The longest farewell blog you'll ever read

So, the last assignment turns out to be the toughest. I should have known.
             This thing could go all over the place, because the truth is I’m not sure how best to put into perspective my 26 years at The Virginian-Pilot, a run that ends the moment you get to the bottom of this epistle. I’ve paid more attention recently to what writers at other papers have done, but I’ve always come away wondering what I would say if I were ever in that position.
             Well, I’m there.
             Tuesday's story on the murky future of coach Joe Gibbs is my final bit of work for The Pilot. For those of you who have written or called over the years angrily accusing me of covering the Redskins merely because I wanted to, that I did it on sheer whim, this should be welcome news. Those of you who understand that people in newspapers write about the things they are assigned to write about, well you can figure out how you feel about this _ and it’s fine not to feel anything.
             I’m feeling enough for all of us, about this paper, my co-workers, the work itself, the pleasure and satisfaction derived from a well-written story or a lively conversation or interview subjects who are willing to let you look inside their lives.
             Newspapers may be in business to make money. By and large, newspaper people are not.
             Whenever Bobby Knight would toss that snide little remark to the media about people learning to write as children then moving on to something important, I’d always think to myself “Well, once kids learn how to bounce a ball don’t they also move on to something more important? Who are you kidding?”
             But the sad truth is that we as a society probably take sports more seriously than we do reading and writing. I look around at football games, where literally thousands of people dress up in jerseys bearing the names of people they’ve likely never met and certainly don’t know outside of an autograph line, and I tell myself that the days when people put athletics into perspective are long gone.
             What’s it say about the value people place on their own life that so many passionately cling to every aspect of the lives and fortunes of strangers just because they happen to wear the colors of their favorite team?
             I always found it amusing to see the looks on other people’s faces when they would find out what I do _ sorry, did _ for a living and breathlessly ask if it was really as amazing and fun and exciting as they envisioned it.
             No, it wasn’t.
             You arrive at a game an hour before kickoff, knock back a few drinks and bolt early if you don’t like what you see, or just to beat traffic. I get to a 1 o’clock game at 10 a.m. and don’t leave the stadium until about 9 p.m., just in time for a 3½-hour drive home.
             There’s nothing amazing about missing umpteen Thanksgiving dinners with family or friends to be in Dallas or Detroit covering a football game. There’s nothing thrilling about flying to Seattle for a playoff game, arriving 10 hours late without your luggage then looking out the window of your twin-engine flight from Philadelphia to Baltimore two days later just as one engine starts smoking and the propeller stops and the woman across from you starts screaming that we’re all going to die.
             There’s nothing fun about spending Christmas Day in a Minnesota hotel, reading a book because it’s snowing too hard to leave the room. Birthdays, anniversaries, Easter, I’ve missed a lot of those. The last few Mothers days have been spent at Kingsmill covering the LPGA.
             Ok, enough griping.
 You know that’s going to happen when you get into the profession. In some perverted way, you hope that it happens. It means you’ve ascended to a level where you’re entrusted with bigger and better assignments. That’s how I always looked at it.
             In the end, I loved it, and I have hundreds of warm memories of people and places and what they accomplished there.
             For 20 years, I covered the Redskins for The Pilot, a stint I never anticipated, and I only wish I’d been smart enough to keep track of the miles I put on dozens of different automobiles between Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., Landover, Md., Carlisle, Pa., Frostburg, Md., and well beyond.
             My favorite Redskin: Doug Williams, not because he was a great player (he wasn’t), but because of the way he dealt with the media. NFL rules at the time stated that players were to be in front of their lockers every Wednesday from noon to 1, in case the press wanted to interview them. McDonald’s fed the Redskins in those days, and Williams would grab a burger or fish sandwich and fries at 11:55 and sit in front of his locker until 1.
             You asked him a question, you got an answer. I don’t have a lot of memorabilia _ don’t believe in it _ but one item I have and will always treasure is a newspaper photo of Williams in the center of a group interview, looking at me and laughing (not the way you think). The other folks are looking at me and laughing, too. I have no idea what I said that was so funny.
             Things ended badly for Williams in Washington, which reminds me of something Joe Gibbs used to say regularly, that there was no good way to part company with a player. Invariably, even the oldest still believe they can play, the most inform believe they’ll heal, the rule-breakers believe they’ve changed enough to deserve another chance, the backups believe they should be paid more, or held in higher esteem by the organization, or that the coach has been out to get him.
             Gibbs, obviously, is one of my favorites ever. We’re not on the same page religiously, politically, certainly not financially, but he’s been the most human pro football coach I’ve ever been around. He doesn’t play favorites with the press. You can take him aside and he’ll make time. You can tease him as much as you want _ Richmond writer Paul Woody is the master _ and he’ll take it. Dish it out a bit, too.
             I was lucky to have broken in on the Redskins with Gibbs, and lucky to have been unmarried when I got the assignment. I would spend weeks at training camp in the early days, where the writers and a smattering of TV people would get to know players and coaches, and vice-versa. Sports-talk radio? The internet? Fan sites? No one knew they were coming.
             I remember asking to interview offensive line coach Joe Bugel one day in my first year on the beat. Bugel came out, sat on a bench and we talked for about 30 minutes. When I said I was done, he got up and as he walked away said something like “If you ever need anything, just ask for me.”
             I was so wrapped up in note-taking I didn’t answer right away.
             “HEY,” Bugel said, “did you hear me? You need something I’m here for you!”
             Today, I’d never get 30 minutes alone with Bugel, certainly not outside on a bench at Redskin Park or training camp. That's not on Buges, who would do it in a heartbeat. For one thing, one of the team’s hired videographers would intrude. Those are young kids who thrust their cameras into everyone else’s interviews, but never, ever, ask a question. Their job is to show your work to the world on-line before you’ve had a chance to write your story. It’s pathetic, but true.
             I’ll never forget the look of horror on Gibbs’ face a day or so after he came back to coaching. He told the PR guy to summon the “local, every day” beat people together for a talk. When he walked into the team’s auditorium and saw e that there were about 50 people waiting there, he reminded the PR guy that he’d asked only for the regulars.
             “There are the regulars,” Gibbs was told, and all the color drained from his face.
             My favorite assistant coaches were Bugel (of course) and the late special-teams coach Wayne Sevier. Wayne came one weekend and spoke to a sports night gathering of about 30 at our church in Virginia Beach, and talked as though there were 300 in attendance. He was a pleasure to be around.
             Another Redskin favorite was Mark Rypien. I actually got him tickets to a practice round at the Masters one year when he was, maybe, third string. Rypien was a golf nut and a pretty good player in his own right and when the tickets came through, he was thrilled.
             “Only one problem, Mark,” I remember saying. “No place for you to stay. The hotels are all booked and so is the house I’m renting in Augusta. You’ll have to sleep on the floor.”
             And so it was that a future Super Bowl MVP spent the night on a circular throw rug in front of a fireplace in Augusta, Ga. _ and paid for the experience with a case or two of beer.
             Other Redskins I’ll remember more than the rest: Earnest Byner, Gary Clark, Keith Sims, Jon Jansen, Grimm and Jacoby, Randy Thomas, Brian Davis, Ryan Clark, Fred Smoot, Jim Lachey, Ray Brown, Brian Mitchell.
             Despite two decades on the Redskins, college basketball is probably my favorite sport to cover _ followed by golf. That’s right, pro football is third. Everything else is a very distant fourth.
             I covered the Masters the year 40-something Jack Nicklaus turned back the clock to win. In the late-Sunday press conference, I asked Nicklaus what someone later told me was the best question he’d ever heard put to Jack: All things considered, age, Augusta National, Masters on the line, was this the best round of golf he’d ever played? (Answer: Yes, when you put it that way).
             I’ve always had a soft spot for the LPGA, beginning with my first trip to Sleepy Hole in September, 1981. I’d been on the paper maybe one month and suddenly I was covering Kathy Whitworth, Amy Alcott, Patty Sheehan, JoAnne Carner.
             I remember making friends with the LPGA PR rep on site and she taking me over to Sleepy Hole Park where Carner was living out of a camper. We sat outside and had a few belts together and shot the breeze like we were next-door neighbors.
             At the end of a tournament one year, Alcott asked me if I’d be interested in co-authoring a book with her. She said if I was to call her agent in LA and talk to her.
             I did, and while they ultimately chose someone else, Alcott was the first to focus my attention that way. Almost 20 years later, I did it _ OK, so I’m a little slow _ and once I’ve turned in my badge to The Pilot, I’ll begin some earnest work on my second book. And in 2009, there will be a third, and then we’ll see where all of that takes me.
             I had a great time watching Curtis Strange win back-to-back U.S. Opens, and covering it for The Pilot. I was standing 20 feet behind the pin the day at Sleepy Hole when Juli Inkster nearly holed a fairway wood for double-eagle during a playoff with Betsy King, Nancy Lopez and Rosie Jones, the single greatest shot I’ve ever seen.
             I spent a day pretending to be the 17th hole at Kingsmill during one of the PGA tournaments held there. I’m not very good at being inanimate, though my wife would argue that point.
             As for college basketball, I came here because the Pilot had an opening to cover ODU hoops _ men and women. I had three very hectic but happy years following the Monarchs and Lady Monarchs around, not to mention the extreme good fortune to deal with Mark West, Kenny Gattison, Anne Donovan, Paul Webb, Marianne Stanley, Wendy (the assistant) Larry, Oliver (the assistant) Purnell, Eddie Webb, Jerry Busone.
             I filled in a couple of times for other writers and got some time with Cal Bowdler, Jimmy Corrigan.
             At Norfolk State, Dwight Freeman.
             My two seasons covering UVA are, surprisingly, a blur, though I really enjoyed spending time with Terry Holland and Dave (the assistant) Odom.
             There’s one overriding memory of college hoops: The 1985 NCAA final between Georgetown and Villanova, won by the Wildcats 66-64 in Lexington, KY. My seat was directly behind the Villanova bench, directly behind coach Rollie Massimino and trainer Jake Nevin, who was battling Lou Gehrig’s disease and wheelchair bound.
             The 1984-85 season had been dedicated to Nevin, and the players draped one of the nets around his head after shooting 76 percent from the field in the second half to pull off what ESPN calls the third-biggest upset in sports history.
             And I was a few feet from all of it.
             Some people to thank before I’m out of here: The late George McClelland and Russ Borjes and, especially, the very much alive Nelson Brown. They hired me. Bob Molinaro, Tom Robinson, Frank Vehorn, Harry Minium. They hung around with me. Mike (also leaving the paper) Flanagan, Bill Beppler. Their editing expertise made my copy better. The appropriately named Buddy Moore, a friend to writers who can make more out of less than any page designer I’ve ever seen. Fred Kirsch and Earl Swift: Great ego-boosters, friends, advisors and writers.
             Special thanks to almost-new sports editor Colleen McDaniel and assistant SE Tom White for allowing me to handle this last season in the manner in which I was most comfortable. You didn’t have to do that.
             Outside the building: Debbie White, Carol Hudson at ODU; Monarchs football coach Bobby Wilder; Redskins PR types Charley Dayton, Michelle Tessier, Chris Helein, Will Norman, Shelby Morrison, Brian Hosmer, Pat Wixted, Paul Woody of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, David Teel of the Newport News Daily Press, Warner Hessler, who got out of the biz a few years ago but was tons of fun to travel with. John Keim and Rick Snider (DC Examiner), Dave Elfin and Ryan O’Halloran and Dan Daly (Wash Times), Jason LaCanfora and Jason Reid (Wash Post) and Richard Justice and Mark Maske before them, Liz Clarke (Wash Post). Tom O’Rourke up in Cumberland, Md.

             In ways large and small, you and hundreds of others helped make the past 26 years so much better than I ever would have hoped. Hopefully, you read down this far to know that I appreciate it _ and you.
            See you around town.

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