The "Homer" sports writer

I saw a local radio guy take a victory lap with his town's high school girls track team after they won the conference title. He even held the trophy for a few steps.

 

Covering a prep softball game a couple of years ago. I think it might have been a playoff game. Middle of Nowhere High has given up a couple of late-inning runs at home and is en route to a loss. The coach's wife is keeping the scorebook in the small press box. She and I are separated only by the scoreboard operator.

A double drives in a run for the visitors. Coach's wife swears loudly and slams the table in the press box, which sends a newly sharpened pencil...right past my face and into the wall next to me. I've never seen a pencil stick into a wooden wall like that. She slammed this table hard.

After thanking God that I still have two good eyes, I yank the pencil out of the wall and quietly slide it back towards her. It took her a year to apologize for that.

 

As long as it wasn't a male cheerleader, I have to say I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.

 

I used to think it was a small-town writer thing. I've sat next to plenty of writers from small, one-high school towns who cheered the team they covered. One writer was notorious. We were covering a softball state title game and it went into extra innings. The team he covered lost. As the opposing team's runner crossed the plate I heard a snap. I looked over and he had broken his pencil -- a mechanical pencil. He looked at it like Lenny would a dead rabbit.

But I quickly learned writers from big papers do it too. Sitting in that same press box was a guy who writes for the biggest paper in my state. We both rolled our eyes when the other reporter busted the pencil. But a couple years later this "big" reporter and I were covering a college basketball game (we now work for competing papers in the same market). During one stretch the officials decided not to call any fouls in the paint. It was bad, but it was bad for both teams. After the third time a player from the team we were covering got hammered without a whistle this reporter threw his hands in the air and slapped one of his wrists, you know the same thing exasperated coaches do when they think a foul should have been called.

Awesome.

 

Precisely. Common courtesy and respect for coaches ... nothing more.

I worked with one fool who used "we" when talking with the coverage high schools. He always used we when talking about his college alma mater. He's been known to hug coaches and crap like that following games, too.

Thoroughly unprofessional. Given where he works, it shouldn't surprise me.

 

We have a winner.

This is definitely a small town paper thing. I've been chewed out for not being homer enough and for being biased against one team in my coverage area versus another.

And there is nothing like sitting in the Ohio State football press box trying to work when a guy, in full Buckeye garb, is sitting next to you with a transistor radio held up to his ear and screaming into it during every play.

 

I was covering a softball game in Texas between a school from my coverage area and one from outside of it. I kept getting annoyed by this older guy who was sitting back from the home plate umpire. Throughout the whole game he was riding the ump about his calls, about how he was favoring the home team with his calls, etc. I assumed he was a player's grandfather or something. It wasn't until he started asking questions to coaches and players after the game that I realized he was the reporter for the paper covering the other team. I guess to give him a little credit, I never heard him ask what they thought about how the home-plate ump was clearly screwing them.

 

Didn't see it personally, but I got the story from a writer at the same paper.
State tennis finals, our paper and a competitor from the area are covering the same team.
The reporter from the competition is shouting, "Climb the ladder, XXXXX! Climb the ladder!" He then went on to hug the winner from the school we covered after she helped them win the state title. He then went on to tell our reporter not to tell out SE what he was doing, even though it is a well-known fact in Eastern N.C. that this guy is the biggest homer in the world.
Sam, you can echo this, I know you can.

 

State high school track meet in Wisconsin. A reporter from a sister paper wears the shirt from one of the schools she's covering. After a relay team finishes its race, she hugs all four girls at the finish line, crying the whole time. That's how reporting is done.

 

Did said reporter also once spend a state championship basketball game in the student section, cheering the alma mater on to victory, before heading to the media room?

 

It's not something I've initiated, encouraged or felt comfortable with, but coaches have hugged me after games on a few occasions.
A simple handshake would suffice.

 

I already did, PR. I know of whom you speak. I strongly suspect Appgrad is talking about the same person.

His insecurity and outright arrogance make him the total package.