By Bob Markus

When I first started writing a sports column for The Chicago Tribune, Brent Musburger, then a columnist for the Tribune-owned Chicago Today, gave me this advice: "Always write about the thing people are talking about the most." Good advice and I tried to follow it. But it's not always easy advice to follow. Some days it's as easy as eating gooseberry pie. Other days it's like trying to choke down a raw rutabaga. In the 10 months or so that I've been writing this blog, there have been more gooseberry days than rutabaga nights. After all, it's only once a week.

But as I look back at the week that was, I don't see anything that's likely to grab a reader by the throat and make him cry: "Can you dig it." Yes, there was Tiger Woods' return to the golf tour with mixed results. Been there, done that. Spring training has started and I suppose I could try spinning a few spring training stories, but the last good yarn to come out of spring training was the Yankee wife swapping story many moons ago. I'm amazed that it's never been turned into a TV sit-com, at least to my knowledge. Spring training used to be one of my favorite times of the year, especially during the 11 years I wrote a daily column. What could be better than escaping Chicago's winters, with the occasional 20 inch snow storm and the sub zero wind chills, and driving the family down to Sarasota, Florida or Scottsdale, Arizona for five weeks of sunshine and baseball? And it's not as if a guy had to work himself half to death, either. Get up at dawn, take your three-mile run through lemon-scented neighborhoods, shower, eat breakfast, and drive to the ball park. Arrive about 10, have your interview done by 11, write your column at poolside and ask your wife: "What's for lunch?" That was the routine in Arizona. For Florida, just substitute running on the beach for the lemon tree ramble and you've got it. Being a beat writer is a little more labor intensive. Basically you follow the same routine as the columnist, except that you have to stay to watch the ball game. Not that you'll write anything about it. If there's one rule a baseball beat writer learns, it's that spring training games are meaningless and they must never, never be written about.

The NFL's free agent signing period opened and the Washington Redskins gave $100 million dollars to a defensiive tackle named Haynesworth. The last time a Haynesworth made headlines in Washington he was being rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court. And as Forest Gump would say: "That's all I've got to say about that." The pro basketball and hockey seasons are heating up and college basketball's March Madness is close at hand. But it's not the time to get excited about them yet.

So I guess I'll have to go to my fallback position. My original plan when I started writing this blog was to write about the job itself, a job that seems to fascinate most male readers. This seems as good a time as any to tell you a little about what it was like to work in The Tribune sports department during the early 1960s. How I got there is a story in itself. After graduating from the University of Missouri journalism school, I worked for five years as a general assignment reporter on the Moline (Il.) Dispatch, but after spending a year trying to decipher the hen scratchings of country correspondents on the state desk, I wanted to make a change. I was told about an opening on the sports desk of a paper in Dubuque, Ia., drove up there, was interviewed and got the job. I gave my two weeks notice and was sitting on a bar stool in a tavern across the street from the paper, watching the Dodgers and Braves in a National league playoff, when I got a phone call from the sports editor in Dubuque. He told me that a friend of his had just gotten out of the army and he had given my job to his buddy.

So I was out of luck and out of work. I called home to tell my parents the news and my father, who knew a guy who knew a guy, asked me if I'd like a job on the Tribune. Sure enough, he did know a guy and I soon got a phone call from Clayton Kirkpatrick, then the city editor and later THE editor of The Tribune. He asked me what I wanted to do and I cleverly told him I wanted to be a copy reader. Now I have to tell you that nobody wants to be a copy reader, but I figured it was better than, as General Patton supposedly said (at least according to the movie) "shoveling shit in Louisiana."

I did not make a good first impression at The Tribune. I was flat busted and my only suit was in tatters. My father loaned me a suit--a white suit--which I wore for two weeks before getting my first paycheck. Oh, did I mention that this was in November? When I had my entrance interview with Neighborhood News Editor Paul Hubbard, he asked me why I'd left the Dispatch. "Because for the last year I was assistant state editor and it bored me to death," I answered. Hubbard cleared his throat and said, "I was the state editor in Springfield for 18 years." Oh.

It was the policy of The Tribune at that time to start every new hire in Neighborhood news. When an opening occurred in any other section, the job would be offered to a Neighborhood Newsie. I turned down one offer, whcih appeared to be about as boring as my job in Moline, but a month or two later the sports department was looking for a copy reader . I was low man on the copy desk totem pole, but all of the others wanted more meaningful employment, so I got the job. I was told from the start that I would be a copy reader for the rest of my life and under no circumstances would I ever write a story. That turned out to be not true. Meanwhile I found myself working among a cast of characters who would not be out of place in a John Steinbeck novel. Another time I'll tell you about them--the next time I can't find anything else to write about.