Your dream assignment

India vs Pakistan in cricket... if I get full battle armor

 

A Jose Mesa-Omar Vizquel article.

At some point I'd put the two in the same room without letting them know ahead of time. Yes, there would be an armed guard stationed by the door with a tranquilizer gun.

To me, there's a fantastic story there waiting to be told. The high stakes of a seventh game of the World Series, two guys who are complete opposites and the sheer awesome fact that Mesa said he was going to plunk Vizquel every time they ever faced each other and ACTUALLY DID IT.

 

Three others who I would profile, in addition to the ones you do: A WWE Hall of Fame inductee, one of the washed-up wrestlers at an autograph show at that weekend, and perhaps a young wrestler at one of the independent shows.

 

But could you see how great a piece of writing that would be? Man. Just the thought of it gives me goosebumps. Sad it will never happen.

 

Me too. Bitterly disappointed Chicago didn't win for 2016, as I probably would have tried to go myself.

 

Right now? Perhaps a "Moneyball"-level inside look at Theo Epstein's Cubs. Would need that kind of access, though. Where are they at? Where are they going? How far do they have to go? What did the previous management do right? Where did it go wrong? What are the built-in obstacles and, on the other hand, advantages, to running the Cubs?

 

Aside from the one I mentioned, the other dream assignment would be to do something similar to what Michael Leahy did with Jordan several years ago. Pick an athlete, follow him around for a year, not have to worry about deadlines and then chronicle the whole season.

Granted, there's no one really out there who could garner the level of interest that Jordan could, but I'm guessing Peyton Manning or Tim Tebow or Andrew Luck or RGIII or someone like that might be interesting...

 

This is the key: Not having to file daily stuff. I wouldn't want to be the Cubs beat writer. Not at all. I'd want to be covering the nitty-gritty of running a unique franchise in a potentially historic transition period, not detailing blisters for the notebook.

 

BYH will probably get mad at me for playing, but...

I'd like to follow Molloy High School basketball coach Jack Curran around for a season.

Curran has coached there since 1958. He succeeded Lou Carnesecca, when Carnesecca got the St. Johns job.

He was old, and already a legend when I used to take my little brother to see his teams with Kenny Anderson and Robert Werdann. I had to check to see if he's still coaching, and he is.

He's also coached baseball at Molloy for years.

He's sort of the (pre-Sandusky scandal) New york City high school version of Joe Paterno.

 

Almost everything has been done already, so I am really stretching with this idea...
One off season with the Stanley Cup, but tell it from the perspective of the Cup. Each chapter would be the about new people you would meet each day or the towns you would see.

It might sound odd, but I think it could be very interesting.

 

My first impulse is, "Too gimmicky."

But I remember last year Posnanski wrote that story about the Royals minor league system as if he were 10 years in the future looking back, and it worked. So sometimes gimmicks are good.

 

The Cup would just be a vehicle to spend a day or two with Crosby, for example, or a last man on the roster and tell their stories of how they reached the point of having their name on the Cup. Plus, you would probably tour the world.