Incredible story about Bobby Orr

I love this site.
I'm new here, but I'm not that young.
So pardon me if I don't fetch anyone's beer.

Forgive me if it's been posted already, but did anyone read S.L. Price's story in Sports Illustrated about Bobby Orr?

One of the best profiles I've read in years.
I couldn't put it down, and it left me wanting more and more.

That's what good sportswriting is all about.

 

Correct. And with no help from Orr, either.

 

Well, yeah, but Orr isn't a guy who wants to talk about himself.

Price brought that up and respected it, which said a lot about both of them.

 

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1152491/index.htm

I assume this is the story. I'm barely a page into the online version, and it is magic.

 

That's the one. And it is magic.

 

Absolutely right.

Just finished it, and that is a wonderful, wonderful piece.

 

There was just one strip of black tape on Orr's stick and the puck seemed glued to it, that fine detail so compelling that Boston strippers took to sporting the equivalent of today's French bikini wax—a thin strip of pubic homage dubbed "a Bobby Orr."

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Game, Set and Match.

 

I meant to post this the other day; Sports Media Guide has an interview with Price, excerpts from his Orr article and Price talks about writing the piece without getting to Orr.

http://www.sportsmediaguide.com/interviews/s-l-price/

 

Sorry, that's gratuitous bullshit that really doesn't belong in the story.

 

There is quite a long tradition of stories of this nature - profiles about subjects who either do not cooperate or are otherwise elusive, perhaps starting with Gay Talese on DiMaggio. This is a very good to very, very good one - but not a great one - I don't think we quite get Orr in all dimensions.

Incredible? I don't think that is the word to use. On this site, and on threads like this (or, for example, the Five Favorite Sports Books) we throw around quite a few adjectives that spill over into hyperbole.

The Hall of the Incredible has a very small door.

 

incredible post

 

OK, then, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and feel it was the sort of back-of-the-book piece absent from SI anymore. Price, to me, is almost a guaranteed good read who doesn't get in the way of what he's writing about, unlike certain big-name sportswriters who inject themselves, their bad humor, their forced devices or their pop-culture junk into their work.

That could qualify as incredible among current stuff, if less so when ranked against the all-timers.