On the road again ... This eight-part series ends with today's final instalment. My plane leaves Toronto Tuesday to Labrador, Iceland, Ireland, and, eventually, Latvia to head off on an another adventure. The purpose of this series has been to promote my coverage of the Worldstars hockey tour with games in Riga, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pilsen, Bern, Karlstad, Jonkoping, Linkoping, Oslo and back to Katowice in Poland before heading home Dec. 23. Some people can't believe I'm taking this trip. My least favourite type of travel is arena-hotel-airport and this one has 10 games in 10 different locations in a 14-day span. It's the very definition of arena-hotel-airport.
But something tells me I'm not going to remember the games and planes, so much, but as the experience, the days, the nights, the people and the places.
Then again, the last time I said something like that ...
VINEYARD TO VINEYARD
It had been an idyllic day in the Napa Valley, driving from vineyard to vineyard, when the way home I turned to Larry Tucker of the Calgary Sun in the passenger seat and began philosophising.
"You know, we're going to remember this afternoon long after we've managed to forget whatever happens at Candlestick Park tonight,'' I said.
Wrong. World Series Earthquake.
It was Game 3 of the 1989 World Series between Bay Area rival San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's. I've covered more than a hundred World Series games but the one which wasn't played was the one I'll remember.
At events like the World Series and Super Bowl, I'm career Aux Box. That's short of auxiliary press box. For this one, the Aux Box was carved into the seats of the upper deck directly behind home plate, directly above the actual main press box.
My seat happened to be on the first row directly behind home play. It might have been the "best'' location in the entire ball park to view and feel the earthquake which killed dozens of people, brought the Bay Bridge down, collapsed double decker freeways and caused millions of dollars damage.
I'll never forget the way it began. The crowd realized it instantly. They were having an earthquake.
They cheered!
Like, "Hey, this is perfect. A Bay Area World Series and we're having an earthquake to go with it."
Then they realized it was The Big One.
That Candlestick Park didn't end up a pile of rubble burying thousands of fans was a miracle. Sitting in the upper deck was like being on a boat in choppy seas. There were actual waves to the concrete around the stadium. The backstop whipped back and forth beyond belief. The greatest athletic accomplishment in World Series history might have been the worker holding on for dear life up in the arc lights which bent like a willow tree.
You felt like you were taking your life in your hands to go back to the between-levels media work room, where the power and phones were out, to collect your stuff. The safest place in the ball park was on the field, where the players and media all proceeded.
A few of us found a phone down the line in left field which was still working. Trouble was it was dark and nobody could read their notes. Most of what was written that night was dictated off the top of your head.
With the Candlestick parking lot gridlock, we found a way out through a ghetto behind the stadium. Eventually proceeding downtown, Tucker found the only bar in all of San Francisco which was open. Everybody inside was on the honour system. Take a beer. Put money on the till. Everybody inside was telling their earthquake stories. It was the perfect place to gather material for the news-side stories we'd have to write. And there was beer.
Unfortunately, there wasn't time for it to be more than two-and-out.
Returning to the scene in the streets, there was now a white-uniformed sailor at every intersection, directing traffic. The fleet was in. Sailors decided to play a part. Much like seemed to be the case when the lights went out in New York we witnessed the very best come out in people.
We managed to get to the Golden Gate bridge and over to the Oakland side the lights were still on. We hit the first phone booths we found to dictate news-side stories and phone our wives to let our families know we were OK.
Finally returning to our hotel in the Berkeley marina, where there was no power or phones, we were led to our rooms by flashlight, dumped our gear, and returned to the lobby where everybody was watching national coverage on TV hooked to auxiliary power.
Then it hit me. I didn't do my radio show.
Back in the car, I finally found a pay phone, taped the show, and returned to the hotel.
The next day I passed the pay phone location in daylight. The side of the building was leaning about 10 feet out over top of the phone booth and only feet away cars were covered in bricks from sections of the wall which had fallen.
That night the media mob staying at the hotel had one of the great feasts of all time. As guests we all invited to the swimming pool area where they were barbecuing everything in the freezers which would otherwise go to waste.
QUAKE AND SHAKE
Idyllic day in the Napa Valley be damned. I'll never forget that 1989 World Series earthquake.
Actually, I've been involved in more than one good shaker. A few years earlier, In Los Angeles, they also had a World Series earthquake. It didn't register the same on the Richter scale. But the chandelier in my bedroom swayed and my hotel room door popped open and I was on the sixth floor. A media mate was about 10 floors higher and got a good ride.
I've been in a few others, including one in Japan that nobody even blinked at. It was live news for about an hour on TV and then, when it was clear it wasn't a major catastrophe, the story went away like it hadn't happened.
Then there was the 1984 World Series riot in Detroit. I barely remember a thing about the Tigers clinching the series in Game 5. But I'll never forget standing on the press box roof watching people turn over cars, torch that area of town.
This is not something you really want to witness, especially when somewhere out there we knew bullets were involved, but we had the best seat in all of Detroit to watch it.
We weren't allowed out of Tiger Stadium but it wasn't as if we were feeling like we were being held hostage. Ever had a pizza delivered to you by helicopter? The pizza king who owned the ball club helicoptered in dozens of pizza for the media. And, to wash it down, they brought up a few kegs of beer from the concession stands.
Finally about 4 a.m. they wheeled in some buses to take us back to our hotels.
RIOT TIME
Riots are a common occurrence after teams win titles. Usually they don't involve any of the real sports fans. It's almost always low-life who see an opportunity to loot and damage without fear of incarceration. Most of the riots are over by the time we leave the press box. But sometimes you have to cover them before you get to your assigned media seat.
This was the case, more than once, at the France 1998 World Cup of soccer and it's guaranteed to happen again at World Cup 2006 in Germany unless the universe should be blessed by England failing to qualify.
The one I remember best from France '98 was up in Lens where the police had cordoned off an area for the press. They're roped off position 'A' for the media where they expected stuff to happen. We were well protected and the police wanted us there. One of their own was in hospital clinging to life from an earlier incident, and it was one of those "make my day'' deals. If one of the hooligans decided to make a move, it was going to be well-covered.
As I wrap this up, there are so many stories I haven't managed to get to and, I'm sure, dozens I failed to recall. Maybe a dozen years from now, when I call it a career, I'll write the unabridged version of all this and more, and call it a book.
Yesterday, as I finished this final instalment, I suddenly remembered Todd Brooker's crash at Kitzbuhel in 1987. I was there when he ended up going head-over-heels down the toughest test in downhill skiing like a stuffed doll. I remember the helicopter which carried him away in a basket hanging on a cable and his wife running through town, following the helicopter to the hospital.
There are few times I've been as proud of my profession as that day. The only place she could phone home was the media centre. We all moved to the other side of the room to give her privacy.
Later Jim O'Leary of the Toronto Sun and your correspondent went to hospital to visit Brooker. I was dressed in some sort of Canadian Olympic wardrobe item I'd aquired at the Los Angeles Olympics. We went to the desk, asked which room Todd Brooker was in,was provided the number, and proceeded directly there. Nobody checked us for identification.
When we entered his room, Brooker was just regaining consciousness.
We were the first people to talk to him.
I remember him feeling his face, which was still caked in blood.
"Broken nose?''
A lot more than that. We told him he was lucky to be alive. We interviewed him at some length and left.
HOOKED ON PHONE-ICS
Sometimes filing from these various venues is easy. Other times ...
I remember when Kurt Browning won his fourth World Figure Skating Championship in Prague. The media room shut down at midnight, so I went back to write in my hotel room. I was using a Radio Shack "Trash 80" at the time. It didn't hold many words - basically a column, a story and a sidebar.
Finished, I came down to hook up to a phone in a lobby booth. I was walking down a set of circular staircases when I tripped. Computer went flying. Batteries went flying. But the thing was a tank. Put the batteries back in. Everything was still there.
With these new computers, good luck.
At the Atlanta Olympics my computer fried in the heat and humidity. A foul ball at softball smashed the screen of another. I took the two machines to Sports Illustrated's office where a technician managed to put the two together to create one workable machine. At the World Championships in Athletics, I fried another one. When all else fails, there's always dictation.
BEFORE THERE WAS TWO
Many years ago, before there was an Edmonton Sun, I used to write non-sports column every Saturday in addition to my main sports column in the Journal.
Once, when the Journal was in the track-and-field business, they sent me to College Park. Maryland, to cover an indoor track meet on my way to the Super Bowl in Miami.
I decided to play tourist to come up with my "Keeping Up With Jones" column that week.
When I arrived to cover the Super Bowl, I called home. My wife, Linda, said she had a question to ask me.
"Something wrong?''
"Depends,'' she said.
"On what?''
"Your 'Keeping Up With' column.''
Instantly I thought back to the time when I referred to her and her six sisters as the "Seven Dwarfs" in print and a few other times I'd put my typing fingers in motion before I put my mind in gear.
"Who is 'the two of us?' '' she asked.
"Huh?''
"Your first paragraph,'' she said.
"I can't even remember my first paragraph,'' I said.
" 'The two of us left at 8 a.m.'' she read it back to me.
I'd dictated the column.
"The tour bus left at 8 a.m.!'' I exclaimed.
COMPARED TO CAM
That one was easy compared to Cam Cole, then of the Edmonton Otherpaper, returning from one of our trips to Australia. We were driving from Melbourne to Sydney and noticing a lot of "Beware Of Kangaroo" signs on the road.
Overnighting in a place called Bateman's Bay, we ended up at a huge party at the local golf course and Larry Wood of the Calgary Herald observed to one local that we'd seen a million kangaroo signs and no kangaroos. A few of the locals huddled up and decided to break the don't-tell-the-tourists rule and tell us about a little cove at the end of a trunk road where dozens of kangaroos hung out.
We were advised to stop at the corner store at the trunk road turn to buy a loaf of bred to feed the kangaroos. We did. And the place was, as advertised, crawling with kangaroos. Cole, wearing a golf shirt, had the bread. He was immediately swarmed by a whole herd of them. Who knew kangaroos had long fingernails?
Cole escaped with scratches all over his back. As he took off his shirt and we inspected the damage, Woody started to laugh.
"I wish I could be there when you get home. She's going to look at all these scratches and you're going to try to tell her 'Honest, honey, it was a bunch of kangaroos.' ''
Nearly 35 years ago my wife knew she was not only marrying me, but the newspaper business as well. Obviously, a lifestyle like mine wouldn't be possible without an understanding family.
- - -
These "On The Road Again" memories are brought to you thanks to the support of my wife Linda, son Shane, twin daughters Nikki and Trina and, now, five year old grandson, James.
To this day, my wife still packs my suitcase. Sometimes I think it's because she can't wait for me to get on the road again.
