MARYVALE, ARIZ. -- Drew Olson is one of the names you know, mostly because sports fans have been reading his Brewers beat in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for almost 10 years. He's a rare breed of journalist who never had to leave his hometown to write about what he loves for a major daily paper.

With more than 200 bylines each year, Olson is an integral part of the paper's most popular section. We caught up with Drew this March in Phoenix, where he was covering a Brewers Spring Training game. In this latest installment of Milwaukee Talks, Olsen tells us why every game story is different, what life is like on the road and how he blew out his knee onstage playing guitar with Kevin Brandt.

OMC: You've been covering the Brewers as long as I've been following the team. How long has it actually been?

DO: I started covering the Brewers in the fall of 1994.

OMC: Was that your first job out of college?

DO: I'm a perfect example of what they say you can't do. They said I'd never get a job at a big paper right out of school. It was by junior year at UWM. My sister was working in the credit department at the Journal, and she told me about an opening for a messenger. Basically, I passed out mail. I was pond scum. I did it for five months, but the messenger's table was right next to the sports department. My big break came when this guy I went to school with, an agate clerk, graduated and got a job in Rugby, North Dakota. When he left, they had an opening in sports.

After six months of opening mail and stealing albums, it was great. They hired me in sports. I was answering phones, taking scores, and that led to one day when the sports editor said, 'A reporter's car broke down and we need you to cover a game.'

So I wrote a game story, and they liked it. I wrote another one and another one, and then told me they didn't want me to answer the phones anymore. I said, 'OK, great.' They wanted me to be a part-time guy covering games. But they made me find someone to replace me.

I went to (OMC columnist and UWM professor) Gregg Hoffmann's sports writing class and asked (current Brewers Director of Media Relations) Jon Greenberg. He replaced me on the agate desk, and I've been there ever since. That was in '86, back in the salty, competitive days of two daily papers in Milwaukee.

I covered high school sports, then the Admirals, the Wave and just floated around. I did a Packers sidebar one day and a Bucks sidebar the next day. I had my hands in everything, and then I graduated and it was my turn to start looking for a job in Rugby, North Daktota. I told myself that I would give myself a year as a part-timer at the Journal. With three months left on my deadline, they created this Waukesha Journal, which was an attempt to put the Freeman out of business. They made me the sports editor, full-time. I was in charge of preps for Waukesha County. I did that for a year, and then I went back to the Admirals and covered the Mustangs for two games. Then Gary Howard came over as the sports editor, and he threw me into all sorts of situations to see how I would do. After a while, he made me the Brewers beat writer.

OMC: Is it tough to just cover baseball now?

DO: I guess I'm identified as a baseball guy, because I've done that longer than I've done anything else. I loved covering the Admirals and floating around. Baseball is such as long season that it doesn't lend itself to doing anything else.

OMC: If you could pick what you could write about, what would it be?

DO: Ideally, I'd be a columnist at the paper. When Mike Bauman left, I applied for his job, but I didn't get it. I think I could do something fun with page two, but I'm not trying to push Bob Wolfley out. There's a short shelf life for beat writers. Guys used to do it for 20 years, but now the burn-out rate is so high.

OMC: Including Spring Training, you must write more than 200 game stories a year.

DO: Easily. Put it this way: in the last three years, I've had 1,702 bylines.

OMC: Do the stories start to look the same?

DO: Not really. If you cover City Hall every day, do those stories look the same? Every day is different, and every game is different. When you're this close to it, it's not the same every day. But the Brewers have been in such tough straits since I've been covering them. We've looked at all the reasons over the years. I would like to branch out but not do another beat.

OMC: Were you a Brewers fan growing up?

DO: I was, growing up in Menomonee Falls. I talked to Bob & Brian about that, actually. People complain about their jobs, but I've got the best job in the world -- watching baseball. But once you start working in the sports department, you have no more favorite teams. I now watch games that are interesting. I like good stories, but I don't like any teams or players more than the others.