What got you started?

Got fired from my first job -- non-journalism, though it involved a lot of writing -- and the nearest weekly rag had a sports editor who had been retiring for the past five years. A friend of mine was the courts/cops/county government reporter and, knowing that any warm body would do, recommended me for the job. Damn her. My first thought was, well, I can write. My second, I shit you not, was "and hey, I get to go to games ..." The craving for legitimacy kept me going long after the thrill of getting in free faded. At some point, I'll actually get there ...

 

I needed money for drugs, and those $40 stringer checks paid for enough black tar heroine to get me through the summer. After that, I was hooked.

 

I was stringing high school games for my hometown metro while in school. The university where I was a junior made a stunning run to the Final Four. The paper used me to do some featurey stories I wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise, including a first-person account of an all-night bus ride to an early-round game at Indiana.
I learned then that sports is magic; that spring transformed our school and how my friends and I thought of ourselves. I figured being a part of the magic-making process would be just about the best way to make a living there ever could be.
Much later, I learned that the magic of sports is ephemeral ... my school hasn't gotten a whiff of NCAA success in the 30-plus years since, the guy who might have been the most talented player on that team eventually died of AIDS. And our business, obviously, has a bunch of problems I didn't quite foresee.
But that was how I got into this.

 

I started writing for my hometown weekly while I was still in high school.

And I was the guy everyone in the school came to with a sports question.

One of the coaches at the school said I would be a great writer and encouraged me to pursue that avenue since I wasn't all that great at anything else.

Soon after graduating, the daily about 12 minutes from my house had a part-time position open up and I applied for it and got it.

 

I got a D in Chem 105, ending my shot at physical therapy. I wrote letters to the college paper all the time, pointing out how stupid their liberal columnist and cartoonist was and how awesome the conservative one was, and pointing out all the errors. I kept getting responses from the EIC saying "You're more than welcome to come down and help us improve."

Eventually I did, and realized I'm too stupid and untalented to do anything else.

 

My dad's college roommate was, and still is, a sportswriter in Wisconsin. That was my inspiration.

It was part the idea of covering games, part the idea of knowing the real truth about athletes and teams (which started as child-like stuff like, "I wonder if so-and-so is cool?"), and part the idea that I knew at an early age I wanted to do something I enjoyed in life.

I think I talked myself into enjoying writing around middle school. Funny thing is I still enjoy the games, but I found I love writing nearly as much. I'm a gamer guy, I still get juiced when I get a gamer just right. Same for breaking news.

 

Crawled out from underneath a house, covered in years of human waste after staring down a cottonmouth and decided plumbing no longer held the attraction it once had (feeding my family). Sports editor of the local weekly had just left for bigger things. I walked in, got the job and the rest is history.

Still don't make as much as a plumber, but I smell a whole lot better. Plus the only snakes I have to deal with walk rather than slither and are seldom armed.