What got you started?

Can you point to a time or an event or a piece of writing that made you decide "I want to do this for a living?"
For me, it was Allen Abel in the Globe and Mail -- the guy was a genius with the written word. I remember a column he wrote in which the whole premise of the piece was that, if Tony Esposito had stopped Jacques Lemaire's long shot in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final in 1971, the entire face of hockey would be different.

The Hawks would have won the Cup. Bobby Hull wouldn't have jumped to the WHA. The WHA would never have gotten off the ground....and so on.
I thought...Man I wish I could write like that guy and do it every day...
I can't mind you. But I get to do it every day...

 

I was dropped on my head as a child...

 

After seeing my first byline, I was hooked.

 

After seeing your first paycheck, not so much...

 

I blame soccer.

 

Someone offered me some at a party.

 

Did you inhale?

 

Friends don't let friends major in journalism...

 

I could write better than anyone at my hometown weekly. And I found I knew more than anyone at the 13K county daily down the road.

]This is immediately after 4+ years of watching Bundesliga Fußball. Except the Krauts wrote better English.

 

Wasn't sure whether I preferred radio or print when I got to college. I tried the newspaper first, and one of my first few assignments was a feature on the university's star pole-vaulter, who had Division I's leading mark of that season and was a national championship contender. Plus, he looked like an eccentric character with his crazy hair and slit eyebrows and quirky personality.

I went to interview him without knowing much about his background (hey, I was a cub reporter), and it turned out he had your typical from-the-ghetto-to-athletic-stardom-and-first-college-degree-in-his-family story. I wrote the feature, got a clip and never looked back (though I, like many of us, do some radio stuff on the side).

My love for sports came from following State U. during the school year and the Cubs in the summer. I'd play ball or swim with my buddies all day every summer ... except when the Cubs were on TV.

 

Actually, it was my high school paper. No paycheck, no nothing. They don't tell you what kind of paycheck to expect in high school. Bastards.