Although my favorite sports coverage was unquestionably at the high school level, I did spend plenty of time covering the pros, so here we go:

Wildest scene: Game two, 1987 NBA playoffs, Warriors vs. Jazz at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City.

In the final minute of the game, Golden State's Greg Ballard got tangled up with Utah's Karl Malone, who didn't appreciate the contact and threw the ball at Ballard, who caught it and threw it back at Malone, only much harder, igniting a wild, bench-clearing brawl into which numerous fans also poured onto the court to join, turning the court into a chaotic mob scene. In the melee, a fan came up behind Warriors Coach George Karl and took a full, cheap-shot swing at Karl, hitting him in the temple and knocking him off-balance. In the moment Karl turned to see the jerk that had cheap-shotted him, the cowardly fan ran away. Unfortunately for him, near the end of the court his escape path took him directly by Warriors guard Chris Mullin, who had grown up in the tough Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush, had witnessed the fan's chickenshit punch and gave him what he had coming: He slugged the guy flush on the chin, knocking him quite literally into the second row. As John Lennonwould have said ...Instant karma.

Weirdest interview: following the final game of the 1979 NBA Western Conference semifinals at Seattle's Key Arena, won by Seattle to clinch the SuperSonics' 4-1 series victory, I went first to the Sonics' locker room, which was such a mob scene that I decided to race across the arena to the Lakers' locker room in hopes of getting some thoughts from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the only Laker who had played worth a damn the whole series, on the off chance that he would express some honest dissatisfaction over his teammates' having dogged it throughout the series. When I reached the Lakers' locker room, Kareem was seated on a bench with his back to a row of lockers, wearing all black and glowering menacing through sunglasses, while the entire Los Angeles traveling media were loitering around the periphery of the room. This was strange, because normally the star player would be surrounded by notebook-and-recorder-wielding reporters after any NBA playoff game, win or loss. my guess is there had been some kind of feud going on between Kareem and the L.A. media, and he had told them at some point that he was through giving interviews. Sonics standout Dennis Johnson had done that very thing earlier in the season.

But not being privy to any such embargo, I walked over to Kareem, knelt down in front of him to be at eye level (he was seated, after all) and asked him politely if he wouldn't mind answering a few questions.

"Sure, kid, shoot," he answered.

So I began asking questions and as soon as the L.A. reporters on the periphery saw that he was answering me, they swooped in around me like air rushing into a vacuum and began shouting questions, which he pointedly ignored, keeping his eyes on me and awaiting my next question. This went on as long as I had questions. He answered every one, while ignoring the other questions from the breathless mob of reporters behind me.

After a few minutes of this, every one of those questions would elicit this response from other reporters: "shut up, he's just talking to the one guy!"

Finally, Bill Russell came in, leaned over this media scrum and said, "Kareem, can I get you for the CBS postgame?"

NBA players were contractually bound to cooperate with any interview request from CBS, who paid handsomely for the broadcast rights. But, still, Kareem said, "Just a second" and looked back at me to ask, "You got enough, kid?"

I did have enough, and that was it. I never understood why that postgame interview had gone that way, why Kareem would answer my questions and no one else's, what message he might have been delivering to the Los Angeles media or why.

Snippets from the S.F. Giants' 1989 season: As the number two guy from my paper on the Giants' beat, I felt like a bit of an unknown outsider to the players until a road series at St. Louis, during which I asked Chris Speier, who I knew to be the team's chess champion, if he'd play a game with me. He agreed, and in the locker room before a game there in St. Louis, I found myself playing the Giants' second baseman in front of a loud, riveted audience of professional ballplayers, who were anxious to see their guy kick the ass of this member of the traveling media, who were typically regarded by pro athletes as a (barely) necessary evil, a nuisance along the lines of a bee at a picnic. But after Speier kicked my butt, as I fully expected he would, It seemed as if I became somehow accepted by the Giants players ... well, except for first baseman Will Clark, who was so unfailingly truculent with the media that I once asked why he was such a prick to us. Left fielder Jeff (Hacman) Leonard could occasionally be surly with reporters as well, but it never seemed obnoxious with Hac like it did with Clark. You just had to know not to try to talk to Hac in pregame when he was getting on his game face. Fellow outfielder Chili Davis revered Hac, as did many of the Giants. When Hac wasn't nearby, Chili was gregarious and friendly with all of us picnic bees, but if Leonard was close by, Chili would clam up, as if that reticence with the media earn respect from Hac.

The Giants made it to the World Series that season, only to have Game Three at Candlestick Park postponed for ten days by the powerful Loma Prieta Earthquake, which among other things collapsed more than a mile of the top level of the double-decked Cypress Freeway (Interstate 880) onto the level below, pinning and crushing dozens of cars, killing 42 people and injuring many more. A day later I was off baseball duty and on to earthquake coverage. I ended up in Oakland at the search for survivors of the 880 collapse, where a large media throng was being updated by a police sergeant at the search HQ about 40 yards from the collapsed viaduct. The sergeant explained that one of the search tools being used by the courageous rescue members who were literally crawling under potentially unstable tons of collapsed concrete to check the cars below was a handheld device that could measure any body heat, sound or movement inside a car.

If we locate anyone using the device, the sergeant explained, we will say we've located a survivor "by touch." A while later, indeed, a survivor was located "by touch." I verified with the sergeant what that meant: the handheld device had gotten a positive reading.

A half-hour later I was typing into my laptop in the same area, when a TV crew began doing a remote next to me. This must have been some local hack hoping to land the nightly lead story on CNN because this is what the reporter said into the camera:

"There's been a dramatic development at the search for survivors at the collapsed portion of the Cypress Freeway. A member of the rescue team reached into a crushed car and a hand grabbed his."

I knew that was a crock of shit and began to say so, only to be shushed up by the TV guy's crew. I related that story later to some friends, who remembered seeing that "dramatic development" clip and wondering why there had been no follow-up later. Well, because it hadn't happened.

Classiest pro athlete I ever met: Thurl Bailey, a forward on the Utah Jazz. Perhaps better known as one of the standouts on Coach Jim Valvano's longshot 1983 national champions from North Carolina State. I spent nearly an hour interviewing Bailey at the Salt Palace during a Jazz shoot-around session in that 1987 playoff series. For a pro to give that much of his time to a member of the visiting media during a playoff series was unheard of.

The next day I was in a taxi on my way to the airport when the driver asked me what I was doing in town, and I explained I was a reporter covering the series and that between games had had a great interview with Thurl Bailey.

"Let me tell you about Thurl Bailey," he said.

So he did. When he wasn't driving a taxi, he told me, he was driving for the limousine company used by the Jazz, so that whenever a player was being taken on some do-gooder goodwill trip, like, say, to visit kids at a children's hospital, he was often the driver. He told me Bailey did more of such goodwill trips than the rest of the Jazz combined. Having seen pros turn such trips into good PR for themselves by bringing along "publicists" who could ensure that the athletes' good deeds would be heralded in the local media, I asked the driver if Bailey was ever accompanied by a publicist.

"Never," he said. "Nobody ever hears about him doing this stuff, and he does it all the time. He just does it because he believes in it. Because he's a great human being."

Bailey later began a foundation, Big TLC, that raised money for various charities, including his own non-profit youth basketball camp.

And all of that is why Thurl Bailey is my all-time favorite pro athlete, not because of what he did on the court, but for what he did off it.