Marlins to sports writers: Pay $3 for some pop

I tracked down the beginning of the boots thread. Thank you, internet archive. Sadly the good stuff appears to have been lost forever.

turning down a romp in the hay

 

Well...sounds like I need to do a little more field research

 

That was an awesome thread. And I can so see Red Fisher and Marty Noble acting as they did.

 

"My name is not Bob. It's boots."

Good times.

 

The bio for Norman MacLean said he wrote 33 books. I wondered how a guy who evidently was not that good a writer got 33 book contracts. So I googled to see what books he wrote. It turns out there is another writer named Norman MacLean. I think the bio combined both writer's books.

The other Norman MacLean was a hell of a writer. I have read three of his books. He wrote a "River Runs Through It", which was also an excellent movie. In addition, he wrote "Young Men and Fire" about a team of smoke jumpers who were killed and he wrote a book on Custer's Last Stand. All of them were great.

 

Exactly! When the assignments were doled out early in the week, we knew who was eating good on Friday night and who wasn't. Having covered Texas HS football for many years, you learn there are some stadiums with phenomenal spreads, and others where you have to go buy your own soda from the concession stand with no food at all in the box. One small town had ladies that brought crockpots of homemade food into the press box. Another much bigger school would have a tailgate party before each home game, and their booster club president would bring that into the press box for everyone — usually barbecue, cajun food or grilled burgers. They always made extra food for the press box.

 

WTF? There were playoff games in Ohio when I'd call the host AD on Monday morning and be told they couldn't guarantee me a seat!

 

Wow. When was that, and were you covering D-VI in Adams County or something? I've worked in Ohio 15 years, and that's rarely been an issue, and only has been an issue at extremely small schools hosting their own playoff games.

And I've been in press boxes catered by steakhouses (with steak) and Italian restaurants (with enough pasta in the box to feed the damn teams).

I guess you are/were on the wrong side of the state.

 

I guess so.
I called the AD of a neutral site school at 8:30 a.m. Monday morning that was hosting a D3 playoff. He decided all the radio stations covering the game needed 3 seats apiece. 1 call to the OHSAA office, and voila, a seat opened up. The AD called me back and had the nerve to tell me I needed to call earlier.
That was the year before the OHSAA redid its Working With the Media guidelines for press seating, so, you're welcome.
(I should add, this same AD ran a regional track meet for a hundred years. Once, in the early 90s, he was running off the results with a mimeograph - I am not kidding. Also, unlike almost everywhere else, he didn't post the results anywhere in the stadium for the general public. Another reporter and I asked if we could get copies and he responded, "Buy a Plain Dealer in the morning." I called the district board and the OHSAA on that one too.)

Meanwhile, I volunteered to host the media when my alma mater high school hosted neutral playoff games back in the '90s and '00s and we always had a pregame spread, a seat for every media outlet and a postgame press conference with both coaches and selected players, and I stayed until the last reporter was done filing.
I've covered high school postseason since the early 80s and never expected to be fed. All I wanted was a seat.

 

I thank you dearly for helping that. I'm always guaranteed a seat as hometown team's paper, so long as the media coordinator follows those guidelines, that is.