Being a sportswriter and getting the chance to be so close to your sporting heroes is a dream job for many fans.
It’s not as easy or as fun as it’s sometimes portrayed. That’s not to say it isn’t fun and that there aren’t great moments, but it’s a job, and no job is without its frustrations.
But for a relatively small number of us, we had the great fortune of covering the greatest quarterback in NFL history, and someone who by and large is a fundamentally decent person. Not everyone gets to say that.
In the final week of August 2006, I became the New England Patriots beat writer for the Providence Journal.