Reilly, before.

Interesting item on Deadspin, collecting a few of Rick Reilly's earlier works, written before he became a Media Empire.

Schott, Gumbel, Jim Murray....I wonder if he misses doing pieces like these.

http://deadspin.com/5295590/

 

The Jim Murray piece gives me chills every time.

Schott was really good, too.

 

Here we go again ....
Still need to read the Murray story. Not sure I read the original. Some great stuff here, though.

 

That Citadel piece was in the first SI I ever read, back in the day. Still remembered some of it. It's stuff like that that helped get me into this business.

 

I don't think he does. I recall reading years ago that he said those long features just took too much out of him to do them on a regular basis. Said he was obsessive about talking to every possible interview subject and then agonized over the writing so much that he didn't feel he could keep it up.

 

The Gumbel story is one of my favorites.

 

I doubt he misses it, since he could still be doing it if he wanted to. It's disappointing that he doesn't have that desire anymore, but I can't imagine what it's like to do a story like that. It seems obvious to me that Reilly just got burned out.

 

I just don't know if we're ever going to see that kind of access again...those stories were written in a different era. The bonus piece in SI is no longer the holy grail of sportswriting.

That's the kind of work that made me crazy competitive in this business, and I don't know who is doing that caliber of reporting/writing in sports today.

 

He was a legend well before those pieces. Back in the early 1980s I was working with a Coloradoan who kept talking about Reilly like he was the second coming. He had started at the Boulder Daily Camera and was then writing for The Denver Post. I knew the byline because I read lots of out-of-town papers, but I had no idea he was our age until my colleague clued me in. There was no SportsJournalists.com, so gossip was carried out by phone ... landline. I wouldn't call it jealousy, because I don't recall anyone saying he didn't deserve it -- it was more like bemused awe. Didya hear Reilly's going to the L.A. Times? After only two years at The Denver Post? And then, a couple years later, Jeez, Reilly's going to SI? Indeed he was. And it wasn't as if he'd arrived out of nowhere.

 

Right, I'm thinking mid-80s. You said it perfectly.

I also recall he was one of the first to have an agent, for books and TV and everything else.

 

I can't remember the last great feature piece that I read in SI. Verducci's work just doesn't cut it for me any longer. After Clemens I keep wondering what he is not telling me.

SI needs to bring in someone like Jeff Pearlman.

 

I get fidgety reading those. Always have. I can't finish Death of a Racehorse anymore without feeling this immediate twinge that I need to go into work tomorrow and do something mind-numbingly significant.

Then I get into work and remember why I haven't had the drive to even try lately. Maybe its an indictment on me, I don't know, but it kills me.