Batter Up! (Angry Bosses)

 

When your angry boss walks into your office brandishing a baseball bat, what do you do? I just told him “Get out!” and he did, with a smile on his face. I don’t think he really intended to use it.

 

This was typical of my experience as editor of Satellite Orbit magazine from 1987 to 1992 in McLean VA. Few people in the cable-dominated Washington area had heard of the magazine, though its circulation of 400,000 was the sixth largest for any magazine based there.

 

When I visited our summer home in Cluster Springs, I loved visiting the Food Lion news stand. There would be maybe 50 Orbits stacked up for sale, with only 10 of maybe Time or People magazines. It was a vital guide for people in rural areas with those big satellite dishes.

 

We didn’t even have a satellite dish at our office up there. My boss, who owned the magazine, angered the building owners so much that they refused to let him install one. I experimented with one at the home of William Royster, a Cluster Springs family friend.

 

My boss, who is no longer with us, moved from a western city to D.C. because his third wife wanted to live there, but he left most of the company behind. I was between jobs and landed the editor’s position just before he arrived. When he got there, he had an idea: Fire the 50 or so people still in the western city’s office and move the headquarters to McLean. The plan: Send a “You’re fired” fax to that office with their names and then flee our office before we all got frantic phone calls. We talked him out of it.

 

There was a firing culture at the company, and in a few years it would be my turn. When I sensed that my time was up, I answered a particularly interesting ad: an editor was needed by an entertainment magazine in the Washington area. I sent in my resume, later finding that my fears were justified: I had applied for my own job!

 

While still employed, I frantically tried to intercept my letter, but the jig was up and I was out on the street. I called one of my former employees later and asked if the letter arrived. “Yes, and they had a good laugh about it,” she said. I had found another job, and we laughed too. (I didn’t get my old job.)

 

The timing wasn’t bad. The big dishes were soon replaced by little ones that were easier to install, and people could get their listings electronically, without a magazine. I had been working for a dinosaur.

 

 

Why I Don't Play Golf

 

Watching the U.S. Open reminds me of my experiences as a caddy in 1958, when all of my golfers were clearly unhappy.

 

The ball ended up in the trees? “It’s your fault, caddy!” It Ianded in a lake: “You made too much noise!” No one could find the ball? “You should have been watching it!”

 

And then if one really hit a great shot—a hole in one—he wanted to keep it secret so he won’t have to buy a round of drinks at the bar.

 

Possibly I was given the worst golfers. I was smaller and less experienced than some of the caddies, who had gone to the Mira Vista Country Club in El Cerrito for years. I was only there for a few months: When one of the caddies pulled a knife on me and demanded a quarter I identified him to the manager, and he was fired. I’m lucky I left the course alive.

 

So it’s no wonder my golfing adventures didn’t last long either. After reporting on the Las Vegas Invitational and watching Jack Nicklaus and others, I had to try one of the courses with a friend later. Believe me, Las Vegas in July is no time for golf!

 

 I did  a bit better with miniature golf, though I came in third behind my daughter and son-in-law in Danville a few weeks ago, At least I beat my grandchildren. Aria, age 7, shot the ball into the creek on her first try. Bryce, age 5, ran through the revolving windmill, which hit him in the head and knocked him down.

 

So, Tiger, Jack and Arnold: Your records are safe.

 

 

What Happens In Vegas....

 

 

“What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegs”—unless I wrote about it.

 

As the Associated Press correspondent in Las Vegas from 1968 to 1970,. The late 1960s in Las Vegas were the era of the rat pack, Howard Hughes, nuclear testing and the Mafia. Thrilled by the entertainment scene, I got into most of the shows for free. Elvis Presley’s debut in 1969 at the International was a highlight. He had rekindled his “Hound Dog” days and put on a great show, though he seemed winded by the end. I saw Frank Sinatra perform five times and attended a party he hosted at his daughter Nancy’s debut, also attended by Presley.

 

Of course, gambling was always fun news. When Circus Circus asked me if the photo of a real elephant playing a jumbo slot machine could run on the wire, I jumped at the chance. Las Vegas was also known for its quick weddings. When I was tipped that actress Lana Turner had married her seventh husband, I called their hotel and got her new husband, the hypnotist Robert Pellar, on the phone. He confirmed the marriage, cut off all further calls, and I had a scoop. 

 

Sports news was loads of fun. I covered the Wednesday night fights at the Silver Slipper (but never wore a white shirt in the front row—red was better). At one of those matches, a fight among two people at the bar got more attention than the one in the ring. In one night, I covered George Foreman’s first professional fight and one of Sonny Liston’s last, at ringside near Howard Cosell.

 

As much as I enjoyed the glamor of Las Vegas, the job slowly wore me down. In 1968, the world was going nuts with assassinations, political turmoil over Vietnam and international crises My role was to write about gamblers’ reactions to these tragedies. Demands of Nevada media were overwhelming. In 1970 I transferred to San Francisco, the area where I grew up.

 

As I grew older, high on my bucket list was a 50th anniversary return trip to Las Vegas, which I took in April 2019. I found the AP bureau downtown, and I rang a buzzer and spoke through a speaker phone. A staffer opened the door warily, but in this day of high security I had to sweet-talk my way in.  Now, the bureau had four staff members plus a full-time sports writer in a city that has grown five-fold since I left

 

I guess my major concession to 50 years away was a bike ride in the desert. For years, I had longed for a leisurely ride in Red Rock Canyon, west of the city, which has great views and a bike path. At age 77, there were more hills than I bargained for, the altitude was higher than I thought, and I had to get into the “sag wagon” twice. My back hurt for days from the bike ride. In 50 years, some things do change.

Why I Couldn't Stay

 

Portland, Oregon, may have been the nicest place I ever lived. That’s why I had to leave.

Sure, the scenery was great, people were wonderful and the crime rate was low.

But as an up and coming journalist in the 1960s, I wanted some hard-breaking news. You wouldn’t find it then in Portland.

The big story once a year was the selection of the queen of the Portland Rose Festival, rating a highly urgent “Bulletin” on the Associated Press’ Oregon broadcast wire.

Every day, on the phone, I had to take the Columbia River fish count of salmon going past Bonneville Dam: 130 chinook, 74 chad, 22 coho. Zzzzz. You could get through a full weekend on the AP broadcast wire with one traffic fatality, one drowning, a forest fire and a legislature preview.

I loved sports, but: seven-man high school football? Writing about former Oregon stars’ play each day in the pros? Once I had to settle a dispute among coaches about who was in first place in the Northwest League in pro baseball: Pendleton or Yakima? Since I wrote the standings for the Pacific Northwest papers, I got to say. Power!

Then two weeks before I left for Las Vegas in 1968, I was involved in probably the most exciting news story of my 46-year career: a prison riot!

Smoke billowed out of the Oregon State Penitentiary after inmates took over the prison, set it on fire and captured 50 guards as hostages. As I arrived to relieve the Salem AP correspondent, a prison official summoned reporters to tour parts of the prison to show that they were safe.  But as smoke poured down the hallways, we came across prisoners who had raided the pharmacy and were getting high on anything they could find. Others ran through the halls unimpeded. One of them even talked to us. The situation was out of control, and I was lucky I wasn’t taken hostage myself.

To end the riot, the prison officials met some of the prisoners’ demands and got help from an Oregonian reporter, who had written sympathetically about problems in the prison. Just like in the movies, she held a megaphone and shouted outdoors to the prisoners to give themselves up. As the pool reporter, I was one of the few outsiders to see this. When the prisoners yielded, I rushed to a private residence nearby to phone the story in after the prisoners surrendered. I learned years later that the prison reneged on all of the promises made.

 

So Oregon wasn’t so boring after all!