Gary Smith probably doesn't read you

The man's written five stories for SI in the last year:
1) Omar Minaya - pretty good
2) Randy Shannon - decent, written in basically the same voice as the Minaya piece, and content to let the bizarre details of Shannon's life just sit there (the hermetically-sealed life, the estrangement from all friends and family).
3) Joba Chamberlain - overwritten, in my opinion
4) Jim Jones, Jr. - the decision to go second-person ruined it for me.
5) Gene Upshaw - wasted too much space with the ghosts metaphor, which overshadowed a basically interesting (though pro-Upshaw) take.

So basically his last four pieces haven't been up to his usual standards. And because he writes so sparingly, it's been 10 months since the last great Smith piece (in my opinion).

 

Indeed. It feels a little like when a great show that's a bit past its prime finally starts winning Emmys.
Smith is for sure one of the greats. But there are a bunch of greats these days.

 

I agree with all of this.

I'd love to see Smith try to vary it a little bit more than he does. No doubt he's able to.

 

I don't see how any one in this business can admit that he doesn't read anything from any genre.

 

Mr Bastard,

It's an admission that only a hack or an amateur or an aesthete could sincerely make. If sincere, Smith has to the hindmost aforementioned.

YD&OHS, etc

 

Maybe it's just because I'm such an omnivore.

 

One home run every eight or 10 at-bats is awesome in baseball. And it would be pretty good in a writer, too -- if he went to the plate eight or 10 times in a shorter time frame. If Babe Ruth took eight at-bats a season, his one home run would not be worth a six-figure salary.

Not sure 52 at-bats a year was worth seven figures for Reilly, either. At least given his home-run rate the last couple of seasons.

 

Bowden could write isosceles triangles around Smith, underwater, after a fifth of bourbon.

 

He has a book excerpt in the new SI, about the '58 NFL Championship Game.

Gotta love a guy who can go from writing "Blackhawk Down" to a book about football. Very Halberstam-esque.

 

And a book about a cocaine impresario before that.

As Larry King says, "Gang, they don't come any better than him."

And, amazingly, they aren't the least bit vaudevillian, unlike, say, Gary Smith.

 

Escobar? I just saw the movie - "Medellin." Billy Chase directed it. I really loved "Queen's Boulevard," so I was expecting more.