The golfer Tommy Bolt once shot a 69 in the U.S. Open to finish his round just off the lead. In the paper the next morning, Bolt’s score was listed at 78. Bolt confronted the writer, who told him it was a typographical error.
“That was no error,” Bolt pointed out. “That was a perfect 7 and a perfect 8.”
Imagine my surprise when, just by accident, I happen to see a column of mine predicting the Jazz over the Bulls in 5.
This has to be some mistake. Is that what I wrote? I don’t remember that.
That was no typographical error. That was a perfect 5.
Here’s a story about the perils of deadline journalism. A writer at an Army-Navy game filed his story with Army winning the game by a late touchdown.
Anyone who ever has seen an Army-Navy game knows how confusing the uniforms are. As he was about to leave the press box, the writer glanced down at the score sheet to see that it was Navy that had won.
He immediately got on the phone to his copy desk.
“Change all the Armys to Navy and all the Navys to Army,” he instructed.
That prediction column? Change all the Jazz to Bulls and all the Bulls to Jazz.
Even before the Bulls poleaxed the Jazz by 42 points I was given a chance to back off, for the record, and I did not. Tim Weigel, generously, tried to let me off the hook as part of a pregame fill he did for Channel 2.
Weigel suggested I was not a “homer,” which is a bad thing for a journalist to be in all respects except when he is trying to chew his morning bagel only to discover it is at least three days old.
More Top Picks Pure Enrichment Pureclean Xl Rolling
And when he takes it back, he gets a shrug and the suggestion that maybe they are fresher in Utah, if you like Utah so much.
No, what I say to Weigel is I still think the Jazz will win and that Karl Malone will get better and Jerry Sloan will get smarter and the Bulls, which is why I picked against them in the first place, will not get any younger.
And that is also why I eat my stale bagel without further complaint, imagining it must be what crow tastes like.
Of course I am a homer. All journalists are homers in the sense that we know who the home audience is and that is for whom we are writing. Familiarity breeds encouragement, except in the case of the White Sox and Bryan Cox.
I picked the Bulls to beat the Pacers in six and it took them seven. I did not take their failure personally.
Henry Kissinger, I believe it was, said that hell hath no fury like a sportswriter whose prediction turns out wrong.
Yet, I have noticed that when motivations are solicited from the Bulls, doubt is cited often. Too old or too tired, familiar words. The Bulls will show anyone who dared think that, and I must admit that dare I did.
So, if I have been any help in that regard, I also have some suggestions on how to get Luc Longley more active in the low post.
Until now, I believe the most unpopular opinion I ever offered was that Mike Ditka did not deserve to be the first tight end elected to the Hall of Fame. Not that Ditka didn’t belong there, but that better tight ends than Ditka should have been inducted first. I still believe that.
As a matter of fact, Ditka has not spoken to me since, not that we swapped gardening tips before.
I do not know who keeps track of these things, but rarely does a writer ever have an editorial written against him by his own newspaper.
No matter. These things get taken much too seriously, though I will point out that when Ditka accepted his honor he did it in the name of all tight ends.
I am here to be used. And I could still be right about the Jazz.
If I turn out to be off on the games and not on the winner, just change the Bulls back to Jazz and the Jazz back to Bulls.