Neil Best farewell column: After 40-plus years of telling stories at Newsday, here's mine

What has it been like writing about sports for a living for the better part of a half-century?

It’s been good! Thank you for asking!

I interviewed the San Diego Chicken and the Phillie Phanatic, each with his head off.

I interviewed Nat Holman, born in 1896, and Matthew Schaefer, born in 2007.

I interviewed the Mount Rushmore of late-Baby Boomer New York-area sports icons — Walt Frazier, Rod Gilbert, Joe Namath and Tom Seaver.

I talked to Monty Hall about calling Rangers games on radio, to Ice Cube about the Raiders, to Will Ferrell about synchronized skating, to Adam Sandler about Mike Francesa, to Christian Bale about boxing, to Syosset’s Natalie Portman about soccer, to 50 Cent about his off-target first pitch at a Mets game, to Ray Romano about portraying a Newsday sportswriter who never seemed to work, to Jerry Seinfeld about WFAN and to Willie Mays about fishing.

Willie hated fishing.

I was invited into the homes of Malik Sealy, Michael Strahan, Jim Fassel, Tiki Barber, Kerry Collins, Jason Sehorn, Francesa and Phil Simms.

Plus, Keith Hernandez — for a sleepover!

Billie Jean King and Dick Vitale gave me hugs.

I called Bob Sheppard at home on Thanksgiving Day to ask him if he was retiring. He pointed out that he was 99 years old and indeed not coming back to work.

I covered a youth track meet in Barrow, Alaska, and high school basketball games in the Bronx, where I interviewed Orlando Antigua, a teenager playing with a bullet lodged near his left eye. He later became a Division I college coach.

I saw Dawn Staley play when she was in high school, Sue Bird when she was in college and Carol Blazejowski and Nancy Lieberman in some long-forgotten event in Queens.

I could go on telling boring stories of glory days. But you are busy and I am old.

I started reading Long Island’s newspaper in August 1972 and always will, but the part where I work here is near an end.

It’s OK! It was my decision! Time for someone else to have a turn.

Heck, Newsday’s sports media beat is as volatile as being a Steelers coach. Three people have done the job over 48 years — Stan Isaacs, Steve Zipay and me. Forty-eight years!

Anthony Rieber is up next. Read him early and often.

This sportswriter thing is a strange job.

You’re a writer, which usually is a lonely, self-centric pursuit, but not in this case.

You tell other people’s stories. You rely on colleagues to point you in the right direction and to clean up your mistakes. You hope strangers will care enough to read, and to write back.

There is nothing lonely about it.

And over more than half the history of Newsday, I could not have asked for a better group to work for and with, or for a more dedicated audience.

This part of the job also is strange: You’re an insider, but an outsider.

I thought about that whenever I walked down the tunnel to the home dugout at old Yankee Stadium, past the sign with the famous Joe DiMaggio line: “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee.”

It’s the sign Derek Jeter tapped before games and later took home as a souvenir. (I watched workers unscrew and remove it after the last Yankees game there.)

Yes, it was cool to follow Jeter down that path. Yes, I was wholly undeserving. But I always appreciated the privilege.

Many people make more money and have more predictable hours. Not many people can say they knew Wellington Mara and Lou Carnesecca and sat on the stage a few feet from Ray Charles at the opening ceremony of the 1993 Empire State Games.

Did I whine about deadlines and editing changes and uncooperative athletes and press-box food? Of course. But it usually was done among fellow scribes, which was half the fun.

Does any of this matter? No, but yes. Sports fans care, and for that reason, so do those of us who cover sports.

We try our best to inform, entertain and engage, to be fair and accurate, to not overthink things. It’s not a bad way to make a buck.

In 1981, I took a tour of the Newsday building in Melville and watched employees enter as I sat in the visitor waiting area, imagining what it would be like to work there.

All I wanted to be when I grew up was Joe Gergen, and eventually I was — albeit an inferior version of the original.

If there were one person I wish I could tell how everything turned out, it would be 15-year-old me. His only conceivable reaction would go something like this: “Cool!”

Anyway, that’s that.

Thanks for reading.