Linebacker Tedy Bruschi talks with the media at the end of a practice last month at the Pats’ training camp, but players’ availability to the press is infrequent these days.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

Here’s why, for sports writers, the good old days at Patriots training camp really were the good old days … and why it’s nowhere near as good these days … and why that matters for you, the sports fan. Back in the day, a hard-working sports writer — no, smart aleck, that’s not an oxymoron — could spend his day at training camp standing near the sidelines, watching workouts.

That was how I spent most of my mid-to-late-summer days from 1979-1989, when I was a beat reporter and the Pats trained at Bryant College.

During most of the long, hot two-a-day sessions, I’d be wearing shorts and a polo shirt, carrying a pad and pen and observing, first, Ron Erhardt, then Ron Meyer and then Raymond Berry put the Pats through their preseason paces.

If you didn’t mind standing out in the sun — I loved it in those days, much to the dismay of my dermatologist these days — you could get close to the action.

You could see the beads of sweat rolling down the players’ faces. You could hear the pop of the pads and hear the grunts as they made contact. You could hear the breathing of the receivers as they sped past downfield, then hear it change to slower and deeper as they trotted back to the huddle. You could see the laces on the ball as Steve Grogan or Tony Eason drilled or floated passes downfield. You could hear the coaches — their words of instruction, of encouragement and, not infrequently, words that couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper.

You came to understand why each drill was being done, what the offense was doing, what the defense was doing. You could stand with Dick Steinberg or Bucko Kilroy or Patrick Sullivan or superscout Joe Mendes and talk about what was taking place on the field.

They enjoyed talking football with people who were obviously interested, who clearly wanted to learn as much as they could about the game from the men who knew it best. It also was fun just talking with them.

It was Mendes, stressing the importance of speed, who one day said, “It doesn’t matter how tough you are if the fight’s over before you get there.”

Kilroy, who had been one of the NFL’s best linemen for the Philadelphia Eagles in the years after World War II through the mid-1950s, was the master of the malapropism. An innovator in the evaluation of player personnel, a trendsetter in how NFL teams came to scout talent, he loved to tell stories, always eliciting a laugh while, at the same time, mangling the English language.

Having heard about an impressive new locker room built by one of the Patriots’ rivals, Kilroy said he’d contacted a friend in that organization and asked him “to take a polio shot of it so I can see what it looks like.”

A naval officer during the war, Kilroy recalled how a ship the U.S. had sold to a South American country sailed from a West Coast port but “sank halfway to Purdue.”

He once mentioned how a trade had fallen through because the deal was “cost-prohibited.”

Talking to Meyer one day about the origins of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Kilroy drew a quizzical look from the coach when he said: “Yeah, we invented Christianity when I was in Philadelphia.”

What was really funny about that was that Meyer was known for similar slips of the tongue on the practice field, once bellowing to his coaching staff: “All right, men, let’s simonize our watches!”

Watching the drills up close and personal, a writer could learn much more about a player than simply how well he executed his techniques.

I remember standing, one morning, just inside a hurricane fence at the south end of one of the practice fields, near where the offensive linemen were working on their pass blocking by hitting a tackling dummy suspended from a crossbar between two metal poles.

The drill was popular with fans, who were gathered three and four deep on the other side of the fence, only a few yards away from where the large linemen would settle into a stance, fire out, and hit the dummy, sending it swaying backward.

Like a long, weighty pendulum, the bag then would swing forward, gathering momentum and force. The linemen would hit it again and again, and then again — but with less power each time. By the fourth or fifth time, they weren’t so much blocking the heavy bag as fighting it off, straining to keep it from knocking them off balance.

That was not the case, however, with John “Hog” Hannah.

Although the crowd pressed against the fence, eager to watch the lineman labeled by Sports Illustrated as the best in the history of the National Football League, Hannah was oblivious to their attentions. While the fans were focused on him, he was focused only on the bag.

His eyes narrow. His jaw tightens. And, when the whistle blows, he sends the bag soaring backward, as if struck by a cannonball. As it begins a slow descent, Hannah crouches low, hands in front of his chest, his powerful legs moving like pistons, and he is exhaling in loud puffs, like a steam locomotive.

Unlike his teammates, Hannah doesn’t seem to tire. Each time he hits the bag, he hits it harder. And, as he does, a funny thing happens to the crowd. Without realizing it, they have begun to back away from the fence. With each ferocious hit by Hannah, they shuffle away another half-step, partly in awe, partly in instinctive self-protection, the way you’d keep a respectful distance from a roaring fire.

When practice was over, a writer could walk with a player or a coach, on the way back to the locker room.

That certainly doesn’t happen now.

Nowadays at the Patriots’ training camp, which wrapped up this week in Foxboro, the media is confined to a special seating section at the north end of the practice field, well away from much of the action. They can’t see all of what’s going on, and can hear even less.

Afterward, if they want to speak with a player, they have to make a request with the team’s media relations staff. Sometimes a player deigns to talk, as when Randy Moss agreed recently “to answer three questions.” Gee, thanks, Randy. Access to the assistant coaches is even more tightly controlled.

Not surprisingly, it is much more difficult to get to know the players, and have them know you — to establish a relationship, to build trust.

Why should this matter to you — the fan, the reader?

Because it distances you from the team, too. With the media kept at arm’s length — and more — you don’t get the stories, the anecdotes, the insights you want and deserve.

The good old days were better.

jdonalds@projo.com