Old tapes

Probably a tad young for the Beejer. All I know is Liz Phair and Oasis sounded great on that tape.

 

I was nursing a cold on a day where I was writing four different stories while at home in my pajamas. (This is why you have a Mac - I could get on the paper's server from home and file my stories without having to worry about e-mail garbling it.) I had a bowl of soup on my pillow on my bed and was settling in to transcribe the press conference I had just gone to (and sat in the back row off to the side where I wouldn't infect anyone) and I pulled out my recorder, tossed it on my bed while I fished my laptop out of my bag and heard a splash.

Yanked the batteries out, put it upside down for an hour in the sink, pulled out my roommate's blowdryer and did some work, put new batteries in and voila! Working recorder with all of my information intact. The volume's a little sketchy (it's missing a lot of the midtones so either I need quiet to hear it or I get my eardrums blown out) but it still works two years later.

 

I keep a few good ones, including Pete Rose getting testy in Mobile (circa 2001) when asked, by me, if he ever gambled on baseball.

 

So what did he say?

 

Somewhere, I still have a tape of my first "real" interview – Raymond Berry. I was just a geeky college kid who had no clue what I was doing, but he was patient with me. Nice guy.

 

Don't forget the Lost Lennon Tapes ...

Leaving ... boring ... etc.

 

I found a tape of Bob Huggins confessing all the dirty recruiting practices. Strangely, there's a 15-minute gap in the tape.

But seriously, I've always been told to dispose of notes/tapes after 6 months. I've not always heeded. I still have audio copies of interviews I did in 1995 at Jacobs Field (Belle, Baerga et al) because I'm such a Tribe fan. I stumbled across early 90's Huggins at UC, an interview with Kenyon Martin as a freshman, Roethlisberger at Miami (OH), and some more recent stuff: Johnny Bench for a freelance piece I did last year, Denis Leary and Peter Tolan on a conference phoner for "Rescue Me."

 

I need to get the tape back out and listen again.
I don't want to misquote Pete or have what he said be misinterpreted.
My lasting memory is that he referenced the Dowd report, which he says cleared his name.
He said he was always "an ambassador for baseball" and that he never talked down about baseball, only talking up about it.
He said his clubhouse door was always open, so players who walked by would have surely heard him on the phone making bets.
He said he never bet on baseball.
All of this after several softballs had been served up by the mass of reporters.
Folks asked things like, "You must be awful proud to be serving as grand marshal of the GMAC Mobile, Alabama Bowl Game."
Or, "What do you know about Mobile."
He did, at that point, at least reference and pay homage to local hero Hamerin' Henry Aaron, and Magnolia, Ala.'s Tommie Agee. I always love it when the stars of here and now can reference past greats, so I give Pete, on that day, some credit for that.

I need to find the tape and listen again.

 

Tommie Agee, name no Mets fan will ever forget.

 

I've never really understood this thinking. I know in broadcasting, radio and especially TV, the companies basically value preserving tapes "forever and ever" as part of their archives. Are newspaper folks with that mentality getting some "super-duper secret deep throat sh!+" that could get 'em whacked some day in the future if they don't erase some stuff that broadcast folks never get?

 

I always thought it was a liability concern, but maybe I'm wrong ...

 

Sirs, Madames,

I had a then-two-year-old tape of an interview with Curt Flood hanging 'round that I was sadly able to turn into an obit. Can't find it all these years later ... the problem with microcassettes, hard to mark, easily tangled.

o-<