Outside of my house, there’s probably not another place that I feel more at home than in the press box at a sporting event.
While I spend the vast majority of my time covering news, I consider myself a sports reporter at heart. Part of that is obviously because of my love of sports, but part of it is just that there’s so much more room for creativity. It’s all there in the drama of a tight game, the juxtaposition of the losing team having to watch the winning team celebrate, the energy and enthusiastic crowd brings to the proceedings.
Then there’s the press box itself. In every press box I’ve ever been in, no matter how high or low the stakes of the game were, there has been a camaraderie and cooperation among the writers, the shared appreciation that we’re getting paid to be here watching a game and either talking or writing about it.
Other than a couple innings of one softball game and an entire baseball game when I was taking pictures, I spent about 11 hours Friday and eight more Saturday in the press box at Hug High School. Their new facilities are outstanding, but the best part of it is that the softball and baseball fields are right next to each other, and you can watch both games at the same time from the press box.
This weekend I had the pleasure of sharing the press box with an old friend, Truckee broadcaster Keith Thomas his color commentator Josh Arbogast and, for a while on Saturday, my friend Tony Erquiaga from Winnemucca.
Unlike at a news conference, where reporters seem to guard every nugget they can get and hope no one else sees it, sports reporters, or at least the ones I’ve been around for the past 30 years, always seem to be trying to help each other out. Keith was only broadcasting baseball but knowing that I was paying attention to both baseball and softball at the same time, he kept updating me with stats, while I kept sliding notes to him and Josh about what was happening in softball.
Now it’s back to news, however, with the two days spent watching baseball and softball earning me a slap in the face from a lengthy, untouched to-do list.
I haven’t yet had a beer in 2025, but that first one of the year is going to taste awful good as soon as I get the email from Rachel that this paper has been sent to press.
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