A Rambling Book Review

Once upon a time, Rick Reilly was a very good sportswriter. During his years writing for the Denver Post, Sport Illustrated and eventually ESPN, Reilly was named sportswriter of the year eleven times. Also, he wrote a pretty enjoyable book entitled "Who's Your Caddy?" where he spent time looping for various people. Clearly, the man used to know how to write, which is what I think makes his latest book all that much sadder to read. It's called "Sports From Hell" and it was supposed to be Reilly's story of travelling the world looking for interesting new sports to try and cover. Now along with the facts that a couple of them were not actually sports (for example: in "Zorbing" no one kept score, no one won or lost, everyone just had a turn and it was over), he didn't try them all (which he implied was half the point of the book) and in the middle of it all he took 20 pages to explain why he thought baseball was the stupidest sport of them all (which, while I tend to agree with his thinking, doesn't mean it should have counted towards the total of dumb sports covered), I had a bigger problem with the book: the writing style is really annoying to read. I honestly think Reilly is no longer capable of writing a straight, descriptive sentence. Everything is joined together by some half-hearted pun that would have been funny 4 years ago. It can't just be an dumb jock; it has to be an athlete who is "dumber than toe lint." One of those a chapter isn't bad - four a paragraph is excessive. It's almost if he gets paid by the analogy at this point.

There is another reason that the constant punning annoyed me so badly. Often when I read a book by an author I have frequently seen on TV, I'll have that author's voice in my head. Those of you who know me also know that one of my biggest pet peeves is people who think they are the funniest in the room when it turns out they aren't actually funny at all. This is where the fact that Reilly is all over ESPN this weekend covering the British Open was not helping his cause. When he is on TV Reilly has the very annoying habit of not only saying all those bad analogies out loud, but he then will laugh at all his own jokes, which I normally never would have known. He ends almost every bad pun with a half-hearted chuckle. I'm not sure if he's nervous, trying to get us to laugh along with him or just finds himself that hilariously funny but whichever it is, it is damn annoying. So the entire time I was reading the book I could just hear that chuckle in my head over and over again. Another problem with Reilly is that he spent so long at the top of the sportwriting mountain that he eventually became a target, which will happen to anyone. (Writers are like stand-up comedians: we want to see other writers do well, but not too well.) However, rather than just letting it go and chalking the people who are critical up as jealous, Reilly goes the other way and seems to feel the need to show off how well he's doing, like when he pointed out (at least three times) that his new wife is very attractive and a former Miss Teen California. Yes, we get it Rick, you're doing very well for yourself, but that has nothing to do with the book.

Now look, it's not that I have a personal dislike of Reilly, I just expect better. The whole book simply felt lazy. Even the editing was lazy (a man named Rob was referred to as Robb a paragraph after being introduced). I'm not faulting Reilly for that one, but if he or his editors really cared about this project you would expect someone to catch that before they went to print. Personally, I blame ESPN for Reilly's work lately. Having done some sports writing, sports radio and sports TV, I know that TV and radio are a lot more fun than writing; they are much easier and you make a lot more money doing them. (Hell, Reilly already has given up writing for ESPN The Magazine to concentrate on filming more Homecoming specials.) By now you have to figure Reilly is set for life money-wise, which is also going to make you not work as hard or care as much. There is a famous quote from boxer Marvin Hagler who said, "It's hard to get up and train when you're sleeping on silk sheets." I kind of feel like that sums this book up: put in half-effort but cash the full check. I was able to read through the entire book in about three hours and I'm going to forget about it just as quickly. The fact that there is almost nothing memorable about this book should bother Reilly a lot, but I doubt it does. I would guess he's as indifferent about it as Manny Ramirez is about running out a groundball. (See, Reilly, one per post!)