When I look around the sports desk at 420 Maynard these days, I notice the mementos of my four years as a part of The Michigan Daily’s Sports section.
The stuffed animals purchased on hockey beat road trips sit at the corner of the desk. A fake SportsMonday poster I made during the month I got really into Photoshop hangs from the bulletin board. The odd loose balls and discarded signs round out the space.
If the heaping pile of miscellaneous stuff is any indication, each of those things will hang around at the sports desk long after I’m gone. Probably long after anyone remembers my name, even. But as I prepare to move on from a place I’ve called home for four years to whatever might be next, it’s hard to not be one of those little items in the corner — it’s hard to not stay at the sports desk forever.
At this point, though, I won’t be adding any more clutter to the desk. So instead, I think about the times that brought those items home.
***
I look at a sign on the conference room door, and I think back to my first road trip. We packed six people into my family’s car and shipped out to Northwestern, just because we were lucky enough to have a place to stay for the weekend. I remember the day we spent in Chicago and the nights hanging out in the basement together. I barely remember that we drove all that way and only got three quotes from the legendary Carol Hutchins.
I look at those stuffed animals, and I remember how luxurious a Best Western felt on the road. I remember going with my friends and getting to see my dad’s alma mater for the first time since I was a kid. A vivid picture of the semi-truck on the way back from Allentown, Pa. enters my mind, but I couldn’t tell you who scored the game-winning goal to send Michigan hockey to the Frozen Four earlier that evening.
A mannequin triggers memories of playing defensive line in a touch football game, for some reason. A gnome reminds me of trips to Tampa, Fla., where I’ve been lucky enough to go three times during college.
So much of who I am sits on that desk. It’s just waiting for someone else to pick it up and start fidgeting with it like I used to.
***
When I think about what I want to leave behind at The Daily, I think a bit too hard about legacy. I get in my head, wondering, ‘Was I good enough? Did I help people get enough out of this place, help them fall in love with it the same way that I once did?’
I still care about those things, and still care about a dumb legacy to an extent, though there’s not much I can do to change it now. For the first time in years, I’ve spent my recent weeknights outside the halls of 420 Maynard, after all.
But the cycle continues, and the section moves on. New faces come and sit at the desk, new clutter pops up, and new jokes form. Suddenly, I don’t feel so large in the grand scheme of it all, and I remember that I needed The Daily much more than it ever needed me.
And so, I look back once again. I look back at those first moments when I joined, and I remember what it felt like to truly be welcome somewhere. I remember the warmth of the people I met here, who kept me coming back long after they left. I remember the games of euchre, “basket ball” and chair monkey, and the late nights spent in the newsroom not because I had any work to do, but just because there was no place I’d rather be.
Our games of choice have changed now, and I’ll remember those, too. I’ll remember the younger people who I get to see at the desk now, who have the privilege of still getting to spend as much time as they want in the newsroom. I’ll remember that while there isn’t a single soul of overlap between my first Sunday meeting and my last, the warmth, the camaraderie — it all feels exactly the same.
If nothing else, I know that’s what’s left behind.
***
The clearest memento from my time at The Daily sits taped to the ceiling above the sports desk: me and Rekha’s Managing Sports Editor campaign poster. It’s filled with quotes from our closest friends, shows us at the softball stadium where we both covered our first beat and even has me catching — the position I played in baseball growing up. It’s probably the only thing in the newsroom that could actually give any insight into what I did for four years here.
Of all the things that I’ve left behind at the desk, it’ll also probably be the first to go. Soon enough it’ll fall, and the people who know us well enough to put it back up won’t be around. Maybe, if I’m lucky, it’ll find its way into a drawer rather than into the recycling.
Once that’s gone, all that’s left of me at the desk will be things like the stuffed animals. The memories attached to them will fade. To whoever occupies the sports desk at the time, it’ll just be a stuffed animal and nothing more.
And when some future Daily Sports Writer picks that stuffed animal up, I don’t hope that some grand story is retold or some lasting legacy somehow permeates their mind. I just hope that they toss it back and forth with whoever’s next to them and stay there a little longer than they need to.
Just like I always did.
