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THERE ARE PEOPLE who call in to sports radio shows to tell a tremendously overweight, raspy-voiced cigar smoker that Manny Ramirez, he's a bum, if, for instance, you're in Cleveland driving through the slush with baseball season months past and months to come. They love to throw bum (and all its connotations) around because-like the good ol' Americans that they are-they hate the job they're driving to, are stuck in the recent past, and are utterly addicted to the mindless banter of this bizarre space on the AM dial. But I'm joining the crackle and buzz arguments in writing today: Rick Reilly (the author of "Life of Reilly" which appears weekly on Sports Illustrated's last page), he's a bum. So, people say he's good, good like Tiger Woods is "good" at golf. (The debate's terms circumscribe metaphoric possibility like a well-run press, but I'm not going to call time-out just yet.) His stats are impressive; but I only name one for now-National Sportswriter of the Year, seven times-because I'm not here to brag for him, not for this bum. Starting from the top: what's with this guy's usual picture, the one that rides atop the column each week? Is Rick trying to look like a headshot model for a SuperCuts window display? So slick, so greasy-the picture might slide off the page if you hold the magazine at the wrong angle. Low blow, I'll admit it. At least the picture this week isn't so terrible; Reilly sports a buzz cut and sits humbly in his office. To the gratitude of all his readers, this week his head doesn't take up the entire photo. Oddly, the new picture makes me sad, like my Cleveland Browns have left and gone away again. When I was but a wee young boy, I read Gretzky, the autobiography of Wayne Gretzky, several times consecutively. It's no Open Net, George Plimpton's insider glimpse at the legendary Boston Bruins of the 1970s, but when I was twelve I thought it was damn fine sports writing. Indeed, sports writing can be good. Reilly "co-wrote" Gretzky. I have to tip my hat to the bum. My real problem with Reilly (besides his furiously essentializing sexism-see "Out of Touch with my Feminine Side," 4/3/02) is the consistency with which he ends his weekly logorrhea with a neat and tidy one-line zinger. If you read Rick Reilly's column, expect a punch line, because it's all he does and it's always on the way. I hear coaches screaming from the sideline, "Stop patting the ball!"-and over on my left is Lunatic Father bellowing at little Ricky, "Stop choreographing the pass-that's why they keep stealing the ball-you're not my son, you're bench material-bench that kid, Coach!" I don't know if I should tackle the Reilly ending, if I should intercept it, return it to the baseline. I'm frozen. An example from this week's column, "Play of the Year," about seventeen-year-old Jake Porter: Reilly tells us Jake is "a kid with chromosomal fragile X syndrome" who "can't read, can barely scrawl his first name and often mixes up the letters at that." Concludes Reilly: Yeah, Jake Porter thinks his 49-yard run made for a comeback victory. He thinks he was the hero. He thinks that's why there were so many grins and streaks down people's faces. Smart kid. [emphasis mine] We've got to ask: Is he being sarcastic? Somehow, the one-liner-"Smart kid"-seems a little out of place, a little too patronizing, a little too easy. The strategy of the one-liner is a little too ironic for this week's particular column, and probably for mine, too. In its purest form, The Rick Reilly Final Punch Line ©2002 is slick-dressed-as-clever, glossy-dressed-as-deep, marketable-dressed-as-honest; it's subversively manipulative and contentious. I'm not saying it's a behind-the-back pass, because a behind-the-back pass gets the job done. I'm no nostalgist. Nor am I a critic of surface in its politically revolutionary embrace of the transparent. But the Rick Reilly Punch Line swaggers about like a sports agent with a magnificently gaudy signet ring and hair that's just too perfectly oiled. It's Rick's old picture, and it's everywhere. The bum really had us all fooled with that new one, didn't he? Witty guy. Joe Shapiro B'04 can bench three times his own weight, but he's still a bum. |
copyright © 2002, The College
Hill Independent
last updated 11 22 02
If Brett Zarda weren't such an athlete, he'd have to play pen