Jim Moore: Hello, readers — I’ll share my sports thoughts here, and I hope you enjoy them

I used to sit in my Redmond bedroom and keep score of Sonics’ games during their first season in 1967-68. I’d think about wanting to be a sportswriter someday and how much fun I’d have traveling around and covering games. And hopefully I’d be able to do it in my hometown.

I feel so darn fortunate that it all happened. I worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 26 years as a sportswriter and columnist and spent the last 10 years in bonus time as a sports radio host at 710 ESPN Seattle.

Now I look back and think, wow, so many of those things are gone — my childhood home, the Sonics, the P-I, my radio job. But here’s what hasn’t changed: I still love to write, and the News Tribune is helping keep my passion alive by asking me to write two columns a month.

You might wonder what took The News Tribune so long to hire me or you might wonder why they hired me at all. Over the course of my career I’ve had a tendency to irritate people, and it’s not premeditated at all. Do I hope people will read my columns? Of course. But do I try to go out of my way to generate clicks and page views? I hope not.

I can promise you this: I’m just going to be who I am, not anyone I’m not. When I was at the Post-Intelligencer, my main goal was to write columns you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Just as a “for instance,” when I covered The Masters in Augusta one year, I wrote a column about Tiger Woods’ dogs. I’ll never forget how nervous I was when Tiger met with the media before the tournament began. The media room was packed with reporters who had so many questions about Tiger’s golf game. But I planned to ask him about his dogs, and when it was my turn, I did.

Tiger seemed to appreciate the break from golf questions. I can still see him smiling when he talked about his dogs. I wrote that column knowing that no one else would be writing about Tiger’s dogs, and if someone wanted to read a column about Tiger’s golf game, he could go to any site anywhere for that.

I love dogs and will frequently ask athletes about theirs. I have two myself, a golden retriever and black lab, and used to host a podcast called “Bark,” where I talked about dogs. I like to write about athletes’ personal lives. I mean, we know who so and so is as a football or baseball player, but who is he when he’s not in his uniform?

If I’m a reader, I’d like to know something I didn’t know about the athletes I’m watching on my flat screen. Another “for instance”: when I worked at 710 ESPN Seattle, we interviewed Mariners pitcher James Paxton and come to find out he plays cribbage. So do I. I’ve been playing since I was a kid. If I’d still had a sportswriting job, I would have written a column about Paxton and his love for cribbage, how it started and what he enjoys about it so much.

Maybe that’s a bad example or maybe that’s something you could relate to because you play cribbage, too. Whatever the case, it’s a different angle on an athlete, the kind that I’m going to try to take most every time.

I try to ask questions that I’d like answers to if I’m a fan. When I was at the radio station, it was oftentimes difficult to do that with partnerships we had with the Seahawks and Mariners. The sportswriter in me always wrestled with that. I didn’t want to hear softball questions, but I knew I couldn’t fire high and hard fastballs either.

Yet I blew that from time to time, forgetting about those partnerships. A few years ago when the Mariners were gawd-awful defensively at the beginning of the season, I asked general manager Jerry Dipoto about his team’s poor play in the field. I made the mistake of saying: “Jerry, my kids’ 15-year-old baseball team plays better defense than yours.”

Not surprisingly, that led to an awkward silence and a half-baked answer from Dipoto when he collected himself and no doubt had to restrain himself from reaching through his phone to strangle me.

Before now, if you knew me for anything, it was probably the Richard Sherman incident, the time when the former Seahawks’ cornerback questioned play-calling during a Thursday night game against the Rams. Pete Carroll had told reporters that Sherman had basically seen the error of his ways and was finally contrite about it.

But when reporters met with Sherman, he still seemed defiant and unapologetic. So I asked him about that, and it led to him threatening to ruin my career by having my media credential taken away. I didn’t think it was any big deal because I’ve had confrontations with athletes before, but because of social media, it somehow turned into a big story.

As I pointed out to several radio shows I talked to that night and the next day, I laughed it off for the most part, knowing that I was perfectly capable of ruining my own career and didn’t need Sherman’s help, plus I was 59 at the time, I didn’t have much of a career left to ruin, so it was all good by me.

The only thing I wish I’d done differently ... when Sherman said he was going to have my media credential taken away, I should have ripped if off my neck and given it to him and said: “Here, take it, then I won’t have to interview jerks like you anymore!”

My main goal with writing columns is to not bore you. If you’re going to take the time to read anything I write, I hope you find it interesting or entertaining or thought-provoking or even annoying, just not boring. Why waste your time if you’re gonna be bored?

I’ve told sports editor Sean Robinson that I greatly appreciate this opportunity, and I look at it as a two-way street. I’ve always felt that if I’m going to give opinions in columns and on the airwaves, you should get your shot, too. You can reach me at jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com or on Twitter @cougsgo. I’ve never blocked or muted anyone on social media, even the guy who routinely tells me how much I suck because I’m a Coug.

Yeah, that’s right, besides being a husband and dad and dog lover, I’m a proud Washington State alum. I will say “Go Cougs” to anyone I see wearing clothes with a WSU logo, and heck, I’ll sometimes just blurt out a “Go Cougs” to myself when I’m hiking on a rugged trail with my dogs. I flat-out love my school and used to write Husky-trashing columns at the P-I that were well-received or poorly received depending on your point of view.

I know I’m following two former News Tribune sports columnists that I respect and admire: Dave Boling and John McGrath, both of whom are terrific writers and fun guys to hang out with. I will strive to do the kind of work they did for The News Tribune.