Some idolize the athletes. Dan Nied idolizes those who write about them.
In my formative years as a wide-eyed chubby catholic schoolboy, naïve to the ways of the world, the only thing that linked me to the rest of my culture was sports and the men who told me about them through their eyes.
Each morning I would sit at our dining room table, bowl of raisin bran overflowing with milk, and read the Detroit Free Press sports section.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday were Mitch Albom days. I’d never seen a man weave words with such description and confidence. He told a story like nobody else could and, even though I was only 7-years old, I knew that he was something special.
It was around second grade that my stepfather bought me a subscription to Sports Illustrated and, from that point on - for the last 17 years - Thursday has been known as Sports Illustrated Day.
And here I am now.
We look back on athletes and measure how they have inspired us with abilities and fame. But they are merely good stories. We rarely think about the men who tell their stories.
As for my path to becoming a sportswriter, five men that I do not know influenced me more than anyone I do.
Four can be found in the tabernacle that is SI and, well, Mitch Albom still writes for my hometown paper.
In reading Albom, Steve Rushin, Frank Deford, Gary Smith and Rick Reilly religiously, like a zealot reads The Bible, I have learned how to tell a story and I have found that the written word still stands as the most powerful medium in the world.
More than that, I have learned that poor grammar and run-on sentences may be the best way to tell a story.
Albom’s column was my teething ring, showing me the basics, peaking my interest in writing. I wondered if the words he seemed to put down so easily were actually hard to find.
I tinkered with a journal and a few sample columns and found that I had at least a scrap of talent. Then words weren’t too hard to find.
Nobody captured the feeling of a city better than Albom did with Detroit. He was a transplant, a Philadelphia native who we got from a paper in Los Angeles. But he was on our pulse. He knew the hunger Detroit’s sports fan had.
And while he wasn’t as poetic as the other four on this literary murderers row, he still stands, in my opinion, as the best.
Albom was the backbone of sports writing for me. But when that Sports Illustrated subscription came I relegated myself to looking at the pictures and reading the shorter articles. I had the attention span of a 7-year old, so the longer articles were just too much.
But as time went on, Frank Deford’s words captivated me. His word choice was perfect, his points salient. Deford showed me what it would be like if Michael Jordan had been a sportswriter.
I searched for his articles in back issues that I may have missed. Eventually, in a compilation book, I found “The Rabbit Hunter” his seminal piece on then Indiana Men’s Basketball Coach Bobby Knight. Immediately I knew I had a standard to go by.
Then as I entered into the journalism program at Bowling Green State University (largely on the influence of Albom and Deford), SI gave Rick Reilly a column on its last page. “The Life of Reilly” was a circus of metaphors and dry wit and perfectly illuminated the reasons we love sports. To this day, I’ve never seen a writer who gets it quite like Reilly does.
He understands the culture, he knows when to lambaste and when to praise. He knows right from wrong, probably the most important quality in a sportswriter.
A few years later SI gave a similar column to Rushin, only this one was in the front of the magazine. Essentially, SI created the most lethal 1-2 combination since Morganna: The Kissing Bandit.
Reading Steve Rushin is like watching all four Rocky movies in one day. It jabs at your heart, invigorates the soul and makes you realize that greatness actually exists. I can’t describe his style here. I wouldn’t do it justice.
So let’s just move on to Gary Smith.
Smith has a rule that he interviews at least 50 people for every story. Yet finding a quote in one of Smith’s stories is like finding an ice cream parlor in the Sahara.
He tells the story based on what people tell him. His writing says that he knows nobody can tell a story better than him, so why rely on their words when his will be more apt.
To try to aspire to be these men wouldn’t be fair to anyone. But their writings - their sculptures of words - are amazing things to behold.
And no matter where I go in this business, whether I emerge to be the next in line of this amazing lineup or settle in as a staff writer at the Podunk Times, I will always rush to read the work of these men.
But pardon me, please, I need to go check the mailbox. Today is Thursday…Sports Illustrated Day
I completely agree with you. I don't read Albom much, although I have Tuesdays with Morrie and LOVED that book. Read Road Swing by Rushin, loved it. Have three Reilly books and they're outstanding. Have the Best of Frank Deford, outstanding. But there is no greater writer in America today than Gary Smith.