D'Amato: My time to say goodbye

I was not quite 12 years old, lying on our living room carpet and watching the 1967 NFL Championship Game on our family’s grainy black-and-white TV. When Bart Starr plunged across the goal line in the waning seconds, I leapt up and signaled touchdown and turned to my father, sitting in the recliner.

And saw tears streaming down his cheeks.

It’s a powerful memory, 50 years old but forever alive. What was it about a football game that made my father cry, that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up? What is it about sports that elicits such raw emotion not only in the participants but in the watchers, those who aren’t on the field or the court and perhaps never were?

I suppose you could say it’s been my life’s mission to try to answer those questions. I knew from the time I was 16 and working part time for what is now Community Newspapers Inc. – making 25 cents per published column inch – that I wanted to be a sportswriter.

It’s the only job I ever wanted. It’s the only thing I can do. And the only place I wanted to work was The Milwaukee Journal, the paper that landed on our doorstep in St. Francis every afternoon, the one whose writers – Bill Dwyre and Jim Cohen, Mike Kupper and Jay Reed – painted pictures with their words that took me onto the pitcher’s mound and into the end zone, onto tranquil lakes and into champagne-soaked locker rooms.

My dream came true when, in October 1990, then-sports editor Chuck Salituro hired me to work the overnight shift on The Journal’s sports desk, after I’d made stops at newspapers in Freeport, Ill., and Racine.

Over the next 28 years I would cover 11 Olympic Games, 27 Masters Tournaments, five Ryder Cups, three Super Bowls, the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500 and heavyweight championship fights. I would interview Michael Jordan and Mario Andretti, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jim Brown. I would file stories from China and Russia, Italy and Brazil, Scotland and England, Japan and South Korea.

I had ordinary talent but enough passion to make up for it. I had extraordinary luck. I had editors who believed in me and sent me to faraway places to write about Suzy Favor Hamilton falling and Kerri Strug vaulting and Sidney Crosby breaking Team USA’s heart with that overtime goal in Vancouver.

My goal was to take readers along for the ride, to show them in words what I saw with my eyes, to take them into the locker room and the boxing ring and onto the 72nd green of a major championship.

I’m forever grateful that some of you may have lived vicariously through those words. I didn’t always get it right, but I always tried.

Now, after 28 years at the Journal Sentinel and 40 in newspapers, it’s time for this ink-stained wretch to step away and make room for a new generation of sportswriters, young men and women who know how to navigate Instagram and Twitter and do podcasts and live streaming videos.

I never progressed much past Microsoft Word and only graduated to a digital recorder after the tape in my mini-cassette recorder broke during a rare 30-minute one-on-one interview with Brett Favre. Got back to my desk at Lambeau Field and excitedly hit the “play” button and … nothing.

But I digress.

The thing is, I’m not going far. I have accepted a job with Madison-based Killarney Golf Media and I’ll be writing for Wisconsin.golf, a website dedicated to all things golf in our state. Those of you who have followed me over the years probably know that golf is my first love. In fact, quite often I received emails from readers angry about a column I’d written telling me to “stick to golf.”

They’ll be happy to know I’m taking their advice.

I’m going to miss a lot of things about newspapers in general and the Journal Sentinel in particular. I’ll miss the anticipation of kickoff, familiar faces in the press box, the feeling of relief when I hit “send” on a story and the thrill of picking up a newspaper, even after all these years, and seeing a small miracle: my byline. I will miss interacting with readers; many of you have become friends.

I could go on, but 750 words are too many when one will suffice. This, then, is good editing:

Goodbye.