The Glory Days

When I read that the New York Times was disbanding its sport department, I gulped.

One more nail in the coffin of conventional news media. So long newspapers. Hello web. Hard to believe the world of journalism has been upended in such a short period of time.

When the New York Times bought the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1985, the celebration was on.

The mighty Times was the PD’s mothership for 26 years, providing excellent sports and news coverage, top notch guidance in journalism practices, and big $$$ for local journalists to provide the kind of in-depth coverage that had only been the topic of barroom talk until then. The Times’ purchase of the PD was a recognition of the respected regional newspaper it had become under a century of ownership by the Finley family.

Personally, I enjoyed being in the center of things when Times’ management expanded coverage in Mendocino, Lake, and Humboldt counties, and transformed a closet-like Ukiah office into a real News Bureau. Seldom were there questions raised about the costs of coverage of North Coast issues, including an intense clash between timber corporations and environmental activists that led to a still unsolved car bombing. The glorious old Eureka Inn became a second home for me during that tumultuous era.

My only brush with sports coverage under the Times ownership came when noted PD photographer Kent Porter and I traveled to Cuba in the summer of 2000 with a championship Little League team from the hippie enclave of Whitethorn in rural Humboldt County.

The relentless American embargo was still in force but then Cuban president Fidel Castro, a huge baseball fan, had invited the California boys to play in hot, humid Havana with teams there because earlier the Eureka guys had gathered up old mitts, bats and balls and donated them to hard scrabble teams in Cuba under a ‘Pastors for Peace’ program.

A group of Vietnam veterans helped the Whitethorn team by selling ‘Baseball Diplomacy’ tee shirts and hats. A dinner dance was held at the Mateel with music my Tubesteak Jones and Frida’s Circus to raise a total of nearly $25,000 to pay for airfare for the team and its managers. There was more. Sports stores in Fortuna and Eureka collected more used baseball equipment for the kids to take with them.

Once there, we learned the Cuban teams played ball year round and didn’t think twice about tropical heat. The Whitethorn team, their managers, and handful of supporters wilted. The North Coast boys got a shellacking over three days of play.

To ease the discomfort, I recall the PD on one of the last days of the trek hosting a pool party for the North Coast kids at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, where they gobbled down hot dogs, and cooled off by hanging in the water most of the afternoon. No questions asked by the bean counters for the Times.

Yes, I know change is inevitable. But I can’t help but think of Bruce Springsteen’s great song, ‘Glory Days.’