The glamorous life of a sportswriter, Part a trillion

How many would turn down the assignment if it meant this?

 

Turn down the assignment because you have to fly to SF in the morning and fly back at night?

 

I get that budgets are slashed... but you can't spring for a hotel room for one of your columnists? For one night?

(Maybe Politi needed to be back in town early Monday, in which case I'll eat lots of crow.)

 

Without love, it ain't much.

 

I can't believe any paper would send a writer coast to coast on a one-day assignment for fear of something going wrong with the plane getting there (delays at Newark. Unpossible!). Has to be some other reason.

 

Shelia E.!

 

Is he booking his own flight? Those football flights fill once the schedule gets announced. I'd guess he was trying to fly direct - god forbid a columnist take a connecting flight - and there was no Monday morning option.

 

I'd like to know more about the circumstances. I'm thinking this might have been a last-minute decision to send him because of the Eli/Geno development during the week? A round-trip ticket would have been crazy expensive. Or maybe he had a personal reason for wanting to be at home Saturday. If this was the plan many weeks ago, then yes, that's terrible from management.

 

Mystery solved.

 

That sounds kind of thrilling. Like ambulance chasing or watching fires.

 

Here's a worse horror story. Kei Nishikori advanced to the semis of the Miami Open a few years ago. So a bunch of Japanese media sent over about ten reps to cover Nishikori in the semifinal. They all arrived all the way from Tokyo to find out a few hours later that Nishikori withdrew from the tournament because if an injury or exhaustion. Youch.