Well, I just made a complete arse out of myself yet again. I went to the RazorSharks' practice at the downtown Y today to talk to Coach Baker for various stories. Because I'm not an expert on basketball (I'll expand on this concept further down), I had trouble coming up with intelligent questions to ask him. (I also wasn't as prepared as I should have been because, alas, I overslept -- there's a surprise -- and didn't have time to think through questions beforehand.) So the entire time I'm feeling like an idiot. And that's certainly not Coach's fault. He was, as usual, very gracious and very patient and very friendly. But I knew I could have done a better job. But the worst part was when I asked him about player-coach Lazarus Sims. When I said Laz's name, I said it wrong -- the emphasis is on the second syllable (La-ZAHR-us), but I put it on the first syllable (LAH-zar-us). Again, Coach was very gracious, but he might have been a little peeved (and I certainly wouldn't have blamed him), and he corrected me. I was so embarassed that I wrapped up the interview and slinked out the door feeling like a moron. It made me recall an interview Bob Knight did with a bubble-headed TV reporter. She asked him a stupid question, and he basically said, "That's a stupid question, and if you don't know what you're talking about, I'm not talking to you," and he stormed away. (Of course, he said it in a much more animated and demeaning way, because Bob Knight is, well, an a**hole.) Fortunately, Coach Baker is the polar opposite of Bob Knight, a fact for which I'm amazingly grateful. But the whole episode today exposed perhaps my biggest flaw as a sports journalist: I'm a jack of all trades, but a master of none. I know enough about pretty much every sport to intelligently write about it, but I often can't go as in-depth as I'd sometimes like, and I often am unable to keep up with a conversation in, say, a pressbox. There were many days and nights, for example, this past summer in the Red Wings pressbox when Jim and Chuck and some other reporters were having really detailed, knowledgable baseball conversations and I had no idea what they were talking about. That's also happened to me in the Amerks pressbox, because Kevin Oklobzija is a walking Amerks encyclopedia, as are the team's PR people and several other hockey writers. At those times my self-esteem plunges, and I feel totally incompetent as a sportswriter. In the past I've thought about calling up Bob Matthews' show or seeing if I could get a guest shot on John DiTullio's WHTK morning show, but I've always decided against it because I know I'd probably get embarassed by their knowledge (certainly Bob's knowledge) and end up sounding like a moron. (I'm also hesitant to go on the radio because I'm a fairly severe stutterer, but I can probably deal with that, as long as I don't pass out.) The plain fact of the matter is that I'm not an overall sports expert, and that really upsets me at times, because I know it's holding me back. Ugh. One final note ... R.I.P. Sandy West, a true Queen of Noise.

 

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