Exactly. The guy could flat-out write, sports or not. In a profession dominated almost entirely by homers, Blinebury-esque hacks and news division rejects, that he chose to mainly write about sports made him seem that much greater. He was sharp writing about sports. On boxing especially, I think he could go 10 rounds with Hemingway. But he was brilliant writing about the culture. More importantly for me, he understood how the one related to the other. I clicked onto ESPN.com after the game tonight, figuring I'd have to wait till tomorrow to read his Pistons-Lakers postmortem. Now there's just the postmortem. RIP (And if ESPN replaces him with another Sports Guy clone, I'm giving up on sports journalism altogether.)
I don't know your age or sex or race or religion or anything else. But I can tell you, after reading that book, your life will never be the same.
I actually have that book; I bought it a few years ago, but I didn't realize until a few weeks ago that it was the same Ralph Wiley.
