Shaking the rust off

Every night, around 9 p.m. or so, I was always the last one around in The Press of Atlantic City's Manahawkin office.

This was 1993, when the newspaper had a Manahawkin, N.J. office (R.I.P.).

My only available neighbor was a Wawa. The street, Route 9, had no lights for a quarter-mile stretch. All I saw through the front door window was blackness.

Too tired to go home, I often pretended I was somewhere else. Or doing something else. Usually, I was a pitcher; I'd grab one of the ad exec's fuzzy dice that she always had lying on her desk, stare at my reflection in the pitch-black door and hurl a few curve balls at the glass.

I snapped my wrist and watched the fuzzy dice swoop out, then loop in, almost always for a strike. Or so I dreamed.

I'd strike the side out, and then, I'd stop, sit in my chair, stare at The Associated Press scroll of stories on my screen and dream again.

I dreamed I was a big time reporter at a big newspaper. I dreamed I didn't have go to Tuckerton, N.J. Council meetings anymore, writing stories about a rash of sewer backups in the bay beach neighborhoods or debates between oddball school board members.

Then I'd feel a chill and think, shit, can we go back to the baseball player?

With the baseball player, at least, I knew I never had a shot. As much as I thought I was looking at Tom Seaver's reflection in the door glass, I knew I was just Tom Davis, the kid who got cut from the freshman baseball team.

Being a big-time reporter always seemed to be within my grasp. It always seemed to be within reach, only slipping through my hands with every job interview, even as I broke news stories, beat the competition and won awards that put me ahead of my peers. But it was all an illusion; in 1993, I was about as close to getting a job at The Times as I was sitting in the dugout, sharing golfing tips with Vince Coleman and pitching for a 59-103 Mets team.

Sixteen years later, I'm happy with the way my career has turned out. Sometimes, I wonder, as I watch newspapers fall like dominos: What would it have been like if I was born at a different time? Would I have landed that foreign correspondent position that I always wanted at The New York Times (I used to say, back in the 1980s, I envisioned myself at a Times or AP reporter, dodging bombs in Beirut)?

But when I look at other newspapers, and see what's happening to them, I lose the dream and wake up to reality. I work for a newspaper that's in business - and is doing comparatively well. The staff has and, even after downsizing and restructuring, remains (comparatively) a close-knit bunch.

I have a newspaper on my resume that doesn't exist anymore. Where would I be if I had stuck around?

The Record allowed me to create a military beat after 9-11. I dreamed up my own feature strories connected to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a lot of leeway given. I wrote a column on mental health issues that got me a fellowship with the Carter Center's Mental Health program. The newspaper not only allowed, but encourage me to write a story on my mother's death in 2003, the end of a life beseiged by mental illness.

Getting the feedback from the readers, whether good bad or indifferent, has always been the best part. The good gives you that shot of confidence and ego boost every writer needs. The bad can be instructional, excrutiatingly painful, but often amusing and entertaining. Either way, you rarely feel lonely, always in touch with a public that, on some level, is connecting.

Sometimes, I cover baseball games. The closer I get to the game, and see all of its warts close-up, the happier I am that I never turned into a jock.

Whatever happens in the future, I can be satisfied that I lived this dream, the dream of being a reporter, at a time when it was still possible to do so.