Rick Reilly's Heartfelt Tribute to Jim Murray

Rick Reilly, who has won the National Sportswriter of the Year award 11 times, could not have picked a better role model than Jim Murray, who captured that honor a record 14 times--including 12 straight from 1966-77. After Murray passed away in August 1998, Reilly penned a touching obituary that displayed Reilly's talent while also explaining the qualities that made Murray so special. I encourage you to read the entire piece; here is an excerpt to whet your appetite:

I once asked Jim Murray if he kept a few extra columns in the bank for days when he had the flu or a tee time or an incurably blank computer screen. "Of course not!" he yowled. "What if I die one ahead?"

On Sunday, Jim Murray, the greatest sportswriter who ever lived, kissed his gorgeous wife, started to put on his pajamas, said, "Linda, something's wrong," and collapsed. The doctor was there in five minutes, but it was too late. Jim had died of a heart attack. He was 78.

He got his wish, though. He didn't have any columns saved up. Too bad. We could use a few laughs right now.

Two Rick Reilly Classics Culled From the Archives

If you are looking for great sportswriting today, you either have to sift through tons of chaff to find a grain or two of wheat or you have to dive into the archives. Rick Reilly used to be the featured back page columnist for Sports Illustrated, consistently producing weekly gems containing insight and wit. Now he has some kind of nebulous role at ESPN, a conglomerate that pays him a lot of money to look very awkward on camera during the postgame show on Monday Night Football. Although Reilly is criminally miscast as an on air personality, four years ago I noted that his literary fastball still hums--and I stand by that contention, based on his recent story about Dayton-based Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy.

I miss being able to just open up a new issue of SI and find Reilly's latest column. Here are two excellent Reilly pearls from 1998:

Speaking of Class to the Class of '98

Reilly offered some words of wisdom to athletes who were about to enter the professional ranks:

"Thank you, graduates. Please be seated. It's an honor to address the college athletes who are going on to the pros this year. If I may, I'd like to offer just a few pieces of advice."

"This is the career you picked. If you can't handle public scrutiny or deal with strangers graciously, become a taxidermist."

"Read everything written about you, good or bad. Then forget about it. No matter what you do, half the people will worship you and half will detest you. You can't fight it."

"One last thing. Remember when you were a kid? All you dreamed of was playing centerfield for the New York Yankees. Soon, you'll be there. Don't forget to tingle."

Never the Groom, Ever the Best Man

After shooting a 75 in the final round of the U.S. Open and tying for fifth place, Tom Lehman declared that there are things that are much more important than winning a golf tournament: "I think life would suck if you had to be an a------ to be the Open champion. I mean, if I die and all they write on my tombstone is TOM LEHMAN: A GREAT PROFESSIONAL GOLFER, then I'll have missed the whole point of life."

The best sportswriting is elevated by the spirit that animates one of the four quotes that serves as epigraphs for my websites; Tom Callahan--who wrote two of my favorite articles (The Best the Game Offers and Dr. J is Flying Away) about Julius Erving--provided a great credo for those who love to watch sports, for those who love to write about sports and for those who love to read great sportswriting: "It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence." As Reilly's story about Lehman demonstrates, "excellence" is not only about attaining victory on the field of play but also about attaining balance in one's life.

Rick Reilly's Fastball Still Hums

I'll be honest: there are very few people in this business who I truly respect for their writing abilities; I've dealt with a few nice people and far too many jerks but very, very few people in either category who can really write, who can make words sing and dance off of the page (or computer screen). A real writer sculpts his words like Rodin, paints a verbal picture like Van Gogh, composes his thoughts like Beethoven--but too much of what is being cranked out nowadays reads like it was hacked together by Edward Scissorhands or simply popped out unedited from the uneducated mind of a distracted child. Yeah, I read a lot less than I used to, because writing that truly engages your heart, mind and soul has become an endangered species.

Forgetting the "real world" for a second, in the sports world there used to be high quality writing in Sport, Inside Sports, the Sporting News and SI, plus periodic lengthy features in mags like Esquire and GQ. The first two of those no longer exist and the others are empty husks compared to their glory years. If you grab an old enough back issue of any of those titles, you can find work that stands the test of time. When was the last time you saved a sports mag because the writing was just so great?

A lot of the people whose writing I respect the most are, sadly, no longer with us.

Dick Schaap.

David Halberstam.

Ralph Wiley.

Read some of their writing and compare it to most of what is out there now and you want to cry. Seriously. Billy Joel was right:



Michael Hutchence's succinct take comes to mind, too: "You can stop the world and let off all the fools." Of course, the world keeps right on spinning and, last I checked, none of the fools have volunteered to leave.

I've heard some chatter that Rick Reilly--formerly of SI, now with ESPN--has lost some MPH off of his literary fastball. I'll admit that I cringe at some of the dog and pony garbage that ESPN has him doing. The sports' Mt. Rushmore? You hire a guy who basically retired the Sportswriter of the Year award--he only owns as many of them as Bill Russell has NBA championship rings--and that is the best forum you can create to showcase his talents? Really? Of course, they previously turned Tony Kornheiser--a truly top notch sportswriter in the 1970s and 1980s, one of my favorites--into a caricature on PTI and MNF, so I'm not really surprised. It's not like I'm crying crocodile tears for those guys, either; ESPN has helped make them as rich as Croesus, while I'm sitting here...just sitting here, definitely not rich as Croesus.

Anyway, if you bought into the fiction that Reilly's heater only hits about 85 on the gun now, then take a couple minutes and check this out:

Hey, pro, don't want to be a role model? It's not your choice.

Yes, Rick Reilly's fastball still hums. Hopefully, ESPN will let him throw it more often instead of using him in the equivalent of slow pitch celebrity softball.

The Forgotten Victims of MLB's "Steroids Era"

I've written extensively about the steroids/performance-enhancing drugs (PED) issue here, including a piece that explained how the "godfather" of steroids in America fooled medical experts into saying that steroids don't work and a post that talked about why steroids users should be banned for life. ESPN the Magazine's Rick Reilly recently wrote a column about some people who could be considered forgotten victims of MLB's "Steroids Era": clean minor league players who never got their shot at the big time because the cheaters outperformed them.

Reilly declares, "I think minor league players...should file a class action, restraint of trade lawsuit against Major League Baseball because they sat stewing in the minors while big leaguers were allowed to cheat...You think the steroids issue is dead, but it isn't. These guys live with the fallout every day. Their dreams died in big league clubhouse johns. I'm telling you: lawsuit." Reilly says that according to Stanford labor law professor emeritus William Gould IV, minor league players would have to establish three things in court in order to prevail with such an action. Here they are, in Reilly's words:

1) A correlation between steroid use and better performance. (Please.)

2) That baseball turned a blind eye to steroid use. (Exhibit A: baseball's own Mitchell Report. It blames Bud Selig and players association COO Gene Orza for allowing steroids to spread like crabgrass. Mitchell said there was a "code of silence" in baseball. You think? Oriole David Segui told his GM that he wanted to go to Florida to pick up juice, and the GM never reported it. A Twins visiting clubhouse attendant found a used syringe and told manager Tom Kelly, who never reported it. The thing has more conspiracies than an Oliver Stone movie.)

3) "Nonstatutory labor exemption considerations," Gould IV says. That's just so complicated it makes our head ache, but a good shark would gobble it right up.