Hale and Hearty Stories Don’t Feel Right to Him

I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong, but before overloading our e-mail system, let me be more specific.

How come I never get to do the best Super Bowl stories?

Two years ago, a player was arrested for soliciting a prostitute the night before he was to play in the Super Bowl, and our hockey writer, seeing the opportunity to finally cover something that might be read, wrote the story.

I was left with the life and interceptions of Chris Chandler.

Last year, the Rams brought a player to the Super Bowl who had been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, killing a woman while driving drunk, and columnist Bill Plaschke is waiting now to learn if his story on that will win an award.

I was left with the life and husbands of Georgia Frontiere.

This year, Robyn Norwood wasn’t much more than 24 hours into her first Super Bowl as The Times’ NFL writer, and she was doing the story on the eloquent alcoholic who plays quarterback for the Giants.

Tuesday arrived, and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to chat with a player accused--but not convicted--of murder, but because this game won’t feature a kicker missing a leg or a blind wide receiver, Plaschke said he wouldn’t have anything else to write this week and claimed Ray Lewis for himself.

I was left with the “Campbell’s Chunky Souper Showdown” news conference.

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I’M WORKING FOR the Los Angeles Times, one of the most respected newspapers in the country, and I’m surrounded by freeloaders waiting for the Chunky people to start dishing out the sirloin burger, and I notice I’m the only guy in the room taking notes as Joe Theismann, the master of ceremonies, reminds everyone that the super in “Souper Showdown” has been misspelled intentionally because this event is all about soup.

Because everyone else has been more interested in the more traditional NFL stories of crime and wanton behavior, I believe I’m the only reporter in North America to have covered the last four Chunky soup news conferences at the Super Bowl, which I’m sure will impress my grandchildren some day. Twenty-one more and I hope to pass on to them the golden ladle.

At this year’s stirring event, two soup-filled chariots are to be steered by Terrell Davis and Kurt Warner and pushed by four other no-name NFL players in a race to determine--I guess--who will get the crackers.

Anyway, the race starts, and Warner’s chariot gets a shove and Warner starts steering wildly toward the 25 cute little grammar-school kids who have been assembled and coerced into chanting, “Chunky! Chunky!” and I’m thinking to myself, “Plaschke will just die if Warner, the goody-two-shoes of all goody-two-shoes, plows over the cute little kids with the soupmobile and I get to write the greatest Super Bowl story ever told.”

But alas, there isn’t even a call for an ambulance.

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BY THE TIME Plaschke, Norwood, Bob Oates and Mike Penner ran down the list of people they planned to write stories on this week, I was left with some guy named Hale, who plays for the Giants. And I had to stand in line on media day to talk with him.

“What was the name of the Ravens’ first coach?” WTEM’s Steve Czabon asked my man Hale.

“Marv Levy,” he replied, and so what if the correct answer is Ted Marchibroda, my man Hale tried his best.

Now if I knew Switzerland talk, I could probably tell you what Rick Adrian from Der Bund asked Hale, but he didn’t seem to understand either, so that was a pretty short conversation.

Someone wanted to know what my man Hale’s favorite cereal might be--stealing my first question. Honey Nut Cheerios.

I could only catch bits and pieces of it, but he told someone else that his hometown newspaper, “the Benton County Daily Record” lacked the budget to send anyone to interview him, but he had made arrangements for the paper to take his calls nightly, with the idea that the newspaper would run his Super Bowl diary.

“First night I called, no one answered,” he said.

After listening to him for a while, I got the idea this guy was not a likely lineup suspect for armed assault or kidnapping--like anybody at the Super Bowl then is going to care about his story. Just my luck, I got somebody normal.

But an assignment is an assignment, and so I talked to my man Hale, having to admit, “I’m sorry, but until today I had never heard of you.”

“Funny thing,” he said. “I’ve never heard of you, either.”

Well, of course he hadn’t heard of me, because all the best stories at the Super Bowl are written by Plaschke, Norwood and our hockey writer, which leaves me writing about things that don’t make it to Page 1.

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I NEVER DID catch my man Hale’s first name, although he did tell me he played in every game for the Giants this year. Good for him and news to me. And I think I did hear him tell someone he’s a defensive lineman.

“You know, I’ve got a brother who lives in Mission Viejo,” he said. “He’s a law student.”

Too bad. If only he was a convicted felon--it’d make a great Super Bowl story.

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HERE’S A HINT on who will win the Super Bowl: The team arriving in the host city Sunday, a week before the Super Bowl, in every case where it applies, has defeated the team that waits a day and arrives Monday.

The Giants arrived Sunday, the Ravens on Monday.

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ODDSMAKERS, WHO HAVE watched Trent Dilfer play, have put the over-and-under for the combined score of both teams at 33.

In each of the last 25 Super Bowls, however, both teams have combined to average 50.5 points--with no game in that time falling below the 36-point mark.

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TODAY’S LAST WORD comes in an e-mail from Dave:

“My wife wants me to see a psychiatrist because I understand and agree with your columns.”

Would you like me to write a column and trash her?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at his e-mail address: t.j.simers@latimes.com.