Deford's confessions in SI

[brettwatson]

Frank Deford's multi-page effort in SI this week provides fodder for debate, starting with What the f--- is it?

He traces the progress of modern-day sportswriting seen through the prism of .....Frank Deford.

Self-indulgent, over-written and way too long, he comes across to me as a pitcher with an 82 mph fastball.

I used to love this guy's work. But if this is the best he can do....oy vey.

 

[Ace]

I haven't seen it yet.

However, I still can't hit a 82 mph fastball.

 

[Bubbler]

I skimmed it in the dentist's office today. Didn't read it thoroughly, but by the look of it, the two hours of dental work were the better choice.

 

[Ace]

I skimmed it in the dentist's office today. Didn't read it thoroughly, but by the look of it, the two hours of dental work were the better choice.

Ouch.

 

[mb]

Even Jamie Moyer thinks he should have packed it in by now.

 

[Den1983]

Have yet to see it, but now I'm intrigued. I've always been a fan of Deford's.

 

[cranberry]

There was a time when I was an avid reader of anything Frank wrote but he went downhill almost as fast as Rick Reilly. Haven't paid any attention to anything he's written or said in about 20 years. He's completely irrelevant.

 

[Fran Curci]

Yeah, he's no Bill Simmons.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

I read it earlier today. I kept waiting for Deford's brilliance to shine, but in this story, it never happened. It just seemed like a bunch of random bits and pieces that never came together.

 

[fishhack2009]

My SI arrives on Thursday. I'll at least read it. Deford's always been one of my favorite writers. "The Anglo Meets The Indian" from his best-of book was one of the saddest sports stories I've ever read.

 

[Small Town Guy]

It was strange because I didn't really get what the confession was. I thought he was going to admit to something heinous, like, the Toughest Coach Who Ever Lived actually wept at the end of Old Yeller. But I did like the anecdotes in it and I'm a sucker for inside baseball things so I enjoyed that. And I like reading about the history of SI - The Franchise is a must-read for anyone interested in Sports Illustrated's past - so I liked the little stories. But yeah, didn't really get what the point of it all was. I think it's unfair to say he hasn't written anything relevant in 20 years. He was gone from SI for a long time, but his occasional stories since returning in '98 have included some superb ones.

And what writer doesn't go downhill? An honest question, is there a nonfiction writer out there whose stuff gets better and better as they go past the age of, say, 55, 60? It's not like it's unique with Deford or even sportswriters - Gay Talese wrote the most famous nonfiction piece perhaps ever - Frank Sinatra has a cold - and several other classics, including the Dimaggio one. But what's he done the last 30 years? Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Mark Kram, Curry Kirkpatrick, Reilly, Rushin, Deford, obviously a lot of people think Smith's best features are in the past. I think it's incredibly hard to maintain the commitment they put in to the longform journalism. In that MacCambridge SI book, Dan Jenkins talked about how difficult it was to maintain the drive and creativity. And Deford was struggling with it in the 80s even, when he started doing things like writing features as plays, shortly before he went to The National.

But as long as he keeps ripping soccer, I'll be a big fan.

 

[VictoryGallop]

Not to date myself, but in my parents' attic I dug up some of my old SIs I saved from 70s and 80s. Wow. The writing and storytelling in those days is just night-and-day compared to now. I mean night and day. You can grab any issue from any week back then and find a great, longform story to read. Now, almost never...

 

[Bubbler]

I was a bit mean in my earlier post. The truth is, even if DeFord has gone downhill, at least he had a hill to go down. Many among us don't.

 

[Versatile]

He had a mountain, not a hill. Deford ranks among the all-time greats.

The guy is 71 years old. Give him a break.

 

[clutchcargo]

I don't care if it was self-indulgent. It was a fun read. And he gave full credit to the guy who wrote the original piece about the football coach. Wasted self-indulgence to me are some of the guys a couple decades younger than Deford who grab for the crutch and interject themselves into the story , effectively saying, "Look at me, I happened to be here when such-and-such took place," not realizing how foolishly contrived they sound. Some of that shows up in SI periodically, and you probably can guess who I"m talking about.

 

[DanOregon]

Toughest Coach Who Ever Lived - god damn I loved that.

Check it out in the SI Archives if you haven't read it already. It's timeless.

 

[Versatile]

Jeez... Just found that story in the SI Vault: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122011/index.htm

Did it pretty much take up the entire magazine that week? That's got to be one of the longest stories SI has run, though I guess I'm mostly familiar with the mid-90s and on.

 

[The Big Ragu]

I read about half of it last night before bed -- zoned out after getting that far. Thank you, Bubbler, for your second post. Yes, Deford isn't the who Frank Deford used to be, but he is in his 70s, still sharp and he still works on his own terms, which means he is not going to be on top of every bit of sports news and be the most relevant writer out there. No one should begrudge him that. He's earned it. Yeah, the piece was self indulgent, but he's Frank Deford. He should get one or two of those--as long as it isn't a staple, and it really isn't--without a peanut gallery of sports journalists piling on him. From what I read, it was less full of revelations, than it was him randomly reminiscing about the gold ole days. Frankly, that is the kind of thing people on here sometimes eat up -- whenever the National comes up on here, for example. There wasn't a ton of focus to the piece -- nothing holding it together well except that it was stories from scattered moments in Frank Deford's life, but I haven't finished it yet. He can still write very well and he's a natural-born story teller, even if I didn't find some of it all that interesting. Deford is a good man, who has a bit of an ego that is funnier than it is insufferable. In my experience he has helped a lot of younger people throughout the years. In my opinion, people should cut him some slack for a piece like that, and also take into mind that SI chose to run it, even if it is self-indulgent.

 

[Dr. Howard]

Great writer, but a pompous tool. He wrote a piece years ago for SI on a junior college football coach in Mississippi that was absolutely the stuff of genius. And yet he seems so oily and generally above it all.

 

[Cousin Jeffrey]

I just read the story. I liked it. But I too am a sucker for inside baseball stories, especially in journalism, and I guess, baseball. Also, I wasn't expecting brilliance, just a fun read.

I wonder if it's going to be part of a larger memoir. Or maybe he was trying to write a memoir and gave up. Surprised there was nothing, even a graf, on The National and his work in TV now. He disses TV, but that's his main gig now. Then again, Real Sports is a bit different, with longform-style stories, which is I'm sure how he thinks of it.