Vintage Reilly here

You know who is also underselling Reilly's ability?

Reilly.

 

Reilly hasn't been the Reilly we grew up idolizing. I'm just 21 and have only limited professional experience to this point, but even I can see that.

But then he writes something this good and can still get ripped. I'm lame for using a comic-book movie reference here but in Batman the Joker says something to Batman like, "You can be a hero only so long until you become a villain."

Reilly's no villain. But he's been good for so long that when he's not at his best he appears worse than he actually is.

Also, to those who say they could write the way Reilly writes were they given the same story opportunities....I doubt it. You could do a good job, sure. But my fiancee, in advertising, says they know they've done a good job when others look at it and say, "I could do that."

LeBron makes dunking look easy. Barry Bonds, cheating bastard he might be, made hitting bombs look easy. The great ones always make what they do look easy.

I just think Reilly's stretched too thin now to produce the quality work he once did on a weekly basis.

But sorry about ranting....I'm done....

 

Nothing wrong with the movie reference, except you have the wrong character. It was Harvey Dent, and the line was something along the lines of, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

 

Reilly is paid a shit ton of money to do something he's very, very good at.

Sure, he has his off days -- or months -- but we all do.

Again, I don't have a problem saying I could never do what he does as well as he does it. Those who think they could.....good for you.

But this bashing for the sake of bashing is pretty ridiculous.

 

I thought this was very well-written and I had no problem whatsoever with the reference to Elway as a god (from the perspective of the 13-year-old).

But if it makes me a cynical bastard because it bothers me that this is a member of his wife's biological family and I'm pretty sure he set the whole thing up, then I guess I'm a cynical bastard. You will never convince me that didn't happen here.

For the people who skimmed over that part or don't care, it's a good story. I enjoyed reading it more than most of his stuff recently.

 

I've called Reilly the Jay Leno of sportswriting. And I stand by it.

When Reilly was at SI, writing features and in the first 5-7 years of his column, he was terrific. His batting average was about .800 and the misses were still entertaining. And I don't have 1/10th of Reilly's talent. Believe me, I know. I idolized him and when I read some of my stuff from when I was starting out, it reads like a 22-year old doing a very bad Reilly impression -- because that is what it was. I studied the Life of Reilly book like it was a college journalism textbook (the Gumbel piece was absolutely fantastic). I would compare it to being a struggling young comic watching Leno in the 1970s, being awestruck by his poise and delivery and how funny he was and being despondent because I could never reach that standard.

But now, his column is either straight-up playing to the masses (redistributing the MVP awards without addressing the obvious fact that the guy who you are giving it might have taken steroids and we don't know), a bunch of puns that read like Catskills comic got drunk and pounded out a column or yet another column soaked in cut onions about some Jerry's Kid Overcoming Through The Power Of Sports. He is coasting on his name and is probably more popular than ever despite putting out a lot of dreck. Watching him do this makes me furious. There are times he tries, but his batting average coming close to the Mendoza line for me.

 

Actually, when I used the "falling into his lap" phrase, it can also be taken as a compliment. and I do mean that as a compliment. hell, it means he's earned his keep and gained a reputation to where--again--a lot of folks are going to relay story ideas to him or may alert him to such ideas over somebody else. from there, it's the great talent he has for our profession that takes the idea and runs with it. he's the one who has to produce when all is said and done and he's done it for a long time.
i'd give anything to have that kind of talent.

 

I love Steve Rushin, but when he wrote a column about marrying Lobo it pissed me off. People get married every day. People have kids every day. Just because something happens to you doesn't make it newsworthy.
A litmus test should be for any writer doing stuff like Reilly's column should be, if it didn't involve you, would you be writing about it?
It bugs me anytime I see a report on a local news anchor on TV getting an award from a local group or having a kid, or getting a ride with the Blue Angels, or receiving some other type of honor.

 

I think in this case, Reilly would have written about it even if he weren't involved. But the problem is, I don't think it would have happened the same way if he weren't involved.

 

Dan...wouldn't you think a lot of it has to do with "ego?"

 

I have a qualified disagreement with this. Roger Ebert says, "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it" and the same applies to columns. If you write a column about your dog dying, so what? But if you can write a column about your dog dying that taps into common emotions and evokes common memories, that is good writing, regardless of the subject. One of Reilly's best columns was about riding with the Blue Angels. If a columnist can't write about the events in their lives, period, full stop, then we are denying them the ability to tell stories that most readers can relate to. If you want to rip Rushin for writing a self-centered column about Lobo that didn't make that vital connection of tapping into something that greater than that one particular story, that would be a valid criticism. But just saying, "Don't write about things because they happen to everybody" is short-sighted.

 

micke, I think it's more about laziness, or mailing it in.
Pope, I agree with you. I liked this story from Reilly for that reason, but I didn't like the fact that he appears to have made the story happen.