RIP Dan Jenkins

Unlike most of you I am not and have never been a sportswriter but none the less had a great respect for Jenkins thanks to our family SI subscription. During the first PGA Championship at Whistling Straits I remember seeing him walk into the media tent and I noted an almost visual aura around him. I didn't have the guts to ask him to join me for a few minutes on my radio show but was determined to have some encounter. During a break in the dining tent I took the opportunity to sit and eat at the same table. He apparently didn't realize I had been stalking him and we only made small talk but I felt really, really privileged to "share a meal" with one of the greats. RIP to one of the giants.

 

Those used to be on a plaque on the wall of the late lamented Runyon's on 50th near 2nd, one of the very best sportswriter hangout bars.

 

I have three copies of "You Gotta Play Hurt." I'd loan a copy out and never see it again, so I made it a point to snag one anytime I saw a used copy for sale.

 

And the set for Costas Coast to Coast in the 1980s.

 

"You Gotta Play Hurt" is a must-read for anybody in the sports journalism business.
Before I read it, I met Lesley Visser, who spent a few days in Vero Beach in the early '80s. Her role in the book is hilarious.
Also, the office dweebs who torment him, and vice versa.
Only he could get away with describing the TCU running backs that way.

 

I might have the amount wrong, but I'll be close.
During its high-rolling times, Sports Illustrated had an expense policy that didn't require receipts for items under $30.
So Dan would turn in expense reports where everything was $29.95. The bean-counters didn't blink.
After a while of this, the staff chipped in for a sweatshirt for Dan. In big bold letters on the back it read:

DAN
($29.95)
JENKINS

 

Those were the days.

The cocktail cart came through every day at 4:30, and the line of black Lincoln Town Cars out front to drive the staff home went around the block.

His expense reports - and his fur coat - were legendary.

 

A toast to Dan Jenkins, who humanized gods and changed sportswriting

 

But the graph further down, describing Johnny Rodgers' 72-yard punt return, is just as classic. That was the great thing about Jenkins -- he never wasted a sentence or a paragraph, hell, probably never a damn word:

"It was one of those insanely thrilling things in which a single player, seized by the moment, twists, whirls, slips, holds his balance and, sprinting, makes it all the way to the goal line. Rodgers went 72 yards for the touchdown, one which keeps growing larger in the minds of all. And afterward, back on the Nebraska bench, he did what most everybody in Norman, Okla. probably felt like doing: he threw up.”

 

Dan wrote for SI during the glory days, lived in New York and hobnobbed with Sinatra and Namath. But he never forget a beat guy's life. One telling thing about him was in a coffee table book he did on the history of the old Southeast Conference. Sally did the forward and told of the the day she visited her parents after they moved back to Fort Worth. Noting that she could see the lights of TCU's stadium from the front porch, she remarked, "You and Mom can walk to the games."

To which Dan replied, "What the hell would I do with my parking pass?"

 

Great story, hondo. Anecdote, maybe.

 

His monthly Playboy column was great and I can never look at calamari - or onion rings - or the movie Reap the Wild Wind the same way after his hilarious article "What's The Deal With Food?"