tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5864259.post-18641578235291467332007-07-02T11:49:00.000-04:002007-08-14T21:51:16.544-04:00Sports writers are the most cynical bunch of fucks you're ever going to encounter; They hate their job, the athletes they cover and the people they're writing for. However, this remains a career they chose because at one time, they cared. After all, these were the dorks getting their asses beat for knowing more about baseball than how to get in a girl's pants. The reason they became writers and not fans is an innate ability to be objective, to separate the personal experience from the game. And it takes a special moment to realize this is even possible. Mine came in 1993. -- I was 10 and the Mets were terrible. I'm talking spectacular disappointments. The team had broken the bank, bringing Bobby Bonilla back to his hometown - which is what you can do when you make him the highest-paid player in the history of the sport. And joining "Bobby Bo" were Bret Saberhagen, a two-time Cy Young Award winner and one-time phenom, and Eddie Murray, who's now a Hall of Famer and one of four players to ever amass 500 home runs AND 3,000 hits. And these three players are now known as the core of "The Worst Team Money Could Buy," because those Mets lost 103 games. One day, relatively early in the year - with losing already threatening to euthanize this abortion of a baseball experience - I looked up from the sports section and remarked to my father that I sure hoped manager Jeff Torborg got fired sometime soon. My dad replied almost immediately, "Well, jeez, honey - we never like to see anyone lose their job ..." And right then, athletes stopped being heroes and started being people. I had already become a journalist. -- So you have your "Eureka!" moment, and you take a job barely making a living wage, all while writing about adults earning millions to play a kid's game You commit to working nights and weekends, traveling all the got damn time, and you learn the art of getting information involves working the room like a politician, and that you go to Derek Jeter for the facts, but Gary Sheffield for the truth. And though Jose Reyes still doesn't speak English so good after three years in the big leagues, you know he's always smiling because he really is just happy to be there. You learn to phrase your questions so Willie Randolph doesn't get defensive like he had to be growing up in Brownsville and that if Tom Glavine trusts you, so will everyone else. And you pick up all this just so you can become the coolest dude the hot girl at the bar has EVER introduced to her guy friends so she doesn't have to give out her number. But then one day, you'll meet a kid like Jack, who survived a Stage-III terminal cancer, and knows something about what it really means to live and die with a team. And he'll tell you how cool it was the first time a real-life YANKEE visited him in the hospital, and how he knew then he'd be okay, because he had to get better to see one more game at the Stadium before it closes after next season. And for a moment, the filters come off, and you remember that you've been doing this for a reason. Because a kid like Jack - even though he's a Yankee fan - know that sometimes all ya gotta do is believe.The Brooklyn Boynoreply@blogger.com