Probably it was a bit unhealthy. I waited so eagerly for his articles on ESPN.com that I refused to look for any kind of pattern in how often his columns posted. If I knew when he was most likely to post, it wouldn't be worth checking several times a day. Occasionally, he’d ruffle my feathers a bit (for example, when he needlessly eviscerated my boy Jimmer Fredette) and I’d wonder why exactly he was such a jerk. But before long, he’d write something else and I was reeled in again. I love sports and I love the way he humanizes things. I loved the people he wrote about. I loved his writing style.
Now, I cannot muster the energy to read his pieces. It makes me tired to consider reading about Stephen Curry and his mosquito nets. I’d really like to care about why he thinks it’s wrong that college athletes can’t sell their autograph (coincidentally, I agree), but I don’t. I liked reading about Phil Mickelson’s huge win in the British Open, but when I closed my browser, I was relieved and re-energized. I only realized how exhausting I find the guy about an hour ago, as I was looking for something to read, notice he had a new column up, and passed it over, as usual.
What the? This is almost as confusing as Carl Lewis getting a second chance to “throw” a first pitch. (Here’s the first time. Yikes.)
But there’s a reason. It’s actually a very logical reason, if strange. And it is:
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| Don't try to tell you me you don't want to scrub this thing. |
and fixing split rail fences. I’m trying not to waste a summer at home with my family, which is why I do most of my writing at 1 in the morning. There are too many things I need to be invested in, and too many that I want to do. Rick Reilly wears me out.
It’s not that he’s a poor writer. In fact, he’s won sportswriter of the year more times than I can count on my fingers (which is the only way I can count, usually). It’s also not that I’ve bought into the anti-Reilly movement that seems to gain strength every year. It’s just that sports aren’t that important. I don’t need someone else to make me care any more about sports than I already do. I need balance more than I need you, Rick. Sorry it’s got to be this way.
And guess what? I’m writing just like Rick Reilly.
Seriously. The zippy one line concluding paragraph is traight out of the Reilly arsenal. Good thing I decided not to close with it, although I was tempted: it had such a nice ring to it.
The long strings of similar sentences or clauses? Hm. Rick Reilly does that all the time.
Deemphasizing the value of sports, something I’ve done a lot of recently, is also one of his go-to moves, even while he immerses you in an athlete’s world, totally overwhelming whatever real-life matter you were considering before. And while I’m on the subject, he’s regularly getting into the social implications of sports news or culture. Sounds like my posts here on Balls and Beards.
Even as I try to distance myself from the guy, he’s one of the big influences on the way I write. The way I think. Who I am as a sportswriter. I read Michael Lewis’s Moneyball recently, and I decided: no more emotional analysis! Numbers. Facts. Objectivity. Those things are superior to feelings and thoughts and personality, right? Right. But knowing it doesn’t make me able to do it for me any more than for Billy Beane himself, the father of the moneyball movement. He works out and studies history during his team’s games, because he loves the game too much and gets too frustrated when it’s not perfect. I sit down to write an analytical, impartial essay and I just can’t keep the necessary emotional distance. I also can’t give up writing.
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| Jim Tressel informs me I'm not the only one who can't handle Rick Reilly in a constructive manner. |
Basically, I can’t handle two drama queen, emotional basketcase, illogical sportswriters at once.
My brain ain’t big enough for the two of us, Rick. And I ain’t leaving.
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