A farewell to late nights, early flights and deadlines.

Byline: Bob Rodman The Register-Guard

A lot can happen in 42 years. A lot did. But there comes a time to pull the proverbial plug.

That time is now.

After 30 years with The Register-Guard as a sportswriter and 12 years of working in news and sports with other newspapers before that, today's the day to turn off the voice recorder, put down the pen and paper, and stop asking questions.

Today's the day to retire.

Nothing, really, is easy. Striking a match on a wet bar of soap, slicing bread with a boat oar, having your heart drop like an egg from a tall chicken ... or leaving a place with which you have been affiliated for nearly three-fourths of your working life.

It does not seem like it all began yesterday ... because it did not. Since the turbulent 1960s, it has been an ongoing process of recording wins, losses, hits and misses, the almosts, the cheers, the tears, the heart and the heartache as well as the late nights and early flights, the deadlines (in the office), the long lines (at the airports) and the age lines (on the face).

It is not the thousands of games, their venues and their outcomes that stick to the memory wall but those who played those games, how they played them and why, and what they thought about the whole thing.

The high school distance runner who constantly was last in his races and when asked why he continued to compete, replied simply that "to finish is the important thing, to finish what you start. Isn't that what life is all about?"

The college football quarterback at Oregon State, Alvin White, who proudly stated he could "throw a ball 50 yards while on my back" and was promptly skewered by his coach: "If you're on your back, it doesn't matter one darn bit how far you throw it."

The black West Point cadet, playing basketball in the early 1970s in the Far West Classic in Portland, who openly admitted that he had considered suicide because of the ordeal of his adaptation to the academy.

The community college baseball player who was sure he had the world in the palm of his hand after signing in the early 1970s with a major-league team for $6,000. A year later, released, he had only his experience and the car he bought with the money to show for it.

The coach, Jody Runge, who took few prisoners and very little guff as she planted an Oregon women's basketball program on the national map by wielding ample supplies of aggression and know-how, with a copy of Title IX clenched in her fist.

The football player who got his big splash in the newspaper with story and photo ... and quit the team the same day his "pub" hit the streets.

The young athlete, flat on his back in a hospital with his head immobilized by a halo-like apparatus after sustaining a neck injury. And the only thing he could talk about was "getting back out there to play."

The tear-drenched happiness expressed by the never-give-up Oregon State football fans in 1999 after the Beavers recorded a winning season for the first time since 1970.

The sadness of a young woman named Jenny Mowe, who was proclaimed from the get-go to be the Oregon women's basketball program franchise but who, despite being adored by Duck fans, could never quite live up to that billing and paid dearly for it in agonizing frustration.

The glee and glow of former UO women's basketball player Brandi Davis as she graduated from college, the first in her family to do so.

The late rebel athletic director named Jack Scott who rocked the college world with his innovations at Oberlin, tweaked the interest of the FBI, was linked to the fugitive Patty Hearst and consorted with Bill Walton during the athlete's nonconformist days with the Portland Trail Blazers.

The colleagues, the coaches, the kids. Too many to list but never too many to remember.

How could one not be affected by these people and so many others? People such as the late OSU coaches, Dee Andros (football) and Ralph Miller (basketball).

Andros, the lovable, rotund guy with the growling voice, might deliver a drop or two of his chew on your white buck shoes during an interview but never skipped a beat.

Miller, despite the gruff exterior, was far kinder than most people ever knew, a highly successful teacher of his sport, but he never failed to let a reporter know that he had just blurted out "the dumbest question ever asked." And then answered it.

People like OSU football coach Mike Riley and Sacramento State women's basketball coach Dan Muscatell - two guys very good at what they do, and even better as human beings.

People like Dennis Erickson, who seemed to always have his bag packed after football coaching stops at Idaho, Wyoming, Washington State, Miami, the NFL's Seattle Seahawks, Oregon State, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, Idaho again and now Arizona State but who has a winning percentage of nearly .700 as a college coach and owns two national championship rings.

People like the legendary distance runner Steve Prefontaine, who made himself a tad more legendary in some circles after a verbal showdown - the topic long since forgotten - with then-OSU track coach Berny Wagner on the Beavers' long-gone track, now the site of a Corvallis hotel.

Even people like Hal Cowan, whose reputation as a rough-edged sports information director, first at Oregon and then Oregon State, was deserved but did not diminish the depth of a friendship.

And the sights. Zillions of them.

Like the 300-foot javelin throw at Hayward Field by the late Bob Roggy. An Oregon State football team pounding mighty Notre Dame into submission at the 2000 season's Fiesta Bowl. Sergey Bubka pole vaulting 19 feet, 6 1/4 inches into the atmosphere over Hayward Field at a Prefontaine Classic.

Like the UO women's hoop team rallying from a 22-point second-half deficit, a school record, to overtake No. 20 Arizona at Tucson en route to the 1999-2000 Pac-10 Conference championship.

Like that sun-baked day at the Pre Classic when the king, Hicham El Guerrouj, and the kid, Alan Webb, made history in the mile run.

And the bizarre. Lots and lots of bizarre.

Seventeen weather-battered hours to fly from El Paso, Texas, to Eugene after last year's Sun Bowl. Trapped in Cal's Memorial Stadium late at night with several other reporters and no key to the gate.

Cornered in Sweet Home, of all places, by an irate parent who was threatening an extreme amount of bodily harm to a rookie reporter for writing something the guy did not want to read.

Being lost on a drive from the Denver Airport to Boulder and realizing it when a sign barely visible at dusk noted that Buffalo Bill's grave - not Boulder and the University of Colorado - was just ahead.

Driving in Iowa's 10-degree March weather, after midnight, with the interior overhead light on because one of the car's doors was frozen open. Greeted in Hawaii with a rental car, one sans brakes.

Sitting courtside at a basketball game one moment and staring at the arena ceiling the next after a player failed to successfully dodge the media table in pursuit of a loose ball. Twice it happened, blood was drawn only once.

Spending a night in a mostly vacant Nashville, Tenn., airport, reclining on a bench when one more night in a hotel room failed, in the sports editor's budget, to economically mesh with an early morning flight.

Being aboard a plane attempting a night landing at Pullman, Wash., and being informed that car headlights would supply the pilot with a view of the runway and bales of hay would help stop the aircraft ... and believing it all.

Seeing the Ducks in the Rose Bowl, seeing the Beavers in any bowl, seeing women's college athletics - once sure it would never get into big money, recruiting and scandals like the men - make the leap into big money, recruiting and scandals, like the men.

Seeing journalism jump from Linotypes to laptops, beats turn into blogs, low-key media turn into high tech competitors. Seeing the good, the bad, and, yes, sometimes the ugly.

And loving nearly every dang moment of it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Bob Rodman, 64, is retiring after 42 years in journalism, including the last 30 with The Register-Guard. A 1965 University of Oregon graduate, he also worked at the Albany Democrat-Herald and Napa (Calif.) Register.