It would be hard to exaggerate how excited - and nervous - I was as my first day working in the Chicago bureau of The Associated Press approached.

Only two weeks before the big day, I was writing features and working the desk at the Rockford newspapers, still trying hard to learn my craft. Now I was about to become part of the largest news gathering organization in the world, and one of the most respected.

It was still hard for me to believe that I was ready to move up to a job like that.

Of course, I was out of sports again. My new job was listed as "newsman," and I wasn't even sure what that meant.

On Sunday, Feb. 16, 1969, I was at my in-laws' house in Skokie and getting ready to sit down for an early dinner when the phone rang. Judy's mom said the call was for me. I answered and an unfamiliar and not very pleasant voice on the other end said, "Where the hell are you?"

I chuckled and said, "At my in-laws' house, why? Who is this?"

"This is Carroll Arimond at Chicago AP and you're supposed to be here,'' he said, still with a nasty inflection. "You were supposed to be here at 4 o'clock."

It took a minute or so to get it straight, but the upshot was that Rockford's work week was Monday to Sunday and the AP's was Sunday to Saturday. I almost missed my first day of work at my new job.

Being Sunday, there was little traffic and I probably broke a few speed laws on my way into Chicago. Fortunately, Sunday also meant free street parking. I walked into the office less than an hour after that shocking phone call.

I approached the supervisor's desk and saw an older man with a green eye shade, looking like a character straight out of the movie "Front Page." That was Carroll Arimond, AP's longtime Chicago news editor and a legendary figure in the business.

I introduced myself and he grunted, handing me a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

"That's the Joliet Fire Department. Call them and get the details on the big downtown fire. Then write it up for me," he growled. "And make it quick. This ain't no weekly."

I walked to the nearest empty desk that had a typewriter and sat down.

Carroll looked up and said, "Not there. That's Dick Ciccone's desk," he added, referring to one of Chicago AP's star writers.

I found a different desk, called the fire department, got the details and hastily wrote the story, which included two deaths and several other serious injuries. When I handed it to Carroll, he hardly looked at it before throwing it back at me,

"Not enough detail at the top. Do it again,'' he said.

My third effort was apparently good enough for him - just. In that pre-computer era, he then handed the copy to the teletype operator, who punched it onto tape and sent my first AP story onto the wire at 66 words a minute, state of the art in 1969. Even with the false start and less-than-friendly greeting, it was a golden moment for me.

They kept me working day shifts for the first few weeks. It was mostly writing up handouts, answering the phone and taking dictation from other writers. But it still felt like I was in the Big Leagues, and I wasn't sure at this point if I belonged there.

Of course, sports was still on my mind and, in my first meeting as an employee with Bureau Chief Al Orton, I told him my goal was to get back into sports as soon as possible.

I grew up reading the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and the byline I saw almost every day was Jerry Liska, the Midwest Sports Editor for AP. I met him and his No. 2, cigar-chomping Joe Mooshil, that first Monday, telling them I would love to help them out any time I could. They had no idea what a pest I would become.

The baseball season was about to start and Mooshil asked me if I would like to help him out at some Cubs home games. I said yes before he finished the sentence. My job was to go to the Cubs' clubhouse and get him some pregame quotes from Manager Leo Durocher or from a player or two that Mooshil designated.

As the Cubs began their first home stand of the year in April, I was put on night shifts, 4 p.m. to midnight. That allowed me time to take the El to Wrigley Field about 11 a.m., get the quotes and meet with Mooshil in the room where lunch was served to the media, team officials and VIPs. Then I would watch the first few innings from the press box and jump on the El in time to get to the office for the start of my shift.

Mooshil got me a season press pass and, for a lifelong baseball fan, it was heaven. By this time, Judy was volunteering during the day at Lincoln Park Zoo, so I also showed up at Wrigley on my days off from AP, meaning I got to stick around to the end of the game and run some more quotes for Mooshil.

My first big news assignment came as a surprise when I walked into the office on April 14 after watching the first six innings of a Cubs game. When I got to the office, I immediately walked over to the sports area and turned on a radio to see how the game was going. But Carroll beckoned me over and said, "There's been a shooting on the South side. A couple of cops have been shot and we need somebody down there to see what's going on. Get on the El or take a cab and call in updates when you can.

He gave me an address on South Exchange Street and sent me on my way. I had no idea where that address was, so I caught a cab. It took a while to get there and I asked the cabbie to drop me off when I saw a couple of Chicago cops redirecting traffic near my destination.

They weren't too happy to talk to me, but one of them did tell me what was happening. A former marine, Frank Kulak, was a suspect in a bombing death at a southside Goldblatt's Department Store. He had apparently left a black powder bomb in a paper bag near some war toys in the toy department. The Chicago papers dubbed him "The Mad Bomber".

Working from a tip, two policemen had gone to his home on the second floor of an apartment building to question him and he had shot them through the front door, killing both.

Kulak was barricaded in his apartment and apparently had an arsenal of weapons, including rifles, pistols, hand grenades and black pipe bombs like the one used at Goldblatt's. The apartment building backed up on a funeral home, which was being used as the police command post.

To get to the command post from where the cab dropped me, I would have to take a long, circuitous walk to avoid the police blockade or convince the cops to let me go straight down the street behind the funeral home and its wide-open parking lot, in view of Kulak's back windows. One of the policemen said, "I have to go over to the command post myself. If you want to go with me, we just have to duck down behind this line of parked cars and get over there in a hurry."

He said, "Stay low and we took off, bent over and moving fast. As we ran, I heard a double thump, like the sound of a grenade launcher that I had heard in basic training. A dark object flew about 10 feet over our heads and clanked off a brick wall on the opposite side of the street.

The roar of the explosion deafened me for a few seconds and, as I lay in a heap, tangled up with the policeman, metal shrapnel flew over our heads and pinged off the street and sidewalk. We got up and ran the rest of the way before checking ourselves to make sure we were okay. Neither one of us had been hit.

Shakily, I walked into the command post and found a communications officer, who gave me an update on the situation. A negotiator was on the scene, but Kulak wasn't talking and nobody else had tried to approach his apartment.

I asked to use a phone and was told they were for official police use only. I walked outside, looked around and saw that across the main street was a residential neighborhood. I walked down one of the streets and saw two older ladies sitting on their front porch.

When I approached, they smiled and asked if I knew what all the red lights and noise were about. I told them I would trade the information for the use of their phone and they gladly accepted the deal.

In the end, assistant police superintendent James Rochford found Kulak's sister and the two of them talked their way into his apartment, stepping over the bodies on the stoop, and got him to give up without further violence. I forged a path between the funeral home and the home of those nice ladies, dictating several leads and updates before cabbing back to the office.

My first by-lined story at AP got me my first written commendation from the bosses. And it turned out to be the only time in my career - and my life - that I was shot at.

But there was a lot more to come.