Tag Archives: Boston Globe

My first job: Bob Ryan covers Celtics for Boston Globe at 23: Intern class of ’68 included Gammons

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Bob Ryan is hanging it up as a regular columnist for the Boston Globe after the Olympics. It’s been a great run. Ryan has been a distinctive voice in the Northeast for more than three decades.

I remember a long night at Runyon’s in New York with Ryan, Malcolm Moran of the New York Times and Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe. Moran had a train to catch to get back home, but thanks to Ryan, the conversation was so lively, Moran kept saying, “I’ll catch the next one.” Not sure if he ever made it home.

In honor of Ryan’s last columns for the Globe, it seems fitting to look back at how it all started. I had a chance to talk to him a few years back for a project about sportswriters.

It turns out Ryan didn’t have to wait long to get the plum assignment that eventually defined his career.

Here’s Ryan:

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My real beginning is that I always was interested in the idea of the newspaper being the validation of a sporting event.

I grew up in Trenton, N.J. It was a very good sports town. It was a big high school basketball town. My father was involved in sports. He was a promoter and publicity man-type. He was an assistant AD at Villanova. My whole orientation was sports.

I liked to read too. If we went to a high school basketball game, I didn’t think it was validated until I read about it the next day. It’s just the way my mind worked. From (a young age) I was interested in newspapers.

I started as a summer intern at the Boston Globe on June 10, 1968. There was this other guy named Peter Gammons. That’s when we met.

As an intern, I did sidebar stories at the ballpark, feature stories on off beat stuff. Boston had a soccer team in the North American Soccer League. Dick Walsh was the new commissioner. He had been a longtime baseball executive. He comes to Boston on a publicity tour and is available for an interview. Who do they send? The lowest man on the totem pole. Me. He laughed about it. He said, “This is what I’ve become.”

(Eventually), they brought me back as an office boy with a verbal promise that I would get the next opening. I got married in May, ’69. I was making the princely sum of $72.50 per week. My wife was teaching school.

By October, the sports editor came up to me and said, ‘You probably thought I forgot all about you.’ The guy who had been covering the Celtics left. That created an opening.

The next night on a Friday, I was covering the home opener for the Celtics against the Cincinnati Royals and their new head coach, Bob Cousy. It was the first year of the post-Russell era. Tom Heinsohn was a rookie coach, and I was the rookie beat man.

Despite all their titles, the Celtics still were on the backburner in Boston compared to Bruins. I did mostly home games. We didn’t travel much.

I was 23. I was exactly the same age as the rookies and not that much younger than the key guys. They took me under their wing. It was a tremendous thrill.

There was a whole different set of circumstances when it came to access. We had almost unlimited access. You could come in and go to practice. You could hang out and sit in the locker room and shoot the breeze for an hour. You’d hang out after practice. You might even go have lunch with them.

I knew how to write, I thought, but I needed to learn the NBA. Nobody taught me a thing about how to cover a team. You have to figure that out yourself.

Heinsohn thought it was to his benefit to fill my head with what he wanted me to know, and it was my benefit to listen. I spent many hours hanging out with him. I got a crash course in learning the NBA.

I know during the first year all kinds of stuff went on. Until this day I have no idea what happened. Later on, I would know automatically, but back then I didn’t have a clue.

I became the beat man in 69-70. It was the first of seven years on the beat. I wound up doing it three different times.

Tommy Boswell once told me when you’re talking about spreading your wings, never be shy about having an expertise in something.

I got two titles out of that run and three in the Bird years. I’ve done many things, but people always identify me with the Celtics. I’m proud of that.

 

 

 

 

Life after Boston Globe: College sports columnist ‘reinvents himself’ with new site; scores scoop with Calhoun

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Mark Blaudschun recorded a scoop Monday. He was the only person to reach an ailing UConn coach Jim Calhoun in the hospital.

Now, there’s nothing new about Blaudschun getting a big story. However, what is new is where his piece first appeared.

Blaudschun, the long-time college writer, recently took a buyout after 25 years with the Boston Globe. He has since launched a new blog called AJerseyguy.com.

Monday, his site posted the Calhoun story. The Associated Press picked it up, attributing Calhoun’s quote to AJerseyguy.com. That story then ran in the Boston Herald.

“It’s a new world, I guess,” said Blaudschun, once he stopped laughing at the notion of his site getting mentioned in his old rival’s paper.

Like so many other people in this business, Blaudschun, 64, finds himself in the position of trying to reinvent himself. He said he didn’t have to take the buyout offer from the Globe, but the deal was too good to pass up.

“I thought I had a couple more years,” Blaudschun said. “But you don’t know what this business is going to be like. I didn’t know if the offer still would be there.”

Blaudschun, though, still wants to work. So he decided to start a blog. College sports will be his main focus, but he will write about other sports.

“College sports is my comfort zone,” Blaudschun said. “But whatever strikes me as being important, I’ll do. I’ll see what happens. I want to have some fun with it.”

There are fringe benefits to his new lifestyle. His son, Jack, asked if he wanted to play golf this week.

“He said, ‘What are your days off?” Blaudschun said. “I said, ‘All of them.'”

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“Blau” and I go back nearly 25 years when we both were on the college football beat. There were a great group of writers that included Gene Wojciechowski and Chris Dufrensne of the Los Angeles Times, Ivan Maisel of the Dallas Morning News, Steve Wieberg of USA Today, Dick “Hoops” Weiss of the New York Daily News, Malcolm Moran of the New York Times, Tim Layden of Newsday, Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, and others. Some pretty good talent there, present company excluded.

We were together almost every weekend during the college season. A lot of good times in and out of the press box. Blau still loves to tell the story of the my 5-wood slipping out of my hands and flying into a lake during a rain-drenched round in Florida.

For all the great games we cover, the memories that endure are of being with my friends in the sportswriting fraternity. I don’t miss the travel and deadlines. But I miss being with them.