 1989 World Series.
“Want to be our columnist?” Fred said.
The earthquake struck the next day.
I survived the earthquake. I didn’t survive layoffs at the Sun Sentinel more than 36 years later. It happens. There’s no boo-hoo crying over it. I’m one of the lucky ones, working with so many great people at this paper and making it to the doorstep of 65 years old in a business where good friends and great talents started leaving years ago. Save any sympathy for them, please.
Besides, what’s a real sports career where you don’t get cut? Don Shula, Dan Marino, Jack McKeon, Zach Thomas — go down the list of sports greats and the ending typically isn’t what they wanted. Worse, many had to read about it coming from someone like, well, me.
And now I’m writing my end, too.
It’s an odd column to write. It’s a goodbye — but I’ll be around if you look. It’s about me — but as I look back, it’s about others more.
It’s about great Sun Sentinel editors like Gene Cryer and Earl Maucker, who stuck with a young columnist with no idea what he was doing. It’s about a sports staff with Fred, Tom Christensen and Bonnie DiPacio helping him find his way.
My favorite story — flying blindly to Hawaii to find former Miami Dolphins great Jake Scott — only happened because a brilliant sports editor, Brian White, saw the potential if I found him. Jake became a friend to the end, even having his CTE records at Harvard opened up to me after his death.
Such relationships made the job fun. Watching excellence at work made it fascinating. Panthers general manager Bill Zito should be interviewed by any business needing a turnaround. Heat president Pat Riley has given a three-decade master class on how to run a championship business (His two rules — no complaining and no gossiping — became part of my family repertoire.)
The tension between media and athletes is a fun topic. There’s some of that. There’s also McKeon taking me to Mass during the 2003 World Series, the Marlins manager not breaking stride to put a cigar on a ledge while entering the church and sticking it back in his mouth on the way out.
There was Miami basketball coach Jim Larranaga waving me into his office a few years back as his staff watched video of Final Four opponent Connecticut. “See, we have to decide to play in front or behind their center …” he said, as assistants wondered why I was there.
That’s the world this job opened up on its good days. There were other days, like when I called home from the Nagano Olympics in Japan, and before I could say anything my wife said, “Your son broke his arm, the realtor is calling about the condominium sale and the dog is running wild around the neighborhood as we speak.”
“Wrong number,’’ I said.
All this me, me, me is why I hesitated to write a final column. The next thing you know I’ll be telling you my favorite event (any Olympics), favorite team (1996 Panthers), most complex athlete to cover (Ricky Williams), favorite personality (come on, I’ve been in the bag for years and wrote a book with Jimmy Johnson) and biggest regret (my harsh tone to Shula toward the end of his coaching career).
Shula, great man that he was, let it all go in retirement. He wrote the forward to my book on the 1972 Dolphins.
So now the big ending: The Dolphins’ great former public-relations man, Harvey Greene, called this week and asked if I saw a few letters to the editor in the Sun Sentinel. They were all nice about my leaving. One, from a reader named Barry Kaplan, said, “It’s a shame that he did not get the courtesy of a goodbye column.”
That’s ultimately why I wrote this. I wanted thank all of you who read along for so long and for so many of you who have reached out recently.
Here’s where I’m supposed to say I wrote for all of you. But that wouldn’t be true. I wrote about what I found interesting in sports.
I’m just thankful you also found it interesting enough to keep me going for 36 great years in this space.
Continue reading...
