COLUMN-WRITING ASSIGNMENT

RICK REILLY

Mile-High Madness

A pair of horn-rimmed glasses marched up to me last week and said, "You're from Denver, right? Why didn't you people put a roof on Coors Field? This World Series is going to be freezing!"

The tips of my ears started to burn. My neck hair stood up. I actually had to put down my adult beverage.

"How come we didn't build a roof on Coors Field?" I said, grabbing his lapel. "Gee, I don't know. How come Stevie Wonder never bought a camera?

"A roof on Coors Field? Do you even know the Colorado Rockies? Their season is usually over by July! I would've bet that Denver would host the World Surfing Championship before the World Series! Everyone in Denver is looking at each other and saying, 'What will we get next? Wimbledon?' "

Do you have any idea how bat-guano nuts all this is for us? Just a year ago my pal Two Down -- America's Most Avid Golf Gambler -- had his office broken into. I asked him what they took. He goes, "Nothing. But there were two Rockies tickets on my desk. They left two more."

Put a roof on Coors Field? We never even thought we'd get a team! Sure, minor league ball was enough for my mom -- "What's wrong with the Denver Bears?" she'd say -- but I'd fall asleep trying to listen to Jack Buck call Cardinals games on KMOX and dreaming of the real thing.

And it's not like we didn't try for the big leagues. We begged, we groveled, we wrote more letters than angry JetBlue passengers. We'd break minor league attendance records -- 65,666 at one game -- and Major League Baseball didn't so much as burp in our direction.

You think Cubs fans have suffered? Please. At least they had a team. Ours was the cruelest kind of suffering -- the hopeless kind. Our motto was: Maybe Next Century.

And then, finally, there were whispers we could have a team if we built a stadium... in Lower Downtown. LoDo, we all shouted, "God, not LoDo!"

LoDo was a dirty, dilapidated old business district, the kind of place gangbangers tiptoed through. When my mom would drag us to those Bears games, she'd reach across and lock our doors when we went through LoDo. It was full of druggies and brutes and three-toothed thieves. And those were the women.

One of the few decent joints in LoDo was run by a skinny saloon keeper named John Hickenlooper, whose Wynkoop Brewing Company was a place you hated to go to if you had a nice car. "I must've had rocks in my head," Hickenlooper remembers. It wasn't choice real estate. His rent was $1 per square foot per year.

And then it finally happened. We got a major league team in 1993, a very bad team, but a team. And we put on clean shirts and crammed into Mile High Stadium and screamed our fool heads off so that nobody would take it from us. If it had been a candy bar, we'd have licked it from one end to the other.

And when Coors Field arrived in 1995, right at the corner of Blake and 20th Street in LoDo, we cheered even louder. Not because the baseball was good. It wasn't. We had one good year, but mostly we led the league in two things: attendance and sucking. No, we whooped because baseball was saving our town. No city in America was transformed more by baseball than Denver. LoDo blossomed into a garden of restaurants and lofts and shops and 4,300 housing units.

And then, this September, after years of taking the bumbling Rockies for granite, when it seemed even our patience had run out, God looked down and said, "Oh, geez, are those people still believers? Send them a gift basket."

And suddenly we had our own Holliday. And our own Kaztrzemski. And guys with Hoover vacuums for gloves who broke the alltime team fielding record. All of a sudden our lovable, stumblebum Rockies developed this terrible allergy to losing. And just when you thought they'd peaked, they'd discover a new peak -- and we are a state that knows our peaks. But 21 of the last 22? Who climbs that high?

And now that skinny saloon keeper is Denver's mayor -- the most popular in memory -- and Mayor Hickenlooper must have Rockies in his head because he goes around grabbing people on the triceps and yelling, "We're in the Series! We're in the Series!"

And now it's October and nobody knows who the Broncos play next because we have this fearless young team that's still playing baseball in Denver, Colo., of all places, and for some reason, in the middle of all the celebrating, I really miss my mom.

And you want to put a roof on Coors Field, Mr. Horn-rims?

How would she watch?

MY OWN COLUMN
One foggy day in Houston the Houston team was playing the Austin team. A very tense challenge because the two teams were rank right next to each other. John was the star on the houston team leading all the ranks. It was crazy.

best sports story ever!!!!!!!!!!

My team and I showed up at the fields at 6:00 after driving about an hour out of town. It was the playoffs for our season and none of us thought we would make it this far. Our team started out the season with all new players except for about 3, including me. We all started to stretch and start our warm ups.About half an hour later the other team, The O.Henry Mustangs. The game started and up to the middle we were neck and neck. By the end of the game we won by 11 to 5.
The second game came around and we were a but tired. This team was a bit more tough but still an even match. By the end of the game it was a tie of 10-10 and came down to sudden death where the first person to score won the game. The draw went up and the opposite team grabbed the ball out of the air. They tried to run to their goal but quickly dropped the ball for one of our players to pick up. She ran down the field dodging all the defenders. She passed it off to one of our brand new players and she scored! Our whole team ran on the field and picked her up like one of those cliche baseball movies. The underdogs won!

finding the flaw

Basically lots of concussions happen in the NFL and there is tobacco! The NFL was all like "this is incorrect". I think that it's okay what the times posted because they were just stating the facts and the NFL just didn't want to be exposed.

gisondi article

Game stories give the highlights of a sports game and there are lots of components that Gisondi talks about. He says that there are five main things that sports stories should have:

• storyline- significance of the events and bits about the players involved
• basically just an overview of what happened
• context- key details, use the nut graph, not narrative
•  basic statistics
• quotes-comments from players/coaches of both teams
• quotes from BOTH teams
• all different players/postitions of the team
• quotes with analysis of the game
• key plays- important plays throughout the game
• score of the game 
• which team was winning or loosing throughout the game
• key statistics-stats of the game
• only important stats not random ones
• maybe even talk about the coach or team as a whole

RIP NANCY (current event quiz)

1.Police have finished the investigations of the shooting of an unarmed and naked teen. This was significant because they finished the investigations right before their 30 day deadline. According to the police chief, most cases like this take about a year to process while this one only 30 days (about a month). The three options the police have as a reaction to this evidence is to either schedule a disciplinary hearing for the officer, request further investigation, or exonerate him of any policy violations.
2.They want to vote in the elction against Trump. Obama is taking action to make it easier online to help people vote. Trump would be like SCREW OBAMA AND THE MEXICANS!!!

3.Railroad comission is struggling because they don't have enough money. They are telling conservatives that they are worried that government will take over because they don't have enough funding.
4.Obama ordered flags to be flown because some old lady died. (Nancy Regan). Michelle Obama is going to the funeral on Friday. It is appropriate that Michelle goes to the funeral because of how important Nancy was not only to her husband but America. She spent the last 15 years working on the Reagan Presedential Library.
5.The jury found that a stalker filmed a nude video of Erin Andrews. Erin's parents said that they felt terror after finding out about the video. The stalker was responsible and the hotel that had the films. The hotel says that the stalker should not be just 51% responsible because it was mostly just the stalke. I think that it was the stalker's fault and they should pay more like 80% of the $55 million.
 6.Now all states have to let lgbt parents adopt kids!!!!!! In Alabama a couple couldn't get kids and were denied by the Albama Supreme Court. The vote was unanimous. They skipped hearing arguments.

Reconsidering Rolling Stone's Reporting

The Rolling Stone believed their source even thought her facts were weird. Editors should always investigate more if something weird comes up. A journalist should learn that you should always double check facts and make sure your main source is reliable. Journalists should make sure to create questions to get the truth and editors need to not be so lenient with writers because many huge mistakes can be made. Rolling Stone definitely need to start straightening up their reporting so mistakes like this do't happen again. It is a mixture of editors and fact checkers not paying attention and the fact that Jackie lied.

yearbook interview with audra banks (rough draft)

Audra Banks is senior this year and throughout her four years at McCallum she has accomplished a lot. Her main activity being Ballet Folklorico she is also in orchestra, latin club, art and many more extracurriculars. Throughout all her years at Mac she says her most memorable experience was her Ballet Folklorico competition in San Antonio, "We had so much fun just hanging out and winning at our competition", she says. She won the Magna Cum Laude award for the national Latin Exam and in tenth grade she went to the sate solos and ensemble.
In her experience at McCallum she found that she was able to make friends that were completely different than her. Through her experiences with them she learned about their culture and learned she could be friends with anybody she wanted to. Even though she had many accomplishments she did have some regrets. She said that she wishes she could have tried harder sophomore year. "I wish I could go back and make better grades". She really knew she belonged at McCallum when she saw all of her old friends from middle and elementary school and they stuck together ever since. McCallum has not only given her many experiences but also influenced what she wants ti do with her life in the future. Her plans for the future are to either be a music therapist, translator or even creating a foster home for kids with disabilities.
After all of Audra's experiences at Mac she has learned a lot and bonded with many people. She is sad to leave all of those opportunities behind as she graduates this spring.