If there's something that we sportswriters love talking about while having a cigarette with each other or in the pressbox or at parties where we think no-one will hear us, it's other parties.
Me? I'm always telling the one about meeting Writer X and Writer Y and how excited I was that I got to bend their ear that time. I'm still wondering if the feeling is mutual.
Anyway, on that note, I'd like to talk about two of the best, who are retiring: Rick Reilly and Gary Smith. And it really makes me sad.
Me? I'm always telling the one about meeting Writer X and Writer Y and how excited I was that I got to bend their ear that time. I'm still wondering if the feeling is mutual.
Anyway, on that note, I'd like to talk about two of the best, who are retiring: Rick Reilly and Gary Smith. And it really makes me sad.
Both Smith And Reilly were a literary Smith And Wesson for Sports Illustrated at a time when I was in my 'CrazyPassionate' phase of US sports-loving, which meant a ton of baseball caps and more than a ton of late nights. And whenever my father/any family member/ any family friend went on a business trip to the USA, they HAD to come back with a Sports Illustrated - my Bible of US sportswriting.
Whenever I went on holiday over the Atlantic, I never failed to pick up a copy of Sports Illustrated. Some people never miss a Playboy. I never missed a SI (So you can imagine my joy when I found out it was being sold in UK shops in 2014!!!!)
Sports Illustrated gave me the insight I needed into sports and sportswriting. The writers weren't just writers, they were wordsmiths. And one of the great wordsmiths during that time was one Rick Reilly. I wasn't the only one who bought SI for the backpage. Go and talk to any sportswriter - of a certain age- in America, and they'll tell you that they bought Sports Illustrated JUST for the back page that Reilly wrote is astonishing. Every time I've hit up a sporting event, I've had the discussion on repeat.
I wrote to Rick Reilly once to ask his advice on how to be a good sportswriter. He wrote back to my Hotmail address, back in the time when Hotmail was the Destination Email Address and Gmail was just a twinkle in a developer's eye.
He gave me some good advice. One of them was: "Try and write originally". In other words: "No-one likes a boring writer".
Reilly would be able to change your life with the way that he could write. He'd make you angry. He'd make you think. He'd make you rage.
I am a good Christian boy, and I still remember seething from reading his 'What Would Jesus Do?' article from 1999, which talks about Jesus Christ, and his return on earth, and the worship of athletes. It's really awesome. He must have been talking to J. Christ a while with the piece.
I finally got to meet Reilly at an Super Bowl party, and nearly fell to my knees. It was truly my Wayne's World Alice Cooper moment....
(FUN FACT: I also had one of those moments when I met ESPN's Wright Thompson (the best feature sportswriter of this generation, probably) in 2011.)
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Anyway, Reilly moved to ESPN in 2006, and people started to complain. They complained because they reckoned Rick had gotten a little more lazy, copying one Rick Reilly piece to the other Rick Reilly piece. They hated him on TV - especially when he tried to get an exclusive that really wasn't his. And Deadspin was perhaps his worst enemy. Mind you, he was giving himself his own enema, too. Either it was self-sabotage, or Rick Reilly saw the light, and decided to check out. I wrote about his 'checking out' back in 2010. And Rick, your article about "Picking Up Butch" still makes me cry. And my buddy Taylor Davis went to freaking Middlebury College, where they did a lot of of skiing (amongst other activities that allegedly go on in colleges in Vermont) and some learning.
What's sad is the stories we won't hear from Rick Reilly. You know, the one about the pressbox at LSU. Or him asleep at The Masters. Or his divorce. The guy will be one hell of an after dinner speaker. You know, if he doesn't try and tell everyone what to ask him and what not to ask him.
And when there was a Gary Smith Article in a Sports Illustrated, you knew there was something special going to be written. You thought you were a good writer? Yeah! Shut the **** up and read this piece by Gary Smith about some football player you probably haven't heard of, which will rip your guts apart on Paragraph 1 and feed them back to you on the final line.
And talk about the sportswriters' sportswriter: When Smith announced his retirement, and Twitter was a great place to check out the Great Sportswriters Of Our Generation talking about their favourite Gary Smith article. And there were many. You would have thought Smith had passed away.
My favourite Gary Smith article was about him chasing around America during the Home Run Derby of 1998, in which Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr all tried to chase down Roger Maris' 62 home run record. Why do I love it so? A) I had actually bought that copy of Sports Illustrated, so I remember reading it as magazine. You know, with the pictures. There's a great one of Smith sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field, a few beers deep, laughing as two guys jump into the netting in front of the front row of the bleachers to try and snag a Sammy Sosa home run ball. B) I remember that home run chase like it was yesterday. McGwire with his arms like tree trunks. Sosa with his little bounce. Ken Griffey with the most gorgeous swing I've ever seen. C) Because Gary Smith is an awesome writer.
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So people, do yourselves a service and go spend an hour or two of your long lunch breaks reading some of their copy. They spent a lot of time writing it, after all.
The Gary Smith archive --- http://www.cnnsi.com/vault/topic/article/Gary_Smith/1900-01-01/2100-12-31/mdd/index.htm
The Rick Reilly SI archive --- http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/topic/article/Rick_Reilly/1900-01-01/2100-12-31/mdd/index.htm
