Chronicle sports columnist Gwen Knapp, who’s leaving the newspaper to go to work for Sports on Earth, a website to launch in seven weeks, starts her farewell column today this way: “When I told my erstwhile colleague Ray Ratto that I was leaving The Chronicle, he said I shouldn’t write a farewell column. So here it is:”
It was a 17-year ride for Knapp, during which time she’s distinguished herself while being one of the (relatively) few women in locker rooms covering all manner of sports. She concludes:
I've worked with wonderful people. They're a bunch of team players: the colleague who drove me home after I flushed my car keys down the toilet at the 49ers' headquarters, the editors who caught absurd mistakes, the writer who became an evangelical minister yet remained dear friends with this heathen.
Like swimming, the job has been full of lessons, some of which must be constantly re-examined. One has taken firm root, though: Whatever Ratto advises, do the opposite.
