The last football game at the Vet
On Jan. 19, 2003, snow covered the streets of South Philadelphia. All morning, it was a winter street carnival at Broad and Pattison—Eagles fans deliriously anticipating the chance to roll over the Tampa Bay Bucs in the NFC Championship Game and earn a Super Bowl berth for the first time in 23 years. Nobody believed the warm weather Bucs could beat the Eagles on the cold, unforgiving concrete floor of the Vet. I had been covering the team for 10 seasons, and rarely did I venture outside the stadium before a game, but I wanted to give ESPN viewers a sense of the rare unfiltered optimism.

We all know what happened. The 27-10 beating left everybody in a state of shock. The Eagles had given the Vet its final baptism of frustration. After the game, outside the stadium, it was silent—just the snow crunching under tired, scuffling feet. That day I really understood and appreciated Philly sports fans: their unquenched passion and their undeniable pain.

The night Ed Rendell knew he was going to be mayor
Before I covered football, I wrote about politics for The Philadelphia Inquirer. The day of the 1991 mayoral primary, I shadowed David Cohen, who managed Ed Rendell’s campaign. We crisscrossed the city all day and into the night. After Rendell won, Cohen took me to an old hamburger joint in Rittenhouse Square. It was approaching 2 a.m. When we arrived, Rendell was already there, devouring a giant plate of french fries, talking about the Phillies. I thought to myself, “This guy is real, and he has a real chance to turn this city around.”

The first day I covered an Eagles game
Opening day, 1994. Rich Kotite’s last year. The Chicago Bears were in town. Weather: blue sky, fall perfection. I settled into my seat in the Vet’s press box—right on the 50-yard line. On my right, Inquirer columnist Bill Lyon was tapping poetry into his laptop. On my left, [Philadelphia] Daily News columnist Bill Conlin was cracking wise. Somebody threw open the windows and the full-throated roar of 64,890 Eagles fans rumbled through me like a thunderbolt. Right then and there I said to myself, “Hang onto this job for dear life.”

The night Jim Gardner surprised my journalism class at St. Joe’s
I was teaching a graduate seminar in political writing on Hawk Hill, and I had told my class— about 15 students crammed into a rectangular conference room in Bellarmine Hall—that there would be a surprise guest. When Jim Gardner, the dean of local news anchors, showed up at the door, the gasps in the room practically fogged the windows. Gardner mesmerized us with a detailed discussion of national politics, the crisis in the Middle East and the state of American journalism. I had to put a stop to the questions so he could do the 11 o’clock news. It was a rare glimpse at a man who is clearly a city treasure.

The day they lined up to say good-bye to a city legend
July 18, 1991. They came from everywhere—from Chestnut Hill and South Philly, from Bryn Mawr and New York and Washington—to get one last look at Frank L. Rizzo. They stood in punishing heat in a line that curved around the corner of 18th Street, where the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul faces west, and stretched down the Ben Franklin Parkway toward City Hall. More than 14,000 people waited and waited for a chance to walk past the casket and a large display of red and white carnations with the message, “Frank Forever.”