But SI had space, and patience, and when Nack was done, there was the article, the masterpiece.īut Nack was not alone. Later, Bill went through the self-torture of writing he felt every time, only worse this time. )īill loved the big red horse, loved the Bluegrass milieu, and he cried when he got the phone call he had been dreading. (As it happened, I had petted Secretariat on his swayed back in May, had felt the earth tremble when he moved. If I had to pick one article that stood for all the expertise and talent (and space, and money) of Sports Illustrated, I would choose the ode to Secretariat written by my friend Bill (William in his byline) Nack, upon the putting down of the great champion in October of 1989. These were no tweets, no muscle-twitch fire-the-bum impulses from the Blogosophere.
Stars like Dan Jenkins and Robert Creamer in the early years, Neil Leifer with his camera, always in position, and then young stars like Frank Deford and Gary Smith. Thank goodness the NYT and Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and others keep up the staffs and budgets and the standards to keep track of the scoundrels in our midst.īut Sports Illustrated – once a plush weekly with talent and swagger plus the budget to back them up – has now been sold to something called a digital platform company.Īs a young newspaper reporter, I appreciated the writing style - and space - that went far beyond the daily accounts in the papers. Apparently, the economy does not support the printed word you can hold in your hand and read without having advertisements and other diversions slither into your vision. I have seen very good newspapers decline or disappear. So it’s hard to level blame at the decline of a giant that meant so much to generations of fans and readers. I no longer needed to keep up with most of the sports I needed time to read other things. With a dollop of guilt, I read about the plague of layoffs at Sports Illustrated.Īfter all, I dropped my subscription shortly after retiring as a sports columnist at the Times, nearly eight years ago.
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