LASA, September 19th
Our day started with baseball. We jumped aboard our bus for Dodger Stadium first thing. Our tour guide was wonderful – lots of nooks and crannies inside the huge spaces of Dodger Stadium, and lots of tidbits of Dodger and L.A. history. We loved being on the field (and watching it be prepared for a game later that day). We also enjoyed seeing the year to year history of the Dodgers played out in memorabilia, trophies and other awards, and the wishfulness that the Dodgers make it back to the World Series someday soon. And though we all had a good and very interesting time, the same was true this year as last: no one enjoyed the day more than Mr. Lee. It was hard to get him out of the gift store in time to meet the bus.
After a terrific tour of Dodger Stadium, LASA returned to the Huntington and met with sports journalist Robyn Norwood. A member of the National Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, Robyn spent more than twenty years on the sports desk of the Los Angeles Times, covering a range of college and professional sports, as well as big events such as the Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four Basketball tournaments, and Major League Baseball playoffs. She cited her coverage of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 2000 Sydney Olympics as highlights of her career. Robyn shared with LASA students a range of anecdotes about interviewing players and coaches, traveling extensively, and working on tight deadlines. In addition to covering teams and individual athletes, Robyn discussed some of the more meaningful human-interest stories that she had written, most notably a piece on the prevalence of eating disorders among professional jockeys.