By Bob Markus

When new acquaintances find out that I used to be a sports writer, they almost inevitably ask me one of two questions: What was your favorite sport to cover; what was the single most memorable event you covered? Those were not easy questions to answer, particularly the first one. In 36 years writing sports for The Chicago Tribune I covered every major beat and found something to like in most of them. Aside from writing a daily column, which I did for 11 years, the most fun I had was in being the national college football and basketball writer. Not only did I get to cover some of the most famous games in college sports history--Villanova's upset of Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA tournament final, Texas' victory over Arkansas in the 1969 shootout in the hills, Nebraska's 35-31 win over Oklahoma in one of the many "games of the century"--but I got to see an estimated 100 college campuses, from the University of Washington in the far Northwest to the University of Miami, which is nearly as far Southeast as you can get. One of the best parts of the job was walking--and sometimes running--through the various college campuses on a Saturday morning. On a run through the LSU campus one morning I was brought up short when I came face to face with the live tiger mascot. At Mississippi there was The Grove, the most sophisticated tailgate setting in the country, where the girls wear designer dresses and the men jackets and ties and watch the football team parade by on the way to the stadium. My vote for most beautiful college campus--Pepperdine, which sits high atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Malibu. So I could have answered: college football and basketball--but I didn't.

Covering baseball fulltime was another beat I found enjoyable--perhaps "satisfying" would be a better word. The baseball beat is hard! It's seven days a week from the middle of February when the pitchers and catchers--and baseball beat writers--report to spring training until the end of October when the World Series ends. Even when the players have all gone home there is work to do for the beat writer, winter meetings to attend, possible trades to be discussed and, generally, in January, a goodwill tour to the hinterlands with the manager and some of the key players. But the beat has its compensations. Although there is a lot of travelling, there is not the frenetic Cleveland today Denver tomorrow ratrace of the NBA. In most cases you stay two to four days in a given town, long enough to send your laundry out and get it back. You're staying at the team hotel, which is usually a four star or better and if you manage your meal money well, you can indulge in the occasional gourmet dinner. Although some people find baseball dull, I agree with the minor league executive who once told me, "the thing I love about baseball is there's an orgasm in every ball game." Think about it. In even the most mundane of games there usually comes a point when a single at bat can change the complexion. The slow pace of the game, while perhaps irritating to some, gives the baseball writer time to plan his story well before the final out and the slow unwinding of the season lets him settle into a rhythm that no other sport permits. But baseball was not my favorite sport, either. In fact, the two sports that I loved covering the most were not fulltime beats.

They are boxing and auto racing. I loved them both for the same reason. The people. I never met an inarticulate boxer or race car driver. Both sports operate under an almost palpable canopy of dread, the danger inherent in each always lurking somewhere beneath the surface, never spoken of, but also never entirely out of mind. A race driver will answer your question if you speak of the life and death aspects of his profession, but he will not dwell on it, nor will he bring up the subject himself. Race drivers are the most honest athletes of all. They never fail to run out the grounders. A driver can be hopelessly out of a race, but he will never stop trying to get his car around the next corner as quickly as possible. Boxers share this trait. The distinction between the two sports is that the race driver knows in the back of his mind he could be hurt, while the boxer knows for an absolute certainty that he is going to get hurt at least to some extent.

Now that you know the answer to question No. 1, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out my answer to question No. 2. Whenever asked about my most memorable event I always come up with a three-part answer. In no particular order they are: The first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden; The 1972 Munich Olympics; The 1988 Indianapolis 500 when I spent the whole month of May working on Teo Fabi's pit crew and filing a daily story about it. Since this year's Indy 500 is just around the corner I'll focus in on that one. It started with a phone call from Michael Knight, the public relations man--one of the alltime best--for the new Quaker State Porsche team that was bringing the iconic German sports car back to Indianapolis. Knight told me that as part of their p.r. effort they were going to let one writer work in the pits on every race day. He asked me if I'd like to do it for the Indianapolis 500 and I answered, "does it have to be just on race day? Could I do it for the whole month?" He, of course, was delighted at the prospect of having a daily mention of his team in the midwest's largest paper. My sports editor, Gene Quinn, was not quite so sanguine about it. "You can do it on two conditions," he said. "No. 1 you won't do anything to get yourself hurt and No.2 you won't do anything that makes the Tribune responsible for affecting the outcome of the race." I crossed my fingers behind my back and agreed. There's no way I could guarantee either of those demands. Danger is inherent to the sport. I had been in the pits when Wally Dallenbach's car burst into flames not six feet in front of me. In 1973 I had been running from my seat in the stands behind the pits toward the fourth turn where Swede Savage had just crashed--fatally, as it would turn out, when I heard a loud "thump" which I later found out was the sound of a crew member being fatally struck by a fire truck racing the wrong way up pit road. I didn't expect anything like that to happen to me, but I couldn't guarantee it.

My main job during the week before qualifying was to time driver Teo Fabi's speed on the front straightaway. My first radar gun was flawed and so the first day's effort was wasted. As the week went along it was obvious that the new Porsche--actually a March chassis with a Porsche engine--was underpowered and was in danger of failing to make the race. On the eve of the first Saturday of qualifying--pole day--there was an emergency meeting in our garage and one of our consultants mentioned that there was a way to cheat the popoff valve and gain a little extra speed. Did team general manager Al Holbert want to try it? This presented me with a serious dilemma. On one hand I was a newspaperman who had promised to tell all. On the other hand I was a member of the racing team. I solved the problem by walking out of the garage. Knowing the late Al Holbert, I doubt that there was any cheating the next day when Fabi qualified the car, albeit at a speed slow enough that we all were on pins and needles until the final second of qualifying on the following
Sunday. It meant just as much to me as it did for anybody else because if Teo didn't make the race, there went my story. Race day was the most exciting of my life. When I stood behind our car at the starting line during the prerace ceremonies, for the first time in my life I was overcome with emotion at the playing of the National Anthem. Then, after the firing up of our engine, I joined the rest of the crew in the mad dash back to our pits, probably a quarter of a mile sprint.

I had two jobs for race day. One was to hold the stop sign and lower it in front of Fabi to mark his stopping point whenever he entered the pits. The second was to man the water hose and squirt water on the fuel cell after each refueling. This was to prevent any chance of a fuel spill from igniting. I was nervous about this job, because the fuel cell was located behind the driver and with the open cockpit it was possible I could hit Fabi in the face. Teo would not have liked that. I had had no chance to practice, so the first pit stop was a source of great anxiety. Teo came in a little hot, but stopped in time. When the fueler pulled the hose from the cell I managed to wash it down with no problem; then Teo sped on his way. Seconds later I heard a roar and everyone in our pits was looking down pit road. A wheel had come off our car and Teo had crashed in the pits. I put on my writer's hat and ran down to join in the interview with Fabi, then went back to the car and helped push it all the way down pit road and into our garage in Gasoline Alley. My career as a pit crew member was over, but I'll never forget it. And Sunday, when 33 cars come thundering into turn one of the world's most famous speedway, I'll have a pretty good idea of the emotions beating in each competitor's chest, from the drivers to the lowliest crew men. Bless them all.