By Bob Markus

For most of my adult life I have considered myself a political conservative, a little to the left of Rush Limbaugh, but considerably to the right of Oprah Winfrey. I was already leaning in that direction when I met Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater at a Christmas party long before most of America knew of him. I was in the army at the time, a lowly PFC serving as the public information specialist at Yuma Test Station, a facility that tested military ordnance under desert conditions. The only reason I was at the party, in the officers' club, was that I was dating the daughter of the base dentist, a major, who was coerced into inviting me.

I was introduced to the Senator, spent quite a bit of time in a group conversation, and came away enormously impressed. Impressed enough that I read his book, "The Conscience of a Conservative," wrote in his name in the 1960 Presidential election, and offered to work for him in 1964. But that was then and this now and if you asked me today about my political leanings I couldn't give you a one-word answer. Conservative? No. Liberal? No. Libertarian? Maybe.

One thing I am certain of, however, is that I am a Luddite. Don't know what a Luddite is? In the immortal words of the Smothers Brothers, "Look it up in your Funk & Wagnall's." The term originally referred to a group of workers in England in the early 19th century, who went around destroying farm machinery, reasoning that the new-fangled implements were the root cause of unemployment. It since has come to mean anyone who resists modern advances in technology.

That certainly describes me. We owned a microwave oven for 10 years before my son finally explained to me how to use it to warm up leftovers. By the time I learned how to use a video tape machine, they were already being replaced by DVDs. It was only a few Christmases ago that my daughter and son-in-law gave me a compact disc player and taught me how to use it.

Which brings us to the subject of computers and closer to the real subject of today's essay. My introduction to computers came in the fall of 1977 when the sports editor of the Chicago Tribune told me that we were going to start writing and transmitting our stories via computer and that if I didn't learn how to use one by the end of the year I was not going to the Super bowl. I was issued a stone age computer called a Teleram, an evil monstrosity that was so heavy it required two Romanian weight lifters to transport it.

It barely fit under an airplane seat and certainly left no room for any other carry-on luggage. It featured a screen so tiny you could barely get 200 words on it and here's the best part--when you filled the screen you had to send it to the office computer before continuing. This required dialing the proper number, listening for the tone, then inserting the telephone into two rubber couplers, making sure of a snug fit. Then you pressed a button and away went your copy. Sometimes it even went to the office. More frequently it went to Afghanistan or Marrakesh. Any nearby noise would send the machine into a hissy fit. It could be the guy next to you pounding on the table and cursing because his own computer had just gone wacko. If you were covering a basketball game at Purdue, where the press row was right in the middle of the maniacal fans, you had no shot. Eventually, after four or five failures, you might manage to get through to the home computer. Then you had to call up a new screen and try to remember how you had ended the previous screen so you could resume writing the story without its looking as if it had been written by a committee of idiots.

Over the years, the computers became more sophisticated and easier to use, but when I retired, almost 20 years later, I still couldn't do anything other than write and transmit a story via computer. When I retired and moved to Florida I finally got a home computer, but I still couldn't use if for anything other than writing a Christmas letter or an indignant letter to a usurious credit card firm. Finally, after much coaxing and cajoling from my now grownup children, I learned how to send and receive e-mail, and at long last to actually get on the internet.

That's where I discovered the subject ot today's text. Exactly a year ago today, Mike Freeman, national columnist for CBS SportsLine, posted a story titled, "Presenting the Top 50 Sports Jerks of All Time." It must have been well received because, as of yesterday, it was still there on the sports home page. In the interest of brevity and avoiding a possible plagiarism suit I won't reveal too much of it except to say that the top two jerks are murderers, one convicted, one not; that Dale Earnhardt is on it and A.J. Foyt isn't; and that Dave Kingman is way too far down the list at No. 48.

But where in the name of Leo Durocher is Alex Johnson? In 36 years of covering sports for The Tribune I ran into several athletes who refused to talk to me. That never bothered me, as long as they didn't talk to other writers, either. A silent Steve Carlton never bothered me. He didn't talk to writers, so what? His privilege. What did bother me was when an athlete would refuse to talk to me in the post game locker room and then whisper something into the ear of a competing writer. Tony Esposito did that to me after a tough loss in the Stanley Cup finals and that infuriated me.

It wasn't until years later, when I found myself sitting next to him on an airplane, that I found out he's really a pretty good guy. Veteran pitcher Ron Reed went straight to the top of my personal jerk list one night when I wasn't even talking to him. I was covering a White Sox game and, after a tough loss, I went to the locker room to talk to Carlton Fisk. Fisk was riding an exercise bike and I interrupted to ask him if he could talk. Reed, sitting in front of his locker a few feet away told me, "Don't bother him; he's busy." I informed Reed that Fisk was an adult and could speak for himself. Fisk did get off the bike and answered a few questions in his usual articulate manner.

But of all the athletes I ever tried to interview Alex Johnson was the only one who threatened me with bodily harm. Johnson, who had won the American League batting title the previous year, had so alienated his California Angels teammates with his blatant lack of hustle that, by midseason of 1971, they ostracised him and his manager refused to play him. I wrote a column saying that Johnson had great talent, was doing what he loved to do, but was throwing it all away. He had, I said "a private devil inside him" which was depriving him of enjoying the fruits of his talent. All in all I thought it was a sympathetic column. Up until then I had rather liked him. He had a reputtion for not talking to writers but I had interviewed him once when he was with Cincinnati and he was cordial enough.

I wasn't sure which Alex Johnson I'd be dealing with when, in spring training with the Cleveland Indians the next year, I approached him and introduced myself again as a writer for the Chicago Tribune. "Chicago Tribune," he repeated. "There was a writer for the Chicago Tribune last year who wrote an article I didn't like. He called me a devil." I confessed that I was the writer, but couldn't recall calling him a devil. I offered to look up the offending article and bring it to him the next time we met. "You do that," he said.

Before the Indians' first visit to Chicago that year I looked up the column and, although I hadn't exactly called him a devil, I wasn't going to argue the point. I admit I was extremely nervous when I went, column in hand, to Comiskey Park the next night. As I crossed the diamond to enter the visitor's dugout and locker room down the first base line I kept thinking of the old Indian in the movie "Little Big Man," who kept saying 'It is a good day to die."

The hell it was. When I reached the locker room, I was told that Johnson had arrived in a good humor. "He was smiling," I was informed. He was sitting facing his locker and reading a book, still smiling--until he saw me. I said, "I'm . . ." and that's as far as I got before he leaped off his chair and screamed, "I know who you are you blankety blank,blank,blanker." He then suggested that I get out of his face before he inflicted severe damage on mine. I agreed this was probably the best course of action and that was my last conversation with Alex Johnson. Does all this make Alex Johnson a jerk? I'm not certain. After all, one man's jerk is another man's idol.