My friend the webmistress, who’s done such a fantastic job creating my Web site from a few vague ideas I jotted down, says I need a bio. So I agreed. Then I sat down to write the thing and came up empty. Maybe if I put it in an interview form, the kind I might use with a subject for one of my newspaper or magazine pieces, maybe that would work. OK, let’s give it a try.

Interviewer: What's with Right Field? Why not left field or hay field for that matter?

Rick Ohler: As a kid, I was happy playing right field, even though I suspected that Coach sent us “emerging” players out there because we were defensive liabilities and few balls would be hit in our direction. Right field offered a panoramic view of the game and all its drama, nuance and beauty. I came to wish that all sports needed right fielders, so I could be the observer, the storyteller. For me it’s been a logical progression from right fielder to writer, chronicler, teacher of writing.

Int: Write, write, write. It seems that’s all you do. What’s up with that?



RO: When the curious ask why I write, I tell them I can’t help it. I write every day whether I have time or not and whether I really want to or not. I neglect important obligations to make time to write. I ignore the dog, I help other people write, I write instead of sleeping, I correct (gently, of course) other writers’ work; I . . .

Int: So it’s some kind of obsession?



RO: I thought you were interviewing not psychoanalyzing.

Int: OK, OK. So when did you start to write?



RO: If you force me to pick a beginning, I’d say the photo that my webmistress placed at the bottom of this page is as good an answer as any. That’s me (top left with the pencil behind my ear and a tie! around my neck) in 1963, working on our lower school newspaper, The Stentorian. I covered sports, the student council, extracurrriculars, any newsworthy stories at the Nichols School Lower School in Buffalo, NY.