Interesting stories we've done

Sometimes you're in the middle of reporting a great story, when everything works out, and you stop and realize that you'll never get something that good again.

It's actually a bummer feeling.

 

Which story was that for you? The Ricky Williams piece, a different one?

 

Oh, Ellis, for sure I had that feeling with Ricky. I can even tell you when, exactly -- smoking giant joints, playing poker, in a locked-up pizza shop, with these two great Australian dudes (including the owner of the pizza shop, who just kept making us big fucking pies all night), till the crack of crow's piss. I mean, even if I wasn't writing about it, it was a Top Ten night. But as far as sportswriting goes, I knew at that moment that I'd never get anything better. I should have been really, really pumped -- and I was -- but in another way, it was depressing as all hell.

 

That's a cynical way to think about it, IMO. Sure, it was great, but why would you believe nothing will ever top it? You never know in this business.

 

You're probably right... It's just that the way covering athletes is going -- the access, the cliches, the wariness on all sides, not to mention the giant scrums around most great stories -- I dunno. Can't think of another scenario that would give me the same kind of wood.

I shall remain hopeful, though. Everhopeful.

 

Agree with you on that point. But who knows? One day you're bored and the next, you're doing mushrooms with Scarlett Johannson in some hole-in-the-wall in Amsterdam.

I guess for me it's the desire to get better and do new and interesting things that keeps me going.

 

If it makes you feel any better, Jonesy, I'd be willing to smoke pot and eat pizza with you on Monday after my round of golf. Of course, I'd expect you to supply the goods for the evening.

 

Interesting stories? Uhhhh.... none so far.

: :

 

Local golfer bounces back and forth between Nationwide and PGA Tours. Never could get things going.

After being stuck on the Nationwide Tour for a couple of years straight, decides it's time to quit. His mentor, who has taught him since he was a teenager, urges him to give it one more year. Mentor soon finds out he has inoperable cancer.

Golfer promises to make it to the PGA Tour one last time while he's alive...and finishes third at Q School.

I spoke with the mentor a few days before he died. He had to breathe hard between each word, and it was a whisper, but he said how the golfer was like a son to him and he was so happy to see him putt out on 18 during Q School.

A story like that is what makes this profession work.

 

Any athlete or team at the high school level that doesn't sincerely thank me for coverage is one who'll never see coverage from me again. I understand unreasonably sensitive parents and biased family members come with the territory of journalism. But I don't understand why any sportswriter would deal with asshole coaches and/or athletic departments or teenage athletes with their heads so far up their asses that they don't appreciate newspaper coverage.

 

I once did a TV story about a guy with cerebral palsy who desperately wanted to be a minor league baseball umpire, but couldn't because he had to be in a wheelchair. The guy went to umpire school and everything. And even though he couldn't actually umpire, he did it anyway. He'd sit in the stands just right of home plate and call his own balls and strikes... at every game. Great guy, not doing it for attention, just doing it because he loved baseball. I mic'd him up during a game. Made for a nice feature.

 

If she was already a "switch hitter," she did she ever take up the "Bi-athlon?"