There were plenty of routine assignments and also plenty of fun ones, but some were really more interesting or more difficult on a newspaper neophyte. Here's a few of them:

In December of 1967, I was sent to Chicago's Wrigley Field on a frigid afternoon to cover the Bears game against the Minnesota Vikings. Neither team was that special, but I was excited to work a game in the historic Chicago north side venue.

Having covered games at Wisconsin and Northwestern by that time, my assumption was that I would be sitting in an indoor, well-heated press box. I wore a trench coat with a scarf and no head covering or gloves.

I presented my credential at the press gate and was sent off to the farthest corner of the grandstand, where I found my seat was in an open-air auxiliary press box reserved for news media that didn't cover the Bears on a regular basis.

The game turned out to be a 10-10 tie on a sloppy field and, by the time it was over, I was a living ice cube. My fingers were too frozen to type and my pen kept freezing up so I couldn't take notes. Lesson for future: Always bring a pencil as a backup.

I stood in the heated men's bathroom under the grandstand at halftime and partially thawed out. But then I had to head back to my seat.

Finally, the game ended and I gratefully headed to the heated Bears dressing room. When I walked into that overheated environment, my glasses became opaque. I took them off and stuck them in my pocket, but that made it hard for me to tell who it was I was talking to. And I had to wait for my pen to thaw out to take notes.

I found the Bears PR guy, introduced myself and asked him to take pity on me and find me a warm place to write my story. He laughed and led me through a maze of corridors to a small room near the visitors' dressing room. It had a small desk and a dim overhead light with a pull chain, but it felt like heaven to me as I waited for my fingers to thaw out enough to type.

By the time I handed my story to the Western Union rep to send to the paper, I was almost thawed out, although my fingers hurt for the next week.

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The next story took several decades to resolve.

In August of 1968, I drove to Chicago again, this time to cover the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox at what was then Comiskey Park. The game wasn't really important, but I was told to write a story about Yankees great Mickey Mantle, who was nearing the end of his historic career.

The Yankees won the game 7-2 and Mantle failed to get a hit in four at-bats. But he did walk and score a run.

When the media was allowed into the Yankees' dressing room, I walked up to Mantle, who was sitting on a bench near his locker, unwinding yards of athletic tape from his gimpy legs. He didn't look up as I approached and I finally said something like, ``Hi, Mr. Mantle. I'm Mike Harris from the Rockford newspapers and I'd like to ask you a few questions.''

Again, without look up, he said simply: "F..k off, kid. I ain't talking today."

I did manage to talk to other members of the Yankees and somehow wrote a feature without quotes from Mantle. But the rebuke stung.

About Twenty years later, I was working the noon to eight shift in AP's New York Sports office. It was about two weeks before Christmas and I often worked in the office in Rockefeller Center around the holidays, when there was no auto racing to keep me busy.

I was usually the extra man in the office, meaning I got assigned to write NBA or NHL roundups, take phone calls or handle the occasional news conferences that came up around New York City.

This particular day, as I walked into the office, the supervisor said, "Hey, Mike. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are coming by about 2 o'clock to plug a series of instructional videos they're doing for kids. Take them into the conference room and get what you need for a short story."

When the two walked in, all smiles, I strolled up, introduced myself and shook Whitey's hand. I then turned my back on Mantle, ignoring his outstretched hand, and said over my shoulder, "Let's go into the conference room."

They followed me in, Whitey laughing and shaking his head and Mantle looking uncomfortable. As we walked into the room, Mantle said quietly, "Okay, what awful thing did I do to you?"

I told them the story and Mantle, to his credit, got a little red in the face. "Would it help if I apologized now?" he asked.

I said, ``Yes, it would."

Mantle said, "I'm very sorry I did that to you. I was a real a-hole sometimes in those days."

I reached over and shook his hand and the interview went well. As they left, Mantle again shook my hand and said, "I really am sorry."

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There was another thing, besides the games themselves, that made college football season exciting in the Rockford sports department. The papers were owned by the Todd family and Bill Todd, the chairman of the board, was an avid sports fan. He also owned a two-engine, eight-seat airplane that had a plush wood-paneled cabin that included several desks. And, better, he was willing to loan his plane and pilot to the sports department on football weekends.

On any given Saturday, four or five sports writers would board the aircraft in Rockford and the pilot would make the rounds, dropping each of us off at a different airport. On one particular Saturday, the plane dropped off writers in South Bend, IN (me at Notre Dame), Evanston, Il (Northwestern), Champagne, IL (Illinois) and West Lafayette, IN (Purdue).

We then took cabs to the stadium, covered the game, cabbed back to the airport to wait for the plane to return and wrote our stories on the way back to Rockford. We would draw lots to see who had to take the finished copy back to the paper after we landed.

Shortly before my tenure in Rockford ended in February of 1969, the papers were sold by the Todd family to Gannett. That ended the Saturday football plane trips.

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One of my most embarrassing moments came during the 1968-69 basketball season when I was sent to cover a high school playoff game in Freeport, Il, about 30 miles from Rockford.

It was another cold winter day but, this time, I was covering an indoor event.

I stopped in the home team's dressing room before the game to talk with the coach and he kindly told me I could leave my coat in one of the empty lockers. I then walked behind him and the team down the hall and into the gym, where I sat courtside to cover the game.

When it ended, I wanted to quickly get to the locker room to talk with the winning coach, get my coat and head back to Rockford to write my story before deadline. But, somehow, I took the wrong hallway out of the gym and walked through a steel door that I thought was leading to the locker room.

Instead, it led into a small outdoor courtyard. The door swung shut behind me and locked. I looked around and saw I was in the center of the huge school building, with four doors - one on each side - all of them locked from the inside. And it was cold and windy with snow flakes swirling around me.

That was long before cell phones, so I couldn't call anybody. I banged on a couple of the doors and shouted loudly for someone to open up. But I heard nothing except some faint strains of music from the gym, where a school dance was beginning.

I was a bit panicky, thinking I might not be able to get anyone's attention until the school opened again on Monday. The only items in the courtyard besides me were some huge rain barrels. I thought briefly about trying to climb up on one of them and throw a second one through a window. But I don't think that would have worked.

Just then, I heard a voice from on high. Some strange thoughts crossed my mind before I realized it was a custodian leaning out an upstairs window asking me what the hell I was doing out there.

I explained the situation and, after a few shakes of his head, he came down, opened a door for me and pointed out where the locker room was. I was embarrassed but more than a little relieved. And I never told my colleagues in Rockford's sports department the story - until now.



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