Among Australian sports columnists, Greg Baum represents the gold standard. Or, at least, he was when he retired from The Age in February: I notice that Wikipedia calls him a ‘former Australian sports journalist’, so I guess it’s official. It added to the pleasure whenever there was a great sporting moment, and the comfort whenever there was a profound sporting crisis, to know that you’d have Greg to read on the morrow. His take would always be considered and his prose crafted, and there would seldom not be a line you didn’t wish you’d thought of. The Nine sports pages, I’m bound to say, are pretty barren without him.
Naturally, when Greg finished up, we offered him the run of the pages at Cricket Et Al whenever he chose, even if I’m half-glad he found better things to do with his time. ‘There's nothing remotely more romantic than a complete-and-forever clean break,’ said John Arlott. But about this break, I also expressed some curiosity: what is it like, I wondered, not to write about sport when one is so conditioned, after forty years in Greg’s case, to doing so? Asking, y’know, for…a…friend…..
The perfect retort, I guess, would have been to send a blank sheet - which Greg considers here then politely reconsiders. He tells a great story about our mutual friend Mike Coward, which also relates a good deal about why Mike is so admired. He also mentions my long-ago colleague Ashley Hay, at which I nodded my head. It’s delightful to read; it’s also delightful to have him contribute. Pop in any time you’re passing, comrade….. GH
Really, this story should stop here. At this point, it would most accurately represent what I am trying to say. Readers should feel free to skip to the end, or better to the next story.
My 40-year career in daily journalism was scored by a constant dread. It was of the day when I would open up my keyboard and nothing came. Whether the deadline was days or minutes away, the feeling was always the same. There were only so many words, and only so many ways of putting them together, and now I was out of both. It was the tyranny of the blank screen.
The nearest I came to this wipe-out was towards the end of the 1987 cricket World Cup, in Pakistan, two days before the final. I stared and stared at that infernal screen, icy pale and empty, fingers hovering over the keys, but nothing damned well came. It took a panicky call to the estimable Mike Coward and a quiet drink with him for the crisis to pass. Some words seeped into mind, not so much a wellspring as a trickle, enough to satisfy the needs of my paper then.
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