Of everything you've written, what prompted the angriest responses?

When I ripped a university's horrendous facilities in a column.

Reader came in the newsroom, angry beyond description. Threw three pages of handwritten notes on my desk. Swore I went to one of two schools that he obviously detested, therefore was griding an axe. Continued ranting. I wanted to read the notes, he would start yelling. When I looked up at him, he would point at the notes.

SE and colleague were also in the office. I asked if anyone wanted to say anything. SE went by and quietly said "he went to (school I blasted in column)."

He then screamed "YOU'RE A TRAITOR!" and, when he finally had enough sense to realize that he was getting nowhere with my supervisor or with me, he stormed into editor's office, probably proclaiming I should be incinerated, fired and the pieces buried.

No one in newsroom disagreed with a word I printed. Said school finally updated its pathetic facility in the next couple of years.

 

Didn't happen to me, but a buddy of mine in college:
D-II football coach never had a great record (usually 6-7 wins a year, tops) and somehow kept his job year-in and year-out. Teams had talent, just never got over the hump to win a conference. My buddy was SE of the school newspaper and he always made sure to point out major problems in how the team lost a game.
Team wins. Yippie. At presser, he asks a few "negative" questions. Coach answers him and you think that is that. Go to practice for a preview story. Coach jumps down his throat about being negative all the time. Tries to intimidate (to no avail) to write more positive about the team (under .500 at that point).
A few years later, coach is run out by new crop of players...they sign a petition to make him leave. I don't think he ever got a job after that...

What did happen to me:
Wrote a column about how the local D-I hockey team had been losing its best players to the NHL before they finished school and then became busts. Used facts (shame on me) such as how they did in college and what they did in the minors (not one made it to the NHL). I lamented the fact that the current goalie was just drafted and he too would become a minor league project after the season and not finish his schooling. Coach tore me a new one and said I "worked" the numbers (puhleeze). I was pulled from covering hockey because he wouldn't talk to me and wouldn't let the guys talk with me either. That goalie left, sat the bench a few times for an NHL squad and is still slugging in the ECHL. I still use that clip occasionally for my resume.

 

Wrote a column about the coach of one of the best high school tennis teams in the state, who canceled a match against the team's most talented opponent, because a couple starters were out of town on a school trip. The coach didn't mind being quoted saying she canceled the match because she didn't want to lose, but apparently her mood changed the next day. I got a call from one of her teacher friends, saying she was so torn up about it, crying, that she couldn't even come to work. Poor girl.

I got calls from people telling me I'd pay for my sins one day before God, yada, yada, yada. Angry emails, etc... Several others praised the column. My SE gets a call from the school's AD the next morning at 8 a.m., demanding a meeting. Being the good guy he is, he went and completely stood up for me. Didn't take any shit from that guy.

This was like four years ago, and I was told a few weeks ago that she had a reporter identify himself at the state tournament to make sure it wasn't me. Every time she'd call in her scores after that column, she'd ask who was talking. If it was me, she refused to give her results.

Just a wonderful lady.

 

I did a feature on an African-American woman racing in one of the amateur drag-racing classes for the IHRA when they came to town. The next day I got some of the most vile e-mails I've ever seen.

I forwarded one to my boss, because we had been planning on sending an African-American intern out to cover the finals, and the words in that e-mail needed to be seen before that decision was made.

 

I wrote a column once saying Pete Rose was justifiably banned by baseball.

Guy calls up my voicemail the next day, so pissed off he couldn't finish one sentence before moving to the next outrage. Then he hung up. Called back a few minutes later, a little calmer, he calls the voicemail again and left a lot of naughty words.

I played it for everyone in the office who would listen.

 

Column I wrote saying there were signs of strain in the team I covered's coaching staff when the head coach unceremoniously fired a long-time assistant who was popular publicly. Got the head coach's supporters very upset and resulted in a sit down involving me, the coach and the SID (apparently there to mediate). Another coach, a school hall of famer who was the current coach's biggest supporter, lashed out at me too.

Fast forward a few years. The coach is at another school and I get a letter from an angry fan at that he's an ass because he just fired the school's longest-tenured, and most beloved, assistant coach. I'm still wondering if there was an ensuing sit down between the coach, the beat writer, the SID, the publisher, etc., etc.

 

I wrote a column critical of State U. Wrote it in between bouts of puking because I had food poisoning, but had to get it done. It got passed around to several fan websites, where I got blasted. Wish I would have been able to give it my full attention, because I would have been able to make my points better than I did.

 

State Volleyball gamer...apparently I was supposed to sugar coat the fact that the team I was there to cover, who are traditionally one of the top teams in Oregon, got absolutely killed in all three games.

 

Living in Maryland, I wrote in 1998 that the Baltimore Orioles should scrap their whole team, and if that meant Cal Ripken's streak should end and/or him retire, then so be it. The letters and calls didn't stop for three days, so many that my boss ran a "best of" letters to the editor over the next weekend. Then he ended the streak at the end of the season. I felt justified. My personal favorite ended "I hope your next job requires you to ask such compelling questions as, 'Would you like fries with that?'"

 

A couple of stops back I started working at a community scrapbook just before the end of the school year. The baseball season had about two weeks to go when I took over and the local team was still looking for its first district win after being picked to contend for the playoffs.

I took it easy the first couple of games as I learned my way around, but this was one of those teams that had a black cloud over it from the start. In going 0-10 in district, the team was tied or ahead in the fifth inning or later seven times.

Each successive failure made the head coach, a hometown hero during his playing days a decade earlier, more and more difficult to deal with. After blowing a late lead in a road game I attendend, he loaded the entire team on the bus and was headed for home before I could any comment.

Last game of the season, against an opponent whose only league win was in the first meeting with the locals, was a back-and-forth affair that was tied going to the seventh inning. Visitors took the lead on some goofy error, but the locals rallied in the bottom of the inning, getting the tying run to third and the winning run to second with one out and the meat of the order coming up.

A pitch in the dirt kicked off the catcher's shinguard about 20 feet from the plate toward the first base dugout, but the coach held the runners. Two pitches later, the batter looped a dying quail into short left-center and the coach sent the runners on contact. The center fielder made a spectacular diving catch and doubled the runner off second by 170 feet.

Game and season over; parents are screaming from the stands that the coach should be fired.

I asked the coach for his view of the final play and his reply was along the lines of "hindsight's 20/20; there's nothing to do about it now."

Then I asked him what he saw on the pitch that got away at the plate and he went ballistic, screaming that the runner on third was "the slowest guy on my team" and that he didn't have to talk after going 0-10 and other similar pieces of brilliance. The tape was rolling the whole time.

That the "slowest guy" on the team happened to be the starting center fielder struck me as just a bit odd, but that wasn't the only strange thing I'd noticed in my brief time in town.

I played it straight with the gamer, mentioning the coach's tirade after yet another one got away, and included the quote about the "slowest guy" on the team. Pretty much everyone in town that knew the coach (his dad was one of the few doctors there) called to rip me a new one.

One little grandma claimed coach never could have said what I claimed he did; she refused my offer to play the taped interview for her.

Another screeched that the only reason I put that quote in was to embarrass that boy. No, the reason I put it in was that was the coach's reason for holding the tying run.

Several others let me know that this wasn't some big-city paper, never mind the fact that I grew up in a town less than a third the size of this place.

All in all, it appeared to be the first taste of real journalism any of these goobers had every seen. They didn't like it one bit.

I stuck to my guns, even after the publisher let it be known he wished I'd done something different than tell the truth.

I wound up spending five years in the place. The coach quit two years later (I never talked to him again), then got hauled off to alcohol rehab a few months after that following a family intervention. It seems everyone in town knew he was a drunk, they just didn't want to see evidence of it in the paper.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Two pieces come to mind.

1. Wrote a story about the memorial for four junior hockey players who were killed in a bus accident in Swift Current, Sask. As it turned out, on the 20th anniversary, there was a moment of silence and ... well, nothing. The general manager was over-ruled by the board on the idea of anything more elaborate (family members still in town dropping the puck, raising of banners to the rafters, whatever). Turned out the community-owned team weaseled its way out of lawsuits filed by families of the kids who died and (in a story that hardly needs to be retold for puckistes here) the coach was convicted for sexually abusing a couple of his charges, something that seemed to be pretty common knowledge around the league. I will never stop for fuel or even slow down to look at the scenery in Swift Current. No loss (again, a point that needn't be made for puckistes and Prairie-goers). Funnily enough, the one NHL exec from SC, Darcy Regier, told me that I nailed the story.

2. On the occasion of MJ's second retirement I inked a feature criticizing Mr Air for being somewhat self-involved and somewhat less than heroic when it came to social issues, such as sweat-shop manufacture of his shoes. Great player, no agent for change despite a position of great influence. With the ultimate platform he does Space Jam. I didn't do the criticizing mind you: I did a survey of folks, including ex-team-mate Craig Hodges, Luther Bedford (Arthur Agee's coach in Hoop Dreams), players on the playgrounds nearest to the arena, Jim Brown, academics, whathaveyou. I offered up defenders of Jordan's non-positions (David Halberstam being one notable). I didn't get complaints from those who read the original 3000-word feature--just from those who read the 700-word wire deal that surgically removed most of those quoted. The responses: You would have thought I swift-boated MLK.

YD&OHS, etc

 

Pre-Confession: Pete Rose is a gambling bastard