Night Owl Cards

One still common misconception about the life of sportswriters is that their job is glamorous. Rubbing elbows with the professional sports elite, munching on free food, watching ball games for nothing, what's not to like? My personal favorite is when people assume we watch games on TV at home and then write about what transpired. If that happened, then my job WOULD be fantastic. That doesn't mean I don't think that there are pleasant parts to my job. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing this Brush With Greatness series. It's just that this is not a job in which every moment is a "Dear Diary, the most wonderful thing happened to me today" moment. For instance, the interview with a professional ballplayer. To many, this would be the highlight. Isn't that what autograph hunters aspire to -- a chance to communicate, up-close, with a professional player? But as a sports reporter, things are somewhat different. First of all, players don't se...

This fits right in line with what I was saying in my Bat Around post, so I thought I'd pick this Brush with Greatness subject this time around. I'm pretty sure most of you don't know who Tom Bruno is. Out of the three guys on that 1979 Topps Cardinals Prospects card, Bruno is the unknown. The two other players had respectable careers, especially Terry Kennedy. I didn't know who Bruno was either, until I was told to cover a professional walleye tournament for my local paper. It was September of 1994 and major league baseball had just canceled the rest of the season because of the strike. I was told there was a former major leaguer among the pro anglers competing in the tournament. That player was Bruno. He agreed to an interview, and we had a very nice conversation by the harbor. Bruno was making his living competing on the pro fishing circuit. He told me he fished throughout his life, and when he played in the majors (he pitched in 69 games for the Cardinals, Royals an...