Your first time covering a "Big Four" professional sporting event

[Mr. X]

The thread about Bleacher Report includes a discussion of your first time covering a professional sporting event in the "Big Four" -- Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, National Football League and National Hockey League -- and whether it was surreal.

I looked up surreal on Dictionary.com and got the following results:

1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of surrealism; surrealistic.

2. having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream; unreal; fantastic: surreal complexities of the bureaucracy.

I'm going to throw out definition No. 1 because I was taught, "Never use a form of the word in the definition."

What do you remember about your first time a "Big Four" professional sporting event? Was it surreal?

The first "Big Four" professional sporting event I covered was an NFL exhibition game for a weekly newspaper. I don't remember much, but it wasn't surreal. I had been taught act like a professional, don't cheer and don't fawn over the athletes, so that's what I did.

 

[MTM]

It wasn't surreal, but it was interesting
I was a 20-year-old college radio reporter standing in the Lakers locker room with childhood heroes Jerry West, who was the Lakers coach, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It was the only time I ever got a little star struck on the job
I had no problem asking questions of Magic Johnson, who was near my age, but I let other reporters ask questions of the other two.
I was back soon and never intimidated again.

 

[wicked]

I remember this pretty well.

I had a local sports radio show in high school, and I made it my life's mission to interview a hometown guy playing in MLB.

Called the local team, got credentials to be on field for the pregame, where the notoriously cranky groundskeeper wanted (rightfully) to toss me for walking on the grass. I managed to stay in the stadium, somehow. Went to the underground cage and player refused interview, said he'd talk after game. I nodded. I didn't know how this worked.

Somehow got post-game clubhouse access from someone in the team's PR office, and then snuck into the press box (couldn't get box access) and sat in the back row during the game to avoid drawing attention to myself. Mind you, I'm probably dressed like a 15-year-old kid, and you could tell I didn't belong.

Went into the clubhouse post-game with my rickety, cheap-ass tape recorder, and player shot me down again. Looking back on it, I would have, too.

They never should have credentialed me in the first place.

 

[Beef03]

It wasn't surreal so much as it was awesome, but my first Big Four game was covering the Heritage Classic in Edmonton in 2003 between the Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens. Just a very cool setting and history-making moment. Plus getting to see guys like Gretzky, Fuhr, Messier, Lowe, Coffey, Anderson, Ranford, Huddy, et al reunited was pretty cool, and then getting to watch them play guys like Guy Lafleur and some of the other Canadiens greats kind of topped it. I have dealt with NHLers for most of my career and never got star-struck, but that event on its own was just flat out cool. And I don't mean because it was -27C plus a wind chill.

I have covered other events that were much more surreal, however.

 

[ColdCat]

covering Lions-Packers at Lambeau about 15 years ago. I went along with another reporter from my shop who had been a Packers intern a few years earlier and still knew a lot of the guys. Before the game we run into another guy who had been an intern at the same time and had just become an agent. He had two insanely beautiful women on his arm, one was the girlfriend of one of the players, the other was the player's sister. That was 'this is cool' moment number one- hanging out in front of the stadium with an agent and two hot women. Of course the moment was ruined by the women in question being bitchy and clearly uninterested in spending one more moment with two journalists.
The game was OK. I never had that 'oh my god I'm standing on the field where Bart Starr played' moment since I was never really a Packer fan. Seeing Brett Favre and Barry Sanders play was pretty cool, though Sanders didn't have any of his signature runs that day.
After the game we head to the locker room and at that point it was just work, but once we got all our interviews taken care of the reporter I was with started BSing with one of the players who in turn introduced himself to me. That part was a bit surreal. I mean you don't have to introduce yourself to me if I just saw you play in a freakin' professional football game.

 

[HejiraHenry]

Monday Night Football game at RFK, circa 1986 or so. I thought it was absurd how many reporters were there.

 

[Dawgpound17]

Not surreal but it also helped that I had covered a college football game before so it wasn't completely uncharted territory. Seahawks vs Redskins last year as a 17 year old. Third row in the press box and only Pete Carroll and Tarvaris Jackson came out to talk, but it was a great experience. Have to say though college>pros at least at this point for me.

 

[Haneluca]

If surreal means coming within inches of getting plowed over by Chris Johnson at a Titans-Broncos game, then yes. My first Big Four game was very surreal.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

When I was a senior in high school I was taking prep agate at a pretty big California daily. They used a different agate clerk to run quotes at NBA games and when that guy got promoted, they used me. I ended up getting a few sidebars out of the deal, even if most of them were essentially transcribed quotes separated by a sentence or two.

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

Larry Brown practically *****-slapped me in front of everyone for asking a dumb question.

Ditto.

My first NBA game and I was 20. Pacers opened the season something like 1-5, then 4-8 and were about to start their long west-coast trip but against Vancouver, Golden State, and a lot of other sucky teams. With other reporters in his office after the game, I asked him if he thought despite the travel and grind, there was a chance to get this thing on track.

He basically told me I was a moron, but I don't remember why. About a week later they were 8-8.

 

[Songbird]

First Big 4 event I covered was an off-season Dodgers luncheon. I sat at a table with Boog Powell. He farted.

First time I helped at a Big 4: 1990 AFC playoffs, Bengals at Raiders, better known as Bo's Instant Retirement Game. I had to run film back in the third quarter. I walked from press box to the Raiders sideline, where our photog was. Got to watch a handful of plays. First thing that kicked my ass: the force of nature that 95,000 screaming fans creates rips through your soul and gives you a rush. Waves of humanity wash over you. I'll never forget that.

 

[kingcreole]

My first was a Chiefs-Broncos game at old Mile High in 2000. The things that stood out:

1. How the pressbox shook when the Chiefs had the ball, because the crowd was so loud.

2. The number of media that had a good seat in the pressbox and didn't show up. I was scheduled to sit in the "media overflow" area inside the media dining area, but noticed right before kickoff the number of open seats in the main press area. I took up shop on some Spanish station's space, and there wasn't anyone within four seats to my left and right, and only a couple people in the row below, directly in front of me.

3. I planned on going to the winning locker room, and since the Broncos led the entire game, I stood by their locker room tunnel behind one of the end zones with about five minutes left. But the Chiefs scored in the final two minutes and won. So I began making my way down the Chiefs sideline to their tunnel. Broncos fans began leaving after a turnover, and the Chiefs were of course taunting. Then a small group of idiots threatened to "****ing kill you guys if you ever come back here." To which the Chiefs laughed and invited the fans to hop over the barrier to discuss it. I wasn't sure if I should stay and watch or run like hell to the tunnel.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I think I covered Peyton Manning's first game. Either that or the meeting against the Chargers and Ryan Leaf later in the season.

Like a lot of people, I had covered major college pretty extensively as a student, so I don't remember it being a huge deal. Plus, covering football games is so sterile anyway.

I had Creosote's experience at my first NBA game - but it was Larry Bird.

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

My Larry Brown thing aside, first Big 4 was Cots-Bills or Colts-Patriots in Indy in 1996. Very impressed at how efficiently everything was run. And it's Indy, so the food was generous.

Boring game. Mostly field goals. Ay halftime, I hit the men's room. Lots of people but very quiet.

Bob Trumpy walks in and says, loudly, "well that sucked."

Everyone ignored him.

 

[Batman]

First Big 4 game was Saints-Rams at the Superdome in 1999. I was a year or so into the business and had never done an NFL game before. Our shop is a few hours away, so we didn't do many. It was mainly just to go, write a gamer and see how the whole process worked.
The game was nothing special, but the postgame was surreal. It was in Mike Ditka's dying days and someone from the New Orleans press corps made the first question in the presser about his job security. It was also the last question. He glared at the guy, said, "Anybody have any questions about football? No? OK," and walked out. Including his brief opening statement, the whole thing lasted, literally, 45 seconds.

After that I wandered over to the Rams locker room and managed to catch Kurt Warner while he was getting dressed. Got a few questions in, including a stupid one about how their high-powered offense would fare against some of the tougher teams they had to play down the stretch. Something along the lines of, "You've shredded a few lesser defenses the last few weeks, so why do you think you can keep it rolling the next few games?"
He looked at me, deadpan, and said, "Why can't we?"
I also resisted the urge to thank him for single-handedly winning me my fantasy league that season. All in all, a nice fella. He didn't punch me or call me an idiot, even though I asked a couple of dumb questions. If I'd have asked Ditka something that stupid he probably would've ripped my notebook from my hand and beaten me to death with it.

Also remember walking back to the press box and taking a minute to soak in just how big the Superdome is when you're down on ground level. I love being in empty stadiums and just looking around the place.

 

[Cape_Fear]

Bills at the Rams in St. Louis in Dec. 1995. I was a senior in college at the time and it was right in the middle of finals, but I wasn't going to turn it down.

And it was surreal for me because I grew up listening to Harry Kalas call Phillies games and I'm in line at the soda machine and I hear that distinctive voice so I turn around and he was right behind me.

 

[SoCalDude]

I had tagged along with our Dodgers writer a couple of times to get the lay of the land at the stadium.
First game I covered by myself: Olden sticks a mic in Lasorda's face and asks, "What did you think of Kingman's performance?"

 

[Liut]

I had tagged along with our Dodgers writer a couple of times to get the lay of the land at the stadium.
First game I covered by myself: Olden sticks a mic in Lasorda's face and asks, "What did you think of Kingman's performance?"

Wow!

 

[albert77]

Saints at the Superdome in 1984, I think it was against Tampa Bay. Saints lost, which they did a lot that year, and one thing I remember about it was when I was in the Saints' locker room and I noticed Stan Brock and another lineman discussing something. I wandered over to maybe get a quote from Brock, who was considered the leader on the o-line, and he looked at me hard and said, "this doesn't concern you." I just said, "hey, no problem," and walked away.

 

[writingump]

First time was actually a Stanley Cup playoff game in April 2011 between Anaheim and Nashville. The Ducks won 6-3 but what sticks out for me was Randy Carlyle's answer when some reporter asked him if he was disturbed that his goalie, Ray Emery, was skating around while the anthem was playing. "I don't think this is the time or place to discuss this," Carlyle said before stalking off.