Chicago, with its big newspapers and major broadcasting stations, couldn't have been a better city to start a journalism career.

As a kid, I'd get up at 3 in the morning during school vacations to help my father on his bakery-truck route. He didn't get a vacation from that schedule.

I wish all high schools could offer students the outside activities that were available at the old Harrison High on Chicago's West Side in the late '20s. They enabled me to become part of a school newspaper, drama group, football team and student government.

My father, a bakery-truck driver, was the epitome of the work ethic that probably kept me knocking out columns six days a week for a rough total of 12,600 over 50 years.

I might be nervous off the court, being booed. But being on the court, it's my comfort zone. It's basketball. It's what I do. I'm not losing sleep over it.

I was always a thin kid; I was an athlete.

What Olympians eat can vary tremendously depending not only on the events they're competing in, but also their body type and lifestyle outside the Olympic arena. Their diets are affected not only by the demands of their sports, but by everything else in their lives, things that are almost impossible to accurately measure and factor in.

You gain know-how from playing matches because every moment of a football match has its own rhythm.