My name is Gerry Fey, and starting today, I’ll be writing a blog about sports. Yes, I know the immediate reaction: Why on Earth do we need another blog about sports. Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure. There certainly are a lot of them out there.
My son Jake and I enjoying an Orioles-Rangers game at beautiful Camden Yards.
The fact of the matter is: I’m selfish. I think most bloggers, when it gets down to it, would admit the same.
I like talking about sports. I like watching sports, and I like writing about sports. This will be my avenue to do all those things.
I graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Kansas in 1996 and have worked in the sports department of four newspapers before coming to Erickson. I pretty much live and breathe sports, especially baseball and college football. I’m a senior graphics designer for the Erickson Tribune, working in the Erickson marketing department, but before that I worked at USA Today, USA Today Baseball Weekly, the Palm Beach Post, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, and the Hutchinson (Kansas) News.
For every newspaper I’ve worked for, I’ve been a graphic designer or page designer, but growing up, what I really wanted to be was a sportswriter. I was fortunate to do that for my college newspaper, but when I realized I couldn’t hack it as a writer, I wanted to stay as close to sports as I could. Luckily, I found out I had a talent for designing pages for newspapers. So I’m not sure what that says about my writing skills for this blog, but oh well! This isn’t really writing anyway, is it?
Minnesota Twins great Tom Brunansky and a nine-year-old version of me in 1982 at the Metrodome.
The truth is, what I’d like to use this space for is to give the events that take place in sports today some perspective by looking back at yesterday. And I’m hoping those who read this blog will help me out.
If you’re like me (and if you’re older than 30 I’m sure you are), you get tired of the accolades that seem to be thrown around so nonchalantly in sports media coverage today. “That was the best catch ever!” “That was the best performance I’ve ever seen.” “This was the best Super Bowl in history!” It seems like you hear these types of statements every other night on ESPN or on the myriad of other stations that are out there. Contrary to popular belief, important things happened before ESPN existed, and often I feel like analysts forget this. For these people, I almost believe in their minds sports history only goes back to 1983.
So that’s pretty much why I started this blog. And as I said before, I would definitely appreciate the help of reader comments to keep me sharp. I’m all of 36 years old, so I readily admit that I lack firsthand knowledge of significant sports events in history. But what I will try to do is applaud (or jeer) current accomplishments by looking at the perspective of the past.
I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I will enjoy writing it.
Is there a subject you’d like me to write about? If so, comment or you can e-mail me at gerry.fey@erickson.com.
