To make matters worse, The Crimson is often the bearer of bad news. The Harvard football, baseball and men's basketball teams are at best pathetic and the men's ice hockey team has disappointed in the last few years. As a result, The Crimson is stuck with a message no one wants to hear and in fact one which many people don't want to be heard.

To make matters even worse than that, The Crimson's staff is often young and inexperienced. In the course of producing a sports page six nights a week, reporting errors are committed. These unforgivable lapses are remembered by athletes who suddenly have memories like elephants the next time a reporter goes after a story.

Pete never told me any of this. For this I can now thank him. If he had, he would have sent me running to a career of badgering Jeremy Knowles and the endlessly frustating Ahhchie Epps. Give me the predictable Tim Murphy and the hypersensitive Billy Cleary any day.

As it was, I got to discover the rest of the ugly truth on my own. Which was:

Not that all Harvard sports teams are bad. There are many which are good--and a few which are legitimately great--but they tend to be the minor ones. The Crimson aggressively promotes the successes of Harvard men's and women's soccer, men's and women's squash, women's lacrosse, women's basketball, men's lightweight crew and softball, only to see the same studied indifference from the student body and the same kvetching from the athletes.

Pretty bleak stuff. "The Human Foul" crack was a cry for help, a plea for attention that went unheeded. As time passed, my glasses turned to jade.

During football season sophomore fall, I started to write honkers like: "The fourth quarter [against Columbia] degenerated into a `qui es mui macho' contest over which team could shoot itself in the foot with the bigger gun." Or: "The first three Cornell scores were virtual gifts from St. Restic and his 45 reindeer." Suffice it to say these statements didn't play well in Mather, Currier and Kirkland (Where Intelligence Is Just Another Big Word) Houses.

I needed a new perspective. Thankfully, summer hit and I caught on with The Boston Globe.

If you've never sat in the Fenway Park press box on a summer night with the windows wide open, the breeze in your face, a Coke in one hand and a pencil to keep score with in the other, well...

Have you ever felt the warm Iowa night air touch your skin as Shoeless Joe shouts his timeless query at Ray Kinsella before disappearing back into the corn? Have you ever imagined yourself in darkened Knights Field, watching Roy Hobbs round third base? Do you share the certainty that Crash Davis will make it to The Show as a manager?

It's like that.

High over the hallowed grass of Boston's most famous landmark, I began to separate my love for sports--be it as a spectator or participant--from my job as a sportswriter. I could be both the passionate fan and jovially clinical chronicler. Boom: perspective. For the first time, I began to savor the moments. This is the turning point in any sportswriter's career. One cannot survive in this business as a fan; the job simply saps the spirit.

For instance: Until I became a sportswriter, I would not believe one could root against a Red Sox comeback in the bottom of the ninth. But when deadline looms and the Sox open the inning with back-to-back singles, I've prayed for the double play. The triple play, even better. The dramatic finish is the enemy, because it requires rewriting the first half of the story. The best baseball games are 6-2 snoozers with all of the scoring early, because one can write the entire story by the time the game is over.

I made these peaces with myself. Mild schizophrenia never hurt anyone.

And there were times when I found a companion on this trail of madness. When new ballplayers came up from the minors, for instance, I always talked to them. "What's it like to be here?" I wanted to know. "A dream come true," they said. The thing is, "a dream come true" is such a banal cliche that it pains me to type it. But when two rookies in a room of veterans have this conversation, the meaning is sky-blue clear. It is a shade unreal.