LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Well, that escalated quickly.

Just the other day, I circled the Indiana University School of Music building in Bloomington, generating the resolve to walk inside and interview the person in charge of instrument rentals for my first bylined story at the Indiana Daily Student (IDS). It was February or March, 1974.

Now, more than a half-century later, I'm logging off at WDRB.

I came in lugging a portable typewriter, blank paper and a bottle of Wite-Out. I'll exit pushing a button on a laptop enabling people to read and respond to my work within seconds around the globe.

From deadlines, space restrictions and the old-fashioned, shoes-on-the-ground delivery system to a multi-platform, instant-overreaction media world without time or space constraints.

It's time.

IMAGES | Scenes from Rick Bozich's Hall of Fame career

Time to tap the brakes. Time to play in a slower lane. Time to invest more attention to family (and spring training). Time to shrug at the next outrageous thing on Twitter without interrupting dinner to make 17 phone calls.

It's been a marvelous run. I wouldn't change much, not even the dead fish an Indiana fan once left in my mailbox.

Hey, personalized notes from author Gay Talese and singer Michael Bolton, Sunday mornings with Bob Ryan, Mike Lupica and John Saunders on The Sports Reporters and an appearance on Mike Krzyzewski's radio show smell better than any crummy fish.

My career lifted off at the IDS, covering Lee Corso for football and Bob Knight for basketball. There is not a 500-level course at any university that could teach you more about dealing with sources.

One was accommodating. The other was not. After you've been cursed at by Knight, a lecture from another coach lands like a Robert Frost love poem.

Then it was on to 18 months at the Anderson (Indiana) Bulletin, 18 months back in Bloomington (including a year as the city hall reporter) and finally my arrival in Louisville as a sports copy editor at The Courier-Journal in July 1978.

Phil Coffin, a friend of 51 years, got me in the door in Bloomington and Louisville before he departed for the New York Times. When the Los Angeles Times asked for my clips early in my C-J career, Phil went to a T-shirt shop and made me a shirt that said, "LA Times Staff Writer."

I didn't get the job. But I loved the shirt — and would have traveled a far different road without Phil.

I wrote stories on my off days, simply to get my byline in the paper — and convinced somebody to let me cover high school sports for the Louisville Times in 1979. One year of that. One season of covering the University of Kentucky for the Times.

In the summer of 1981, two critical transactions hit the agate type of my career. Dick Fenlon, a marvelous columnist, gave up that job at the Times for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, his hometown paper. They summoned me from the bullpen.

You can credit (or blame) the next 47 years on Fenlon. Sometimes, a kid needs a break.

'Heaven'

Within the first six months, I covered the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Cleveland. Pete Rose led off. Fernando Valenzuela pitched. Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Reggie Jackson and Dave Parker hit. Roger Angell was in the press box. Heaven.

In October, the inimitable Pee Wee Reese saw the overwhelmed look on my face at baggage claim. He and Rex Bradley of Hillerich & Bradsby gave me a ride from LAX to downtown Los Angeles, sharing stories about Yankees-Dodgers' World Series past and present. I wrote a column about Rich "Goose" Gossage, a former White Sox reliever then working for the Yankees. It landed in Best American Sports Stories. Heaven. Again.

In December, I was part of a small media contingent that watched Muhammad Ali lose his final professional bout to Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas. The fight was delayed by two hours because Berbick wasn't certain he would be paid. A cowbell signaled the start and stop of every round at an abandoned air strip. It wasn't the greatest sendoff for The Greatest but it was heaven for a young columnist.

Rose, Reese, Ali ... and it only got better from there.

The Louisville Redbirds bringing professional baseball back to town and becoming the first minor-league team to draw more than 1,000,000 fans ... the one and only original Dream Game in Knoxville, Tennessee ... Mary T. Meagher winning three Olympic gold medals in Los Angeles ... Howard Schnellenberger breathing relentless ambition into University of Louisville football ...

... Sunday Silence vs. Easy Goer ... holding my breath as I feared the upper deck would collapse into the lower deck at Candlestick Park during the 1989 San Francisco World Series earthquake ... Louisville smacking Alabama in the Fiesta Bowl ... the Laettner Shot ... Joe Carter's walk-off home run that landed 25 feet from my seat in the SkyDome in the World Series.

That just got me to 1993. Better stop there or we'll be here all night.

I'm not forgetting basketball. I didn't have the best seat in town. I had the best seat in America. What a blessing to work in a market that loved college hoops as much as I do.

There is no greater return for a writer than to have readers who care enough to read with regularity and then react, even in disagreement. Thanks to everybody who came along for the ride.

Friends in larger markets asked if the menu got stale in Louisville during the gap between the Kentucky Derby and start of college football.

No. In Louisville, you could write about college basketball 52 weeks a year. Readers would ask for more.

For somebody who grew up falling in love with the college game and players like Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Wes Unseld, Pete Maravich, Austin Carr, Dan Issel and the 1966 NCAA champion Texas Western squad that featured two players from my hometown of Gary, Indiana, it was the perfect fit.

I stayed, despite several offers to leave, including one columnist job I filled for two chilly days over the 1986 Halloween weekend in Minneapolis.

Thanks again to the anonymous reader who mailed me two packs of long underwear with a note that said if the cold weather is what kept me in Louisville, I was free to depart. Well played.

Everybody has an occasional Err Ball. I quickly got it right — and in the end I was court-side for three (1980, 1986, 2013) men's basketball NCAA titles at U of L, three (1996, 1998, 2012) at Kentucky and Knight's final two at Indiana (1981 and 1987).

It's been awhile, but I expect all three programs to crank things back to the dominant way it used to be ASAP. I'll be watching. Trust me.

Bob Knight, Denny Crum, Joe B. Hall, Eddie Sutton, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, Scott Davenport ... how lucky was I?

Thank yous are necessary but tricky. I worry about overlooking somebody who gave me an encouraging word, returned a call, indulged a locker room interview, provided a job or saved me from getting pummeled in the Louisville football locker room. (That's you, Anthony Cummings and Mark Sander. Eternal gratitude.)

Apologies in advance for folks I don't mention, but special thanks to Harry Bryan, Pat Forde, Jody Demling, Jennie Rees, Russ Brown and others at The Courier-Journal.

13 years at WDRB

Bill Lamb and Barry Fulmer created a terrific path for Eric Crawford and me in June 2012. They had this wild idea to hire both local sports columnists and give them a platform on the WDRB website as well as on television.

As Seinfeld buffs, EC and I kept our pursuit of the jobs secret by asking each other if there was any news from "Vandelay Industries?"

Some media people, including a few in this town, said it wouldn't last a day longer than the original three-year commitment. We hit the 13-year milestone in June. Vandelay Industries worked.

Thank you seems inadequate for the gratitude I have to Lamb, the brilliant station manager, and news director Barry Fulmer, owner Allan Block and former news director Jennifer Keeney for their persistent support and encouragement. You re-energized my career. I hope I gave you what you were looking for.

Thank you IS clearly inadequate for my appreciation of Eric. I remember a day early in our time at WDRB when we were spotted together in a grocery store by a WDRB viewer.

She had just watched us discussing a topic on television. Now here we were, buying goodies at the grocery.

"Are you two always together?" she asked.

Pretty much.

That's why EC nailed it the other day when he wrote that if you ever had the sneaking feeling you were annoying me, you probably were. It's a Serbian thing.

Especially if you swiped my licorice or hogged a parking pass.

Eric is not my co-columnist or friend. He's my brother, as selfless and supportive as anybody I've known. Keep watching and reading him at WDRB and WDRB.com. He's a multi-platform wizard, writing, reporting, taking pictures and posting videos. Eric will gain an extra hour of free time every day not having to solve my tech and internet issues.

Everybody at WDRB has been terrific, from the web team to the advertising staff to the newsroom to the weather team. Example: Marc Weinberg called me in Mississippi after a Kentucky basketball game one night, advising Steve Andress and me to wait an hour before driving back to Memphis because of an approaching storm.

That's the WDRB way.

Being married into the media can be a thankless task. The hours cut into most weekends, birthday plans (hers in 2017) get blown up by NCAA investigations. People often disagree with what your husband writes or says. My wife, Rhonda, has been steadfast in her support, understanding and loving, while serving as an occasional copy editor and story ideas person.

My son, Alex, and daughter, Maggie, dealt with similar challenges as the children of a sports columnist. Part of the job description is dad misses baseball tournaments, show choir performances and college graduations because of events like, say, the Kentucky Derby. Sorry, Marge.

Their experiences rubbed off in strange ways. Maggie earned a degree in journalism but transitioned into a wonderful career in sales while Alex majored in political science but built successful websites about professional wrestling as well as IU basketball.

My sister, Janice, and her husband, Dave, were available when I needed assistance more times than I can count. My step-children, Julia and Jess Pritchett and Dillon Bailey, enhanced the ride.

But the biggest thanks are reserved for my parents. My dad, Alex, worked a dangerous and exhausting job at Inland Steel in East Chicago. He fueled my interest in sports as well as in writing by bringing multiple newspapers home from work every day. After west coast baseball games, he left me notes on the kitchen table about whether the White Sox won or lost and which guy made the winning play.

My mother, Sonia, instilled the work ethic and commitment to education. She saw the toll the intense summer heat and harsh winter chill at the steel mill extracted from her husband and nudged me away from more than summer jobs at the No. 3 open hearth.

Without them, there would be no encounters with Pete Rose, Pee Wee Reese and Muhammad Ali.

Sorry to run on for 1,800 words, but 50 years takes up a lot of time and space.

What's next?

I'm not certain. I haven't turned off my laptop yet. Some retirees advise me to stay busy. Other insist I should sit back, relax and watch more (bad White Sox) baseball. Make up your mind, people.

For now, a pair of concerts are booked. An anniversary trip to the North Carolina mountains. A White Sox-Phillies game with one grandson at the end of July. Serb Fest on the first Saturday in September in Indianapolis. A spring training trip to Arizona, for sure. For me, the one-week gap between the end of the World Series and the start of college basketball is the gloomiest week of the year. Sorry, Roger Goodell. It's the truth.

Will I continue to write?

Maybe, but certainly at a slower pace. Several website folks have already inquired. Others suggested launching a column at Substack.

I haven't decided. When I do, I'll use those nasty legacy media killers like Twitter and Facebook to let everybody know. Stay tuned. How is that for a tease?

Until then, thanks for taking this amazing ride with me. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

-30-

Hey, everybody in the business dreams of typing that.

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