Full disclosure: I have no inside knowledge about what happened in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse during the month of September, or the inner workings of how the Boston Globe’s Bob Hohler compiled his front-page post-mortem last week. I write this speculation simply as someone who was a sports reporter a lifetime ago and later a city desk reporter who got to do the hatchet jobs on Pittsburgh pro sports teams that the sports desk wouldn’t touch.

Here’s a broad generalization about the sports journalists I have known in my career: they are, by and large, super fans, suffering from a Stockholm syndrome of sorts, held hostage by the teams and athletes they cover. Their freedom is an off-the-record or not-for-attribution comment that gives them a minor scoop in the competitive, horse-race nature of covering major league teams.

They will be the first to call a guy out when he’s not playing up to his multi-million dollar contract or question a coach’s late-game strategy decision that led to a loss. But when it comes to reporting the really compelling stuff — stuff like star players drinking beer, eating fried chicken, playing video games and shrugging off instructions from a strength coach — they’re not going to cover it. I have former students who have interned for the Red Sox and NESN, and if they can figure out who is sleeping with whom and who is not doing what they’re supposed to, you’re going to have a tough time convincing me that beat reporters who spend almost every working moment following the team didn’t know at least some of the behind-the-scenes reasons of why the Sox collapsed so spectacularly.

So I wasn’t really surprised that Hohler’s article A) ran after the season ended and B) was written by someone who doesn’t cover baseball — or sports, for that matter — on a regular basis. The Atlantic has a pretty good post-mortem of Hohler’s post mortem, ultimately concluding “Boston’s media outlets, including the Globe itself, [need to] take a hard look at their own rules about covering the beloved team.”

City desk hatchet men

I started my career as a sports journalist before realizing I didn’t like watching sports enough to make a career of it. When I moved to news that brief stint covering high school basketball, college hockey and Legion baseball somehow qualified me to cover the construction of two professional sports stadiums in Pittsburghs. Our task, as city desk reporters, was to look for “the gold plated toilets” worked into the publicly-funded stadium deals the teams got.

As a result, the owners of two professional sports teams have started interviews with me using almost the same exact quote. It’s been awhile but I still remember being asked as we sat down “So…how are you going to fuck me today?”

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When I had spent a day or a week or an entire fiscal quarter chasing a story in Pittsburgh that was going to send me to the bar with that “I-scooped-the-Post-Gazette” smile, Bob Fryer was the guy who sent it to the copy desk after giving it one last read-through, turned from his computer and, rather than saying “congratulations” or “have a good night,” asked what I was working on as a follow-up.

I haven’t always had nice things to say about my time working for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, but one of the best parts of working there was learning how to be a good reporter from Bob Fryer, the Trib’s managing editor who died Wednesday.

I’ll admit that at times when he was pushing me to make one more set of phone calls or file one more round of records requests, “Fucking Fryer” had nice alliteration. When he got excited about a story he often stuttered, and I remember feeling bad about mocking him after he demanded I not sleep until I found out whether or not they were going to install “g-g-g-gold p-p-p-plated t-t-t-t-oilets” in PNC Park.

But I always had the sense that he never asked me to do something he wouldn’t do or hadn’t done himself, and those basic principles of always pushing for one more quote, one more confirmation or one more angle made me a better reporter and the Trib a better place to work and learn. Bob wasn’t pushing me on the PNC Park story — or any other story — to make me miserable; he was pushing me because the $320 million stadium had been largely paid for by taxpayers.

He had to be a hard ass. He believed – and instilled a belief in me and lots of other people who worked for him – that a reporter was only as good as his or her last story, and a paper only as good as its most recent edition. It’s that kind of leadership that let the Trib grow beyond the political labels that marred it when it first published a Pittsburgh edition. Fryer’s obit headline described him as a “consummate newsman,” and that was exactly what that paper desperately needed when it was trying to shake the reputation of “conservative billionaire’s plaything” in the nineties and early oughties.

Fryer, like any decent journalist, had a healthy distrust of all politicians, regardless of political party affiliation. He believed in facts, fairness and the pursuit of objectivity. He forced his reporters to ask tough questions of whomever they were covering, but there was also a relentless dedication to doing what was right and conducting yourself as a respectful professional.

One newsroom legend said that when Publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, the previously-mentioned conservative billionaire, wanted to run the headline “FINALLY!” in holy-shit-sized font over the story that President Clinton had been impeached, it was Fryer – then a relatively new employee following an acquisition – who stood up to him and threatened to quit if they didn’t choose an objective headline more reflective of the paper he wanted the Trib to become.

Beyond being a great newsman, he was simply a great guy. I got taken back to covering Y2K, Pittsburgh’s dismal financial situation, elections, 9-11 and the LMD scandal when I read the line in the obit about how he “relished being able to call a reporter in his office, put his feet up on the desk and talk about the reporter’s work.” There was the sheepish grin and the stories about his constant state of dishevelment, with one of my favorites being when someone interviewed for an entry-level reporter’s job and, during the interview, he reached into the trash barrel to retrieve her resume.

She got the job.

When my Dad was diagnosed with leukemia it was Fryer who told me to take as much time off as I needed, and even offered to look into getting me an advance if I needed help covering flights home to visit him. (And, for the record, Jim Cuddy, the Trib’s assistant managing editor and I would guess Fryer’s heir apparent, was also great during this time. He and I didn;t get along that well but there is a human beneath Cuddy’s crusty exterior).

And, later that year, when I decided it was time to leave the Trib and try something different, I got the biggest compliment I could have asked for: Bob called me and asked me to reconsider. I told him I had made up my mind, that, after five years, I needed something new. The last thing he said to me nearly seven years ago was that he was proud of me, that I had done some great work and that he was going to miss me.

But not, I suspect, as much as I miss him.

My former Pittsburgh Tribune-Review colleague Bill Steigerwald got profiled in this week’s New York Times book section for his work in retracing John Steinbeck’s steps to find out that big parts of the former nonfiction bestseller Travels With Charley were fictionalized.

My favorite quote from Bill: “I didn’t set out to blow the whistle,” he said. “As a libertarian, I kind of like the old guy. He liked guns; he liked property rights.”

And why “Lunch with Steigerwald” remains one of the top 10 reasons I’d give if anyone asked me what I miss most about Pittsburgh.

Bill has an article in this month’s issue of Reason, and if you grew up loving Steinbeck as much as I did (and still do), you should go back and check out the blog Bill kept while driving around the country last fall.

Bill Steigerwald’s “Travels Without Charley” continues to be a great read and has me thinking I may want to do a road trip of my own next summer (Steigerwald, as I previously posted, is retracing the trip Steinbeck took in 1960 and eventually wrote about in “Travels With Charley”).

For now, I’m happy to read along from the comfort of my own home. Bill was interviewed by Scott Simon for NPR”s Weekend Edition this week and will probably be heard Saturday morning.

Bill Steigerwald, my former colleague and frequent lunch buddy in Pittsburgh, is setting out to “retrace the iconic road trip (John) Steinbeck made in the fall of 1960 and turned into his 1962 nonfiction bestseller ‘Travels With Charley’” — without the dog. He’s writing about it on a blog for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and says along the way he’ll “be conducting the first-ever and last-ever totally unscientific Steinbeck Poll to take the political pulse of the country.

“If you want the objective reporting of a veteran newspaper reporter/opinion writer who dislikes Republicans as much as Democrats, or if you want a local dateline if Yellowstone Park blows up next month, you know where to find me – Travels Without Charley.”

Bill is a keen observer, a political free-thinker and, best of all, a gifted reporter and writer. I haven’t been this excited about reading a blog — and a quasi-political blog at that — in quite some time. Disclaimer: I should also say I’m massively biased because Bill had a huge influence on my career and gave me the best career advice I ever got when it came to trying to muck my way through life as a staff reporter for a dead-tree publication: “Get out. Now. Go write books and movies.”

Pretty nice salad for a pretty hot night, and it also served the double purpose of getting rid of some stuff from the fridge that needed to be gotten rid of:

Romaine (chopped)
Tomatoes (diced)
Strawberries (sliced)
Leftover, grilled salmon (cold and flaked)
Almonds (sliced)
Goat cheese (crumbled)
Poppy seed dressing (poured)

It tasted like a fairly close approximation of the salad I used to have a few times for lunch each month at Atria’s in PNC Park when I was working in Pittsburgh. And I have enough leftover for a side to whatever I end up bringing to school tomorrow for lunch.

Yeah, I’m pretty much geeking out about school starting, if you hadn’t noticed. Four months of dictating my own work days was about three months too many.

I wanted to hit at least five of the 10 places on my Restaurant Week list, and I did just that as of last night. I arguably saved the best for last (Tangierino was a close second), as evidenced by my 750-character review on Open Table:

Best value I found during Restaurant Week – not a lot of flexibility on choices, but a LOT of food in comparison to most RW menus, and it was all good to great. I’d much rather have the extra course (Osushi served four) than a half-assed attempt at desert.

I agree with other posters: most of the selections off the regular menu are expensive for what you’re getting and you may be better off at nearby Douzo for these prices, but I really wish more places would follow Osushi’s lead on RW.

Hard to pick a favorite course off the RW menu, as they were all so good, but I’d go back for the mushroom miso soup, the sake carpaccio and the tuna avocado salad

Ambiance was okay, considering it’s in a shopping mall. Servers was attentive, friendly.

Osushi, did, however, get me thinking about something that has been sort of percolating in my mind since I moved back here in 2005: Boston is just not a sushi town.

There. I said it and I’m ready to face the wrath of Douzo disciples and Fugakyu fundamentalists. I’m not saying those places are bad, I’m just saying that to get consistent, high-quality sushi in Boston you have to pay dearly for it. I can tell you this having lived in a shockingly good sushi town.

Pittsburgh.

When I was in the process of moving to Pittsburgh I was told a few things. I was told I was heading to “The capital of West Virginia.” I was told it “always” rains in Pittsburgh. I was told it had a lot of good golf courses. And I was told it had “shockingly” good sushi places.

All of those things proved to be true (okay, the capital of West Virginia thing was a cruel knock and it only seems like it rains all the time). I don’t golf so I didn’t give a shit about the number of courses there. But sushi, that was something special. You wouldn’t think that would be the case: Pittsburgh is inland meaning seafood was traveling a day before it got to the table and, well, this is the town famous for putting french fries on a sandwich in lieu of lettuce and tomato.

When I was there, Pittsburgh only had one high-end sushi place that I knew of. But Umi was over-the-top high end, and over-the-top good. Me and the three people I took there who had also eaten at Nobu in New York all agreed that Umi was better, more creative and less expensive than Nobu, and the food was served up without the heir of pretension that most sushi places with $100+ checks offer along side the wasabi and ginger.

But where Pittsburgh really excelled was in the smaller, no frills, hole-in-the wall places. There was a place in Squirrel Hill where the chef grew his own wasabi (most Americans have never had real Wasabi; almost every sushi place in this country serves horseradish with green food coloring). Sushi Two, a local chain of three or four restaurants, served up consistently good sushi (and their all-you-can-eat sushi on Tuesday nights was worth checking out, if only for the people watching, at least once). Freshness was never an issue at any of the places I hit regularly. There were a handful of others, and I can only remember one disappointing meal at a sushi place in Pittsburgh (and Pittsburgh covered the phase of my life where I was having sushi at least two, three or four times a week).

The reason Pittsburgh excelled is because it didn’t have the glut of mid-level and hole-in-the-wall sushi places that Boston suffers from. Those places in Boston don’t attract crowds because there are so many to choose from. They do a decent business, but not a brisk business. That means fish seems to sit longer and seems to taste less fresh than it did in Pittsburgh, which is four hours inland.

So maybe it’s not that Boston is NOT a sushi town; maybe it’s that Boston is TOO MUCH of a sushi town. There are too many places and, in food preparation where freshness is key, that slow turnover hurts. In Boston — generally speaking — you have to hit high-end places to get the quality and flavor that was available in all of my favorite mid-level haunts in Pittsburgh, and that means I can no longer afford my two-times-per week sushi habit.

Adapted from a book proposal I never ended up selling…..

This story starts five years ago today and, someday, I hope it ends.

It starts at a place in Pittsburgh called rock bottom. The place isn’t really called rock bottom; it’s actually a newly-rented storage unit, and, more specifically, the tailgate of a borrowed 24-foot truck parked haphazardly in front of the storage unit. It is not yet 5 on Monday, May 16, 2005 and I have just finished moving almost everything I own, by myself, from Cheryl’s house into the storage unit.

I am covered in blood.

I am covered in blood and sitting in the parking lot because that morning I had arrived at the storage unit rental facility with a red wine hangover and wild, glassy eyes, demanding a unit that very day. At 10 a.m. I figured the manager who rented me my 15 by 20 foot box was used to seeing broken and desperate men like me.

But nearly seven hours later I figured he wasn’t used to seeing them blood covered when they returned the keys to the free loaner truck at the end of the day. I decide that rather than raising suspicions about what I may have been looking to hide at Guardian Self Storage and spending the next few hours explaining the whole awful situation to the police as a team of cadaver-sniffing dogs picks through my unit, I’ll wait until the place closes for the night at 5:30 and drop the keys to the truck into the after hours drop box.

It starts to rain. I continue to sit on the back of the panel truck, even as the rain comes harder.
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Bill Steigerwald’s last newspaper column for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

No one sane ever went into journalism for the money, and neither did I — which was a good thing. I’ve made my first million as a professional newspaper writer/editor but it took nearly 36 years.

This is a snippet of a note from a former colleague at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and I think it pretty much sums up the state of the industry:

“I lead a media relations team now, so I am unfortunately an eyewitness to this collapse of newspapers. Sometimes we’ll arrange an interview in the morning and the reporter will have been laid off by the afternoon. Crazy.”

I think one of the sadder things is that, in all the media coverage, the death of newspapers is somehow being equated with the death of journalism. I just don’t think that’s the case, and I think people who can interpret and present complex information will always have a role in this society.

Or at least I hope they do.