I'm going to take a little literary license now and double back for a few more stories from my time in Cleveland.

A few weeks after returning from our meeting in New York City with Wick Temple, Judy and I and the kids were invited to join some friends for Thanksgiving dinner.

We had told our families about the new job and the move to the New York metropolitan area and had received lots of congratulations and good wishes. But we hadn't told any of our Cleveland friends.

As dinner was getting started, I said, "Guys, Judy and I have something to tell you."

After everyone had stopped talking and was looking at me in expectation, I said, "I've been promoted to a new job at AP's headquarters in New York and we're moving at the end of the year."

Instead of the expected happy smiles and congratulations, there was an awkward silence for a few moments and then a chorus of "Not New York." "It's dirty." It's dangerous." "It's expensive." "Why would you want to move there?"

No amount of talk about the great opportunity, the entertainment, the excitement of being in The Big Apple or the history made a bit of difference to these locals. They were acting as if we had been sentenced to life in prison.

It made for a fairly awkward Thanksgiving dinner, although things did eventually lighten up. But it certainly was not what we had expected.

And, thinking back on my Cleveland years, I almost forgot about another special assignment that brought lots of new experiences.

In the summer of 1978, I was sent to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to work with a small AP team on the Commonwealth Games _ an Olympics-like tournament for athletes from countries that were or had been part of the British Empire. Like the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games are a quadrennial event taking place in different cities around the world every four years.

Forty-seven countries with 1,475 athletes took part in 128 events in 11 sports in these games

The team was led by Geoffrey Miller, the AP's European sports editor, and included sports writers George Strode from Columbus, Ohio, Dick Braude from Boston and Bert Rosenthal from New York Sports.

It was a very friendly and cohesive group and it made the two weeks in Edmonton tremendous fun.

One of the best parts was coming into the little AP office (alcove) in the main press center every morning and listening to Geoffrey expound on last night's cricket results as he went over them from the overnight wire copy. It was the most I ever knew about cricket, which is one sport I still don't really understand or follow. But his excitement about his favorite sport was contagious.

We divvied up the various sports among us and my main job was covering freestyle wrestling. India dominated the sport and I never knew there were so many Singhs and Kumars in the world. That experience was the basis for my covering the same sport in both the Los Angeles and Seoul Olympics.

And I also got to cover swimming, boxing and lawn bowls in Edmonton.

Yes, lawn bowls was a serious competition and a sport I knew nothing about. I could hardly believe it when Geoffrey told me to go cover the opening round.

That first lawn bowling session, I scanned the spectators and found a gentleman who really seemed to be into it. I sat down next to him, started a conversation and picked his brain about the sport. He turned out to be a youth coach from Vancouver and gave me all the basics of lawn bowling that I would ever need.

Geoffrey complimented me on my first story saying, "I had no idea you knew about lawn bowling strategy."

A far less pleasant assignment came in August of 1979 when Thurman Munson, the star catcher and captain of the New York Yankees and a native of Akron, was killed in the crash of a private plane at the Akron-Canton Airport. He was 32 years old and in the prime of his Hall of Fame career.

We got several calls from radio stations saying that they had heard someone famous had crashed a plane in Akron. I started making phone calls and quickly verified with the airport security people that it was Munson's plane that had crashed.

He had been flying for about a year and had bought the plane to be able to come home to visit his family on off days during the long baseball season. Munson was practicing touch and go landings when he came in too low, clipped a tree and crashed. His two passengers, including an instructor, survived, but Munson was trapped in the plane and died of smoke inhalation.

As details came in, I wrote several quick ledes. But NY Sports quickly grabbed onto the story and my part of that job was over. Then, surprisingly, I was assigned to cover the funeral a few days later at Canton's Memorial Civic Center.

There were 700 people at the service, but the media was not allowed to go inside. Officials had set up a bullpen area in front of the convention center and we were told the Yankees' public relations staff would get us quotes and notes from the service, but I was anxious to find some way to see it myself.

I left the pack of media people in front of the building and found the loading dock in the back. There was no security there and I was able to slip inside. I made my way through a labyrinth of corridors - feeling like James Bond about to meet the evil enemy - and finally found a door that opened behind the stage area of the main hall.

By opening the door a crack, I could hear everything that was going on, although I couldn't see who was speaking. Fortunately, the speakers were introduced and I was able to hear the eulogies by Lou Piniella and Bobby Murcer, Munson's closest friends on the Yankees.

As the eulogies ended, I slipped through the door and got a look at the convention floor and the crowd, giving me some visuals to relate in my story. An AP photographer noticed me and gave me a wink as I walked off the stage.

At that point, I was able to walk through the crowd unnoticed and rejoin the other media people in time to get the promised notes and to interview some of the players and other baseball people as they walked out of the hall.

My story had plenty of detail and color and the folks in NY Sports were pleased.

I spent the last two months of 1979 training my Cleveland replacement, Chuck Melvin, trying to get the house sold and preparing for my new assignment.

Although there was no movement on the house sale, I was ordered to report to New York Sports on Jan. 30 to learn the computer system and help on the desk during the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.,  before heading to Daytona for my first Speed Weeks in February.

That was just nine days after returning from the NASCAR race and Super Bowl in California. And it wasn't easy to leave Judy and the kids, especially not knowing when I would see them again.