Happy to get back to newspaper roots

In a sports season filled with overwhelming disappointment - the Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, and Sixers did little to make us beam this past year - one thing stood out as a highlight for me: returning to The Inquirer to write a Sunday column.

My career has come full circle. I started in newspapers and somehow my professional life spiraled with a semblance of control through the worlds of magazines, radio, and television, and now back. I have spent the majority of my professional life as a sports-talk radio host. But newspapers are a root to me like a math equation is a root to an engineer.

I learned to read because a newspaper was delivered to my parents' porch and the written word sat right there for me. I learned to write by reading the well-crafted sentences of a newspaper feature.

I would spend 10 years as a reporter/features writer at The Inquirer. And I can say without equivocation that nothing in my professional life has given me more pride or exhilaration than researching and reporting a story, then using passion, tenderness, and care to write that story for publication for a readership anticipating what you have to say.

It wounds my heart to see how the importance of newspapers has been diluted. As papers squirm for advertising revenue, newsrooms have shrunk. Good newspaper people have been forced to leave the profession.

We live in a microwave society now. We rarely have the time to sit with our morning newspaper anymore. We'll read a couple of paragraphs online, or in a blog.

To me, feeding your mind in the morning with section by section of a broadsheet splayed across the kitchen table is as nourishing as the eggs and bacon you have for breakfast. And even at the price of one dollar, newspapers are the best bargain in the world today. All that information for a buck? A no-brainer.

I have to laugh when I hear about how Bill Gates invented Windows. Newspapers were Windows before there was Windows. Tidy rectangular modules arranged neatly on a page. Just like the blocks Gates put there on a computer screen.

Newspaper folks are incredibly talented people who ply their trade out of love and dedication, and for very little compensation.

As I started back writing this column for The Inquirer, memories of my days as a reporter came flashing back - the characters I covered, the stories of which I was a part.

As a sports-talk host, I get this question all the time: Are you a fan?

My answer is always, uh, sort of. A sports-talk host can be a little bit of a fan.

But a newspaper reporter must leave his fandom at the door - otherwise he can't cover the story with the requisite objectivity. And that's what your reader deserves. That can be difficult, especially if you grow up in Philadelphia rooting for your favorite teams, and experiencing the same disappointments.

When you get into this business, you get into it somewhat tainted by idealism, thinking that covering sports teams will be just as wonderful as rooting for them. Very quickly you learn that is not the case.

The first newspaper assignment I ever had, I was a college kid doing some free-lancing at a suburban newspaper, covering Sixers training camp. During the middle of a scrimmage, I watched star player George McGinnis walk off the court, sit on a bleacher, pull a cigarette out of his gym bag, and proceed to have a smoke. As Sixers coach Gene Shue pleaded with him to get back on the floor, McGinnis waved him off and finished his burner. I remembered thinking that I had become Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and suddenly I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

One of the great characters I ever covered was former Villanova coach Rollie Massimino. Massimino and I had a love-hate relationship because we were both hardheaded Italian Americans. He couldn't understand why I didn't write everything about him in a positive light. We battled constantly for our own turf. In a story in which I was actually praising him, I used the word irascible to describe his demeanor. He called me at the newspaper office and ripped into me for about 10 minutes.

By the same token, Massimino would often seek my approval on certain matters. One day, he invited me to observe a special Villanova practice. This was the year when Temple's basketball team, led by brilliant freshman Mark Macon, was ranked No. 1 in the nation for nine straight weeks. Understandably, The Inquirer, and me in particular as the main college basketball writer, were giving the Owls the predominant attention. And Massimino, only three years off a national championship that made the Wildcats the hoop kings of the city, didn't appreciate that one bit.

He broke away from his practice, joined me to chat on a sideline bench, and pointed to Greg Woodard, a moderately talented 6-foot-6 lefthanded shooting guard.

"You see that kid?" Massimino asked me. "If we gave Woodard the same freedom that they give that Macon over at Temple, he'd be just as big a star."

I paused for about five seconds, turned slowly to Massimino, and said, "Dude, have you gone insane?"

I don't know if Massimino was more ticked that I didn't agree with his assessment of Woodard or that I called him "Dude." Needless to say, that little gymnasium klatch didn't help our relationship much.

One of the most important assignments I ever had at The Inquirer was being the front man on our coverage of Pete Rose's eventual ban from baseball. I teamed up with the paper's federal court reporter, Fredric Tulsky, to dissect and interpret, within hours of getting it, the 225-page Dowd Report detailing Rose's baseball betting activities. Tulsky had managed to obtain a copy from a law firm in Cincinnati - before anyone else had it.

In separate Cincinnati hotel rooms, we pored over the report in order to write cogent stories that would appear in the next morning's Inquirer. To me, that was the essence of journalism.

Then there was the 1989 NCAA national championship basketball game in Seattle between Michigan and Seton Hall.

I covered six Final Fours at The Inquirer, and none was more exciting than this one, with publication held to wait for my game story. It was about midnight in the East - a good hour past my normal final deadline - and the game was made longer by overtime.

Over the din inside the Kingdome, my editor was screaming at me through a weak telephone line that I had to send my final story approximately one second after the game's final buzzer. Seton Hall had taken a one-point lead with only a few seconds left and I typed feverishly on my computer about what a great victory the Pirates had forged, to win their first-ever national title.

With three seconds left, though, Michigan's Rumeal Robinson was fouled. I still thought I was golden with my story, since Robinson was merely a 65 percent free-throw shooter. But he made the first. And then he made the second. And when the Hall's desperation heave at the buzzer didn't connect, I had to rewrite my story in about 10 seconds. By then, my editors were out of their minds. But what a night.

And so I'm glad to be back here writing.

The folks here who pound out three columns a week, keeping it fresh, interesting, and pertinent, are masters. I have enough problems with one.

I also have tremendous respect for beat writers who have to grind it out day in and day out, often having to deal with insolent players and coaches as they write the truth in the face of organizations trying to control the news.

At the end of the day, though, I can only hope that newspapers live on forever.

Happy New Year.