Frightening Grant Wahl news

If it opens for you, it’s worth reading.

Grant Wahl’s sudden death at World Cup was a huge loss to football | News | The Sunday Times

 

I’m sure this is well intentioned by someone at SI, but the guy you axed and then was publicly trashed by the suits… you’re now “celebrating him”? Fuck that. It’s insulting.

 

I can't think of too many things worse than dying while on a road trip. Don Drysdale comes to mind. The OCR had a college writer named Chuck Abair. He died of a heart attack in a hotel room in Las Cruces, N.M., after covering a Cal State Fullerton basketball game. This was in 1992. One of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

 

Don Banks.

 

We all got a little crazy last night, me included. Sadness and rage at the same time.

 

Nothing wrong with what any of us said here last night. None of us would have run with a column or news story hinting at what a lot of us hinted at (or outright said) last night. This is the place to come to yell and air our stresses, anger, fears & sadness.

 

From Chris Jones:

Last night, he sat directly in front of me, one row removed. He arrived in his seat close to the whistle. When he did, I thought, "Oh, there's Grant Wahl," and I gave him a wave. He looked tired and wan, but he wasn't going to miss such a big game.

The last goal he saw came on a sneaky set piece by the Dutch that tied things up in the 101st minute of regulation, the latest equalizer in World Cup history. Grant tweeted his admiration of the play: "Just an incredible designed set-piece goal by the Netherlands," he wrote. A few minutes later, his colour changed, and he fell from his chair. Bedlam broke out.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/worldcup/world-cup-grant-wahl-chris-jones-dec10-1.6681667

 

I didn't even think about the affect of watching a colleague and friend collapse and die on the other soccer media folks.

 

In my lifetime, when you’re matching writers to sports, it’s Dr Z for the NFL, Curry Kirkpatrick for college hoops and Grant Wahl for soccer. That’s pretty much it. He’s one of the all-time greats at the craft, and it’s a devastating loss.

(add: I don’t consider guys like Schefter, Passan and Wojnarski “writers” in the same way — they’re newsbreakers, and fabulous at that. But Wahl was among that small group who could hook you in with a story and teach you something at the same time. I don’t know a lot about soccer, but most of what I’ve learned over the last decade has been from reading Grant Wahl stories.)