As some of you may know, if you were listening to the MSP this morning, I have been officially informed that I will be inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame Tuesday, Sept. 28.

I don’t really even know where to start in thanking everyone who has helped me along the way. I’m the luckiest guy I know — my job(s) have afforded me the opportunity to go so many places I didn’t think I’d ever go. And now I’m headed into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, where only three sports writers reside. All three of those giants, George Pasero, Don McLeod and L.H. Gregory have passed away and I am humbled to be in their company.

I also believe so many other great ones — Leo Davis and Ken Wheeler, to name just two — should be in the Hall and aren’t.

But I wanted to make a point in this space to thank just a few of the many people who have helped me, with apologies in advance to those I’ve missed.

For me, it started in high school, where a journalism advisor, Jack Vogel, mistakenly put me on the school newspaper staff, then took the time to mentor me. My high school baseball coach, Jack Dunn, has been a lifelong friend and mentor, as has the great Roy Love, the baseball coach and athletic director at Portland State, whom I served under for three years in a coaching capacity. Both are already in the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and I’m so lucky to have been influenced by them.

At the old Oregon Journal, where I began my career, George Pasero was as patient as he could be with me after Bill Mulflur was kind enough to hire me. Ken Wheeler helped me get the job in the first place and to this day is a man who has forgotten more about Oregon sports than I’ve ever known. The Journal was a great place, where people such as John Dhulst, Carl Cluff, Brian Cour, Tom McAllister, Floyd Schneidermann, Dayton Turner and Dave Roberts took the time to mentor people like Kerry Eggers, Steve Brandon, Norm Maves and me. It was an amazing place to learn the business under the iron hand of Pasero, who was a newspaper genius.

Later at The Oregonian, Jeff Wohler took a chance on me and threw me on the Trail Blazer beat back in 1984 when he had no business believing I could handle it. Somehow, I managed — thanks to so much help from guys like Jack Ramsay and Stu Inman. Later Terry Frei helped me get the column there and I couldn’t have been more fortunate to have such a willing tutor in doing that job. There, first Bill Hilliard and then Peter Bhatia had my back when I got a little off the track at times.

At the Portland Tribune, Dr. Robert Pamplin treated me with great respect and was generous in so many ways. Steve Clark was always there for me and taught me so much about the newspaper business. And in the sports department, Steve Brandon and Kerry Eggers were not only great friends but standards for hard work that is incredible.

At KPAM, there were Kevin Young and Bill Gallagher and Bill Cooper and Pat Boyle and so many others willing to share the solutions to so many of the mysteries of radio with me.

Now, at 95.5 The Game, Antonio Harvey and I are working with Chad Doing — who is the hardest-working man in show business (really) and an extremely talented young man who carries the show by himself a lot of days. Brian Jennings provides us all the tools we need to be a dominant force in the market in the mornings. This job, I think, is the most fun one I’ve ever had.

Man, am I lucky.

And I haven’t even mentioned my personal life. I have had two best friends since high school. We’re not as close as we used to be but I know if I need them, they’ll be there for me. Tom Trebelhorn and Mike Clopton have been friends for decades and each has established a standard of excellence in his life that I cannot hope to match. But I like to try.

Will and Elizabeth are the best children a man could ever ask for and I’m so proud of them. They have put up with so much over the years because of the demands of my jobs and I hope, on balance, I’ve made them more proud of me than embarrassed by me.

Lastly, my wife Kim is an inspiration. I will try for the rest of my life to be as good a person as she is and probably never make it. Generous, kind, smart, successful, beautiful. Yeah, I know — I’ve outkicked my coverage, gotten out over my skis — whatever way you want to describe it, I have already heard it. She’s perfect for me and we are perfect together.

But, hey, like I said. I’m the luckiest guy I know. And thanks for reading — not only today but for the last three decades or so.

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Yeah, that’s right — meat.

If you’re a steak lover, and I bet you are, you really have to get down to The Ringside, which has temporarily relocated to the Fox Tower, while the old location on Burnside is being remodeled.

Man, Craig Peterson and his family have owned the place for decades and it’s Portland, through and through. The service is extraordinary — professional people who have spent their lives learning how to take care of customers, a throwback to the old days when people went to restaurants as much for the service as the food.

The onion rings are a trademark and I have to tell you, even if you don’t like onion rings, try them. You will become addicted in a short time.

And the steaks are unrivaled anywhere. The best. I’m not getting anything for saying this, consider it a restaurant review. I just can’t help myself. I’ve been a customer for years and I think it’s a unique experience that you need to visit — or revisit — if you can.

And I write this now only because I want to make sure everyone knows about the new — very interesting — location in the Fox Tower. You really ought to get there soon.

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It’s certainly the last time Oregon and Oregon State will meet in baseball in the Portland area for quite a while. As you know, PGE Park becomes a soccer/football-only venue after this summer and it’s not likely either school would give up a home game to come to Portland to play in a venue that doesn’t seat way more people than their own ballparks.

And I don’t see any ballpark plans on the horizon anytime soon for this city. Baseball was the last Civil War sport being played outside Eugene or Corvallis and is a major attraction here. It should be even bigger this time with the Ducks seemingly already having nailed down an NCAA tournament berth and the Beavers still having a shot at one.

My big regret for tonight is that the weather is probably going to be a pain. It will certainly hold the attendance down a little, along with the game being telecast locally on Comcast Sportsnet. If you can’t make it to the ballpark, catch Joe Giansante and me on the broadcast at 6:30.

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We’re working on this thing, but it’s slow going. Rebuilding some things that were lost due to a bit of a security crack that affected many WordPress blogs. Sorry that we couldn’t take comments yesterday but that function seems to be operating on some basis now. I hope.

Your continued support of this blog is most appreciated.

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The site was down a bit over the weekend and would still be in that state if not for the efforts of Butterbean, who is, as usual, The Man. Thanks for finding your way back here. (And yes, we realize the RSS feeds are not working — we’re working on it.)

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The story has been out there for a while but today it was official: Morning Sports Page Co-host Gavin Dawson is leaving us at 95.5 The Game after today for a new opportunity. It’s a big station in a big market and he’s going to be doing afternoon drive — which means, best of all, the guy actually gets to live a normal life. Or at least as normal as Gavin can live it.

We wish him the best of luck and we’ll be carrying on in the mornings from 6-9 with Chad “The Body” Doing. We’re very excited about the show moving forward.

And one last thing, Gavin — thanks for the nickname. I’m going to stick with that “Godfather” thing for a while. It seems to have caught on.

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I plan to open the comments up again later today have opened the comments… and I must say it’s been a nice reprieve.

The reaction has been interesting, too. I would say 80 percent of the e-mails I’ve received about closing the comments were favorable to my decision.  A whole lot of people thought it was time for a break and that a lot of the comments were getting out of hand. I apologize for having to make the move, because I like comments. But I just didn’t feel I had the time to police them as well as I should have.

I’m still not sure I do, in fact. But we’re going to give it another shot.

The other 20 percent were rather varied. A few people figure that it’s their God-given right to be able to comment on anything and everything written on the web. And it drove them crazy when they couldn’t leave comments.

Some people thought I shut down the comments because they were growing increasingly critical of me. That’s not true, by the way. I’m accustomed to the criticism and if you’ve ever heard “Dwight’s Greatest Hits” — a compilation of voicemails saved from my days of writing columns at The Oregonian — on 95.5 The Game you’ll know what I mean.

No, what bothered me most was commenter-on-commenter crime. The way people treated each other. I hate to be the venue hosting such hostility. It got nasty and sometimes way too personal.

And another thing that got to me was just how many comments certain people were leaving. Seriously now, if you find yourself leaving 10 or 15 comments on one blog post, you really ought to think about something else to do with your life that might be more productive.

So we’ll start allowing the comments again with a few words of caution:

– Please be nice to each other, even if you can’t be nice to me.

– Understand this blog is free and thus try to treat everyone here with the same respect you’d have for someone opening their home or heart to you.

– Try to limit the number of comments you make on each blog to two or three. Is that too much to ask? If you find yourself being drawn into an argument with another commenter, take a step back from the keyboard, take a deep breath and go link to another fine blog in my blogroll. Take your mind off this for a while.

– Please don’t troll here. If someone calls you a troll, by the way, there’s at least a 50 percent chance you are one — so give it some thought. Let’s try not to intentionally get under each other’s skin, OK? People get emotional about their teams and their beliefs and it’s hard enough not to arouse deep feelings without just intentionally setting out to do so in the first place.

– Debate is great. That’s why there are comment sections. Feel free to call me or anyone else out. But try to do so in a factual way without being personal. It’s really about the argument, not the argumentors, right?

Thanks for reading my blog. You pay me back by listening to me on the radio on 95.5 The Game from 6-9 a.m., on the Morning Sports Page with Gavin Dawson and Chad Doing — it is far and away the top-rated morning sports show in the market. Or by watching “Talkin’ Ball” 30 minutes after every Blazer game shown on Comcast Sportsnet Northwest. It’s a fun show.

Or you can really do me (and yourselves) a favor by wandering into a great men’s clothing store on Northwest 16th and Glisan called “Este’s” — it’s a first-class, old-time Portland place where the service and quality are almost as outstanding as the price. Those guys even manage to make me look pretty respectable, so you can only imagine what they could do for you. And it may be the only joint in town where if you tell them I sent you, you won’t be thrown out.

Again, thanks for coming here. I really enjoy doing this and have met so many very nice people here. Thanks, too, to my pal “Bean” — Chris Snethen – for all the tech support. You ought to check out his great blog right here.

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I can’t think of a blog that hasn’t done this at some point or another. I often wondered why but now I don’t.

We’re going to shut down the comments for a while. And there are several reasons. First off, there are getting to be so many of them that moderating them has become a nightmare. I just don’t have the time for it. That’s the No. 1 reason.

But also, they’ve become a place for silly or sometimes nasty arguments to take place. I hate being the venue for such things. And after a while, I think we all may just need a break.

So, sorry about this, you’re going to have to do without them for a while. If you have a problem with me, drop me an email. The address is right on this page.

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If you don’t get enough of me already, between the MSP from 6-9 a.m., Monday through Friday, on 95.5 The Game and Talkin’ Ball on Comcast Sportsnet, you can also catch me on a podcast this week right here.

I’m with Casey Holdahl, who creates all the great contact on the Trail Blazer website, and the legendary Dave from Blazersedge.com. We had a lot of fun and I think you will enjoy it.

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I really appreciate everyone’s patience with me. I wish I could blog a little more often, but it’s the holiday season and I’m kind of busy — so the thing I don’t get paid for is the first one to be put on hold.

As always, I appreciate your understanding. And at the same time,I would like to wish everyone the happiest of new years.

And in a related event, I’ll be spending New Year’s Day in Pasadena, as a part of the Comcast Sportsnet crew — getting ready for two-hour shows Thursday and Friday. And I’ll be joining the MSP boys Thursday morning from there, too. More on all that later.

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