<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over a period of thirty years, I was an avid reader of <\/span>Sports Illustrated<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 When they became yet another publication that slimmed down from a weekly to a monthly format, their features changed radically enough for me to let my subscription lapse.\u00a0 From 1997 to 2007, the first article I read in every issue was Rick Reilly\u2019s <\/span>Life of Reilly<\/span><\/i> opinion piece that always occupied the last page of <\/span>SI.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Yes, I have shared how I tend to read newspapers and magazines from the back to the front, but in this case, I gravitated to Reilly\u2019s column because it was always great.\u00a0 It was the first signed opinion piece in <\/span>Sports Illustrated <\/span><\/i>history and it transcended \u2018sports\u2019 – Reilly told stories of human interest wrapped around his sportswriting excursions.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Born in Boulder, Colorado on February 3, 1958, Reilly graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and lives there today in his semi-retirement.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t thought of him since I let my <\/span>SI <\/span><\/i>subscription lapse so when I spotted his book on sale at the local St. Vinnie\u2019s store, (<\/span>Hate Mail From Cheerleaders – and Other Adventures in the LIFE OF REILLY from the Pages of Sports Illustrated <\/span><\/i>(2008, Time Inc. Home Entertainment)), I couldn\u2019t resist.\u00a0 Okay, it is a bit dated – it came out with an introduction written by Lance Armstrong four years before the United States Anti-Doping Agency investigation concluded he (Armstrong, not Reilly) had used (and denied using) performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career and fell from grace in the world of sports.\u00a0 A collection of 100 of his backpage articles between 2003 and 2006, <\/span>Hate Mail<\/span><\/i> became a <\/span>New York Times <\/span><\/i>best seller and reminded me why I always read his stuff first.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In this day of YouTube clips, Tik-Tok cutesy videos, and sponsored content being streamed out of everybody\u2019s assorted electronic devices, it was refreshing to reacquaint myself with Reilly\u2019s ability to transform the alphabet into such an artform.\u00a0 In the book\u2019s <\/span>Acknowledgements<\/span><\/i>, Reilly recounts his journalism professor at UC-Boulder taking him aside one day \u201c[sniffing] You\u2019re better than sports.\u00a0 To her, I\u2019d [Reilly] like to say, emphatically, \u2018<\/span>Phillllbbbbbbbtt!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Personally, I have nothing against those who like their entertainment dished out in soundbites and video clips, but the next time someone asks me why I still read real newspapers and magazines, I am going to say, \u201cRick Reilly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Reilly moved from <\/span>SI <\/span><\/i>to <\/span>ESPN <\/span><\/i>in 2008 where he continued his presence as the \u2018last page guy\u2019.\u00a0 He retired from his regular feature gig in 2010 and now exclusively does on-air essays on <\/span>ESPN<\/span><\/i> from live sporting events like Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the British Open.\u00a0 In fact, the day I found his book, he popped up on one of those shows where the talking heads endlessly debated some important sports topic in need of total dissection like, \u201cWhen will the Arron Rogers\u2019 trade be completed?\u201d (although I can\u2019t recall exactly what his take on their big topic of the day was)*.\u00a0 Golf would seem to rank high in his semi-retired life – he has penned at least six golf theme titles going all the way back to 1996\u2019s <\/span>Missing Links<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Not everyone loves Rick\u2019s writing.\u00a0 An article in <\/span>Basketball Jones<\/span><\/i> claims he missed the joke in a piece he did about LaBon James under the heading <\/span>ESPN\u2019s Rick Reilly Apparently Mistakes Satire for News.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The <\/span>BJ\u2019s <\/span><\/i>article begins,<\/span> \u201cESPN\u2019s Rick Reilly doesn\u2019t quite get the joke and would very much like you to explain it to him . . .\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is no way I could do justice to why I like Reilly\u2019s work because I lack his knack for stringing words together while telling stories inside of sports topics.\u00a0 Instead of relating a bunch of little snippets from the 100 essays in this book, I am going to share one in its entirety.\u00a0 If you aren\u2019t a Reilly lover, this won\u2019t change your mind.\u00a0 This, for me, is just an example of how one can teach lessons about the wider world under the guise of \u2018sportswriting\u2019.\u00a0 This originally ran in the June 20, 2005 issue of <\/span>Sports Illustrated <\/span><\/i>entitled <\/span>Strongest Dad In the World:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI TRY TO BE A GOOD FATHER.\u00a0 GIVE MY KIDS MULLIGANS.\u00a0 Work nights to pay for their text messaging,\u00a0 Take them to swimsuit shoots.\u00a0 But compared to Dick Hoyt, I suck.\u00a0 Eighty-five times he\u2019s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars – all in the same day.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dick\u2019s also pulled him cross-country skiing, has taken him on his back mountain climbing, and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike.\u00a0 Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And what has Rick done for his father?\u00a0 Not much – except save his life.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This love story began in Winchester, Mass. 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHe\u2019ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,\u201d Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old,\u00a0 \u201cPut him in an institution.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But the Hoyts weren\u2019t buying it.\u00a0 They noticed the way Rick\u2019s eyes followed them around the room.\u00a0 When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate.\u00a0 \u201cNo way.\u201d Dick says he was told.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s nothing going on in his brain.\u201d \u00a0 \u201cTell him a joke,\u201d Dick countered.\u00a0 They did.\u00a0 Rick laughed.\u00a0 Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate.\u00a0 His first words?\u00a0 \u201cGo, Bruins!\u201d\u00a0 And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, \u201cDad, I want to do that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Yeah, right.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 How was Dick, a self-described \u201cporker\u201d wo never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles?\u00a0 Still, he tried.\u00a0 \u201cThen it was me who was handicapped,\u201d Dick says.\u00a0 \u201cI was sore for two weeks.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That day changed Rick\u2019s life,\u00a0 \u201cDad,\u201d he typed, \u201cwhen we were running, it felt like I wasn\u2019t disabled anymore!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And that sentence changed Dick\u2019s life.\u00a0 He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could.\u00a0 He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNo way,\u201d Dick was told by a race official.\u00a0 The Hoyts weren\u2019t quite a single runner, and they weren\u2019t quite a wheelchair competitor,\u00a0 For a few years, Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially:\u00a0 In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Then somebody said, \u201cHey, Dick, why not a triathlon?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How\u2019s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn\u2019t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon?\u00a0 Still, Dick tried.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Now they\u2019ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii.\u00a0 It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an older guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don\u2019t you think?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hey, Dick, why not see how you\u2019d do on your own?\u00a0 \u201cNo way,\u201d he says.\u00a0 Dick does it purely for \u201cthe awesome feeling\u201d he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim, and ride together.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083 place our of more than 20,000 starters.\u00a0 Their best time?\u00a0 Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 –\u00a0 only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don\u2019t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNo question about it,\u201d Rick types.\u00a0 \u201cMy dad is the Father of the Century.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And Dick got something else out of all this too.\u00a0 Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race.\u00a0 Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95 percent clogged.\u00a0 \u201cIf you hadn\u2019t been in such great shape,\u201d one doctor told him, \u201cyou probably would\u2019ve died 15 years ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other\u2019s life.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together.\u00a0 They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father\u2019s Day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe thing I\u2019d most like,\u201d Rick types, \u201cis that my dad sit in the chair and I push <\/span>him<\/span><\/i> once.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Postscript (added in his book)\u201d\u00a0 This is another one that people seem to have taped up on their refrigerators or their desk lamps.\u00a0 Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) liked it so much he read it into the <\/span><\/i>Congressional Record<\/span>.\u00a0 Video of Team Hoyt on YouTube is now burning its way around the internet.\u00a0 People forward it to me with a note that says, \u201cDude, you\u2019ve got to read this.\u201d\u00a0 And I write back, \u201cDude, I wrote it!.\u201d\u00a0 The Hoyts are still rolling, but the way.\u00a0 Last I checked, they\u2019d entered 911 different events.\u00a0 They admit the number is more but they\u2019re too busy to update the total.\u00a0 Too busy,\u00a0 Ain\u2019t it great?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Reilly\u2019s final print essay was published on ESPN.com on June 10, 2014.\u00a0 ESPN further announced that he would continue with them in a television-only capacity on their <\/span>SportsCenter <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Sunday NFL Countdown<\/span><\/i> shows.\u00a0 During his career, Rick has been voted the National Sports Media Association (NSMA, formerly the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association or NSSA) National Sportswriter of the Year eleven times.\u00a0 Only the late Jim Murray of the <\/span>Los Angeles Times<\/span><\/i> collected more NSMA hardware (14).\u00a0 In 2009, Reilly also joined a notable list of writers who have won the Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The trouble with writing about events from previous decades, one must sometimes backtrack a bit to add context.\u00a0 With that in mind, I will need to add my own <\/span>Postscript<\/span><\/i> to this FTV to bring everyone up to speed on some of the information above.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0First we should address Lance Armstrong.\u00a0 Reilly had long defended Armstrong when he was accused of using performance enhancing drugs mostly because his own reporting turned up no evidence to prove the allegations.\u00a0 When Armstrong finally admitted he did indeed use the drugs after many years of denial (he confessed in January 2013), Reilly wrote, \u201cArmstrong had spent 14 years polishing a legend that turned out to be plated in fool\u2019s gold.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As for Team Hoyt, through March 2016, they had competed in 1,130 endurance events including 72 marathons and six Ironman Triathlons.\u00a0 They ran in 32 Boston Marathons with their last one together in March of 2014.\u00a0 They had been about a mile from the end of the 2013 race when two bombs exploded near the finish line.\u00a0 A bystander with an SUV transported them back to their hotel and neither were injured.\u00a0 From 2015 to 2019, dentist Bryan Lyons took Dick\u2019s place on Team Hoyt but unfortunately he died in June 2020 at the age of 50.\u00a0 Rick\u2019s mother passed away in 2010 and Dick died in his sleep on March 17, 2021 at the age of 80.\u00a0 Rick Hoyt succumbed to complications with his respiratory system at his assisted living home on May 22, 2023.\u00a0 Rick was 61 at the time of his passing.\u00a0 More information about Team Hoyt and their foundation at teamhoyt.com.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One last nugget – the title of Reilly\u2019s book as he explained it in the Foreword:\u00a0 \u201c<\/span>Hate Mail from Cheerleaders.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 When, I first started writing the <\/span>Sports Illustrated <\/span><\/i>column every week, I did one on cheerleading.\u00a0 I said, \u2018Cheerleading isn\u2019t a sport!\u00a0 There are 10 or 11 sports for girls at every high school.\u00a0 If you want to play a sport, get in between the lines and play a real sport!\u00a0 But wearing a circle skirt and a tight sweater and facing away from the field going \u20182-4-6-8\u2019 is not a sport.\u2019\u00a0 Well, this went over like anthrax brownies.\u00a0 We broke a record for hate mail on it, but hate mail from cheerleaders really isn\u2019t bad at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of like getting pelted with rolls of scented Charmin.\u00a0 It\u2019s always on pastel paper and usually includes a picture of the squad, and they write, \u2018I hope you die\u2019 with a little hear over the <\/span>i.<\/span><\/i>\u201d\u00a0 And now (if I may be so bold as to borrow a catch phrase from another American treasure, Paul Harvey), you know (at least part of) the rest of the story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*This article was begun before the great Aaron Rogers Trade Drama was resolved on April 25, 2023.\u00a0 Thankfully, Wisconsin sportswriters can now begin talking about next season without branching off into yet another round of \u2018will he go, won\u2019t he stay, where will he go, what will they get for him\u2019 (etc, etc, etc) drama that has permeated all things Packers for the last two years.\u00a0 Seems a strange legacy, to follow the Brett Farve trail to New York, but I will not say any more than that.\u00a0 I won\u2019t even speculate if Aaron will also end up wearing purple after the green. I would, however, be interested in reading Reily\u2019s take on the whole story.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Jo Jo Gunne singing (what else) Run, Run, Run<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over a period of thirty years, I was an avid reader of Sports Illustrated.\u00a0 When they became yet another publication that slimmed down from a weekly to a monthly format, their features changed radically enough for me to let my subscription lapse.\u00a0 From 1997 to 2007, the first article I read in every issue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2878,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2875\/revisions\/2878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}