Steve Rushin

I haven't posted here for a long time, but all this talk of the Rick Reilly-Dan Patrick swap makes me nostalgic for my favorite writer during my time at SI.

Hence, here's a link to Steve Rushin's blog.

http://www.steverushin.com/wordpress/

To me, he's still king.

 

Saw his site a while back. Enjoyed his recent piece on George Bush writing to him that appeared in Time, and is linked on his site.

 

Has he done any of those zany anagram columns lately?

 

I loved this entry, for at least a couple reasons...

Perfect
September 4th, 2007

The other night I phoned my father — 1,300 miles away in Minneapolis — and he casually mentioned five minutes into our conversation that the Twins were beating the Royals 3-0 in the 7th. “It’s a meaningless game,” he acknowledged, “but there’s nothing else on.”

We spoke for ten more minutes about other things, and when I finally hung up the phone I saw on the ESPN ticker that the Twins had lost 9-5 to Kansas City. So I called my dad back and asked him how the Twins could possibly be up 3-0 when their game was evidently over and they had in fact lost. He replied, “They lost the first game of a doubleheader. I’m watching the second game. And now the Twins are up 5-0 in the eighth.”

Fair enough. But when I hung up the phone for the second time, the ticker said, to my astonishment, that Scott Baker of the Twins was throwing a perfect game through eight innings. So I called my dad back and said, “In two separate conversations about the ‘meaningless’ Twins game you’re watching, you didn’t think to mention that Baker is throwing a perfect game?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, after which my 73-year-old father — alone in his condo, half a continent away, sounding like a chastened child — said: “I didn’t want to jinx it.”

 

Zeke....Wonderful post. Thanks for sharing. I just sent it to my father and my son. Rings so true.

 

It wasn't me, it was from Rushin's blog, but I agree with the sentiment.

Reminded me of lots of phone conversations with my dad.

 

Rushin had a back-page article on a recent issue of Time magazine.

 

Well, now we know. Steve Rushin jinxed Scotty Baker's perfect game. Dick.

 

I'm a charter member of the Rushin > Reilly group. I'm a tenth as disappointed to see Reilly leaving SI as I was when Rushin left. Really glad to be able to read him again ...

 

I liked Rushin a lot when he told good tales in his columns, like the Scott Baker story above. I started straying away when he got more and more into wordplay, and pretty soon I would just look to see if I wanted to read him that week. I miss those good columns, though.

 

On his blog, you can find the text of his Marquette commencement speech -- just perfectly done.

 

Just read the Marquette speech. Really nice. Thanks, Dave.

Here's a direct link: http://www.steverushin.com/news.htm