She said she wanted to talk to me on the first week of her new show after reading my farewell column, in which I’d talked about how these are exciting times, what with this whole new paradigm in journalism thing going on. She said she’d become a fan of the column in the previous few months because of my interest in some of the social issues that surround the games. “Under_Score” seems to view the sports world through a similar lens.

Meehan was exceedingly kind in her introduction of me — so kind that I joked that I felt like I was attending my own funeral. I wish I could say I lived up to my billing over the next 15 minutes or so, but I don’t think I did. Whenever I get done talking on the radio I always find myself hoping Hemingway’s iceberg theory had kicked in. I had all kinds of interesting thoughts going on there, and you should have somehow understood them by hearing the tip of the iceberg, the few dumb things I actually said.

Here’s a link to an MP3 of the interview, and here’s one to it on iTunes. And here’s the “Under_Score” page on the Hardcore Sports Web site. Check out the show. It sounds pretty good.

I’ve been reading Ringolsby since the ’80s, when he worked at the Dallas Morning News and his Sunday notes columns were syndicated. We talked about the future of journalism, a pretty hot topic in my circles lately as the newspaper industry comes crashing down.

My obsession with this subject — my attempts to educate myself about the current thinking, my own efforts to think it through — is the main reason why I haven’t been writing much for Salon lately. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, nor is there enough brain capacity, to think clearly about such disparate subjects and be able to spit out sports commentary I’d stand behind.

I’ll be writing about the Tournament over the next few weeks, I’ll have a Q&A with Allen Barra about his Yogi Berra book and I figure I’ll do the usual baseball season preview nonsense. Maybe by next month my obsession will have passed and I’ll pick up the column pace again.