The best phone call/compliment you ever received

I forgot one from my community college days.

After the college's board of trustees voted in a $5 per credit hour tuition increase, a group of students walked out of the board meeting in protest. During our allotted time to speak, board members yawned openly, doodled, interrupted and did all sorts of things to show the students they just didn't give a fuck.

In fact, the board chairman even imposed a three-minute time limit on the student speakers during the SECOND student speech ... and cut him off before he could finish. When it became my turn to speak and the board chairman told me "three minutes," I started by leaning into the podium, adding a slight edge to my voice and saying, "I am aware of that, sir." That was as close to STFU as I could say without getting in trouble. It made 'em all sit up and take notice.

In the week that followed, a bunch of the students wrote columns in the school paper. I also wrote one. The board chairman also wrote one. The part that fits this thread is what happened when the next week's paper hit the stands. One of the students who wrote a commentary came up and told me her mother sang the praises of my column. I go "that's cool," but she had the sense that my reaction was not to make too much of a big deal about it. Then she told me a story about how tough a critic her mother is of writers. AND she told me her mother said, "that's nice, dear" and went right back to praising my column when the daughter reminded mom that she'd also written a column.

That floored me.

 

I called out the refs in a HS basketball game for being partial towards the home team. The road team was the team in my coverage area and where about 95% of my readers come from. I got a lot of compliments from the people for that....then again they're view is a little skewed. I take what I can get though.

 

Recently, I was covering a city high school school game with a coach I've only spoken to one other time, which was two years ago (I don't have a high school beat). He comes out of the locker room, sees me, and goes, "TheMethod, right? I really like your stuff. You've got some flair." The fact that the guy knew who I was on sight, had remembered my bylines as stuff he liked, combined with the fact that nothing I had written was about his school all totally made my day. And it helped that it came at the end of a pretty rough week reader-wise.

 

I think the "Best job of pandering to your audience" thread is that-a-way ----------->

 

I did a column one time on this guy, in his late 40s, who was a big NASCAR fan. His wife gave him, for their anniversary, a trip to the Richard Petty Driving Experience. I sat down with him one night, he talked for about a half-hour on how great it was that he got to drive a race car. I really didn't want to write the column, but I was stuck for an idea that week, and I thought, hell, it's a local column.

About a year later, I'm looking through the obituaries and I see this guy's obit. At first I didn't recognize the name _ I had forgotten about the column.

So I'm sitting at my desk a couple of weeks later, and I see someone walking up. It was the guy's wife. She told me, with tears in her eyes, about how nice the column was that I had written and how much her husband really had appreciated it. She said that getting to drive a race car was one of the greatest experiences of his life, and my column just added to it.

 

I'd remember a guy named TheMethod too.

 

I've told this story on the board before, but while writing for my hometown paper, my first real job in this business, I covered the two local high schools. One of the schools' volleyball team had a first-year coach and its cupboard was pretty bare that season - final result: an 0-20 record. The coach would always call me after the matches with the same results, but did so with a good attitude, picking out the bright side of the match for his team and which players did well. I really admired his attitude throughout the whole thing, and he was a pretty pleasant guy overall.

Anyway, he calls after the last match, and we go with the usual questions and answers and my last one was something along the lines of "I know this isn't what you expected for your first year, but do you think maybe you'll look back at this in a few years and laugh?" There was a pause and he says, "Well, maybe I'll smile a little bit, but probably not laugh." After we ended the call, I started thinking about it and cursing myself for asking that last question, because it was pretty dumb and he might have taken it like I was twisting in that 0-20 knife a little deeper, and I felt bad about it because he was pretty cool.

I stopped worrying about it a month later when a Christmas card came in my office mail. It was from the volleyball coach and his wife with a nice note thanking me for the coverage we gave his team that season. That was classy: Thanking me for documenting every match of an 0-20 season.

 

I wrote a follow up story once about a football player who had suffered an injury during practice that left him paralyzed and never able to walk or play football again. I did a lot of research on my subject, talked to numerous family members, teammates, coaches and friends. The only person who wouldn't talk to me was his fiance' for some reason.
We put together a collage of photos of this kids' high school and college career, including the final photo taken of him in which he layed on the playing field injured. I interviewed the kid for hours, asked everyone all kinds of questions that led to little anecdotes I almost never would have gotten had I not talked to so many people.

Once the story came out, I received too many compliments to count but there was one I will always remember. The mother of the player wrote me a hand written letter along with a signed thank you card. She wrote about how much football had meant to her son, her husband and her family --- this player was a major stud throughout his career. She went on to say she could not read my article without crying each time she read it because the details were so intense that it was so painful to relive but at the same time beautiful to remember. It is framed and hangs in their son's room on one of his walls alongside many of his other football accolades as the centerpiece she told me.

I used that feature as a clip in a couple of interviews years later and it helped me land two jobs. Two separate editors said the exact same thing, which sort of baffled me, but they called this one particular feature "Sports Illustrated" quality.

While the compliments by the other sports editors, writers and fans were all appreciated greatly, none will ever mean as much as the thank you letter the players' mother wrote. You could see the tear stains in the ink on the letter she wrote me. I still have that letter today. It is the only thank you note of such nature I've ever kept. I knew that my story had served a purpose for a family, it had given them some closure in a way, and I'll always appreciate the words of gratitude they expressed to me.

Sometimes I pull that letter out just to read it and relive those feelings and it almost breaks my heart for them. It's that feeling that makes a writer want to write.

 

This is the best I have

Caller: Who's the asshole who screwed up the TV listings in today's paper.

Me: I'm the asshole. What was wrong with the TV listings?

Caller: You don't have the Florida game in there.

Me: They don't play today; they play tomorrow.

Caller: Really? Hmm, maybe you're not an asshole.

Me: Thanks for calling

 

Not exactly a compliment, but it was a moment that showed me I'd made the right career choice.

Way back in the early 90s, my high school (student body of less than 500) hired a football coach away from one of the biggest (more than 3,000 students) high schools in the state. His salary went from something in the $80K range to about $40K.

The school district he left has a reputation for political infighting among other issues, but it was a big surprise that he decided to leave after a rebuilding job that resulted in the school's first playoff berth in more than 25 years.

One weekend when I was visiting relatives, I took a chance and got him to give me an interview. He spoke frankly about all the stuff he'd had to deal with (death threats, vandalism to his home, etc.) after making some decidedly unpopular decisions at his previous job. It was the first story I ever had picked up by AP and ran in papers across the state, including the one my dad subscribed to.

A few months later, my sister, who lives in Australia, came home for a visit. Dad had kept the article, telling her it was a pretty good story about the new coach at our high school. She saw my byline, which Dad hadn't noticed.

I thought it was pretty neat he kept something I wrote without realizing it was my work.

 

I wrote a news obit on a (very old) former area athlete that turned out well (it's in my clips), and one of his friends took it to the funeral services in another state. I later got a handwritten note from the friend letting me know what a hit my article was with the family. That was pretty cool to know I was among the highlights of a funeral.

But the best came when I was working in a one-high-school town. Of course I got to know all the kids well, and at the end of the year the girls basketball team presented me with a handmade card that was a collage of all the headlines and great graphs I had written about them. They all signed it, with several writing more than just their names. Rarely have I been so touched as a person, let alone a sportswriter.

 

I wrote a signing story on a softball player a few years ago. The girl was nothing special and not going anywhere above a junior college level, but we were under a "byline quota" so it was good enough.

Days later, I get a hand-written letter from the mother. I will always look back fondly on the times when people didn't "demand" anything of me or told me I "owed" them anything.

The next fall, I do a feature/gamer on a football playoff loss. The supposed favorite to win it all got knocked out during the semifinals. It was their only loss. Needless to say, those kids were devastated. Days later, one spots me in the grocery store and shakes my hand. He said he was a senior, and it set in that he'll never win the state title, but that my story brought him some closure. Closure? Yes. i shit you not. Closure.