September's upon us, and that takes me back to my first job; being a sports writer at the late, great Bethlehem Globe Times, about which I've spoke before.
It was 1971. I had been at the Globe for seven months when my first high school football season came upon me. Buzz Bissinger had not yet written his classic book called Friday Night Lights, and so that phrase was not written into the lexicon. But the most important season to a small or mid sized newspaper — even big newspapers, in some cases — was the Friday Night Light time of year. The atmosphere. The feeling that nothing was more important than the fortunes of your high school football teams. And you're going to be judged as a journalist and, to an extent, a human being, by how well you chronicle those wins and losses.
I remember feeling the weight of Bethlehem football history in that first season, even though I didn't know a damn thing about it. I was a New Jersey kid, and over four years at Muhlenberg College, I only ventured to Bethlehem a couple times, and that was to play basketball at Moravian. But you just felt this history; this Chuck Bednarik, Bull Schweder, Stevie Meilinger, Tommy Donchez, Mark Hartenstine (I'm probably forgetting somebody) — that tradition.
It was serious business for a 22-year-old out-of-towner, I can tell you that. As the new kid, I was assigned Freedom High School because the main writer, Barry Fry, who became a great friend, covered Liberty; his alma mater. Barry seemed to know everyone and everything about Bethlehem city football, and Liberty in particular, for the principle reason that Barry did know everyone and everything. I knew nothing. Barry sometimes sat with the team in the locker room at halftime, for God's sake, and I had trouble finding my parking spot behind the gym.
I was still learning about Freedom, which had only opened three years earlier. In fact, one of the big arguments at the newspaper was whether to call the stadium Bethlehem Area School District Stadium, which would've been correct, or continue to call it Liberty Stadium, which was the wish of the Liberty alums at the paper. Now, journalists are supposed to be objective, and honestly, we're not terrible at it, despite what you might think. But I rooted desperately for Freedom. I identified with them, I was them — an outsider, a newcomer trying to find my way among the strong old guard. And my memory is that, in the first few years of the season-ending Liberty v. Freedom game, a holy war of sorts, Liberty dominated Freedom, and that made me feel like I was dominated, too.
You had better learn your journalism chops quickly when you cover football in Bethlehem. The Liberty coach in the early '70s was a tough but fair man named Bob Buffman, who owned a concrete business, and he could make you tremble when he looked at you. Eventually, I started covering Bob's teams, and I was forced to offer some criticisms about his traditional style in the paper. They were not accepted kindly by much of the Liberty alumni, though Bob himself was always a gentleman about it — intimidating, but a gentleman.
Then, Bethlehem Catholic got good, specifically a 1974 team that went undefeated and featured some magical names in Bethlehem city football lore: Guman, Spagnola, Haney, Brown, Godbolt. Now there were three relevant teams competing for space and attention under those Friday night lights. It was a break from tradition. It was a change.
Now, I can still conjure up those feelings, that tension, not just about the game but how to cover it. How to be fair, yet honest; respectful, yet critical if necessary. I'd be surprised if there was a better spot or better time to learn how to be a sports journalist than during autumn nights in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. God, I'm glad I had that time and place as a learning ground.
