(Ed. note: This is a rerun of a column written 10 years ago, updated a bit for reasons that will become apparent).

Statistics, I was told. Norm Jollow loved statistics in sports stories.

OK, I thought. Then numbers it is.

It was Jan. 30, 1984. I was 23 and about to embark on my first assignment as a sportswriter for the Finger Lakes Times. It was a job I’d aspired to since I was in seventh grade, and my English teacher, Mr. McKee, wrote on a paper I’d turned in: “You ought to think about becoming a sportswriter.”

In all honesty, I hadn’t thought about it — I mean who does in seventh-grade? From that point on, though, I sure did, interning for the hometown weekly, majoring in journalism at St. John Fisher, working as a reporter for the Democrat & Chronicle, and then — finally! — landing a prized job as a sportswriter for the Times.

Tommy Leo was leaving for a similar job at the Syracuse newspapers, and I was interviewed for his spot by Managing Editor D.C. Hadley and Sports Editor Jollow on a Friday. They told me they would think things over during the weekend and let me know their decision on Monday, but by the time I got home to Lyons, where I was living at the time, there was a message on my answering machine from Hadley. “You know what,” he said. “Why wait ’til Monday to call? We want to offer you the job. Can you start on Monday?”

They offered a princely salary of $216 per week — which really didn’t matter because I would have taken that job for a dish........

© Finger Lakes Times