I guess that was my biggest media claim to fame \u2014 playing the Jacksons in basketball in a charity game at Santa Barbara High School. I blocked a shot at the buzzer that would have tied or won the game. My coach, Jack Trigueiro, the coach of Santa Barbara High\u2019s boys team, told me I should have let them make the basket. Oh well, my destiny wasn\u2019t fulfilled.<\/p>\n
This was during the Jacksons\u2019 heyday in 1977. No, Michael Jackson wasn\u2019t there. I remember we, the faceless opposition made up of local members of the media, sat leaning against the gym walls during the halftime spectacular before a packed house that had come to see the Jacksons sing and put on a dance show before enormous throbbing speakers.<\/p>\n
During a George Plimpton (look it up) phase of participatory journalism as a 23-year-old and thereabouts, alternately:<\/p>\n
–I played ice hockey against a boys youth team on skates. At the conclusion of the game, we piled the kids in the goal as a humorous coda to the event. They all loved it.<\/p>\n
–I jogged with a female UC Santa Barbara long-distance runner while interviewing her, then wrote up the whole piece afterward for the Goleta Today, a weekday-morning daily I served as a one-man sports staff.<\/p>\n
–I got smoked by Los Angeles Rams player Otis Grant (like me, 6 feet 5 inches tall) as he went around me easily to score in a benefit basketball game at Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard, near my hometown.<\/p>\n
I spent one week as an assistant basketball coach for Bruce Lofthus at Dos Pueblos High in Goleta\/Santa Barbara until I explained a pivot to a varsity player that didn\u2019t comport with Bruce\u2019s understanding of the move and we called the whole experiment off. I continued my sports writing, he continued his teaching and coaching at the school. That was my one foray into coaching, and I have remained a sports reporter\/photographer on the sidelines in stretches ever since.<\/p>\n
Along the way, I experienced the mundane \u2014 covering local high school basketball games for the Chico Enterprise-Record as a college student intern \u2014 and the more elevated \u2014 sitting in the top deck of Estadio Azteca in Mexico City sharing sandwiches and snacks with other fans during a pro soccer semifinal.<\/p>\n
When I entered journalism as a junior high writer with a column, \u201cEddie the Editor,\u201d then proceeded to high school to author my next sports column, \u201cPhysical Ed,\u201d I never once thought of newspapers as something that would go out of style. My cousin, a managing editor of an outlet in Nebraska, recently told me he knew from his college days that the days of newspapers were numbered.<\/p>\n
However, I did realize that some of my own days writing for a paper would be limited when after 14 months at the Goleta newspaper, my health went bad and I had to seek the support and solace of my parents\u2019 home in Ventura County to figure out my medical issues and complete my recovery.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I guess that was my biggest media claim to fame \u2014 playing the Jacksons in basketball in a charity game at Santa Barbara High School. I blocked a shot at the buzzer that would have tied or won the game. My coach, Jack Trigueiro, the coach of Santa Barbara High\u2019s boys team, told me I […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1484,"featured_media":304350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"I guess that was my biggest media claim to fame \u2014 playing the Jacksons in basketball in a charity game at Santa Barbara High School.","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"3","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"1","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"1","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1484"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}