Two and a half years ago, when The Wife was giving her notice at work that we were quitting our jobs and leaving Salt Lake, a male co-worker raised his hand and said, "I'd like to have Jim's job."
I did not exactly work in a salt mine, or so it would seem to a lot of people.
This blog is about a lot of things, but it isn't about sports. TW has often said she would never know she's married to a "sports guy." I was the assistant sports editor at The Salt Lake Tribune, but you would have never known it to visit our home. There's no sports posters or paraphenalia. We don't watch ESPN. In the last two years, we've attended exactly four sporting events together (one Red Sox game, two minor-league baseball games and one college football game).
Sports isn't who I am, it's what I do. Sports writers aren't like other journalists. Most of us got into journalism because it was fun going to games with friends. In high school, I attended 46 home games for soccer, football and basketball; I know because I still had the $5 punch card in my wallet until a year ago.
Sports writing and being a sports fan are two very different things. Do sports writers get to go to games for free? Yes. But there's more to it than that.
A good beat writer shows up for a game at least a couple of hours before the game to go over notes, watch for injured players warming up and to schmooze with team officials.
There's no cheering in the pressbox, at least among professional journalists. College kids will sometimes start high-fiving, but there's usually somebody in the pressbox to tell them to hush up.
There's also no drinking on the job, which is probably for the best because you usually have at least one tight deadline to make. The vast majority of games start at 7 p.m. and the vast majority of deadlines start around 10 p.m. A good beat writer can easily work until 1 a.m. writing a game story, composing a notebook and blogging. When people would ask me who I root for, the answer was a pat, "The clock." The game has to end so I can do my job.
Did I have a cool job in Salt Lake? Sure. I also worked every Friday and Saturday night for seven years (10 years, if you include my jobs before Utah). Every time I covered a Utah-BYU football game, every time I showed up to cover the Super Bowl five hours before game time, every time I was among two dozen parents at a high school soccer game, my wife and dog were at home without me. It's not a 9 to 5 job, which is fine when you're 23, single and have no friends. After a decade, it grinds on you.
That's why I enjoyed bringing 21-year-old journalism students with me to Utah Jazz games. We'd take our press passes and walk around the inside of the stadium. I'd walk with them directly onto the court and stand in the middle of the floor ... because we get to do that. Wide-eyed, they'd stand there and take a picture with their phone. Then, I'd tell them, "There's 19,000 people up there in the stands that would kill for the kind of access you get to have. The trick is converting that kind of access into telling those people something they didn't already know from watching the game."
And that's the trick that awaits me for the next few days. The Utah Jazz are in Boston this week for a game Wednesday night. I'm covering and writing about practice today, the game tomorrow, and another practice Thursday. I'm also working at my normal job Tuesday and Thursday nights.
For me, it's a treat. The biggest events I've covered in the past two and a half years are state high school basketball games and minor-league hockey games where I'm one of two writers present.
For my old paper's beat writer, Grizzly, it's more of an endurance test. He's on a four-game roadtrip. The Jazz won in triple overtime last night, which led to a good story. It also led to a lack of sleep. Grizzly went to bed around 2 a.m. last night and woke up around 4 a.m. to catch a flight from Toronto to Boston. Practice is at 11:30 a.m. I'd be surprised if he's not drinking coffee.
He won't be complaining, though. After all, there's lots of people that would be more than happy to have our jobs.
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