Anyone still out there?Re-entering cyberspace, I think, might be more challenging than entering it the first time. Technically though, I never really left, going from the  Chicago Tribune to my blog, which kept me sane after being laid off from the Tribune, to ESPNChicago.com, which saved me.

I began my blog in the weepy hours after being pushed out by the Tribune last April and kept writing as I stopped crying and started to see the hope and humor again, through my first months with ESPN. And then I stopped.I still do not know exactly why I stopped. But I am flattered by the handful of you not including those directly related to me, who noticed. I hope you find me again. And though I can’t promise anything, I hope not to take a three-and-half month break again.

For a while, I know I felt that if I was not doing something productive every waking hour that I was a slug and would never be gainfully employed again. Then, when I was gainfully employed again, I discovered the utter sense of comfort I got from taking a few hours off and not feeling guilty.At about that time, I also re-discovered our couch in the family room and how much I loved it – and the furry purple blanket my daughter Amanda brought home a few years ago as one of the truly great bat mitzvah giveaways. And then I remembered why my husband rarely rents movies as I drifted off to sleep each night, a deep, almost drugged-like state in which I could hear myself snoring but I could not do a thing about it.

It also was then that I couldn’t imagine how I would ever find the time and energy to write a blog again.But I did miss it.  Like an old friend who you stop calling for no particular reason, then a few weeks turn into months and you reach that uncomfortable stage when you’re almost afraid to call, not remembering who called last and if it’s your fault so much time has passed, I am hoping that as I do start again, I will find that my friend(s) are still there for me.Writing columns again on a regular basis for ESPN has been a joy I thought I might never experience again. I do it now with a light-heartedness, even for the heavy subjects, I have not had in a very long time. Maybe it’s because I am no longer under strict space or time restrictions. Maybe it’s just because it’s a terrific positive atmosphere. Or maybe it’s because no one really writes to me anymore.There is no e-mail address at the bottom of my columns and I have made no effort to correct that. While I have always loved hearing from readers, even critical responses, the advent of blogs and the increase in Internet traffic has lent itself to people who can spontaneously reply from their desks – or dark caves, as the case may be  — anonymously, of course, and with spewings of racism, sexism and just general hatred that I really grew tired of reading.I just figured I’d cut down on that a little and it seems to have worked and I feel much better. In fact, e-mails like the one I got this morning in response to my [U.S. Olympic speedskater] Shani Davis column calling me a “barren lesbian freak” hardly ever happen anymore. So things are great.But I do love hearing from people who read my blogs, particularly since they seem only to be nice, normal, literate people who would never think of calling a writer a “barren, lesbian freak” even if somehow that was an appropriate response.The other thing is that I find I am talking to myself much too much without a blog, particularly in the shower when I am a literary savant, every story flowing through my brain with just the right touches of humor. Of course, by the blow-drying stage, I’ve lost it. But where else but here can I talk about Amanda’s turnabout dance (I called it the “Sadie Hawkins dance” recently and she looked at me as if I was wearing a bonnet and hoop skirt), my continued eating problems (I bought a Valentine’s Day cookie cake as if we were having a party – we’re not. Cake is now gone), my 11-year-old son suddenly caring how his hair looks (I can cry), the new Superdawg grand opening (like a drive-thru bar mitzvah), and many funny facets of my life that have been lost forever in this three-and-a-half-month black hole.So I’ll be back, promise.  

They don’t teach you about softball questions in journalism school. It’s just one of those things you pick up, like how to push “record” on your tape recorder. You want to ask an athlete about an 0-for-April slump, you start by lobbing in a few about his charitable foundation.

Of course, this technique is also older than hot type and any athlete with the sophistication of a little leaguer sees right through it immediately, which is why I dispensed with any softball small talk today when I interviewed Jackie Joyner-Kersee for an ESPNChicago.com story, and launched right into the day my high school basketball team pasted hers in the 1979 state title game.

Mostly — because in addition to being the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, she is also a very nice woman — she just laughed. She told me we had a good team (which we did, and that’s not bragging since I rarely played) and remembered that the officiating was bad (it was, but I also felt compelled to remind her that a 16-point victory virtually erases any bad reffing differential).

She also remembered — or politely pretended she did to humor me — the interview conducted by WGN’s Floyd Brown on the state tournament telecast, in which he said he heard she was quite a little athlete and might one day even be in the Olympics.

Jackie, who was a shy 16-year-old junior at the time and just thrilled to be on TV, bounced up and down and acted slightly embarrassed as she shrugged a giggly “Yes.”  This was before she took the court and soared above the rim for a tip-in, something we had never before seen a girl even close to pull off and scared us right out of our socks.

Joyner loved basketball, so much that she played at UCLA in addition to competing for the Bruins and training for the Olympics in track and field. So much so that she had a one-year stint with the Richmond Rage of the fledgling American Basketball Association in 1996.

So much so that like us, growing up about 300 miles or so away, she ran around her neighborhood playing with her older brother Al and the other boys. There was not too much running around, however, and not too much playing with the boys if her mother Mary, a nurse’s aide, had anything to say about  it.

“My mom didn’t believe in that,” Jackie said, “and really didn’t understand what I was doing in athletics. Thank God I had a dad who thought it was ok. My mom was like, ‘No sports. Get your education, come clean the house, sports is out the door.’

“For my mom, it was about morals, values, character, integrity, about me being a good person, to be respectful and understanding the challenges of life.”

Mary Joyner understood. She married Jackie’s father Al Sr., when she was 16 and he was 15 and did not want her four children following the same path.

“Even as I continued to develop and grow . . . me and my brother talked about going to the Olympics (Jackie’s brother Al won the gold medal in triple jump in the ’84 Olympics) and she’d be like, ‘OK, OK.’ “

The tragedy is that Jackie was called home during her freshman year at UCLA after her mother was struck by meningitis and died at 37.

“She never saw me compete on the Olympic level,” Joyner-Kersee said.

Talking to her this morning, she looked like she could still run barefoot across gravel and appear the Olympic champion. And annoyingly, she would not go along with me when I all but begged her to tell me she at least felt a little sore when she worked out.

She reminded me that after losing that ’79 title game, “We came back and won the next year, you know. Didn’t lose a game.”

I told her I remembered hearing something about it. Trash-talking an Olympic legend is always in good form. Then I asked if she still shot around, if she still had some game.

“It would take me a while,” she said. “You always have it, but at this point you have to go get it.”

I imagine she doesn’t have to go very far.