Why did you get into sportswriting?

To work long hours for very little money and be called an idiot by readers who can't spell.

 

Wrote a few sports stories for the high school paper, but mostly other stuff. Did some news stringing for a couple tiny weeklies. First daily, though, the paper's editor was not going to let a 16-year-old cover anything but sports.

KC is one of my all-time favorite former colleagues and I don't doubt she is motivated by wanting to affect people's lives, but that's seldom what motivated me, even in that era just after Watergate when I began (first professional article in 1976). I kind of just wanted to work with words in some way, but my first time in a daily newsroom just hooked me on this way. The pace, the clacking of the AP machine and the typewriters -- but mostly because the editors in sports were the first grownups who did not treat me like a kid in any way. I was getting paid, so I had to be at least as adult as the staffers who had just graduated from college. No excuses, and no exemption from being shouted at.

 

Karen is one of my favorite people in journalism. She might catch shit because she has a very different world view than most sports writers, but that's also what makes her so good at finding so many different ways to tell a story. And if you are a nice person, KC will do cartwheels to help you in any way she can.

 

You have a future wife? Does your current wife know that?

 

Well said, DD. She is a terrific writer and a better person.

 

Couldn't hit the curve.

 

Sirs, Madames,

It's an amazing story. Re the handwriting of the page illustrated in the piece, I recognize it. I once helped out Karen with a quote. (Ron Wilson was an asshole with the women who covered the Ducks but had no problem chatting up reporters in Toronto.) The next week she wrote me a three-page letter and thanked me for helping her out. Way above and beyond the call of duty. I actually didn't think anything of helping her out. She'd be great to work with and an even better friend.

YHS, etc

 

I wanted to tell stories.

 

I got into sportswriting because I had always dreamed of having my career end in my mid-30s and getting to deliver that news to my pregnant wife was also a dream of mine.

 

Back in the mid-90s, I knew just about every sportswriter in SoCal. I was the victim of a layoff. The one hand-written note of condolence I got was from Karen.

 

I just wanted to cost a bunch of kids scholarships.