As a junior reporter at City News Service in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, I was once assigned to cover a meeting of the group planning the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. I had grown up watching the Games on TV, and it was pretty cool to be at an Olympics organizing committee press conference. I had no way of knowing it, but that assignment was, to paraphrase “Casablanca,” the beginning of a great relationship. Ten years later I was reporter at the City Hall Bureau for the Toronto Star, covering Toronto’s bid for the 1996 Summer Games, which Read more
journalism
I can’t say I remember a lot about Rickey Henderson’s two-to-three month stint with the Toronto Blue Jays when I covered the team for the Toronto Star in 1993. But I sure remember how we met. It was July 31, 1993; the Major League Baseball trade deadline, and it was my second year as a full-time writer on the Blue Jays beat for the Star. The Jays had won the World Series the previous year by beating Atlanta, but they desperately wanted a second title and were believed to be in the market for another outfielder with some offensive skills. Read more
The Paris Summer Olympics begin on Friday, July 26. And I’m very much looking forward to it. I covered the Toronto bid for the 1996 Summer Games (I seem to recall we lost to Atlanta) for the Toronto Star, and then the city’s (again) unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Olympics, which went to Beijing. It was a tad depressing, but then I handled the Star’s coverage of Vancouver’s winning bid (it was close, but they got it) for the 2010 Winter Games. Covering the bids, as well as the International Olympics Committee voting scandal in the early 2000’s, allowed me Read more
