I met Charles O. Finley, the colorful and unpredictable owner of the Oakland Athletics while I was working in Indianapolis.

Charlie O, as he was known,  owned a farm in LaPorte, IN, near Lake Michigan and the Michigan border. He held a Christmas Party there for several years, with lots of baseball personalities and celebrities attending. His PR people decided in 1974 to invite some media to the event.

I met Charlie during the party and we hit it off, talking about his colorful and unique ideas for baseball and how they sort of mirrored the American Basketball Association's red-white-and-blue ball and three-point shot. He liked to talk about his vision of baseball's future and how the stodgy powers that be weren't thinking ahead.

That party produced a nice feature story and I thought that was going to be the end of it. By the next Christmas, I was in Cleveland.

The A's had been a powerhouse team, winning three straight World Series championships earlier in the 1970s. But, by 1974, Charlie had pretty much dismantled the team in the name of economics. He was also known, like George Steinbrenner of the Yankees, for his firing ways.

I was at home on a dreary winter afternoon in January of 1976 when the phone rang. I said, "Hello," and the voice at the other end said, "Mike, this is Charlie. I want you to come work for me in Oakland."

It took a moment for the name and location to register, but I said, "Hi Charlie. What are you talking about?"

"I'd like you to come out here and be my PR man," he said. "I think you and I could work together."

I recognized his voice, so I knew this was no prank call. But I hesitated for a few moments to get my thoughts together before saying, "What are we talking about here, Charlie? You know I have a young family and a pretty secure job and you are not known for keeping your people around for very long."

"I'll pay your moving expenses, my people will find you and your family a place to live and we'll sign a contract," Charlie said. "Why don't you fly out here and we'll talk about it?"

Again, I hesitated for a few moments before finally saying, "Charlie, I'm flattered, but I don't think PR is my future. I ... "

I was just about to say that I thought coming out to Oakland would be a waste of his time and mine when I heard a click. He had hung up and that was the last time I talked with Charles O. Finley.

During my time in Cleveland, I got to cover a few other things besides professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey.

The only college sports that I had any dealings with were at Cleveland State University, where I covered the NCAA swimming and diving championships one year and also a couple of basketball games.

But I did get to report on a few golf tournaments.

One notable one was in the summer of 1978 at Tanglewood Country Club in Chagrin Falls, a suburb of Cleveland. My memory on this one isn't clear, but I think it was the Ohio Men's Amateur Championship.

There were 128 players entered in the first round and I was responsible for sending the scores on the wire as well as writing stories. I thought about bringing Judy along to take care of the scores for me, but it turned out we had out-of-town company that week, so she was not available.

I had trouble finding a stringer to help out, so I decided to bite the bullet and handle the scores myself.

My laptop computer at the time had a function allowing me to write on any of six screens. So I used one of those screens to keep a running tally of the scores, which had to be done in order of lowest (best) to highest (worst) and complete with home towns.

In the meantime, I also was writing my stories _ a main story and notes column for the morning papers and a story for the afternoon papers. The latter would include more quotes and color from the post-play interviews.

As luck would have it, the final twosome of the day were both in contention for the lead. My morning stories were all done and ready to just plug in the results of that match and a couple of quick quotes. The story for the PMs members was also mostly done. And the results, 126 names and scores, were in proper order, just waiting for the last two names and scores to be added.

It was a long day of play and the sun was on the horizon when that last twosome came to the 18th green. The club manager, trying to be a nice guy, walked into the room and said, "Let's get some lights on for you guys."

But he didn't know which switches controlled the lights and began trying every light switch in the room. What he also didn't know was that several of the lights were also tied in with the electric receptacles into which our computers were plugged.

Suddenly, my computer screen blinked, momentarily turned black and then flashed back on _ with all six available screens empty. And that computer did not have memory capability.

A couple of us cursed out loud, but the manager, still unaware of what he had done, smiled and said, "Now you can see what you're doing." He had no idea why we were so angry and upset. When he was told, he simply slunk out of the room and was not seen again for the rest of the tournament.

That happened about 8 p.m. and, by the time I covered the leader interviews, reconstructed my stories and the scoring list, it was after midnight. And I had to be back at the country club by 9 the next morning.

That was truly one of the most frustrating things that ever happened to me in all my years covering sport. But that was a strange week in more ways than one.

Those out-of-town guests I spoke of were an odd lot.

While we lived in Indianapolis, Judy befriended a strange young man who hung out occasionally at the zoo. His name was Danny. His queer behavior apparently put off a lot of people, but Judy saw the goodness in him and quickly adopted him as a friend.

It took me a little longer to warm up to him, but I eventually did. And, after we met his parents _ a hard-working pair of farm people _ we became even closer.

Eventually, we met a few of Danny's friends and one of them, Bobby, was a dwarf who used a tiny wheel chair to get around in. He was born with a condition called "brittle bone syndrome," which meant his bones were so weak and brittle that they began breaking in the womb. He was a very bright but also a strange guy. Bobby was from a wealthy family and was going to college when we met.

We lost touch with Danny and his friends after moving to Cleveland. But then came a phone call that Judy answered.

This odd little voice said, "Hi, this is Bobby! You may know me as Robert, a friend of Danny's. I just graduated from college and I would like to come visit you for a vacation. You probably won't have to carry me off the bus because I can probably ask the bus driver to do it since I am so small."

Judy told Bobby to hold on for a minute and told me what was being said. We both agreed that we didn't want to disappoint him, but the idea of having to possibly carry him and take care of him did not make us happy. I came up with a contingency plan.

"See if he would ask Danny to come with him and be his helper," I said. "Maybe Danny can even drive him."

That resonated with Bobby and he said he would let us know.

A few days later, another call came. This one was from Danny telling us that he would indeed drive Bobby to Cleveland _ and that another friend, Don, whom we didn't know, would also be coming.

The three of them showed up late on a Friday night in the middle of Judy's shift as a waitress at Corky & Lenny's Delicatessen, where she worked part-time for a couple of years.

There was Bobby the dwarf in his tiny wheelchair, strange looking Danny and this very big guy named Don, who turned out to have injured vocal cords that made him sound like a little girl. It was quite the trio that definitely got some attention from the other waitresses, especially after they found out the guys were staying with us.

Tory and Lanni were then 5 and 4 and they knew Danny. But Judy was concerned they would say something to offend or embarrass Bobby when they first saw him sleeping on the couch in the living room. She kept waking up during the night, trying to make sure she was there when everybody got up. But, eventually, she fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke, she heard voices and the sound of a television, threw on a robe and rushed downstairs. She needn't have worried.

Danny and Don were bustling around the kitchen making breakfast and there were Tory and Lanni sitting at the kitchen table, elbow-to-elbow with Bobby, the three of them huddled together eating cereal and totally engrossed in the Saturday morning cartoons.

However, that was only part of the of the strangeness that week.

I had gotten a call that Friday from a former colleague from Chicago, Bob Sidman, who had worked in AP radio. He was unemployed, pretty much broke and coming to Cleveland for a job interview. He needed a place to stay.

What the heck, Judy said. The more the merrier.

So, that Saturday, the 6-foot-5, 280-pound "Big Bob" showed up at our house while I was at the golf tournament. By the time I got home for dinner that night, it was a big love-fest. Big Bob and Little Bob hit it off right away _ opposites do attract, I guess _ and Big Bob, always a talker, kept all the boys entertained with his wonderful stories of celebrities and adventures.

Once I got past that awful Friday night at Tanglewood, it turned out to be a really fun and interesting weekend.

I also got to help out AP's longtime golf writer, Bob Green, on a rare pro golf doubleheader _ tournaments at the same venue two weeks in a row. The American Golf Classic, a regular tournament, and the World Series of Golf, an invitation-only event for 64 of the top golfers, were held on consecutive weekends at Firestone Country Club in Akron.

Green asked me to cover the first tournament by myself so he and his wife, who traveled with him full-time, could take some vacation days. That was fine with me.

Only a few of the big names were entered in the event, but it was still fun to watch these elite players taking apart the new North Course at Firestone.

All the rounds were affected by gusty, swirling winds and Saturday's play was interrupted by a massive rainstorm that stopped play for several hours. A second squall later that day postponed the end of the round until Sunday morning.

The rain delay turned out to be a nice break for me. I wound up sitting in the clubhouse dining room with the eventual tournament winner, David Graham, a slim, pleasant Australian who, besides being one of the top golfers in the world, wrote a column for a golf magazine and was also a master club-maker.

Very relaxed, he talked about the rigors of playing golf all over the world and being away from his family for extended periods. Good stuff.

Then David began interviewing me, picking my brain about writing sports and asking some really good questions about writing styles.

It was a fun time and I enjoyed watching him continue on to the tournament title, turning in four consecutive rounds in the 60s despite the windy conditions that had so many other golfers scrambling.

A week later, I was back at Firestone as Green's helper, running around the famed South Course, known as "The Monster," and mostly gathering notes and quotes for him. But it also gave me the opportunity to talk with some of the game's top players, including meeting Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino for the first time.

I really loved the variety that was afforded by writing for AP.