What Sportswriter Did You Want to be When You Grew Up?

I lived in New Orleans after graduating from college, working at a dead-end job that gave me enough spare time to read the Times-Picayune virtually from cover-to-cover, and I was really taken by the writing of Peter Finney. He had an effortless style that I always wanted to emulate, and that's when the idea of going back to school and training to be sports writer took hold. Met him once or twice in passing covering some Saints' games and discovered that he was a genuinely nice guy.

Once I got into sports writing in Mississippi, I soaked everything I could learn from Rick Cleveland.

 

Growing up in Ohio and always knowing I didn't have the intellectual horsepower or ability to be an SI sort of guy, I really hoped to find a style similar to the simple, clean approach of Terry Pluto. I loved Loose Balls and I grew up a Cleveland fan, so I loved all of his Cleveland books and tried to read everything he wrote in the ABJ and Plain Dealer.

 

First off, I just want to say this is a great thread. This is when SJ is at its best and why I signed up when I was in college.

I'm taking Reilly. I was one of those who always flipped to the back of SI. I'm trying to think of someone I read that way now, and I can't think of anybody who puts out content like that on a regular basis.

 

While Riley is not my first choice, he was my runner-up. I always read SI backwards too --- from the back to the front --- because of Riley.

 

I wondered if someone was going to mention him. Russell was the whole package. He was smart, funny, and had a sharp sense of where sports fit in to the cultural landscape.
Here he is with some old, white, seersucker wearin' Southern guy.

It's my favorite picture of both of them. (And thank you, Mister Rice. Your articles about golf made me think twice about dismissing it as a boring waste of time and real estate.)

 

You might honor Reilly better by getting his name right.

 

Whooops, lol

 

I grew up reading The Record so I wanted to be like Mike Celizic and Bill Pennington.

 

My second son is named in honor of Grantland Rice.