We're back from the dirty south, where Mrs. Gopher finished the half-marathon with a personal best time of 2:13:10. That shaves more than nine minutes off her previous PB. Of course, two races is an admittedly small sample size, but she was thrilled with the result, and I remain inspired by her ability and willingness to push herself beyond what she ever thought she could accomplish. May some of that drive rub off on me.While in Atlanta, I finished reading "Now I Can Die in Peace: How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, With A Little Help From Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, And The 2004 Red Sox." I was a little hesitant to dive into the book because I feared that 370 pages of Red Sox-centric writing might just drive me to the brink of mass homicide. But I trusted Bill Simmons. I like his writing on ESPN.com, and I figured he'd find a way to make this tome interesting to all baseball fans, not just those raised on Yaz, Fisk, and Freddy Lynn.
(An aside: I realize that Simmons-bashing has become something of a sport on a variety of popular blogs these days. Whether it's the Deadspin crowd (mostly their commenters, not Leitch himself), Awful Announcing or the various knockoffs of those sites, there's a lot of anti-Simmons angst out there on the net. Curiously, it echoes the backlash against Chuck Klosterman, who's been the target of an insane amount of vitriol from the hipsters at Gawker. Both crowds come across as wannabe journalists/celebrities who are taking out their frustrations on a couple of successful writers whose considerable talents are often masked by their "regular-guy" schtick, leading to criticism that -- when reading between the lines -- basically says, "I wish I'd thought of that first, but since I didn't, I'm gonna knock them down a peg or two so I won't be so lonely down here." But I digress...)
The Simmons book is about what you'd think -- a collection of columns you've probably already read, if you're a fan, but with footnotes added to further explore salient points and digressions. He does a nice job of capturing the pathos of Red Sox Nation pre-2004, which I can particularly relate to as a lifelong fan of the Minnesota Vikings. From what I could glean, 1986 was to Simmons what 1998 was to me, so I could relate to a lot of what he was going through.
My only complaint, and it's a light one at that, is that in the afterword (written in the summer of 2006) he didn't really touch on the much-deserved backlash against Red Sox fans, who quickly became as insufferable as Yankees fans thanks to the East Coast focus of ESPN and the rest of the national sports media. He's acknowledged it in columns, but to make this book stand up against the ravages of time, it's a point he could have explored in just a bit more depth.
Otherwise, a solid read for all fans of baseball, pop culture and breezy sportswriting, and a great way to kick off the 2008 MLB season.
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I didn't find this link until long after this posting, but it sums up my thoughts about Simmons better than I could have commented. I'm glad, if not jealous, I was unable to adequately put it in words myself:
http://deadspin.com/378253/ricky-reilly-billy-simmons-and-the-follies-of-privileged-sportswriting
Don't get me wrong -- I still read and podcast all things Simmons. But it was inevitable he would fall into this trap of going Hollywood with access and a modicum of celebrity. He is no longer one of us. And we can't blame him because we probably would have done the same thing.
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