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U.S. Opens covered. Dave reported on a lot of tennis, including one Wimbledon and many Miami Opens, which began in 1985 in Delray Beach.
Championships won by South Florida’s professional sports teams — three by the Heat and two by the Marlins. Olympics, including four Winter (Alberville, Nagano,
Salt Lake City, Turin) and three Summer (Seoul, Atlanta, Sydney)
Different coaches for the Dolphins, not including interim coaches. 12 seasons were spent covering Don Shula.
for the Marlins ...
Super Bowls, beginning in 1984 with the Dolphins’ one trip to the big game with a guy named Dan Marino at QB.
Major college football bowl games, including 20 in which a state school played for the national championship. Seven times state schools won the title.
Getting paid to think about sports all the time, an activity most guys do voluntarily.
Pretending to truly belong, if just for a moment, in the company of professional stars and iconic coaches and billionaire owners. Makes me laugh just to type that one in.
Along the way you surely found some of my opinions to be off base, and I certainly can’t say you were wrong. The job was just to keep putting them out there, day after day, with the knowledge that none would make everybody happy. My sincere thanks to those of you who stuck with me anyway.
As for highlights, moving with the masses around the back nine as Jack Nicklaus roared to a comeback Masters win at the age of 46 could never be topped.
Standing near the finish line for the 100-meter final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics is up there, too. I was still young enough to be amazed that viewers on every continent were tuned in for that showdown between Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson, and exhilarated to know that every last one of them would have killed to be standing exactly where
I was standing at that moment.
What comes next? Well, it’s going to be a while, maybe years, before I merge onto I-95 or the turnpike for that infernal drive to Miami.
Instead my wonderful bride, the best God ever dreamed up, will be riding shotgun with me on trips to the few national parks we have yet to visit. Our two brilliant daughters, plus one stellar son-in-law, may be seeing more of me than seems rational for a while, but our fancy little granddaughter is still open to my silliness, and there will be much of that.
Altogether, I have The Post and all my bosses to thank for showing insane confidence in me, and for the more practical matter of allowing for bills to be paid on houses, cars, the kids’ college and such.
My only regret is not learning Spanish in high school so that communication with so many spectacular athletes would have been easier, so I’ll close these remarks to decades of loyal readers and hundreds of wonderful workmates with one of the few words I’ve ever really mastered.
Adios.