Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Wilker and Olney

I may have missed it the first time around, but Cardboard Gods' Josh Wilker was apparently childhood friends with ESPN's Buster Olney.

When my brother and I first met him he was a 10-year-old farm boy whose life
revolved around baseball and baseball cards (a love that he passed on to us),
and as he got older his love of baseball and sports in general fed into a
burning desire to become a sportswriter. He was the editor of his high school’s
newspaper and a writer on his college’s newspaper and after college got a job on
a newspaper in San Diego. By the last time my brother and I saw him, years ago,
chatting with him for a few minutes outside the press box during a rain delay at
Shea, he had bounded from the San Diego job to a job covering the Orioles to a
job as the beat reporter following the Mets for the New York Times. He soon
switched over to the Yankees and we haven’t spoken to him since, though I hear
his voice practically as much as I hear the voice of anyone I know, given my
habit of squandering my finite hours on earth listening to sports talk radio and
given the ubiquitous presence on such radio of this baseball-crazy figure from
my childhood, Buster Olney.

Small world.

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