Before transferring my journalism flag to the entertainment and opinion pages, I did my newspapering as a sportswriter for the Peoria Journal Star. While I loved the actual work, I came to detest the hours. And the nights. And the weekend assignments. And the fast food.

And come to think of it, I didn’t much care for the air travel, or dealing with cranky coaches, or early Saturday evening deadlines or moody athletes.

So as I read Erie Times-News sports columnist John Dudley’s lengthy Sunday column  (www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010302289912) aggressively cracking on Indianapolis Colts star safety and former Cathedral Prep football hero Bob Sanders’ irritable disposition, I recognized the impatience driving those strong words.

Here is a taste from Dudley’s column. This is not for the faint of heart.

Yeah, I know this will sound like sour grapes from scorned media types. But I don’t need Bob Sanders to like me. I don’t even need him to know my name. I just need him to answer my questions – or not – without throwing a tantrum.

Sanders could have politely declined to say how much it cost him to put computers and printers in technology labs at Wilson Middle School and McKinley Elementary.

Instead he had his flak fetch a folder and look it up, and, with a glare, he confirmed the figure was about $20,000.

Then he turned angry, demanding to know why we needed that information.

Gee, Bob, I don’t know. Maybe because we are in the information business?

By the time he was done, Sanders had told me to never write about his contract again ($37.5 million over five years).

He said he is sick of reading about how often he is hurt. (He has played in 41 of a possible 80 regular-season games during his NFL career.)

That, as Jim Rome might say, is a big-time smack down.

Now I worked with Dudley at the Erie Times-News for years. As Erie Times-News readers have undoubtedly noticed, John has a caustic sense of humor that could be easily mistaken for an affable grumpiness. I like him.

John is also a gifted sports columnist who also happens to write the best Good Morning columns at the paper (these are not easy to do). While we were mostly the “Hi, how are you doing” kind of work colleagues, we did have one memorable e-mail exchange back in 2006.

Dudley, like numerous sports columnists that summer, including the New York Daily News’ mega-media-star Mike Lupica, wrote pre-U.S. Open columns on Phil Mickelson’s opportunity not only to win his third straight major, but to actually take the improbable step toward succeeding Tiger Woods as the world’s top golfer with his own “Tigerslam” (four straight non-calendar year majors that Woods achieved in 2000-01).

My intention here isn’t to call out Dudley or Lupica for getting way ahead of golf reality. Who knew Mickelson would give away that U.S. Open by slopping around Winged Foot’s final hole? (Phil’s Phailure will hurt for a while )

The context here requires refreshing. Recall that Woods lost to Mickelson in a frantic final Sunday at the Masters back in April 2006 just before the death of his father. That came after Lefty won the PGA Championship at Baltusrol the previous August. Besides the fact that Woods had won 10 of his 14 professional majors at this point compared to Mickelson’s 3, it struck me that Dudley, Lupica and scores of writers were also forgetting Woods won the Masters and British Open in 2005.

So as a former golf scribe myself, I e-mailed notes to both Dudley and Lupica, pointing out why Mickelson simply wasn’t on the same golf page as Woods no matter what happened at Winged Foot.

Postscript: By the way, Geoff Ogilvy won the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot after Mickelson blew that one-stroke lead with his infamously unforgivable double bogey at 18. Woods missed the U.S. Open cut in his first tournament since the Masters and his father’s death. Woods then won the British Open and PGA Championship later that summer.

Dudley responded with a pleasant, well-argued e-mail that basically pointed out that he didn’t mean to suggest Mickelson was as good as Woods (at least not yet). Instead, Dudley wrote that he simply wanted to challenge the notion that Woods intimidated every player by merely teeing up at the first hole. That Mickelson wasn’t one of those lame guys who crumbled before the great Tiger Woods. Point taken.

Now forgive me for taking the long road to the point, but here it is: I never heard from Lupica, which surprised me. Most newspaper types might be slow to respond to argumentative readers looking for a fight, but most writers will tap out a response to folks in the business. Folks who take the time to type out an e-mail. For instance, the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan and the late, sorely missed David Halberstam cheerfully answered e-mails I sent to them.

That’s called professional courtesy. The point here being Dudley is a pro.

So no, I have no real beef with Dudley’s column on Sanders. I don’t know the guy and certainly have never worked with him. Dudley does. While reading the column, it did occur to me that part of Sanders’ unusual exasperation with his lucrative contract remaining so very public stems from simple frustration. I’m betting he gets hit up constantly for “loans” and handouts. But even if this is true, that certainly isn’t Dudley’s problem.

My only quibble with the column is timing. Pounding on Sanders the same weekend the guy is in town to deliver free computers and printers opened up Dudley and the Erie Times-News to nitpicking critics who welcome the opportunity to correctly point out nobody cares if Sanders isn’t nice to sportswriters. And as you read before, Dudley made that point himself.

I do wonder if somebody thought to ask whether there was a more appropriate time to run that Sanders column. Did somebody wonder out loud if cracking on a local hero in town doing good deeds seemed sort of mean-spirited?

In any case, Dudley is a big boy, who understands that taking heat comes with any column gig. And to be fair, all that heat would come if the Sanders column ran next week or the week after.

Whether you think Dudley and the Erie Times-News were off base or not, I just want to make it clear that Dudley is very good at what he does. Keep in mind that an honest disagreement with Dudley for calling out Bob Sanders doesn’t change that fact that this guy writes a helluva a sports column four days a week.

You ought to try it. From personal experience I’m telling you it ain’t easy.

Endless Health-Care Reform Debate Nears End Game

Even as congressional Republicans scramble for even more creative ways to frighten House and Senate Democrats into figuring out a way not to pass a comprehensive health-care bill and get it to President Obama’s desk later this month, a serious, doable plan is finally on the table.

Washington Monthly’s must read “Political Animal” by Steve Benen details how the Democrats’ health-care reform endgame materialized:

Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate. Harkin made the comments after a meeting in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office including Harkin and Sens. Baucus, Dodd, Durbin, Schumer and Murray.

By agreeing to pursue reconciliation, the Senate leadership almost certainly believes it will have the 51 votes needed to approve the budget fix. This makes sense – even center-right Dems have been coming around on this procedural question in recent weeks, frustrated by Republican obstinacy.

I should emphasize, for any lawmakers or reporters who may be reading, that by agreeing to the majority-rule route, Dems aren’t talking about passing health care reform through reconciliation. Health care reform was already approved by the Senate in December, and it passed 60 to 39 through the regular ol’ legislative process. No tricks, no abuses, nothing unusual at all.

Rather, reconciliation will now be used – if all goes according to plan – to approve a modest budget fix that will improve the final reform bill.

In terms of institutional wrangling, Harkin’s green light for reconciliation should help encourage House Dems to go first, as some House leaders seem prepared to do

Now health-care reform is obviously hard work and complicated politics. If health-care reform were easy, another Congress and another president would have long ago provided insurance for most Americans, barred insurance companies from not paying health-care bills when you get sick and made darn sure insurance companies couldn’t refuse to provide insurance due to pre-existing conditions.

But no previous Congress or previous president managed to get two comprehensive health-care reform bills passed in the House and Senate.

After President Obama backed the tactics spelled out by Benen, House and Senate Democrats will have to provide all the hard votes while clueless Republicans sit it out on the sidelines.

I’m not feeling sorry for these under-the-gun Dems. Hell, aren’t Democrats in Washington to make hard votes and hard choices. Surely they’re not hanging out in the nation’s capital because Washington is a swell place for a second home.

So I wish jittery Democrats would recall President Kennedy’s words way back on Sept. 12, 1962, in his legendary speech at Rice University Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

OK, maybe this isn’t the best analogy, but you see the point? Did Democrats go to Congress to solve hard problems and make hard vote? Or did they go there to fret over re-election?

You Know You Want It: Even More Tiger Woods …

Doug Ferguson is the tireless Associated Press sportswriter who chronicles golf news from virtually every PGA Tour stop every single week. Notice those PGA Tour tournament briefs you see in the Erie Times-News Wednesdays through Mondays? They come from Ferguson’s keyboard.

So because Ferguson covers the PGA Tour every week, he probably knows Tiger Woods better than any journalist. That’s why it might matter when Ferguson reports that Woods is back home from rehab and a family counseling session in Arizona (Tiger home from counseling).

Home is Orlando, Fla., at Woods’ gated Isleworth community. According to Ferguson, Woods is hitting golf balls at Isleworth and taking the steps toward getting into something resembling a golf routine. And an interesting note here: Wife Elin was watching as Woods did his work on the range.

Meanwhile, Woods’ buddy, Isleworth neighbor and fellow PGA Tour pro Charles Howell, ran into Woods on the Isleworth range. Here is what the New York Times Larry Dorman reported:

“(Woods) He looked real good and seemed fine. He seemed to be in good spirits. We spent quite a while talking. He looked like he always has. And he seemed like he was hitting it the same as ever. It was all good.”

I know this is all probably a reach. But I just want the guy back on the golf course. I suspect so does Elin Woods.

Pennsylvania’s Gambling Push Finds No Fans At The Inquirer

While serving as the Erie Times-News Editorial Page Editor, the newspaper’s Editorial Board remained consistently supportive toward both slots gambling and full-blown casino table gaming. Our position at the time, and as far as I can tell the paper’s position now, goes something like this: The Erie region isn’t in any position to quibble over an industry that creates thousands of jobs while producing millions of dollars in private and government investments in the region.

In other words, the Erie region can’t afford any weepy concerns over the morality of legalized gambling.

So a very different regional perspective on gaming in the commonwealth is revealing. The Philadelphia Inquirer hates legalized gambling. In a blistering editorial Tuesday (Editorial: Leaving Las Vegas) on a proposed Philadelphia casino development pitched by Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, the Inquirer comes out guns a blazin’.

A taste:

Wynn is scheduled to appear before the state Gaming Control Board tomorrow to outline his plans to build and operate Foxwoods. Gamblers expecting a casino remotely like the $1.6 billion Bellagio resort that Wynn built in Las Vegas will be sorely disappointed.

Wynn’s plan calls for a low-budget casino more fitting to its lousy waterfront location in South Philadelphia, not far from a Wal-Mart.

Gone are the original plans for a hotel that could at least attract gamblers from out of town to help bolster the city’s tourist trade. Instead, the latest Foxwoods incarnation will just be acres of slot machines and scores of table games aimed at the locals living paycheck to paycheck or on fixed incomes.

Wynn made some goofy comments last week about building a “dandy” casino for all the area Italians, Jews, and other ethnic groups that like to play craps and gamble. For good measure, Wynn he said he plans to include a Vietnamese restaurant for Asians who live in the area. Nothing like a politically correct casino.

The place sounds so cheesy it’s not even clear that Wynn will put his full name on the joint. Instead, he is considering putting just his initials on the casino.

This proves again that the only difference between Erie and Philadelphia isn’t just that big old Great Lake in my backyard.