Literally living with hurricanes

When I moved from the safe haven of my hometown of Toms River, N.J. to the unfamiliar tropical climes of Key West, Fla., in August 1999, there were a number of changes I needed to make in my life.

I appreciated warm weather more. And I also appreciated the wearing of Hawaiian shirts ... a lot actually. Made for a very easy wardrobe in the Southernmost City. I also had to deal with the lifestyle that included the fact, according to Randy, one of our pressmen, there were "240 places to purchase alcohol" on the 3x5 island. What kept me from being a full-blown alcoholic still amazes me to this day.

It was all pretty laid back, too. Well, almost every part of living the Keys life was.

There was this thing called hurricane season that every now and then kept you on your toes. And when there was some disturbance in the Caribbean, you suddenly became a Weather Channel follower. The first thing you wanted to know was what direction the possible storm was heading in and was it going to be a tropical storm or a category 1 hurricane or something worse. These, I came to find out, were issues.

It was in Key West I truly got schooled on the fine art of hurricanes. I learned about the severity of these storms. I learned about how easy it was for the power to go off in this part of the country. And I learned that if the storm was severe, you had two options -- get in your car and make a bee-line on the Overseas Highway (US-1) to get to the mainland or stick it out and hope that you aren't blown from one end of the island over to the other, riding some wave down Simonton.

Living in New Jersey all my life, the hurricanes I grew up remembering were pretty darn tame -- there was Hurricane Belle in 1976 when I was 9 years old. There was Gloria in 1985 and Hugo in 1989. Oh, there was a bunch of Nor'easters as well in the '90s, but that was pretty much it. How to handle a hurricane coming at 100 mph? Yeah, I had no clue whatsoever.

So in the Keys, I had to learn the urgency of what a hurricane was like and the damage it could do. Over the first couple of months in my new residence on Stock Island, across the way from Key West, I did a bit of reading on hurricane season in the Keys. The "big one" in terms of hurricanes was in 1935 -- the Labor Day hurricane -- that killed hundreds of people and forever knocked out the Florida East Coast Railway. That, legend says, was a Category 5 hurricane, which pretty much doomed you if you had very little warning, which the residents had none of in 1935.

Hurricanes in the Keys are as much a business as, say, fishing, tourism and the Key West High baseball team.

Almost two months into my living in the Keys, I get a phone call from my mom. She's telling me she and my dad are coming down to Florida to visit relatives and they are going to be coming down to the Keys on October 14, a Thursday. Well, of course, I was going to be happy to see my folks.

So I knew they would be coming. Well, wouldn't you know it, there's a storm brewing out in the Caribbean. And this one is pretty darned serious. They were about to make this one into a hurricane by the beginning of the week. And on that Tuesday, October 12, 1999, Hurricane Irene became a reality.

Goody, goody gumdrops. This storm had formed somewhere south of Cuba and put the lower Keys into its path. The warm Caribbean water was a perfect breeding area for Irene and once she sliced through Cuba and got back into the water, she could have gone any way she wanted to. Either way, she was going to be doing some kind of damage.

Now what kept a lot of the lower and middle Keys folks on edge was that the year before, they were terrorized by Hurricane Georges, which had done an amazing amount of damage between Big Pine Key and Key West. That memory was still fresh in the natives' heads.

We knew what we all had to do at the Key West Citizen -- our goal was to get done as soon as we could before the storm started kicking up. Well an early deadline for a sports editor is trying enough. How about also worrying about your folks who are driving into a hurricane situation. At one point, this was a category 2 hurricane with average speeds of 110 mph.

What a nice way to introduce your parents to your new home!

So on Thursday, October 14, I reported in earlier than normal at work and set up my day so we would get done as soon as possible. We did, and just as we finished up with the paper and gave it off to the press room, the lights flickered on and off and those in charge of the building had already closed up the emergency shutters over the windows. There was no television, so I had to listen to Game 2 of the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and Yankees on a crackling, fading AM radio station in my car, listening to the Yankees come back for a 3-2 win.

There were no lights and practically most of Key West was dark by now. During the day, I had communicated with my folks, who arrived in Key West early in the afternoon before the hurricane problems arrived. My dad, who worked for Days Inn at the time, had a voucher to stay there and all was cool except one thing -- if the hotel had flooded or something happened, they could not guarantee or compensate for anything that was lost. So my parents basically said, "Thanks, but no thanks." They found the Hampton Inn on Roosevelt Boulevard (US-1) and parked underneath a garage that was protected from the storm.

When I got done, I had driven over from Northside to the Hampton Inn, being aware that there were no lights on at this particular time, but I knew what room they were staying in. So I knocked on the door in this driving rainstorm and windy conditions and my mom answers the door.

Yes, my first meeting with my parents in nearly two months since the move was with flashlights on in a dark hotel room. I kid you not.

"Well, mom, dad ... how do you like Key West so far?" I jokingly asked as you can hear the wind and rain on the other side of the door in the background. So we caught up for a good half an hour, but I felt much safer being in the hotel room than at my cottage that I had been staying in at Stock Island. Still, I needed to pick up some stuff before I headed back to the hotel.

So back south on US-1 I went, over the bridge leading in and out of Key West into Stock Island with absolutely no traffic lights to guide me. Good thing there weren't many other people on the road at this particular hour.

I made it to my place on Maloney Avenue and somehow managed to find what it was I needed to get me through the night. By now, the rain had subsided a bit, but the wind was still prevalent. And with the flashlight, I beamed it down to the bedroom floor and saw a portion of the rug soaked from the rain that was seeping onto it underneath the door that was not fully protected with the rubberized bottom.

Honestly, I was more concerned about having a place to be at the next day than the silly rug. With the hopes I'd have a cottage to return to, I grabbed what I needed and trudged back into Key West and back to the Hampton Inn. My folks slept in a queen size bed together, while I slept in the other queen for the night.

Though I can hear the wind in the background, it surprisingly didn't keep me up. I was pretty tired anyway. When I woke up at about 8:30 the next morning, it was as if the calm had settled in. The power had been fixed and we were watching the Weather Channel in the room to see where the storm went off to. Overnight, the storm had taken a northeastern turn instead of coming northwest and threatening the lower Keys like Georges did. It spared us more damage than it could have pummeled us with. The hurricane went over the middle Keys quickly, then began to weaken across southeastern Florida until it dumped out back into the ocean in Vero Beach.

I went back to my cottage after 10 because I had some cleaning to do if there was damage. I got back and other than a soaked carpet on the bedroom floor, there was nothing else. The place survived. I told Kathy, who was a manager's helper for the cottage complex, about the carpet and she said she'd take good care of it, which she had a person with a vacuum come in to suck the water and moisture out of the rug when I'd come back later on in the evening.

The hurricane shutters were still on the Citizen building when I got there just before noon. The power was back on and I was back in business to prepare for our Sunday paper since we didn't print on Saturdays. Friday night football was taken care of at the time by a group of writers, including my assistant who loved to cover Key West High. So that was his basic job. All was set. Business as usual again.

My folks had gone out but didn't venture far. They went across US-1 to the Winn-Dixie supermarket to pick up some stuff. Other than my mom taking pictures of all there was, they didn't go far. So about 3:45 p.m., I get back to the hotel and they want to see Key West ... more importantly, they want to see the Old Town section.

I was pretty hesitant about it. We were going to go in my Ford Thunderbird LX and honestly, I didn't know what kind of damage was done to that side of the city. But we jumped into my car and drove off on Roosevelt until it turned into Truman. And when we got to Duval Street, there were people on the sidewalks, but no one was in the streets -- Duval practically flooded. I came to find out that when Key West has a bad storm, usually the open ends of Duval where the Gulf of Mexico is at one end and the Straits of Florida is at the other fill up and make driving kind of interesting. The three of us were just looking for a place to eat in the famous seafood restaurant section of town.

You'd think in a town as tough as Key West that business owners would fend this storm off and open up to the public.

Nope! Not at all. We drove around the flooded streets of the Old Town. Nothing. As a matter of fact, we found it hard to eat anywhere. And I know my folks were set on having seafood in a seafood-famous town like Key West. So back to the Newtown section. We came across one restaurant not far from the hotel for all of us to eat. It was a nice little place called Perry's. I had not been there yet, but my folks were willing to try it so we ate there.

Perry's was a nice little place it turned out. This was the restaurant that I tried mahi-mahi for the first time (dolphin, not Flipper dolphin). We had a good time and then that night, we hung out at the hotel. My mom went off to do laundry that was needed to get done, while my dad and I stayed in the hotel room and watched Game 3 of the National League Championship Series between the Mets and the Braves, a game won by the Braves, 1-0, to take a 3-0 lead in the best-of-7 series. When the game ended after 11, I said goodbye to them for that time (I was meeting them after work Saturday night in Key Largo to spend Sunday with them and my girlfriend, who was still living in Palm Beach Gardens, on a glass-bottom tour boat) and headed back to my cottage to sleep in my bed for the night.

The next morning, mom and dad stopped at my cottage to see where I lived and I gave them 10-second grand tour of the place (a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and the bedroom). The place overlooked the water that led out to the Straits of Florida. It was very scenic. For my first "home," it was very nice. I ended up living there for 11 months until my girlfriend, who moved down to be with me a month later, and I moved to West Isle Apartments on Duck Avenue in July 2000.

Needless to say, there would be no more hurricane threats during the 1999 season.

But that didn't mean my association with hurricanes in the Keys was over by a longshot.

It's now November 4, 2001. It's a Sunday and I am excited about this day -- it is Game 7 of the World Series between the Yankees and the Diamondbacks. But it's a cautious day -- Hurricane Michelle had started as a wave off of Nicaragua and headed through the still-warm Gulf of Mexico and sliced through Cuba, just like Irene had done two years earlier. The day before, the World Powerboat Championships that were to be held in Key West were canceled to end the season. This storm meant business.

And so by the time I came into work around 2 p.m., it was fairly obvious our publisher, John Kent Cooke III, had one thing in mind -- get the paper out by 6 p.m. I knew on a pro football Sunday we wanted to make sure we got at least the 1 p.m. games in, which included the Dolphins, who were playing the Carolina Panthers in Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium. But the Buccaneers had a 4 p.m. start and were playing in Green Bay. I lobbied to try and push the deadline to 7 p.m. to get the 4 p.m. games in, figuring the grandson of the former owner of the Washington Redskins might have it in his heart to wait another hour.

All I got in return was a definitive "no" and a snide remark. I came to find out the grandson wasn't exactly the sports fan his grandfather was. So we went through with what we had. My assistant had taken the weekend off (the executive sports editor had given her the weekend off without ever telling me what was happening) so it was up to me to get my three-page section done, which I did just after 6 p.m.

And when the night was finished, I had gone over to Albertson's supermarket. It had opened up a few months earlier and I actually preferred going there instead of Publix and Winn-Dixie at the time. I wanted to pick up some odds and ends and the essentials like bread and water were practically gone! You'd thought Armageddon was about to take place. I gathered what I could get in bread and water and some cold cuts and I was off to my apartment which I lived in by myself, the relationship between my girlfriend and I splintered just seven months earlier.

I sat in my bedroom and watched Game 7 of the 2001 World Series with the wind kicking up, wondering what the heck was going to happen. At any moment, Michelle, which was a Cat-4 hurricane that blew into Cuba at 140 mph, could make a left turn and head toward Key West. I had prepared myself for "the blackout" to happen.

I had literally turned out all the lights in my apartment and the only light that was on by now was the TV. Miaculously, I still had cable television. So in this battle royale between Curt Schilling and Roger Clemens, I may never have seen the amazing end of the 2001 World Series. By the top of the eighth inning, I went outside to see what was happening.

It was eerily quiet. Whatever wind was left was very, very light. I knew we were out of the woods.

I got to see the Yankees take a 2-1 lead on the Diamondbacks in the eighth inning of the World Series on Rafael Soriano's solo home run. And just as I was resolved to swallow pride again and watch another Yankees World Championship take place with Mariano Rivera on the Bank One Ballpark mound to protect the lead, the Diamondbacks put together a rally for the ages.

And when Luis Gonzalez's flair into short left field with the infield in fell softly to the ground and Jay Bell scored the winning run, I was surprised they couldn't hear me all the way up and down Duck Avenue. The big, bad Yankees had been dethroned as World Series champions by a 3-2 count.

By Monday morning, November 5, the world that I became familiar with called Key West was back to normal. There was some damage caused by the wind, but minimal. And nothing happened to me or my belongings. Michelle decided to go away from the Keys and keep churning through the Straits of Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean and out of harm's way.

The next time I would go through another hurricane would be 2004. Though not direct-hit like hurricanes, my new girlfriend and I dealt indirectly with both Frances and Jeanne in a three-week period in September 2004. A ton of rain, quite a bit of wind ... you know the normal things you see during a hurricane. But everything stayed up and we made it through.

Now I know just about everything I need to in case a "disturbance" makes its presence felt.

My time in the Keys was more than an education to prepare me for when one took place, that's for sure.

My marriage ... to my job

For the last couple of years of my life, there is one statement that I have heard constantly from people -- male and female -- that I swear to you if I wasn't such a pleasant human being, I'd have cold-cocked them.

"You're such a nice guy, I can't believe no one would want to be with you."

It's taken me this long to finally believe that maybe I am a nice person. I've never always believed that. But to not be with anyone? Hey, that's a choice I've made.

Besides, I'm already married -- I've just never said, "I do" to my spouse "directly."

Yes, I am married -- to the work I do five days a week. As a matter of fact, me and my spouse have had a love-hate relationship just like real people do.

* We fight about how and when things should be done.

* We fight about the other people in our lives trying to dictate us.

* We fight about when we have time for ourselves.

As a matter of fact, "work" left me for 16 months in the early 2000s. Boy I missed work badly. I was a zombie without it until work came back to me and we have been inseparable since.

Sure, I can joke all I want about it. But work is my lifeline. It's what keeps me focused and out of trouble and off the streets. It's what gets me a paycheck. And it's also what allows me to enjoy my "travels." I have a traveling job from time to time. My job has taken me to events in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, New York and Delaware as well as my native New Jersey and current home state of Florida.

I enjoy "work's" company. Me and work are together ... for better or worse.

You see, only once has "work" let me down. And, quite ironically, it was two incompetent human beings in April 2002 who separated us for over a year. As I said, it took 16 months to "re-find" work, but work has forgiven me for not being there for those months I was away.

I can't say the same about me forgiving the idiots who let me go.

But while most people in life have found that balance between work and relationships, I've never mastered it and I've pretty much given up on the balancing act.

First off, it was my bloody luck that every woman I was with was not a full-fledged sports fan. Well, my ex-fiance loved the Florida Gators. She loved football. She went with me to spring training baseball games in Viera and Dunedin. And to this day, I still think she did that because she was "putting up with it."

My failure as a human being in 28 years in this business is the fact that no woman can stomach being around me for a sufficient amount of time. No one. I simply don't make it easy for them either by being my stubborn self. I'm too much into what I do and into my job to really appreciate the person I'm with.

I've tried. Believe me, I have. I'm just not very good at keeping a woman happy. Making her happy is one thing -- sustaining that happiness is another.

And frankly, I've given up. Came to the conclusion after my last breakup over two years ago that no woman should be with me. Not on a full-time relationship basis, that is. I won't shun them away entirely. But I won't exactly make the effort to say, "Hey, let's do this again tomorrow."

My job is, as I've found out, my mistress, my wife and my girlfriend all wrapped into one. And if she ever abandons me again, I'm not sure how I would feel or react. Let's say I'd be absolutely miserable ... though it'd leave me a lot of time to go date.

And that's another thing ... dating. Uggggh! I'd rather have a root canal than be starting all over again on another "meet-and-know" date. I've done that recently and actually enjoyed the time with the women I've seen. But time is a very tough thing to negotiate. Sure, if you are into someone, you make the time. But the women I've been on dates with are usually about a good 35 to 40 miles away from where I live. And unless you are 25 and under here in Podunk, I really have no interest in the single women.

Let's just say I'm not attracted to any of them and haven't been since practically day one nine years ago.

I told a close female friend of mine when I was up visiting in New Jersey last May -- one that I'd seriously think about dating if she wasn't so far away, but would rather cherish her friendship and never ruin -- that I was not going to just "settle." That was soooooo out of the question. I'd rather be alone and miserable than be with someone who has the potential to make me miserable. At least when you're alone and miserable you have no one to take it out on right there.

I knew when I was 13 years old I was never going to be a parent. You need patience, a good temperament and understanding to be a parent. I have none of the above. And I don't have it in me to be a parent 24/7 the rest of my life. So I like my "me" time. And people say I'm crazy when I tell them my favorite sound in the whole wide world is silence.

I'm used to silence. My world has been about silence for the last six years of living alone and two years of not having a significant other. And I admit, I'm very selfish about my "me" time. I have lots of it, so I cherish it. And yes, there's that absence of intimacy, but believe me, you learn to deal without having it.

The truth is, I've put up with enough crap in my life from the opposite sex that I've pretty much convinced myself that they're all bad in some way. Yes, it's an unfair accusation I admit. But six years ago after my ex-fiance walked out under circumstances that still make my blood boil to this day, I rejected every woman who came within earshot of me. There must have been over two dozen women who wanted to be with me and I pushed them all away.

Why? Because I was convinced that they may love me today, love me tomorrow, love me next week, love me next month even love me next year. But somewhere after that perhaps they'd fall out of love with me and walk away -- just like every other woman did.

My heart could not handle another rejection again. It closed up. But there was one woman who was persistent enough to try and break through that. I didn't give her a chance at first. We were very very close, yet I still felt she'd fall out of love with me even when she said she loved me. She gave me an ultimatum that she needed "to move on" with her life and that she was not going to be just "a piece of ass." I didn't want to lose her friendship and yes, I loved her, too. So we decided to give it a try. The problem was all the things we did before we became boyfriend/girlfriend we couldn't do anymore. And we began after a while to see less and less of each other. Being 125 miles from one another takes a toll.

And my job meant more.

There, I said it. I could've gotten a job at a newspaper where she lived, but there were only two that fit the bill -- one was at the Orlando Sentinel, which I've sent five f*cking resumes for various jobs over the last nine years and those idiots haven't even recognized me. So that was out of the question. And the other paper was Florida Today ... a Gannett paper. I've worked under Gannett rule. No thanks.

She saw the writing on the wall, the same wall I saw the writing. We should never have gone out together. I knew it could be possibly a bad decision. But we tried it and we enjoyed whatever time we had together. That I will always cherish. Ultimately, though, she fell out of love with me just like every other woman did that I ever was with. I just joked that I should come with a warning label saying, "Don't fall in love with him ... he'll disappoint you!"

I've been a disappointment. I just stopped. I just didn't really care anymore. And any woman I was interested in had no interest in me anyway.

So my relationship with women is pretty mutual -- we agree to disagree about almost anything and everything. Casual? Yes. I still treat women with the same respect I would want to be treated with in return. But a serious relationship with the opposite sex? I don't think so.

My work has always gotten in the way of me. I know work has the wedding band on its finger, though I refuse to seriously acknowledge it. Still, it's what keeps me from truly ever having a balance. I fight to work so I can actually do what? I don't even take time off from work for me anymore. My one true vacation I take every May doesn't involve a signficant other going with me and I'm thankful for it. It's to go see my family up in Jersey. Whatever joy I do have is bent around helping with a high school county softball tournament which I have for years. So in a sense, it's still a working vacation.

I'm happy for the time I spend with my friends, but really, that's about it. Even my friends have a life so I don't try to invade their time.


It's now to a point in my life where I wouldn't even know what to do with my time where I am now. And I accepted a long time ago that I may die alone. To me, it's OK. I spend about a good 120 hours a week in my car alone or in my apartment alone. And, sure, it's easy for someone to say, "Get out of the apartment and do something!" Quite a few things have money involved in it, though, and since I don't have a whole heck of a lot of money to begin with, I just don't go out. And as I've learned in my nine years here in Podunk, there ain't a whole hell of a lot to see.

So work masks a lot of the "me" time. It's what keeps me busy and actually around people that I like being around. I'd really go insane if I didn't have work.

I trust work far more than I would a female. Sad, I know. And I'm pretty sure there are plenty of females who have no trust in the male gender, too. I've always told a woman if they didn't want to have anything to do with me because of past transgressions with the male population, I'd actually empathize with them. They usually tell me no ... but the door is always open to walk away.

I love my job and what I do.

I'm pretty sure I can't say the same thing about the opposite sex.

Yes, very sad for a "nice guy," I know.

My first first-place honor ... and the crap I went through to get it

I've always said that awards are nice to gain, but not ever going to define me ... just my career. And as I've found out over the last few years, winning a lot of awards has meant diddly-squat when it comes to advancing further in my career.

I find myself apologizing for being talented and over 40 and sarcastically wishing I'd never do it again, but that's a totally different matter.

Those awards are collecting very nicely in my closet, thank you.

But when you're younger, you're looking for recognition for different reasons -- appreciation for a job well done and acceptance among peers. It shows them that you a) have a mastery of the English language and b) you can tell a story that will go beyond the first three paragraphs.

Problem was that it took over 20 years to find that recognition. It's a good thing I started professionally when I was 17 or else I'd really be a bitter, old man. I worked at two institutions where newspaper awards contests were either frowned upon or just not cared enough. As a matter of fact, as a correspondent at the Ocean County Observer I was actually told I should enter my work by one of our news editors who, I guess, took a liking to what I did. Well someone must have said something to my sports cohorts who were looking to enter their work and were told there were only so many spots to enter in the contest and I just happened to have taken up some of the spots.

I can still remember one cohort trying to be gentle as he could by telling me, "You've gotta get your stuff out of there." It was sad and it was almost hilarious the way he was trying to talk to me like I was some teenager who might have gone out and done something wrong. There was nothing I could do, though ... they were late in asking me to withdraw my contest entries.

Needless to say, I didn't win. And, frankly, I didn't really care about contests after that. That incident in 1988 was enough to tell anyone to go "f*ck off" when it came to contests. When I got let go by the Key West Citizen, though, in 2002, I knew one of the big hindrances in finding another job was what kind of job swagger I had. No awards, and it would make it harder for me to find a job, which for 16 months I couldn't. I don't wish my 16 months of exile from this business on my worst enemy. My business is very, very cruel -- they want younger so they can pay cheaper. I defy any newspaper boss to tell me otherwise, and I still won't promise to laugh in their faces.

In 2003, I joined the staff at the Palatka Daily News and they were very headstrong about entering in contests that were available to us. I had as much pessimism over entering any of my work the same way Randy Quaid had pessimism that the Cleveland Indians were going to the World Series in "Major League II." But I went through with it. In 2004, I put my best work forward ... nothing. Not even a mention.

I didn't want to bother anymore. I started believing that 20 years into this business, I may have picked the wrong profession. Problem is, I didn't have any other options as to where to go. I was a one-trick pony -- journalism or bust. But as I've known my entire life, I just trudged along.

Then the story of a lifetime fell into my lap accidentally ... and everything changed.

It was November 6, 2004 at Tampa's Ed Radice Park. This was the night Interlachen High School's Jeremy Criscione won the FHSAA 2A cross country championship in 15:02, a record time, and beat some of the strongest runners in the state in the process while running in the memory of his late coach Dwayne Cox, who had passed away that August. I let whatever I had to write flow freely on the day off from work since we didn't publish a newspaper until Tuesday, November 9.

It turned out to be a 30-inch story that had everything to make it sound like a story of the year. But all the negativity was still allowing me that avenue to believe no one likes my work. Parents and kids and friends are one thing. Your peers are another. So I made a vow to myself that if I didn't win anything in the 2005 contest cycle with this story, I was never entering another story again and truly believing that 21 years in this business have been nothing more than a waste of my time.

Well, lo and behold, wouldn't you know it -- in July 2005, I found out that the Florida Sports Writers Association judges selected that story as the silver-medal winner in my classification of small-to-medium sized newspapers for best sports event. So it was during that late July weekend of the Florida college football coaches convention in Orlando in which we got to interview all the coaches (including FSU coach Bobby Bowden and new kid on the block Urban Meyer of Florida) that the FSWA handed out its honors and I collected my award.

So now I couldn't believe anymore that none of my peers appreciated my work. That was gone. Turns out this was the appetizer for what was to happen next.

In September 2005, I found out that the same story took first-place honors in the "General Excellence in Sportswriting" category for newspapers 25,000 and less circulation at the prestigious Florida Press Club. Even I had to admit it was the highlight of everything I've done up until then. Covering a Super Bowl, a Major League Baseball All-Star Game and two Little League World Series were amazing, but being appreciated by your peers ... that was waaaaaaay cool.

And so I planned on going to the banquet, scheduled near downtown Orlando right off of I-4 with my girlfriend, to not only pick up my honor but any other honors our newspaper won. I had made plans with my great publisher and with the woman who handles all the money at the newspaper a week in advance. They cut me a check for $70, one for myself and one for the love of my life at the time to attend the festivities.

The banquet was to be held on Saturday, October 15, 2005, at the Ballroom at Church Street in Orlando. As was our routine on the days my significant other worked, whether it was weekends or during the week, I'd get home from work around 1:30 in the morning, maybe 2, stay up and watch television out in the living room, then when it was time for her alarm to go off, I'd go into the bedroom. I was never trying to avoid her -- I just hate alarm clocks.

Our lives together were so far better when she worked an overnight shift at the sheriff's office from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. As of early summer 2005, she was now working the morning-to-afternoon shift for which she famously replied to me, "It's not going to affect our relationship," for which I gently retorted, "Yeah, if you say so."

Was she ever naive.

So as I crawl into our bed as she got ready for what would be a half-day at work for her (she had gotten the OK from her bosses to leave early so she could go with me to the banquet), I turned on my favorite Friday night/Saturday morning HBO show "Real Time With Bill Maher," a show hosted by the liberal-minded comedian and common-sense advocate. He's not only funny, but he speaks to me in what I believe.

At one point in this particular show, he was talking to an important official in New Orleans about the atrocities that had been taking place involving the police officers and those left without a home recently because of Hurricane Katrina. I don't care who you are, but officers should never gang up to billy-club and mercifully beat the crap out of a helpless man, whether they utter words of defiance at officers or not. The incident was on video, so there wasn't a whole lot of sticking up that any fellow officer could do for these rogues acting out of line in the aftermath of a crisis.

Well guess who took offense to that? Yeah, my "die-in-the-wool-for-my-fellow-officer" girlfriend, who got further annoyed when I agreed out loud after Mr. Maher had said the logical thing about any cop inflicting harm to any person left out on the street to fend for themselves should have their badges taken away.

She went to work in a not-so-good mood. And apparently she came home at about 1 p.m. in a not-so-good mood either. We got dressed, me wearing my green suit and jackets combination that I only got to show off for big events like this which, of course, I had never partaken in before.

She was strangely quiet as we got into my car and took off down US-17 toward DeLand and onto SR-472 and onto I-4. We were listening to the radio for the better part of the time. I believe the Gators were on the radio that Saturday afternoon and she being a big Gators fan wanted to listen. We had gone through half a dozen towns by the time we hit DeLand and I asked her why she wasn't so talkative.

"You don't want to know why," she answered.

"Well, no, I do want to know why since we haven't said a word to one another," I shot back.

"You really don't want me to tell you," she answered back. "Because if I do, I won't stop."

I knew where she was heading with this. She was still pissed off at me about the morning, about my agreeing that cops should be bashed for beating up innocent people regardless of the situation. My liberal-minded views and her conservative ways were about to clash in a not-so-nice manner. Let's get it all out there, girl! Tell all your troubles!

"I don't care. If you need to vent, then do so."

For the next three minutes, she started going off about anything and everything that involved me, my profession, my way of life, my thinking, etc., etc..etc. She wasn't being very kind about it either. But I let her. I allowed her to say what she needed to say, hateful vitriol or not. Then she stepped over the line of what was allowed and what wasn't ... she started going off on my family 950 miles away.

"Your parents are just a--holes!"

I stopped her there. I said she crossed the line and I had no problem turning this car around and driving back to Palatka and "dropping her ass off and hoping it wasn't there when I got home" from the banquet. I can take a lot of crap from a lot of people, but if you start talking badly about my family, you're on the road to your ruination with me. She apologized, realizing she went too far with her poisonous diatribe.

That was it, though. I was turning onto I-4 from SR-472 with another 31 miles to go to get to the Ballroom and the night was ruined.

This should have been a night for celebration. She turned it into a reason why I should never be around another woman for something important again.

 I will admit the next 3 1/2 hours from the time we got into Orlando, parked the car, went inside, had dinner, watched various speakers talk about my business, then pick up the awards for my paper were like going through the motions. By the time the event ended at 9:30 p.m., there was no hanging out with any other media members there to talk and enjoy the company, which I would look forward to ... she had to be back home to our apartment and asleep to go in to work on that Sunday.

The only memories I have from that night other than picking up my award were her criticizing to me privately the way some of the other people dressed in simple dress collar shirts and khakis and me escaping the room for a few minutes to talk to my Uncle Lewis, whose birthday just happened to be that day and that he and his girlfriend were going to be in St. Augustine for that Sunday and I told him that I wasn't going to make it, but thanks for the invite.

We got home at midnight. She actually thanked me for taking her there and she went to sleep soon after.

I let what happened earlier in the day go. That is, I let it go until we started having similar fights about stupid stuff for the next year until our breakup in October 2006. I wondered how life may have been different if I had been a bigger bastard, turned the car around that afternoon, pulled over to the side of US-17 and demanded she take herself out the door and walk back to Palatka. I wouldn't have gone through the last year of our relationship and the wasted four months of an engagement.

It started me down the path of being jaded and cynical toward the opposite sex. I vowed that I would never take another woman with me to another awards ceremony ... that is, if I was lucky enough to be so honored to win another award.

Three years later, I was honored again with awards by the Press Club. This time around, the banquet was to be held at the Daytona Beach Hilton. And my new girlfriend at the time wanted to go. I was hesitant, but I figured, "Heck, it couldn't be any worse than the last one I took with me."

We actually had a good time and made it an awards celebration/birthday celebration for her since it was the weekend after she had her birthday. And she went with me to the 2009 awards at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando as well. She and I had a good time those two years.

But she and I broke up and now it's just myself going to any awards ceremony that involves me getting something. I'm used to it. I don't ever want to force someone to go with me when they're half-hearted about it. Just not my style. I pretty much decided a long time ago that I was going to ride solo in a lot of things in life. And that's OK.

I've been fortunate enough to win a total of 17 awards either state-wide, nationally or within my company, 15 of which have come since 2008. I don't have to prove anything anymore to my peers -- they have told me I'm pretty darned good at what I do.

The awards and sheets of paper that show I won collect dust in my closet. I don't ever let that define me ... just my career.

And it's all good. I enjoy going to any awards ceremony by my lonesome.

After all, it's a definite improvement from the first time I actually took first place in something.

My 45 minutes with Steve Sabol

In February 2005, the Super Bowl was coming to Jacksonville.

Yes, that Jacksonville, as in Jacksonville, Fla., as in the biggest city per square mile in Florida Jacksonville.

And after covering the Jaguars for the second year I was working at the Palatka Daily News, I was excited to cover the big game. One problem -- my boss decided he wanted to cover the big game. Talk about being shot down in your hopes of doing great things.

So I wanted to contribute in some way to any Super Bowl coverage we would do. The problem was that my boss only put credentials in for himself and our photographer who was going up there to shoot the game. In other words, there was no backup plan or a backup pass for that matter in case something happened to him.

Greeeeeeeeat. But I was undaunted nonetheless. He could have the game, but I wanted to do one feature, something that would be interesting for our readers and might provide for great stories to put into our paper. And then I knew what I wanted to write about.

I knew that NFL Films was going to make the annual pilgrimage to the league's biggest game and I wanted to talk to the man who was at the forefront of NFL Films, the company's face. And though it was Ed Sabol who started NFL Films, it was his son Steve who took the company to the next level, pushing the brand on anyone and everyone within earshot. Though those in the know knew Ed Sabol and his contributions, most people knew his son as the embodiment of NFL Films. So I contacted NFL Films on the Monday of Super Bowl week, when things really began to warm up in northeastern Florida.

I got his secretary, who told me she would get a message to him. Well Tuesday came. No word yet. I called the offices in Mount Holly, N.J. again. And I got the same secretary. I told her I was wanting to talk to Steve Sabol about NFL Films and how things work during the week of the Super Bowl and actual game day. She apparently called in to Mr. Sabol's office to see if he was busy. He was and he couldn't get back to me, but he apparently told her to see about Wednesday.

I told her I was available, but I had a feeling she would tell me he would talk to me very early, which I really wasn't looking forward to.

"Can we make it late in the morning, like about 11 o'clock?" I asked. She checked with Sabol. All seemed fine. I left it at that.

Now you have to understand my routine and schedule. There are very few "9-to-5" jobs in the business, especially in the sports department where most of the local sports is taking place either in the late afternoon or in the early evening. So I have one of those schedules that has me going in at about 6 in the evening and leaving around 1:30 in the morning. Not exactly a "home-happy" schedule, but I was living with a girlfriend who worked at a sheriff's office from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. This was nirvana in that regard.

Well that early day, I didn't get to sleep until about 5:30 in the morning. Since my girlfriend was working a second job that had her jumping from her first job to the second in Jacksonville, I had really no way of being woken up other than maybe leave the television on, which I did.

Don't ask me how, but I woke up at about 10:05 a.m. on Wednesday, February 2, 2005. I was lacking from sleep and knew that I wasn't going to be at my best on 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Somehow, I dragged myself into a shower, got dressed and headed to the office. It was 10:50 a.m. Turned on the computer and looked on the Internet, waiting for the phone to ring.

I was anxious. C'mon phone ... ring already!! It was 11 a.m. Then it became 11:05, then 11:10. And suddenly my eyes got heavy from waiting. While there was a small amount of people in the newsroom at that hour, I literally dozed off waiting for a phone call. I was asleep literally in front of my computer for about five minutes. It was 11:15 and before I can get my bearings, there was the phone no more than a foot away from my desk and almost two feet from my ear. The red message light was blinking.

Oh f**kin' faaaaan-tastic! And I dreaded hitting the button and numerical code to hear the message, knowing it was Steve Sabol asking where the hell I was. But I did ... and it was Steve Sabol calling, leaving a very polite message and asking me if I could call him back as soon as possible. It was Wednesday after all and I knew that it was either that night or Thursday that he was getting on a plane and heading from Philadelphia to Jacksonville.

It took me about 45 seconds to a minute to get my bearings. Then I made the phone call back to NFL Films. The same secretary I talked to for two days answered and she knew to send me into Mr. Sabol's office.

"This is Steve Sabol," came an answer on the other end of the phone.

"Mark Blumenthal from the Palatka Daily News in Florida. Nice to finally catch up with you. How are you doing this morning?

"I'm doing fine. Making final arrangements here before heading down your way for the Super Bowl."

I asked how much time we had to talk. He was willing to give me a half hour. I wasn't sure 30 minutes was going to sufficiently be enough to hear him talk about NFL Films. What I did was put the onus on his telling of how NFL Films came about, how it evolved and what he does for Super Bowl week with the crew of cameramen and editors.

So I asked him about the very beginning and how it all came about. Steve Sabol was a fabulous football player in high school in the late 1950s and he eventually went on to Colorado College in Colorado Springs. His father pretty much taped everything he did on and off the football field, and from there, Ed Sabol had a passion to film football as a real profession. The New York Giants and Green Bay Packers were playing at Yankee Stadium in the 1962 NFL Championship and Ed Sabol was one of a handful of people who put in a bid for the game.

"There wasn't much interest in taping the 1962 NFL Championship," Steve started. "There were only four bidders. They were all separate film companies and the price for the previous year's NFL Championship (between the same two teams) was $1,500. Then my dad, who really wanted to do the taping, doubled the bid and we got it for $3,000. My mom said he was not very smart, but he didn't care and he wanted to do it."

The problem, though, according to Sabol, was his dad's lack of any big-time film work. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle took a look at Ed Sabol's resume and knew he may have had a little problem.

"Pete Rozelle was excited that someone would open the bid that high," Steve said. "Then he read my dad's resume -- under 'experience' was 'filming my 14-year-old son.' Rozelle was concerned. My dad was selling overcoats, but he could sell his passion. He wanted to make football films desperately. So over a four-martini lunch, he convinced Pete to get him to film the game and the beginning of a long relationship between Pete and my dad began."

And it was that $3,000 investment to do the '62 title game that was the start of what would be a major film industry. Meanwhile, Steve Sabol was still in Colorado, finishing up his sophomore year at Colorado College with the team's final game against Idaho State.

"My father told me, 'You've been out there and all you've done in that time is go to movies and play football,'" Sabol said. "So I quit school and came home (to New Jersey) to help him. It took two to three years to develop a style for our films. The first film we did was with John Facenda (the legendary Philadelphia-based broadcaster with the passionately deep voice) and it was shot in slow motion. It took a while to do what people recognize as 'theatrical.'"

Sabol is one of very few people who was able to attend the first 46 Super Bowls. And he has long-lasting memories of those games, including the first one at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs, a game most people didn't even think was going to be close and figured to be a Packers blowout that January afternoon in 1967.

"The game was pretty hyped up," he said. "It was a carnival ... a freak show. The stadium wasn't filled because everyone thought it was going to be a 70-0 win for the Packers. There wasn't a sense of real competition, but (Packers coach) Vince Lombari was really nervous. He didn't want to play the game initially. Frank Gifford tells the story that he interviewed Lombardi before the game and that his clothing was so wet and he was shaking like a leaf. He felt if he lost, the whole Packer legacy would be ruined."

And though most people point to Super Bowl III when the New York Jets of the American Football League stunned the heavily favored Baltimore Colts at the Orange Bowl in 1969, Sabol was quick to say Super Bowl IV between the Minnesota Vikings and Chiefs in 1970 was a bigger game for a bigger reason.

"When the Jets beat the Colts the year before, everyone thought it was a fluke," Sabol said. "But in Super Bowl IV, parity was born out. The Vikings were a 14-point favorite over the Chiefs. There was no equality between the two leagues, but that game was a butt-whippin' (a 23-7 Chiefs win). (Coach) Hank Stram's Chiefs were one of the greatest teams of the modern era, but for some reason they are forgotten. They had a Hall of Fame quarterback (game MVP Len Dawson), linebacker (Bobby Bell), a great wide receiver in Otis Taylor and a fine defense headed by Buck Buchanan and Johnny Robinson."

That game highlighted the quirks and sounds of Stram, who was miked up, giving the famous lines "Keep matriculating the ball down the field Lenny," "Let me ask you something Mr. Official. How can six of you miss a call like that?" and the famous "65-toss power trap" that led to Mike Garrett scoring a touchdown and Stram yelping wildly on the sideline, repeating the scoring play over again and yelling, "Atta way boys!"

It was that 30-minute highlight real that put NFL Films and Super Bowl chronicling on the map forever. But that day at New Orleans' Tulane Stadium came at a high price. Sabol told me about the experience of being in New Orleans for the first time during the first full week of January 1970 and how awful it was.

"We had 20 rooms booked at our hotel and to show the clout the game had back then, they canceled 10 of the rooms because of a dry cleaners convention," he said vividly remembering that week as if it were only yesterday. "One of our assistant cameramen was a doctor. He got us rooms at a charity hospital, so 15 people were staying at the hospital. The worst thing that happened was our main camerman shared a room with a guy brought in because of a heart problem and the guy died in the middle of the night. The cameraman was so upset, he didn't want to shoot the game, but he took time to get over what happened and he was professional about it. However, he was still so distraught that he shot the first quarter in the wrong camera speed and didn't realize it. And that was my initial experience in New Orleans."

And Sabol minced no words when it came to New Orleans -- he wasn't a fan of the Crescent City whatsoever.

"It's a horrible place. We've been robbed three times there," Sabol said less than seven months before the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina. "We had 10 (crew) people who suffered food poisoning one year. It's awful, it's seedy and it's the kind of place you'll see Lee Harvey Oswald in the corner of a bar. My hotel room was robbed and for Super Bowl XV in 1981, our equipment was stolen."

Sabol had a favorite place for Super Bowls. To him, it was a no-brainer.

"Los Angeles," he told me. "They start the game in the daytime at 3 p.m. and the Rose Bowl has a beautiful backdrop to it. The crowd blends right into the field of play. There's no sights of ambulences or forklifts in the background. L.A. is a big city that can handle the game."

But his mind wandered back to another Super Bowl in New Orleans at Tulane Stadium, the place they held the game before the Superdome was erected. It was Super Bowl IX between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Vikings, a game won by the Steelers, 16-7, for their first title on a grey, yucky day with game-time temperatures at 46 degrees.

"It was colder than what the temperature actually was," he said. "I was wearing an Air Force jacket that I had to buy two days before the game because it was so cold that week in New Orleans."

Before there was ESPN to show all those amazing Super Bowl films, Sabol and his father found various "venues" to show the artsy films the two of them made.

"I remember so distinctly the first seven, eight, nine years of NFL Films, the only way we could show games was if you were a member of the Rotary Club or the Kiwanis Club or the Elks Lodge," he said. "We do a 16-mm film and take it to various conventions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was underground film. We were strictly a mom-and-pop company. If we had a championship game (to show), you'd call to get the game and we'd bring along Frank Gifford or Don Meredith or Pat Summerall to show the film.

"Then when we got to TV, it would be shown at 6 in the morning when our audiences were milkmen, bartenders, parking-lot attendants -- people who were up late or getting up early. Then ESPN came along and spread the films out in various times and we became nationally recognized."

For the first Super Bowl, Sabol said there were 20 employees at the L.A. Coliseum to do the filming. For Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, there were over 100 people going. He told me what he did was allow the cameramen there shooting the game to be their own "artists" and to "create" their art on film.

"I was a cameraman and I don't believe in overdirection," he told me. "I talk to them briefly and then send them off to do the game. It's like sending 13 artists out there and each comes back with their own interpretation of what they see. Then, after the game, it's up to myself and editors to take the tape and present the story in an enlightening and entertaining way."

It wasn't a surprise to me that college kids wanted to make their mark shooting NFL games. And again, Steve Sabol let me in on the secret.

"To work with us, they have to work as an intern first," he said. "We must get 350 to 400 applications from people, then another 200 for internships. It's like getting into Harvard. It's flattering to get all the letters."

And with those he had on staff,  he took them under a precious wing and let them know it's OK to fail as long as they understood what it was they were doing.

"If you see them trying and they're not the best at what they do, but they get along with people, we give them a shot. It's like a football player who may not run the 40 that fast or have a great vertical leap, but if they are a good person and willing to work hard, you put them in talent coordination. It takes a while to become a talented filmmaker."

It was beyond the 30 minutes I was allotted to chat with him by now. And I heard this man talk about his passion like a big-time director would. What Scorsese, Spielberg and Cameron were to the big screen, Steve Sabol was to the small screen. And unlike those other big-time directors, Sabol never had to give a directorial cue to his "actors." I asked him if he had done anything that wasn't football-related.

"I did a film for NASA on the 10th anniversary of man landing on the moon (in 1979), and they wanted me to make the film equivalent to what it's like when the Dallas Cowboys won a big game. That was fun."

Ultimately, I heard something from Steve Sabol that I could relate to -- he couldn't really do anything else other than the craft he became famous for doing.

"I love the job of making movies, but I'm not a director that wants to expand beyond football," he said. "I'm a one-trick pony and I love football."

I could've talked to Steve Sabol into the afternoon hours about the technology that made his job better and easier over the years or about the rise of the Steelers and San Francisco 49ers dynasties or even the budding dynasty of the New England Patriots. But ultimately, he saw the clock on his wall in his office.

"I have to cut this short because I have a flight to catch," he said. "Anything else?"

"Well, one thing," I said. "How long do you see yourself doing this for?"

He wasn't hesitant about his answer one bit.

"I hope I can keep doing this as long as I'm coherent and can make good film," he said. "Picasso and Matisse painted into their 80s. I hope I can do the same thing."

And that was it. I thanked him. He was gracious in saying I was welcome. And he was off to Philly Airport to head to Jacksonville to work on the filming of Super Bowl XXXIX, a game that I eventually got to cover when my boss got double pneumonia that week. It was a heck of a thrill that I hope I'll do again in my lifetime.

I never saw Steve Sabol at the Super Bowl, but that was OK. He was busy doing what he was there to do and I was as well.

Sabol wanted to do his craft into his 80s like Picasso and Matisse. Unfortunately on September 18, 2012, he lost his 18-month battle with brain cancer, only two weeks from his 70th birthday. It gave me a chance to reflect on that late morning in February 2005 when I got to hear him talk about his passion in a 45-minute phone conversation that I no doubt could've heard all day. By the end of the conversation, I was convinced the man had a story for every occasion, no matter where he was or what audience he was in front of.

To this day, he's the most interesting sports figure I ever interviewed. It will not be the same to watch any archived NFL Films on ESPN or the NFL Network, which began broadcasting in 2005. Steve Sabol will always be the face of NFL Films, even though it was his father who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2011 and Steve Sabol gave the speech, even as he was fighting brain cancer, wanting badly to do that one task.

Someday, Steve Sabol will join his dad there even though he won't be able to celebrate it.

He proved to me he was a Hall of Fame person that morning. And his work will live on forever through NFL Films. Because that combined group of young and veteran cameramen and editors are as passionate and dedicated as Steve Sabol was.

And that, my friends, is one hell of a legacy to leave behind.

The best high school football player I ever saw

Rivalry football games can be fun to cover. Lord knows how many rivalry games I've covered over the years -- from Toms River South-Lakewood (started in 1920) to St. Augustine-Palatka (started in 1921) though my experience with that latter game was a one-sided affair in 2009 (St. Augustine killed Palatka, 62-6).

In 2000, the rivalry between private-school based Gulliver Prep of Miami and public-school Key West was a strong one, especially in baseball. That spring, Gulliver beat Key West for the District 16-3A baseball championship.

And though the two schools were not in the same district in football that fall, the rivalry proved to be a fierce one nonetheless. Such was the case on Friday, September 8, 2000 at Tommy Roberts Memorial Stadium.

I was one year into working at the Key West Citizen and had pretty much understood how things worked there. In that fall of 2000, I got to cover Key West High's football team. The year before, I pretty much had the night off while my assistant covered Key West High's games. It was all good and dandy, but I was really the person in charge of the place as the sports editor and now that he was gone and moved on to another venture, I got to take over the job of covering all the Conchs' games both home and away. It also didn't hurt that we did not have a Saturday newspaper, so there was no pressure to write a story and get a paper out that night. This was before the Cooke family who took over ownership thought we were ready to publish seven days a week, a bad mistake in judgment as far as I was concerned.

One project that was new to me for the 2000 high school season was not only putting the preseason tab together, but I was in charge of putting together an eight-page tab for every week of the season. All I know was the Citizen was going to sell this sport to the hilt and it was my duty to make sure the paper looked something close to beautiful. And for the second week of the season, the highlight game was the one at Tommy Roberts between Gulliver Prep and Key West.

Just the week before, Key West showed up at Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale and destroyed Class 6A Stoneman Douglas High, 41-13. These Conchs were a veteran team, led by senior quarterback James "Rock" Osborne, senior wide receiver-cornerback Colton Butler, senior lineman Patrick Lewin and junior linebacker Justin Duck. This was a very good Key West High team.

And the team the Conchs were facing was pretty darned good, too. Quarterback Buck Ortega was a senior and the son of former Miami Dolphins player Ralph Ortega. He was being looked at seriously by the University of Miami. Markus Jones was a solid running back that helped to balance out the offense.

But the best player on the field for either side was a senior named Sean Taylor. Taylor was a running back who also could play wide receiver, but his talent was as a cornerback, the young man Gulliver put on the other team's best receiver. But Taylor had not played the week before and Gulliver suffered an opening-game loss.

Now the 1-0 Conchs and the 0-1 Raiders were about to get it on at Tommy Roberts. I had heard so much about Sean Taylor. His coach, Steve Howey, told me he was being recruited by a number of schools -- Miami, Iowa State, Iowa, North Carolina State and Florida. You don't get mail from the big boys unless you're really, really good. So I was looking forward to this matchup since I never had the opportunity to see the game the year before, mainly due to the fact that my megalomaniacal assistant was persistent about covering Key West High football, so I let him. This is the same guy who told me "not to change the statistics" from the big Key West-Glades Central game in '99 because the statistician who covered Key West High "has done their stats for years!" 

Well guess what big guy? So have I! My attitude basically to my big boy assistant with the little boy attitude was "f*ck yourself." I honestly couldn't wait for him to move on, finding out later that I beat him out for the sports editor's job that summer. So working with him for the short amount of time that I did was a very uncomfortable experience.


With the door wide open now for myself to go cover this team without his aggrevation to deal with, I was looking forward to the Conchs' season. The opener in Fort Lauderdale was an awesome display of great balanced football on the offense and defense. This game against Gulliver was going to present a challenge and find out how good this Key West team really was early on.

Arriving early at Tommy Roberts -- which was no more than about five minutes from the apartment complex I was living at on Duck Avenue with my girlfriend at the time -- I could see the stands filling up on the Conchs' side. If there is one thing that those Key Westers are known for, it's their hometown pride. Tourist town? Absolutely! I tell anyone who thinks about visiting Key West to go and enjoy the experience of a lifetime. But this town comes out for its own and does so in a very boastful away. It's one of the things I took away from Key West when I left eventually in June 2002.

Those fans were there to watch their Conchs in action. They were also there to watch this great player in Sean Taylor. How good a player could he be?

From my view in the press box, I got to see the pre-game pomp and circumstance of the two teams coming out in dramatic ways, the coin toss and the loud, positive display put on around me and below me from the Key West High faithful.

And it was obvious from the start the Conchs' defense of assistant coach Pat Freeman was ready. Each time a running back touched the ball, there was a Conch defender there to lay him out or stop him from getting any momentum. I found out later from head coach Greg Kremer that six players were "halfway to three-quarters healthy" due to a flu bug that was going around at the school.

What kept the Conchs from doing any damage was the punting of Peter Simon, who was averaging 33 yards per kick. But the Conchs were playing a beautiful game of ball control. With Osborne calling the signals and the running backs doing their job, they were chewing up the clock and keeping Ortega from doing his job offensively. In the first 24 minutes of the game, the Conchs picked up 11 first downs. You'd think they would dominate this matchup.

The problem, though, was the Conchs kept coming up short on their drives. And this included the first drive of the evening ... and how Gulliver scored off of it.

Osborne had taken the Conchs down the field masterfully on that first drive and had taken them to Gulliver's 38. It looked like a well-oiled machine rolling along. But from the 38, Osborne rolled to his left. He spotted an open receiver back toward the middle, so awkwardly, he fired a pass.

And there was Sean Taylor. Deion Sanders would have been impressed with what happened after he picked the pass off. Taylor started heading toward the Conchs' sideline, but realized he had no blockers and a pair of speedy Conchs in front of him. So he back-tracked. He weaved his way around a couple of teammates who were getting in the way of Conchs players, then managed to find the sidelines. From there, Taylor, who would also win the state 2A 100-meter dash later in the spring, turned on the afterburners. No Conchs player was going to stop him and even if they did, Taylor found blockers to run past.

Taylor hit paydirt. The touchown went for 78 yards, but it may as well have been close to 110 with all the running he did on that particular play. Simon kicked the extra point and the Raiders had a 7-0 lead.

For the rest of the first half, Gulliver's offense was anemic because the Conchs' defense was simply frustrating Ortega and both the passing and running games.

But the scoreboard read Gulliver ahead 7-0 after one half of play. And as I talked to the longtime help working in the press box, I can see there was a combination of both concern and confidence. The touchdown really was "a fluke," they felt, and the way the defense was playing, there was no doubt Key West would figure it out on offense eventually. And I felt it, too. The problem I was having was how long could the Conchs keep Ortega and Taylor down on offense. This Gulliver team was far from mediocre. It sure didn't look like a run-of-the-mill football team that would go 6-4 at best.

The third quarter, though, was more of the same as the first half. The Conchs continued to clamp down on the Raider offense. Though not quite visible, Ortega was becoming frustrated. Key West's defense and Freeman had done their homework and were keeping this battle to a 7-0 score. Defense was going to dictate this affair.

The Raiders didn't pick up their first first down until Jones got loose for an 11-yard gain with 3:37 to go in the third quarter. In the first half of the game, Key West ran 39 plays -- 39 plays! Gulliver ran exactly eight. Gulliver had a grand total of minus-18 yards on offense. The Conchs were more than doing their job on defense and yet, they still couldn't score. Even with Jones' 11-yard gain on one play, the rest of the quarter saw the Raiders lose eight yards.

So going into the fourth quarter, the Raiders had a total of minus-15 yards. Now all Key West needed to do was find a way to get into the end zone. And they did on the one mistake Simon made punting -- an abyssmal 2-yard attempt that allowed Key West to start at the Gulliver 36 late in the third quarter.

This time, the Conchs were not going to fail. Osborne handed off to both his running backs -- fullback Adron Barnes and tailback Mike Edwards. In five plays, they had the ball at the Gulliver 10. On the next play, Edwards handed off to Barnes, who powered his way through the equally tough Gulliver defense to score. When Max Labrada kicked the extra point, the game was tied at 7-7 with 7:41 left to play.

Finally! There was momentum. Now the Conchs and their defense with a five-man front were playing at even ground again. And once again after the kickoff, they were stopping Ortega and the ground game. It got to third down. Freeman would say after the game that he knew what was coming.

The play Howey called was "143 pass." On the play, the wide receiver on the left side starts out, stops, then starts again like it's a down-and-out pattern. Ortega dropped back to pass and none of the five Conch players on the line were getting to the quarterback. With his protection there, Ortega -- who had completed just one pass for the night for zero yards -- let the pigskin fly.

The pass had to be perfect. The catch had to be in the right spot. That's because even the coverage was pretty darned good by Butler.

But when the young man at the end of the pass play is Sean Taylor, you could pretty much call it game, set, match. Taylor ran underneath the pass with the precision of Willie Mays catching Vic Wertz's 450-foot shot at the Polo Grounds in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. The pass landed beautifully in his hands.

He was gone for a 67-yard touchdown. So, too, was the tie game with 6:36 left.

That sinking feeling came about the entire enthusiastic crowd at Tommy Roberts all at once. And an offense that had struggled all night, committing three turnovers, one that led to the other Gulliver score, was having to try to ramp it up again after they had scored on the previous possession.

One touchdown was needed. And things looked good early on as Edwards picked up a first down to keep the Conchs rolling. But soon enough, the drive stopped thanks to a pair of penalties, forcing Edwards to punt it away. Gulliver had the ball at its own 31 with 4:01 left and Key West had three timeouts remaining. The Conchs continued to make stops on the first two plays, forcing Gulliver into a third-and-14 situation at the 27.

I'll be honest -- it was looking good that Key West was going to get the ball back just one more time. Ortega went back and once again, Key West defenders were on him like flypaper. They had Ortega bottled up, but it was only a moment. Ortega slid free and found a hole. When he barreled in at the 41, he had gained the necessary 14 yards for the first down.

It was deflating for the Conchs. They had to exhaust timeouts. And they never recovered. After masterfully holding down the vaunted Gulliver attack, the Raiders found a way to get the job done. They collected three more first downs and ran the clock out for the 14-7 victory.

After having minus-15 yards of offense until the backbreaker touchdown from Ortega to Taylor, the Raiders finished the game with 98 yards, including just 31 yards on the ground in 28 attempts.

The Conchs, who had 236 yards of offense for the game, did everything to win the game -- except outscore Gulliver's Raiders. The dejected looks walking away from the midfield handshakes after the game pretty much summed it all up. Fans were equally as dejected. They had this so-called "state power" within its grasp and couldn't reel the Raiders in.

But that's football ... one play can decide a game.

"Key West's defensive game plan was excellent," Howey said afterward. "I know if I were them, I'd be proud of the way my kids played defense. They were sending a lot of people at us. We're glad to come away with the victory."

And then Howey stated the obvious to me afterward.

"Taylor can do it all. He's a big-time player. The two touchdowns he scored tonight were both beautiful."

That was an understatement. When it was all said and done, I came off the field realizing I did see something special that night at Tommy Roberts Stadium. Key West went on from there to finish that season 7-3 and earn a postseason spot where the Conchs got creamed in their first game against state power Rockledge.

And Gulliver? They took that unimpressive performance that they made into a victory and turned it into a winning streak. The Raiders would win 14 straight games and finish the season as the state 2A champions, going 14-1.

As for Taylor, he stayed in the city of Miami, played for the Hurricanes and became an All-American cornerback as part of two Miami teams that went to national championship games, winning in his freshman year against Nebraska. Taylor declared for the NFL draft after his junior season and was drafted in 2004 by the Washington Redskins. Though a problem child to begin his career, Taylor was starting to figure it out as a player. His future -- as I saw it when he was a senior in high school -- was pretty darned bright.

But he got injured in the 2007 season while tied for the league lead in interceptions with five, forcing him to miss two weeks as he recovered from the injury. Back home in Miami in the early morning of November 26, 2007, Taylor and his girlfriend, the niece of actor Andy Garcia, were awakened by intruders in their home. Taylor went out to find who was there and was shot in the femoral artery by one of the suspects. Taylor was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital, but had lost a significant amount of blood and had gone into a coma, reportedly his heart stopping twice during surgery. He came out of the surgery that afternoon, but it didn't look good.

Taylor was pronounced dead on November 27, 2007 at 3:30 a.m. He was only 24 years old.

I've seen a lot of good football players on the high school level over the years. I saw Keith Elias star at Lacey High School. I saw Joey Struyf at Marathon High dominate like a man among boys until injuries set him back at Florida International. And one night in 2001 in Riviera Beach, I saw a Suncoast High two-way senior star named Devin Hester dominate Key West like I've never seen a player dominate a team in my life.

But the best high school football player I have covered in 28 years was Sean Taylor. He had mad talent both offensively and defensively. He had swag, too, but not ever over-the-top swag. I knew when I left Tommy Roberts Memorial Stadium that September 8, 2000, I saw a player who was going to dominate the sport for years to come until a callous act ended all that.

I'm proud to say I saw him in person do the kind of damage that he did that night in a rivalry game.

It was truly amazing to watch.

A memorable culmination to a first summer of employment

My first summer of employment in 1984 was nothing but covering baseball for the Ocean County Observer.

Little League All-Star baseball, Senior League All-Star baseball, Junior League All-Star baseball, and when that ended, it was Ed Carleton League baseball and ultimately Jersey Shore Baseball League action and finally, the state's tournament of champions that brought together teams from around the state to play in late summer to ultimately crown a champion.

I was 17 and suffering withdrawals from the end of the District 18 season. When my boss handed me Ed Carleton League ball, I jumped right on that ... and didn't mind one minute.

And if anyone wanted to come for the ride with me in my mother's Ford LTD II, they were more than welcome to tag along. When I covered the Section 3 All-Star Tournament championship that Brick American lost to Spring Lake-Sea Girt, my sister tagged along -- not that she loved baseball, but the trip was to Sayreville Little League, and not that far from Sayreville's field was a White Castle, and believe me, long before Toms River got one in 1988, a White Castle was a burger joint's version of Fort Knox. Hey, those little burgers were gold as far as she and I were concerned.

Then there was the Ed Carleton League championship involving the Toms River South entry against Eatontown. Jim Renner, who played baseball for my father and I on our Toms River Senior League team for three years and was about to enter Toms River High School East as a freshman in a few weeks, wanted to come along with me for the ride to Liberty Oaks Park on that Friday night. It was the first time that I had gone to the Freehold Township-based park since my father's Junior League All-Star team at Toms River that he coached with Bruce Shepherd as manager beat West Milford in the state final, 2-1, just over five years to the day.

The summer of '84 proved to be a liberating summer for myself. I was a professional even though I probably should not have been trying professional writing for a professional newspaper without a single day of college journalism courses. But that was the beauty of doing correspondent work for the small-town paper -- you get to cut your teeth there and if anyone working there has anything of worth to give you as advice, you take it from them.

Once Ed Carleton Baseball ended, the next task was to cover Jersey Shore Baseball League stuff. The man with the most I could learn from was a guy named Art Rooney. Art was a man in his early 40s, like my parents, who was the perfect coach to play for -- a stern disciplinarian for a summer-league team where you can have some fun but still concentrate on furthering a college baseball career, maybe even more than that. In one of the games I covered -- and I can't remember if it was that summer or the next couple of summers -- this man went up to the plate at 40-something to hit for someone and gave it three mighty swings against a fastball-throwing 20-something. He struck out, but man did he make it worth watching.

The team had won the Jersey Shore League title (by forfeit, no less) and was that league's representative in this statewide Tournament of Champions. In the double-elimination event, the Merchants (Point Pleasant's nickname) took out Woodbridge Recreational, 12-5, in the first game, and their reward was another game on the next day against an outfit called Rutgers Service Center. And, unfortunately, the game was not being played in Point Pleasant.

Road trip!

Except this time, no one wanted to tag along with me on this Sunday afternoon, August 26, 1984. I was left to my own devices and very vague directions to some park near Rutgers University. I was fairly confident in traveling Ocean and Monmouth counties, but I wasn't so assured leaving either county and heading elsewhere. And to be quite honest, I was a little scared.


The only things I had with me other than a scorebook and pencil were directions to the park and field I was going to and a Middlesex County map that was in pages and not like the messy, fold-up versions of maps. If I needed to get from one part of Middlesex County to another, I had to flip from map number 3 to map number 14 in this booklet. So paying attention was kind of important.

I headed up Route 9 until just crossing into Middlesex County and then it was a turnoff onto Route 18 heading north. And the opening part of the Route 18 ride is pretty open. There's lot of trees and lots of nothing. No traffic lights. And here I was trying to sneak a peak at my so-called "maps" figuring out where I had to go once I got closer to New Brunswick. And somewhere along the way, I wound up going from the far left lane to the far right lane without ever noticing what I was doing. It was a good thing I was alone at that moment to at least 28 years later tell you about it!

Once I got into the heavy portion of East Brunswick, then New Brunswick, finding roads became a challenge, but I slowly figured out the road I needed to find -- it was Easton Avenue. From there, it was a couple of turns and somehow, luckily, I found the park and the field where the game was being played.

As I remember walking from the park's parking lot to the playing field, there was this look of amazement on Art Rooney's face as if I had found my way out of the most elaborate labrynth ever assembled. And all I can say as I approached him was, "Made it. May I see your lineup, Mr. Rooney?" for which he handed me his lineup for the day and a "Glad you can make it" in his charming northern New Jersey accent. I grabbed a copy of the Rutgers team's lineup just as the game started since they were in the field first and copied that quickly.

Unlike any other kind of baseball I covered all summer, the upper levels were nine-inning affairs. As I made my way back from copying down Rutgers' lineup, I sat down in the stands behind and next to Point Pleasant's bench. Immediately, I recognize this beautiful-looking lady sitting there, probably not much older than I was. So with curious, 17-year-old hormones wanting to find out who she was, I parked myself down behind her and made small chit-chat through the first inning. I come to find out her boyfriend is the third baseman of the team, Carlo Colombino. I'm thinking, "What a lucky bastard!" She was wearing fancy sunglasses and had that curly '80s hair going. How could you not miss that?

I can see this concentrated look on her face when her boyfriend stepped up with a runner on first in the top of the first inning. He hit a rocket shot -- in most enclosed ballparks, this ball would have gone over a fence and Point Pleasant would have had a 2-0 lead. But this was an open field that the teams were playing on in a park. So center fielder Mike McDede started going back ... and going back ... and going back with his back to the play. Somehow, he caught wind of where the ball was and made an over-the-shoulder grab.

But here's the best part: As he was catching the ball, he was no more than 10 feet away from an implanted bench on an adjacent and unused baseball field. McDede literally jumped over the bench, then had the presence of mind to throw the ball back to the second baseman, who threw a two-hop strike to the first baseman to double off Norm Johannessen, who was probably the second-most shocked person on the field that McDede had caught the ball.

I took a look at the beautiful lady sitting in front of me. Her mouth was agape. Absolutely speechless. To this day, it is still the greatest baseball catch I have ever seen and that was 28 years ago. It has literally stood the test of time.

At this point, this story was writing itself out, but Rutgers' team was not making it fun to write at all. After Jim Ritchings singled home Keith Ender to make it 1-0 in favor of Point Pleasant, Rutgers got three runs in the bottom of the second inning as Jim Fleming made up for an error in the previous half-inning with a two-run single. For good measure, they got three more runs off starter and former Point Pleasant Beach High standout Bob MacDonald in the third inning as MacDonald couldn't locate the plate, walking home one run and bringing another in on a wild pitch. A sacrifice fly by Don Tyus made it 6-1.

And Rooney made sure MacDonald's day was done. He took him out and replaced him with former Brick Memorial High School standout John Sheehan in the fourth. And Sheehan was the rock that the Merchants needed, going six innings, allowing no runs on one hit, walking one and striking out two. But Point Pleasant neeed runs to dig out of this hole. And they had three innings left to do it in.

In the seventh, Ritchings singled and one out later, Curt Pirl tripled to the left-center gap on that huge field to cut the lead to four runs. Sheehan grounded out, but that got Pirl in to make it 6-3. Then Bill Reynolds, a former two-sport standout at Brick High School in baseball and football, started a new rally with a triple to left field. Johannessen walked and Colombino singled in Reynolds. Ender brought in Johannessen and suddenly, the lead was a run.

Now I was thinking this ride could continue. But the Merchants needed another rally in either the eighth or ninth innings. The eighth was out of the question as the Merchants went down quickly. So it came to the ninth.

Leadoff hitter Reynolds started it by reaching on an infield hit. Shortstop Fleming made another error on a Johannessen grounder and Colombino got Reynolds to third with a flyball out that was far more routine than the one he hit in the first inning. It brought up Ender, who had three hits going into the at-bat. He got his pitch from reliever Mike Sokolowski and delivered a single to tie it at 6-6. That brought it up to Bob Benkert. He delivered a single to knock in Johannessen to make it 7-6.

A five-run deficit with nine outs to go was now gone. And the Merchants added two more runs in that frame to take a 9-6 lead. That was good enough for Sheehan to close things out and get the victory.

And there was much joy on the Point Pleasant side from the smattering of fans that were there -- some parents, a few friends, Carlo Colombino's girlfriend.

Point Pleasant moved on to play another weekend. But there was one request that was made by Rooney after this game.

"Keith Ender needs to be somewhere long before we get back," he said. "Are you heading back now? (I nodded by head affirmatively.) Can you take him back with you?"

It didn't cross my mind twice. I said, "Sure! I'll do it!" And as I left, Keith grabbed his gear and he and I piled into my mom's LTD II and we headed back on Route 18 heading south. He had me continue on Route 18 until it spilled onto the Garden State Parkway going south. From that point, he directed me to where he needed to go and so I dropped him off in Point Pleasant and he thanked me for the ride. I jumped back on the Parkway to head back to Toms River to write my story.

One weekend later, Point Pleasant's season came to an end as the Merchants lost to the host Irvington A's, 7-6, in 10 innings in come-from-behind fashion on this little field where if you hit a foul ball just perfectly to the third-base side, the ball could be hugging any one of the four lanes on the Parkway (talk about leaving your comfort zone). It dropped the Panthers to the losers bracket, and the next day, September 2, the Merchants lost on their home field to the Wayne A's, 14-10, in 10 innings, strapped for relief pitching and having to go with poor Jim Ryerson all 10 innings. Point Pleasant out-hit Wayne, 23-16 -- 23-16!!! -- and yet, the season ended for Point Pleasant with a 37-7 record.

A couple of weeks earlier, I had been asked by my boss if I wanted to stay around and cover high school sports that 1984-85 season. It was as if the happiest day of my life had taken place by just being asked. I accepted it and didn't look back from there.

I look back on that summer of '84 fondly, though maybe not as fondly as Bryan Adams looked back at the summer of '69. It was a very good time to start a career and to go cover events in areas I'd never been before. I got to meet new faces and make new friends like my dear friend Mr. Rooney, who I cherish to this day. I think I dealt with Art every summer I worked at the Observer until I moved on in 1999. And I thank him for his introduction to the "bigger leagues."

I don't know whatever happened to that woman that Carlo Colombino was dating. But I still tend to put her in 1984 beauty perspective. I can still see her in my mind. I can still see that Willie Mays-style catch that Mike McDede made on Colombino, bench-jumping and all. I can see myself switching lanes on Route 18 without knowing I did.

What a first summer to be employed.

A state championship game -- and comeback -- for the ages

For four straight days, my 1977 Dodge Aspen had worn a path out between Toms River and the Spring Lake Heights Little League complex, the site of the 1990 state Little League All-Star Tournament. On one of those days, I had to leave my car behind at a gas station on Route 71 when water splashed under my car and got in to soak my engine, causing it to peter out and my dad had to pick me up.

Stupid older-model cars! But I digress.

The two northern New Jersey representatives in this tournament, Morristown National and Rutherford, had come and gone in the first three days. It left the other two teams in the double-elimination event to fight it out. There was Section 4 champion North Trenton and the team I was there to cover, our District 18 boys from Brick National, a Little League on the southern end of Brick Township off Cherry Quay Road that had seen very little success over the past decade, but now under the leadership of manager Roy Yakovchuk and coach Rich Harden, were one victory away from winning the championship and advancing to Bristol, Conn. for the Eastern Regional Tournament.

During the winners' bracket final on Wednesday, August 8, 1990, Brick National beat North Trenton, 6-5, to earn the Thursday off, then wait for the losers' bracket representative between North Trenton and Morristown National. North Trenton didn't make it close, tearing up Morristown National, 9-5.

So it came down to the first championship game on Friday, August 10, 1990. For the first six innings, North Trenton's Jamar Booker and Brick National's Mike Terranova threw a gem, neither pitcher giving in to the other. But in the top of the seventh inning, North Trenton's big bats came alive to score 10 runs -- yes, 10 runs -- mostly off Terranova, the highlight being a grand slam by Howard Williams, who broke a 1-0 game open. North Trenton won the game, 10-0, and forced a second championship.

And now it came down to that second championship -- Saturday, August 11, 1990 -- the biggest day in Brick National Little League's history.

And the biggest day of my young career. At 23 years old, I had been fortunate to leave the state of New Jersey just one time in my career other than to go cover Phillies games at Veterans Stadium, and that was to cover the Toms River 13-year-old All-Star team in the Mid-Atlantic Tournament in dull Dover, Del., in 1987.

I knew if these Brick National kids would prevail, I was going with them up to Bristol for the regional tournament. And yes, I was excited about the possibilities.

But I was also concerned going into the late morning. These boys from North Trenton -- a predominantly African-American squad of tall boys who could have been confused for 16-year-old basketball players -- were pretty freakin' scary good, especially with the bats. Just about every player in this North Trenton lineup could hit the ball a country or city mile. In four games in this state tournament, North Trenton had deposited seven balls over the fence.

The team's ring-leader was pitcher-third baseman James Cox, who was already 6-foot tall at 12 years old. And when he got a hold of a pitch, he sent it very, very far, not a single park could hold his drives in. Cox had already hit nine home runs in the 1990 postseason. And his fastball had been dominant throughout the tournaments. There was cleanup hitter Williams, who had belted four home runs so far. And smooth second baseman Derrick Funches had swatted seven home runs that summer.

If you looked at that lineup from top to bottom, you'd be amazed anyone would have a shot at beating these young men.

But Brick National had beaten North Trenton for the first time this summer a few days earlier. And though Brick National's lineup wasn't scary from top to bottom, it had two very reliable bats in the middle in No. 3 hitter Jimmy Kish, a smooth-fielding shortstop who could hit the ball with authority, and cleanup hitter Justin Marsch, a hard-hitting, left-handed right fielder who socked his share of home runs, just not to the same verocity as Cox or Funches. And No. 6 hitter Brian Patton was a solid contributor at the bat and on the mound. Otherwise, the Brick National team had a ton of scrappy players, starting with Terranova, whose step-father was Harden. Mike Russomano was a prototypical leadoff hitter who could get on base and get around the bases. Yakovchuk's son, Brian, was an unheralded pitcher and solid second baseman on the team. And third baseman Mike Mendes and catcher Ricky Bigelow provided steadiness at their positions.

If any team was going to hang with ... and beat ... these scary, hard-hitting tall boys from North Trenton, it was definitely Brick National.

As I arrived a half hour before the game and got my place at the scorer's table behind home plate next to Trentonian writer and a great Little League scribe in Jim Davis, who I had known for years, we both didn't hide the fact that this was a huge day. Jim had done numerous tournaments beyond the state thanks to the success of powerful Nottingham over the years in District 12. Now it was another team from his home base that was one victory away from taking him to Bristol.

The pomp and circumstance that was this final was so intense as the lineups were being announced, you could cut the tension with the proverbial knife. But the beauty of this state tournament all week long was how well the two teams got along with one another. They practically became friends during the week, and in the midst of an intense and powerful week, it was refreshing to see how much they supported the other. Both teams' players knew they were going to be playing one another for the right to represent New Jersey in the Eastern Regional tournament.

As was their custom, the North Trenton coaches took the visiting side of the scoreboard after winning the coin toss so their kids could hit first. Roy Yakovchuk put his eggs in Kish's basket for this game. Kish could throw the ball hard, but he mixed in a nice breaking ball that could keep the North Trenton hitters off-balance for the better part of the game.

But with two outs in the first, Cox singled to right and when Marsch fumbled the ball for an error, the first of nine errors in the game between the teams, six by Brick National's usually dependable defense, things looked desperate. Bigelow could not handle one of Kish's breaking balls and the passed ball allowed Cox to go to third. Williams singled to left field to score Cox for the early 1-0 lead. Kish got out of further trouble by striking out Jerry Dennis to end the inning.

Not surprisingly, it was Cox that North Trenton's coaches turned to pitch the clinching game on this beautiful Saturday morning on an equally beautiful-looking field surrounded behind the first- and third-base sides by trees. With one out, though, Terranova reached second base on a fielding error by first baseman Dennis. He took third on a wild pitch. Things looked good for Brick National's two big guys at the plate, but Cox got both Kish and Marsch swinging to end the threat.

It was deflating. And it was about to get tougher for Brick National and Kish in the second when Booker and Jordan Younger each singled, moved up on a groundout and both scored when shortstop Terranova mishandled Corey Floyd's groundball, making it 3-0. It took a heads-up play by Bigelow to keep things in check as he took the throw home on the play at the plate and fired a strike to Mendes to nail Floyd trying to get to third. That was huge considering the next hitter, Funches, singled. He was left stranded at first, but Brick National's deficit was three runs.

Still manageable by no means. And in the bottom of the second, the boys from South Brick were about to be heard from. With one out, it was Patton who woke the doldrums up on the Brick side of the fence when he took a 3-2 Cox fastball and deposited it over the center-field fence to make it 3-1.

There was the wakeup call. A rattled Cox then hit Bigelow with a pitch and Mendes beat out an infield hit to put two runners on base. A wild pitch by Cox moved the runners into scoring position and No. 9 hitter Stan Czekay walked to load the bases. It was apparent Cox's cage was really rattled. He walked Russomano on five pitches to force home Bigelow. Then he walked Terranova to bring in Mendes with the tying run. There was still one out and the big boys were coming back to the plate.

But reliever Williams struck out Kish for the second out. Marsch made good contact and sent right fielder Corey Brown as far as he could before he could make the catch to end the threat, just mere feet from a grand slam.

It wouldn't be Marsch's only grand slam opportunity in this game, though.

Now it was a new ballgame and anything went from the third inning on. New life for the Brick boys. Patton, though, got into trouble in the third inning after he relieved Kish. After striking out Cox and Williams, he allowed a hit to Dennis. Then Bigelow was called for catcher's interference and Booker was allowed to reach. Then an error by new first baseman Yakovchuk loaded the bases.

I was holding my breath again -- another two-out rally for the North Trenton bunch. Bob McCall hit a rocket down to third base but Mendes was once again the reliable third baseman any Little League All-Star team needed. He scooped up the ball and stepped on third to end the rally.

Whew! That was close. However, Williams had settled things down by the third. He struck out Yakovchuk and Patton and got Bigelow on a lazy flyball out to left fielder Booker.

Worry, though, crept back into play in the fourth against Patton. When left fielder Russomano misplayed a Brown flyball for an error, the wheels were in motion. Cox singled Brown to second and Williams singled home Brown to give North Trenton the lead.

And like a lot of rallies involving North Trenton all week, this one didn't stop either. Dennis got a hold of a 2-2 offering from Patton and drilled his seventh postseason home run over the left-center field fence to make it a 7-3 game.

When Brick National could not do anything in its half of the fourth, North Trenton kept pouncing on its opportunity. Floyd reached on a forceout after McCall singled and the smooth-as-silk Funches planted an 0-2 Patton pitch over the right-field fence for an opposite-field home run, making it 9-3.

A 9-3 lead with six outs to go. This was looking more and more insurmountable for the boys from Brick, especially when Kish got to third after a double and wild pitch to lead off the fifth, but Williams struck out the struggling Marsch, got a comebacker from Yakovchuk and struck out Patton to end the frame. Williams had allowed no runs on two hits, with no walks and six strikeouts in his 3 2/3 innings of work to this point. In a game as important as this one, Williams was the star with two hits, a run and two RBI at the plate and his stellar pitching.

Patton, who was relied on to do his best by manager Yakovchuk because Kish had not done well in his two innings and Terranova could not be used because he had thrown the night before, delivered a 1-2-3 top of the sixth inning to keep the Brick boys at a six-run deficit.

But let's face facts -- these scary-good kids from North Trenton were ferocious. They pounced on just about every opportunity afforded them in this game. And now they were just three outs away from a trip to Bristol. I turned to my writing colleague from the Trentonian, Mr. Davis, and said, "Well, it was a good run for Brick. Congratulations before I forget and have a safe trip to Bristol."

Jim took one stern look at me and said, "You haven't seen these kids play when there's a little pressure on them. This thing is far from over."

Really? There's three outs to go ... what the heck could possibly happen to keep North Trenton from its state title and its Eastern Regional date in Bristol? For the moment, though, I was going to let Davis' words soak in my head and just go with it. Maybe he knew something I didn't at that second.

The bottom of the Brick National lineup had accounted for two of the three runs and No. 7 hitter Bigelow was up first against Williams. He drew a walk.

Suddenly, there's a runner on base to begin things. A wild pitch moved Bigelow into scoring position. Brian Gatto, who came into the game for Mendes in the fourth inning and had grounded out in his first at-bat, hit a comebacker to Williams, who took the out at first as Bigelow moved to third.

Two outs left for Brick National. No. 9 hitter Czekay came back into the game in the top of the sixth and he drew a walk, putting runners on first and third. Now the top of the order was coming back up. On a 2-2 pitch, Russomano hammered a shot over Younger's head in center field for a double to bring in Bigelow and send Czekay to third. Now it was 9-4.

Still a long way to go and only two outs left in the tank. Terranova walked to load the bases for the hungry meat-eaters of the order.

Kish hit a groundball that swallowed up third baseman Cox for an error. Czekay scampered home and now it was 9-5.

The bases were loaded and Marsch was strolling to the plate in the form of the tying run. But if you had seen Marsch in the state tournament, you would've questioned the validity of his being placed in the cleanup hitter's spot. Yes, he was scary and when he got a hold of a pitch, he could send it a long way. However, until this at-bat in maybe the biggest moment of his 12-year-old life, Marsch was a dismal 0-for-11 in the state tournament.

However, there was that little thought in mind that if he could just get a hold of one pitch -- one little pitch -- things could change in a heartbeat. I had seen him perform well in the district and sectional tournaments. So I knew what he was capable of doing. But his slump was starting to get the best of him. And against Williams in the previous inning, he was made to look silly at the plate, flailing away at strike three.

The first pitch was a called strike. I'm still thinking at this point that there's one out and if he could just make contact somehow and put the ball in play, something good could come out of it, even if it was a sacrifice fly. Williams delivered his next pitch, a fastball about letter-high.

And Marsch did not miss this one.

PIIIIINGGGG!!!!!!

That sound still resonates in my head to this very day. The ball took off. There was no doubt about where it was going. The last I saw of the ball was it clearing the snack stand some 280 feet away from home plate situated in center field. I never saw the ball land, the way Barry Bonds hit that bomb off Troy Percival a dozen years later in Game 2 of the World Series.

For one of the few times in my career, I let out an "Oh my God!" The Brick side of the field was absolute bedlam. Marsch had gotten out of his slump in an incredible way and at the right moment.

It was 9-9. In a matter of less than 10 minutes, the Brick National boys had wiped away a six-run deficit facing the end of their season. And I was having a hard time putting this into words other than that three-word outburst.

The looks and the sunken shoulders on the North Trenton side told the story. And Brick National's players were like sharks in water looking at blood, waiting to pounce on Williams further. Yakovchuk singled and Patton walked after Williams was finally relieved by Floyd to continue the rally. The winning run was now on second base. But Harden got greedy. He called for the double steal and catcher McCall threw a strike to Cox to nail Yakovchuk at third. Bigelow walked to put runners on first and second, but Gatto struck out to end the inning.

However, what looked absolutely desolate 20 minutes earlier was now a major sign of hope. For the second straight day, North Trenton and Brick National were going to extra innings to decide the game's fate.

Feeling good about himself, Marsch was put on the mound by Yakovchuk. This Brick National team had a lot of pitchers, though, outside of Terranova, Yakovchuk and Kish, none were that outstanding, just good enough to keep things from getting out of hand. Patton had eaten up some needed innings for Brick National and though he gave up six runs, his effort was honored and noteworthy.

With one out, Marsch walked the dangerous Funches, never giving him anything good to hit. Brown singled to move Funches to second. Cox hit a screaming line drive, but right at Kish at shortstop for the second out. Marsch was almost out of the top of the seventh, having to face cleanup hitter Williams, trying to atone for what had just happened in the previous inning. He went after Marsch's first pitch and lined a single to left field. Russomano went to pick the ball up, but could not pick it cleanly. That error was enough for Funches to race home to make it 10-9.

Marsch got Dennis to ground out to end the inning, but here we went again -- Brick National was down to its last three outs, just like a half-hour before. This time, though, it was No. 9 hitter Czekay starting the rally and Brick National's players, coaches, manager Yakovchuk, family, league officials and friends knew North Trenton's invincibility was no longer there.

On a 1-1 pitch, Czekay blooped a ball into right field. I can still see second baseman Dewayne Rogers and right fielder Brown go hard after it. It landed just inside the foul line and Czekay didn't stop until he got to second with a double.

The rally was on again and the top of the order was waiting. Russomano, though, hit a sharp comebacker at Floyd, who bobbled the ball, but recovered and tossed to first baseman Dennis for the out. It was that bobble, though, that allowed Czekay to get to third with one out. Terranova came up and he was a gamer throughout the entire postseason to this point. If he could get the bat on the ball, something good was going to happen.

But the No. 2 hitter got anxious and popped up the second pitch he saw on the left side of the infield and into Cox's glove for the second out.

Now the situation was dire compared to an inning earlier. Brick National was down to its last out and the last hope was the solid Kish. He took a strike for the first pitch. Then on Floyd's next offering, Kish hit a soft grounder on the right side of the infield. It became a race between Rogers and Kish to who was going to execute the moment better. At this point, you could have put the film in slow-motion with Rogers coming in as fast as he could and Kish running as hard as he could.

Rogers got to the ball and threw toward Dennis. Kish slid into first base.

"Saaaaaaafe!" the umpire called at first base. North Trenton's coaches were stunned. Czekay scored and suddenly it was 10-all. If anything, I knew we were going to be at least in the top of the eighth inning in this already incredible ball game. But now the game was on Marsch's bat. Just a half-hour ago, Marsch had battled out of his horrific slump with a shot that left everyone breathless.

Marsch took a strike. On the next Floyd offering, Marsch met ball with bat. He lined a single to right field. Kish was not stopping. The throw came in from Brown on a bounce to Cox. Kish was dead-to-rights out at third base ... if Cox could have just gloved the throw. He missed it. And the ball went behind him to the fence.

Kish got up and took a quick glance at where the ball was located. He took off for the plate. Cox recovered the ball and fired toward catcher Williams. The ball one-hopped off Williams' chest protector. Kish slid into the plate.

And I still have the picture of me raising my arms in jubilation as Kish slid into home plate (above) knowing that Brick National had just made the comeback of all comebacks in my young career and that it was I who was about to plan a trip to the Eastern Regional Tournament in Bristol, Conn. and not my dear friend and scribe Mr. Davis, who would get plenty of other chances to go after 1990. He passed away about a decade ago. I miss my dear friend a whole bunch.

As for the aftermath of the 11-10 victory, I witnessed moms hugging other mothers and grown men hugging one another. Lots and lots of hugs. Lots of tears, too, mostly from those moms, some from the dads and a whole bunch of tears from North Trenton's players who felt they were the ones heading north after carrying the state flag around the Spring Lake Heights field. It was up to the Brick National parents and officials there to console those boys who looked like men, but needed us to be reminded they were still 12 years old. From those Brick National-based men and women, they needed to be reminded they did great things during that week. That sportsmanship as well as compassion will always be reminders of that great week and the respect and care these two programs had for one another.

Of the two Brick Little Leagues, National was the forgotten one of the two between themselves and American by 1990. This was a win for the south side of town, one that will live on forever in everyone's minds that morning and early afternoon at the Spring Lake Heights complex.

This team got me to Bristol, Conn. and I could not thank them enough, from Roy Yakovchuk to Rich Harden to every last player on that team. In Bristol, Brick National won a pair of games in what was a single-elimination tournament back then. But in the semifinals, Brick National lost a heartbreaking extra-inning semifinal affair to Shippensburg, Pa., the highlights being another Marsch bomb to tie the game in the sixth again and an unusual triple play that got Shippensburg out of a first-and-third jam in the top of the seventh, then the winning run scoring on a base hit in the bottom of the seventh.

It was heartbreaking. If Brick National had beaten Shippensburg, there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever the boys from Brick would have won the regional final and would have been on to Williamsport and the Little League World Series. Shippensburg actually reached the Series final, but was blown out by a team from Taiwan in the title game. It was hard to watch that game on television knowing that could have easily been Brick National in Shippensburg's place.

As for Marsch's blast in that second state championship game that tied the game at 9-all against North Trenton, it was the greatest home run I ever witnessed in my years of covering Little League of all levels ... until Chris Cardone hit the two home runs coming off the bench that gave Toms River East American the 1998 Little League World Series title over Kashima, Japan, 12-9.

That 1990 state championship game was a landmark moment for myself in my career. It's still one of the greatest events I have ever witnessed in my journalism career.

And I'm still wondering if Justin Marsch's shot has landed yet.