You want disillusionment? Work at a major daily. 

I’ve been a newspaper columnist for more years than some of you have been here. And part of the job — maybe the most attractive part,  I thought, would be meeting famous people. (Caution: Insert namedrop alert here).

There is a downside to meeting celebrities and famous people. The downside? When you actually meet them.

Let’s start with sports. I loved baseball growing up. Read Baseball Digest, memorized batting averages, etc. I became sports editor of my college daily. 

After university, I became a sports editor of a Pennsylvania daily. But soon I became attracted to Montreal, so I slipped across the border after proving I spoke French. I was a rarity up there: I never met another American there who did NOT go up there to beat the draft. 

So at last, I got to cover a major-league baseball team, the since-departed Montreal Expos. Before each game, I joined the players chatting around the batting cage with my notebook. And what were these master conversationalists discussing? The opposing team? Its pitchers? 

Nope. It was usually which women in the stands they found the most attractive … in very graphic terms. And what they’d like to do with them after the game. Lucky gals! 

They were almost invariably jerks and prima donnas. But I did get to meet one of the Expos’ broadcasters, the legendary Jackie Robinson. A sweet, classy man. A baseball rarity. I did the last interview he ever gave. Robinson passed two weeks later.

I also got the chance to meet former Cleveland Indians star Larry Doby, the first Black player in the American League. I wish I hadn’t. Doby, who managed the Expos’ minor-league team, was no class act in the clubhouse. Strike three for baseball. I was way too young to become jaded. 

After years of covering sports, I got the chance to cover rock music, which I loved. Wow, I thought. Musicians can’t be nearly as bad as jocks.

Wrong again. Rock stars were even more immature than ballplayers. Bigger jerks. Bigger skirt chasers.

I went down to Fleet Street, London tabloid central, and signed on with Britain’s biggest rock-music paper, Melody Maker. I suddenly had access to more famous bands and artists than I could at my Montreal daily. Among them: Ian Anderson, aka Jethro Tull; the Stones/Jagger; Pink Floyd, etc. But one interview I’ll never forget heightened my disgust with rock royalty.

I was in the dressing room of one of my favorite bands, Led Zeppelin, reporter’s notebook in hand, scribbling away, chatting with guitarist Jimmy Page. Then there was a loud boom, and into the room stormed a bear of a man: Peter Grant, Zep’s legendary manager. Grant became well-known for his trashing British record stores that sold Led Zep bootleg recordings. As I watched in dismay, Grant, for no apparent reason, began ripping speakers off the dressing-room walls and stomping them into splinters. For no apparent reason. None. This was Grant’s idea of having a laugh — also the band’s, who laughed at their immature manager. 

I shook my head, quietly excused myself. I again started thinking about another beat to cover.

It was not the only example of immature behavior I’d witnessed covering rock stars. Even the musically mellow Cat Stevens once threatened to punch me over an unfavorable review I wrote about one of his awful later albums.

Maybe it would be more relaxing writing obituaries? 

I opted instead for covering television, which a fellow critic once wryly observed, is “an art form trapped within an industry.” 

Today, when people in PT hear about my newspaper misadventures and the famous folks I’ve met, several have told me I should write a book about them. My standard response: To say what really needs to be said about many famous people would require a lawyer well out of my price range. 

Once-disillusioned Bill Mann worked as a sports writer and TV/music critic at dailies in Montreal, Honolulu, and San Francisco. Contact him at newsmann9@gmail.com.