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

Fred Russell.

Fred Russell - Wikipedia

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Can you imagine this being said of anyone today?

An influential figure in the Golden Age of sports, Russell was sports editor of the Nashville Banner for 68 years, from 1930–1998.

/sigh

 

There are a thousand writers who would commit crimes to have the kind of run Reilly went on between 1986 and 2000. He lost his fastball as a columnist because writing a national column on (at the time) the most studied real estate in sports journalism was as hard a job as existed in sports writing. For the first four years he did it, he was unreal.

The landscape changed. Writers run out if stuff to say. Kornheiser and Wilbon and Deford (and Simmons!) were all smart to find a different medium. It didn't work for Reilly. Gary Smith was smart to retire when he "style" no longer resonated or when his pieces started to feel the same. Dan Jenkins dictated tweets are mostly bad, and his last attempt at writing was so awful, Tiger threw a tantrum. It rarely ends in a pretty way.

Reilly is on no way a waste of talent. He did a shit ton with his talent, burned up a bit and his personal life crumbled (been there) and the work was hard. Sadly what the current generation remembers him for is dentist jokes. He's certainly not in their league, but the idea that Murray and Royko were turning out weekly/daily gems late in their careers just isn't true. There was a lot of limping to the finish. Murray used to say writing a column was like riding a tiger. You had no idea how to get off when it was time. I think Reilly jumped off and is mostly enjoying retirement.

 

Mike Royko

Jimmy Breslin

Robert Caro

David Halberstam

 

Royko really was fantastic, wasn't he?

 

I wanted to be Bob Schieffer growing up....then it turned into wanting to be Dan Patrick.
Now, Michael Jackson is my life goal (The Beer Traveler writer...not The King of Pop)

 

Aside from everything else he did, he had a few favorite sports subjects -- the Cubs and Bears (those columns were always funniest when the teams sucked), 16-inch softball and fishing (his column on why fishing for bullhead beat all other types of fishing was a classic). I've got a book that's a collection of Royko columns with an entire chapter devoted to his sports-related writing, and every column is a winner.

And one sidebar about Royko: A friend told me about walking into Billy Goat's tavern in Chicago, one of Royko's favorite hangouts, around 1980 or so. Royko was there -- sitting at the bar with Harry Caray. Lord only knows how much alcohol those two put away that night.

 

This one made BASW of the Century.

A Solid Book Can Light A Fire

 

I'll get crap for this but one of my favorites growing up was Michael Wilbon. This was well before he made a living yelling and calling everyone a knucklehead on television. Lost in all of that is that Wilbon was an incredibly talented writer back in the day.

 

I can understand a columnist running out of ways to fill the page, how many athletes can you condemn?, how many can you mock? how many heart-warmers can you throw in to show you are about more than just sports? I have to think there are other things to write about though. Other forms. Limiting yourself to just twitter?
Write screenplays. Novels. Articles for national geographic. Profile people in your life who made a difference along the way. Follow up on past subjects. Admit when you were wrong.

 

No reason to be defensive. Michael was a damn fine columnist in his time.

 

When I was a little kid, my grandmother lived in DC. Read Povich when I was learning to read. Excellent choice of influence.

 

Bob Ryan