A Not-So-Desultory Philippic

One month ago, the Executive Board of The Crimson began the process of turning over the reins of power to a new crop of executives.

It dawned on me that my time in the building was limited. After four years of sportswriting and editing, I was about to leave.

The night the new officers of the Crimson were named, I began to write some of the things in my head, just a journal, nothing formal (I'm a sports writer--I hate formal).

Since then, I've compiled these thoughts into what turned out to be this column.

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It has been a long, long time before anything has compelled me to write. That is, other than a professor.

But tonight I find it absolutely necessary to sit down at my computer and type out my thoughts.

Less than 24 hours ago, The Crimson, where I have served as an assistant and associate sports editor for the past two years, selected its 124th executive board. And for the first time in three years, I was not making that triumphant walk down the hall, ready to be introduced as an incoming executive editor.

I was preparing to leave.

The guard named that night was the beginning of the end for myself and my colleagues on the 123rd executive board. We were about to become, as it is known in Crimson parlance, "fossils" or "dinosaurs". I'm already starting to feel like oil.

So many things were running through my head amid the cheers and champagne in the newsroom. I remembered my first visit to The Crimson, where John Trainer and Y. Tarek Farouki, the sports editors at the time, pitched the idea of comping sports to me. I remembered my first game story--a field hockey story for which I was so nervous that I prepared a detailed list of 20 (!) questions for Harvard coach Sue Caples. (I didn't even know the rules of field hockey.) I remembered my wonder and amazement as I became an executive for the first time in the fall of sophomore year.

There were so many great games I covered--I've seen Harvard in the NCAA tournament for both men's soccer and men's lacrosse. I've watched the hockey team from the press box of the venerable Boston Garden.

But for all those exciting moments, that's not what I'm going to miss the most.

My comp class, the comp class of 1993, is a group of people that will be irreplacable for me. No single organization will ever be able to bring together so many talented, helpful, genuine people. For me, The Crimson was really one place where I could go and every one knew my name.

I'd just walk into the newsroom.

"Hey Ginz!"

"Hi Mikey, how are you?"

You get the picture.

We have been through so many things together.

Last year, five of us--myself, Jeff Gell, Eric Brown, Peter Wallace, and Manlio Goetzl--rented a car and went to The Game. We had a blast--how many "Yale Sucks" chants did we get going?--and then took in a movie after the football (how could we not use the car for the full 24 hours of rental?).

There was the summer of 1995. Todd Braunstein, the current president, was in town doing summer Crimson. As a side affair, he wanted to clean up the archives of the paper and bind volumes of the paper from the past three years.

So every weekend, he and I and other Crimeds would hit the basement, sifting through paper, with the sounds of the Boss or the Forrest Gump soundtrack blaring in the background.

"I found the November 15th issue! We only need one to finish the month!"

So many times, I went with these folks to Red Sox games, movies, or just to the paper to hang out. And I'm going to miss it. A lot. I will never experience this again.

*************

This year's edition of The Game was perhaps my most special experience as a Crimson editor.

I had never covered football--this game was my first coverage. But I wanted to do this one.

Covering alongside me were Eric and Matt Howitt, with whom I shared the pleasure of being on the sports executive board two years ago. There we were in the press box, watching The Game, laughing it up, then getting serious and cranking out the Extra that followed The Game.

Matt was a bundle of excitement--he literally purloined the computer guts of the Crimson and took them to the Stadium to publish the Extra. And he was smiling--every minute of the Game.

As the shadows grew long on the field, and the scoreboard flashed congratulations to the seniors of the team, it dawned on me too that this was it--the next time I would see a Game, it would not be as an undergraduate or as a reporter.

I would be--gasp--an alumnus.

We cranked on that Extra up in the press box like there was no tomorrow. Every five minutes, Matt would exclaim, "I love this!" Truth be told, I loved it too. And as the sun began to disappear over the horizon, I almost wished our project would just take a little bit longer. But like all good things, it too came to an end.

As Matt, Eric and I loaded the car, Matt gave me a quick handshake.

"Long live the 122nd and 123rd [executive guards]," he said quietly.

"We were the greatest," I said.

As he drove off, he stretched his hand out of the car window, pointing his finger in the air.

I didn't realize how much I was going to miss my sports boards, both the 122nd and 123rd boards. And it wasn't until that moment that I realized that was how I felt.

We were the greatest.

***********

Then there were the Friday nights.

Once a week, one sports editor spends the entire evening editing the stories and laying out the sports page for the next day. My night was Friday. For two years I spent Fridays in the basement of the paper, a room named for our production supervisor, a 56-year-old priest from Everett (with Mafia connections), Mr. Patrick R. Sorrento (hereafter referred to as PRS).

In the beginning of my days as a page editor, I was as effective as a Tim Wakefield fastball.

I could just do nothing right--the fonts were wrong, the wire stories always seemed to come in late, and my layouts weren't looking so hot.

But practice (and a little help from the previous guard and PRS) got me going better.

Four figure closeouts as far as the eye could see!!

But there was a rub.

Hockey.

You see, hockey kinda takes forever to cover because the reporters either come back late from the games or modem their story in from faraway locales. So I would have to wait until late into the evening before I even had something to put into the paper.

Sometimes, things can get really exciting, like last spring, when the men's hockey team played in the ECAC final at Lake Placid, N.Y., while the women's basketball team took on Vanderbilt--in Nashville.

There was a little voice in my head.

"AT&T, how may I help you?"

Friday nights always seemed to always have some such impending disaster, but somehow things got done.

Fridays also always seemed to be the skeleton crew; unlike the other nights at the paper, the building was often a ghost town on Fridays.

But there were a lonely few that persevered, that resisted the temptation to party on Friday night so that there would be a Saturday paper.

And they came to be known as the Dream Team.

No, we couldn't hit 30-foot jumpers or whale on seven-foot Angolans in the lane, but nobody could put out a Saturday paper like we did.

I'm going to miss all of those Friday nights. A lot of people used to ask me wouldn't I rather spend Friday night out. I used to think that the answer was yes.

But as much as I'm sure I hated giving up those Friday nights at the time, now I know I wouldn't have traded them for anything.

************

Last night was the last time I'll edit a Friday night page. Sure, I may edit a few more pages on other nights, but they won't be the same.

I feel like it was just yesterday that PRS was yelling at me to finish the page before sunrise.

Actually, it probably was just yesterday.

To the 124th: Good luck!--you'll do a great job.

As for me, I'm outta here.

I had a ball.