Pretty good Reilly column this week 1/15/07

Powerful story. Hauntingly real situation handled about as well as possible.

 

Ditto. That story, although a bit old, is much more compelling than any old wrasslin' story.

 

i really would have like to have read a much longer piece from reilly on this, the kind he used to do. he can do the troubled psyche as well as anyone (remember the citadel story, for one?)

 

Nicely done, though, like other posters, wish it had been a bit longer.

I believe ESPN/Sports Center also did a piece on this sometime last year.

 

I guess I'm the only one who wasn't blown away by it... mainly because I also read John Tomase's article in the Boston Herald and on ESPN Page 2 months ago. It didn't seem like Reilly was breaking significant ground, regardless of which sibling he was focusing on.

 

"I think we all believed he would try to kill us all one day. I'd kind of been preparing to shoot my father for a while."

What a chilling quote.

 

My sentiments exactly.

 

I had not read anything about this, or seen anything on ESPN, so it was all new to me. I guess if the story is old news to a reader, I can see how it might come across differently.

As for the idea that Reilly is an average columnist/awesome take out writer, I disagree.

(Unfortunately, for whatever reason, much like with Bill Simmons we can't seem to have a discussion about Reilly's work without debating whether not he's worthy of what he gets paid or whether he could or should do something else, but just for kicks again, here goes...)

Reilly is very good at what he does. He's not quite as good as he was five to seven years ago, but he's still excellent. Yes he phones it in too often these days, but he's also being compared to himself more than he is anyone else. If anyone else had that high profile of a gig, we'd tear them to shreds after about a year. The standards for that piece of back page real estate are pretty high. He's the only writer I can truly say I've read 95 percent of his stuff for the past decade. And 70 percent of that was very good. The problem with that is, the crap really stands out.

There are times when he can be too cute for my tastes, but this was a good example of letting a good story tell itself. That's why I posted it.

 

Sports are only as dramatic as the people involved.

 

Great read. Agree about the chilling quote. But that tattoo is a strange idea.

The best sports stories are human interest stories with a sports connection, no matter how small.

 

"his" could have stood for an italicization.

Great column

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&country=US&addtohistory=&searchtab=home&formtype=address&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&cat=&address=30+Greenleaf+Circle&city=Perkasie&state=PA&zipcode=

 

sports are dramatic - the columnist has to find it.

murder - or killing in self-defense - is also dramatic. but there's plenty of that in the metro section. where it should be.

again, why does a sports columnist need to range that far afield to find a subject?
easy answer. he's bored with sports.