Randy Peterson's farewell column: Sportswriter reflects on 52 years at Des Moines Register

Pinch me, Rick. It’s time I finally wake up from what’s been a 52-year dream I never thought imaginable, for this kid who graduated from Des Moines East High School and barely made it (but I did) through Drake University.

This is my hanging a 30 (journalism lingo for the end of a story) on a full-time career spent at just one place − my hometown Des Moines Register − which back in the day (and still should today) starred the Sunday Big Peach sports section.

It’s been an honor to share column inches (and internet space) since December 1972 with some of the best journalists and people on the planet. We scrapped for leads. We muscled against the TV reporters during stand-up interview scrums outside and inside cramped locker rooms. We didn’t know the meaning of 40-hour work weeks way back when I started putting together sentences that hopefully didn’t end with prepositions.

We competed for stories, and then after the final press run we decompressed across the street (or across the alley, way back in the day) at the Office Lounge.

Newspaper ink was my blood. Diet Coke was my coffee. Deadlines were the beloved enemy. That was back when the Register was a daily three-edition masterpiece of breaking news, storytelling, investigative reporting, politics, and, of course, sports pages that actually included next-morning, in-depth reporting of late-night, triple-overtime games (The Mayor’s Cyclones in 2014 at Oklahoma State come to mind).

We worked until stories were told. We were protective of our beats back then. We saw stories through to the end. Our final deadline was around 2 a.m. — for a newspaper that would be rolling off the press (and into delivery trucks) shortly thereafter.

Those were the days.

Reading habits change. Subscribers prefer news on laptops and cell phones. We change, too, and we’re still changing – some for the good and some for the ... I wonder?

What hasn’t changed is the zest with which we do our jobs. Our mission to inform and inspire factual conversation has been present since the day I walked into the newsroom as a punk kid who didn’t know anything other than sports. It was still that way just a few days ago when I removed the last partially eaten Kit-Kat candy bar from my office desk drawer.

Yes, I’ve been blessed.

My late-night 'groceries' proclamation became family legend

After hitting our late-night writing deadline for the Register’s Saturday morning newspaper, a few of us recharged at Chuck’s Restaurant in Des Moines’ Highland Park district (if we weren’t at the watering hole across the downtown street from the paper).

We talked about games we’d just covered, we brainstormed ideas for the coming weeks of what back then was a daily, multi-edition, statewide newspaper into which we poured hearts, souls and passion.

We’d be deep into our conversations as coaches from around town gradually joined us. They needed to wind down, too. We conversed informally with them until it was time for last call.

I’d grab my to-go pizza, onion rings, garlic bread and Italian salad and drive home, where I would (well after midnight) proclaim loudly to my sleeping wife and daughters (and dog):

“Groceries!”

Gradually, they’d join me downstairs in the kitchen, where we ate, rehashed everyone’s day and anything else on anyone’s mind.

I’m remembering that while pecking what likely is my final column as a full-time employee of this wonderful run of writing for Iowa’s largest newspaper. It’s time for someone else to fill the space we’ve been blessed and honored to fill since sports editor Leighton Housh took a chance on this kid who grew up reading more newspapers than books.

How many stories were written? A bunch. How many bowl games? Thirty-something, maybe more. NCAA Tournaments? I’ll get back with ya. Final Fours? Zippo, although there was a shot with Larry Eustachy’s 2000 Cyclones, which lost in the Elite Eight to Michigan State, and again with Fred Hoiberg's 2014 team (until Georges Niang broke a bone in his foot).

I covered high schools in the mid-1970s. In the early 80s, I moved on to Iowa and Iowa State – both as regular beats. I learned more about newspapering while covering the Triple-A baseball Iowa Cubs for oh so many years than I learned during four-plus years at Drake. With former Des Moines Register editor Michael Gartner as the team’s principal owner and unmatched press-box storyteller – listening to (and learning from) his newsroom stories were way more beneficial than reading any journalism textbook ever written.

Memories I’ll forever cherish.

The big scoop, a compromise and Cyclones history

We staked out the football team's hotel in Norman, Oklahoma, on Friday afternoon, the day before the mighty Sooners were supposed to thrash Matt Campbell’s up-and-coming Cyclones in 2017. We had a tip. We heard starting quarterback Jacob Park was off the team.

Shortly after colleague Tommy Birch and I touched down at the Oklahoma City airport, we checked into our hotel, went through the line a time or two at the Golden Palace buffet where we always lunched during Oklahoma trips, then drove 10 or so minutes to where the team was staying.

It’s big news when the starting quarterback mysteriously isn’t on a road trip. It’s big news even if he’s the starter for a team that was expected to lose by 30-some points.

We waited in the lobby for probably an hour until the team buses arrived. Iowa State athletics media relations director Mike Green knew we’d be there. He either sensed it or he was tipped. Campbell wasn’t far behind him off the bus. He, too, had an inkling we’d be there, doing our jobs. So did backup quarterback Kyle Kempt, who noticed both of us from his window seat on the bus.

As the team unloaded, we went into a smallish hotel meeting room. We talked. Birch and I told Campbell and Green what we had. They didn’t deny, although they wondered if our immediate release of the breaking news would give Oklahoma time to alter its defensive strategy.

That wasn’t our problem. Our mission was to inform readers as thoroughly, as accurately and as quickly as we could – and really, defensive strategy for an opponent the Sooners were supposed to beat by a hundred points?

We compromised, agreeing not to publish online until 5 p.m. or so that Friday before the game – unless we sensed the situation becoming so viral that we could not wait.

We started writing in the hotel lobby, one eye on what we were pecking, and the other on anything out of the ordinary we might notice. We had the scoop, and the next day, we had a story for the ages:

Cyclones upset mighty third-ranked Oklahoma − with a third-string quarterback.

That’s an unforgettable moment. It’s one of the stories I’ll carry to wherever my post-journalistic path leads. Sure, I’ll miss road-game dining and beverages with Cyclones beat writer Travis Hines (and Birch). I’ll miss hearing stories about their young kids.

I’ll miss the buffet in Oklahoma City, Cricket’s Draft House and Grill in Waco, Sixth Street in Austin, Primanti Bros. restaurant (in Pittsburgh) during road trips to West Virginia, and The Stockyards in Fort Worth. Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse, too.

I’ll miss arriving in Iowa State’s football press box three hours before home games, and also this:

Twenty or so minutes before every home game came this unforgettable part of Tom Kroeschell’s announcement reminder about Jack Trice Stadium press-box etiquette: “If you want to cheer – great. Go outside.”

(I’ll neither confirm nor deny being the reporter who dropped a maybe audible F-bomb when the 2019 Cy-Hawk football game in Ames went into a second or third 30-minute lightning delay).

We’ve been front-and-center during the process that has resulted in Campbell making Iowa State football nationally relevant. I had the same front-row seat when Kirk Ferentz was introduced at Iowa, and when Hoiberg and T.J. Otzelberger worked their Cyclones magic, and Bill Fennelly and Kevin Dresser, too.

And Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard? He was exactly what the school needed when he was hired in 2005. (And he still is what the Cyclones need.) Sure, we had occasional disagreements. That happens during long relationships in our business. It’s healthy. In the end, we’re good – I think.

MLB at Field of Dreams? Thankfully, the bosses talked me into columnizing about something I initially didn’t look forward to even attending. I did, and here’s how much I liked it:

“DYERSVILLE − Thursday night’s Field of Dreams game was a showcase, an extravaganza, a happening,” I wrote. “You can't even dream this stuff up, how magical this night was. The center of the sports universe, at least for one day, was smack dab in the middle of a cornfield way up here in northeast Iowa. Put plainly, baseball's grand showing at the 'Field of Dreams' movie site was our state’s greatest sports event ever.”

It's time for a change

Leaving this wonderful career at a time Iowa State football, wrestling and men’s and women’s basketball have ceilings maybe higher than they’ve ever been – that was tough. I’m sure Campbell, Otz, Fennelly, Dresser and I will talk about that when the Cyclones Tailgate Tour hits Arnolds Park in a couple weeks.

Watching from afar what Caitlin Clark did for women’s basketball and all of college sports – riveting and unforgettable. Ditto for Iowa State’s superstar freshman hoopster Audi Crooks. And they’re both Iowans; they're coaches, too. How cool is that?

Yet after consultation with the best daughters and granddaughter in the world, a Team Peterson that’s had my back throughout all highs and lows of this adventure − it’s time for someone else to write Iowa State columns. I know the person I recommended can figure out managing work with family.

That’s tough, and believe me, this wouldn’t have happened without my girls. They somehow found ways to put up with my long hours, brutal and tiring travel schedule – and thankfully, yet unsurprisingly, were supportive throughout. Because of them, there’s been a front-row seat in my personal sports world.

In this age of buyouts, layoffs, newspaper mergers and focus gradually trending away from print and toward the internet – we’re doing this our way. Sure, I’ve been furloughed; we all have. No one ever approached me about early buyout offers that occasionally were available.

There’s been so much talent leave this newsroom (and others) over the years, either on their own or otherwise, that it makes you sick. It really does.

Throughout those trying and very sad times, the Register has remained a strong product -- an everyday must-read. We still investigate and expose what needs to be exposed. We still write thought-provoking opinion columns. We still do high-level storytelling. We still take wonderful photos. We still cover the heck out of our sports beats. With my departure, the quality of Register online videos has instantly improved. In case you didn’t know, that wasn’t exactly my forte.

For me, though, long working days are over. Writing columns sometimes seven days a week (and believe me, that’s not always as easy as it sounds) no longer will be part of my DNA. And you know what? I’ll miss it.

I’ll miss co-workers, and you know who you are. I’ll miss the adrenaline rush as we typed 1,000 words in the very few minutes before deadline and during an age when my “you’ll get my piece when you get it” bark to impatient editors still doesn’t cut it.

I’ll miss the connecting with fans that goes along with life on the road. Unforgettable and enlightening.

The time former Iowa State coach Dan McCarney invited me to hang out for a while in his office, just an hour or so after he was out as the Cyclones’ football coach with two games remaining in the 2006 season. We were reminiscing, then all of a sudden his phone rang. It was a pick-him-up call from Urban Meyer.

“Good remembering,” Mac told me recently, when I called to verify my recollection – a memory that includes fans storming the field after McCarney’s Cyclones beat Missouri in his final game as the coach. Fighting to the end – that’s the Dan McCarney I’ll always remember.

I’ll miss the time a great basketball player at Elk Horn-Kimballton once told me she’d someday be President of the United States. Jan Jensen didn’t become president, but I’d say she’s done all right for herself. We still text occasionally, something I don’t take for granted. The same with former Iowa State greats Georges Niang and Lyndsey Fennelly – among many others with whom I stay in contact.

Oh yeah, I’ve been blessed.

As for Rick Brown (who I referenced in the first paragraph of this column), the best friend I ever had in this business ...

Maybe we can get together up at The Bunker in Pleasant Hill sometime and tell stories until it’s time for that wake-me-up pinch.

-30-

Iowa State columnist Randy Peterson has now officially concluded 50-plus memorable years as a sports reporter at The Des Moines Register. You can reach him at randypete4846@gmail.com. You can find him in a boat, sitting on an Okoboji dock (without a fishin' pole), hanging with the daughters and the granddaughter, and maybe even as a first-time tailgater somewhere next football season.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Randy Peterson's memories of 52 blessed years at Des Moines Register