Covering John McCain from the sports pages

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Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun has one of the more unique jobs in sportswriting. Besides covering the University of Maryland football team, he does a lot of his work reporting on sports issues from Capitol Hill.

That has brought him into contact on numerous occasions with John McCain. Barker was well positioned for that role. Barker also covered McCain as a news reporter for the Arizona Republic. He wrote an op-ed piece for today’s Sun about that often prickly relationship.

‘One of the things I remember best about covering John McCain was his genuine zeal for sports,’’ Barker told me in an e-mail earlier today. ‘He used to tape the Phoenix Suns games and watch them late at night at the Capitol.

‘My period covering him for the Arizona Republic had been stormy at times. But after I left the paper and joined the Baltimore Sun, he readily agreed to be interviewed about sports.

‘You ever hear George Will talk about baseball? That’s the way McCain talks about boxing. ‘There’s something about some matchups that’s transcendent,’ he once told me. He said he’d sometimes pony up $49.95 to watch a fight on pay-per-view.

‘In the Senate, he’s sought to better regulate boxing and has prodded baseball on its steroids policy. ‘I would imagine if I wasn’t a sports fan, I wouldn’t have this kind of involvement,’ he once told me.’’

-- Randy Harvey