Tiger, Meet My Sister...: And Other Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said - Couverture souple

Foreword

Now that I’m dead, I’d like to discuss my funeral.

First off, I want chili cheeseburgers. And Guinness. And the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders.

I want the Cure playing, live. I hid some money under the rock out back. Should cover it. If there’s any left, get the Phoenix Gorilla, too.

I’ll need a mix of crying and laughing, 25 percent/70 percent, if we could. The other 5 percent is going to be those who will be there howling happily to see that I’ve boxed. That will be Bryant Gumbel, Steve Garvey, and Sammy Sosa, people like that. Let them holler lousy things out about me now and then. I don’t mind. I was hard on them.

A lot of my final rankings will be hanging on big posters on the walls of whatever hall you rent. (The back room at an Olive Garden ought to do it.) They are as follows:

NICEST PEOPLE:

   · Steph Curry
   · Jim Nantz
   · That bald guy with the mushroom-cloud ear hair who always comes up to me and tells me how much he loved my last column even though Mitch Albom usually wrote it

BIGGEST JERKS:

   · Barry Bonds
   · Barry Bonds
   · Robert (Arliss) Wuhl
   · Barry Bonds
   · Jay Cutler

MOST FUN:

   · Charles Barkley
   · George Clooney
   · David Feherty

GREATEST WITNESSED THRILLS:

   · Nicklaus wins the 1986 Masters
   · North Carolina State wins the 1983 NCAA March Madness
   · My first SI Swimsuit shoot. Oh. My. God.

LARGEST REGRETS:

   · Believed Lance Armstrong
   · Didn’t believe Jose Canseco
   · Sold all my Apple at 125

DUMBEST QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASKED ME:

   · Where do they store the hockey ice at the arena when they switch over to basketball? (A: They cut it up in little squares and the players take it home and keep it in their freezers.)
   · Why has Greg Norman never been selected to play in the Ryder Cup? (A: Because Norman has a deal with U-Haul.)
   · When was the last repeat winner of the Kentucky Derby? (A: Sigh.)

PEOPLE I WAS SURE WOULD BE DEAD BEFORE ME:

   · Mike Tyson
   · Dennis Rodman
   · John Daly

BEST INSULT:

   · “Thanks for sending me your book. I’ll waste no time reading it.” (From a reviewer.)

PRESIDENTS MET:

   · Ford (stepped on my foot)
   · Carter (wouldn’t let go of my wife)
   · Bush 41 (very fast, very bad golfer)
   · Clinton (smart)
   · Obama (fantasy football partner)

ANNOYANCES:

   · The readjust, re-Velcro, triple loogie done between pitches every freaking time
   · The stupid rule that won’t let you pull it out of a divot
   · Guns

THINGS I’LL MISS:

   · Wife and kids and buddies
   · Third-and-8 and Peyton Manning deciding who he’s going to burn
   · Piano bars

THINGS I WON’T:

   · “Can you take a look at my nephew’s book? It’s a true story!”
   · Wide receivers who pump their chest and point to the name on their back after a six-yard gain.
   · The 43 million waiters and waitresses in this country who set the plate down and say, “Enjoy.” Hey, lady, it’s a cheesesteak. Where do you think I’m putting it?

WHAT I LEARNED:

   · The faster a sprinter is, the slower he walks
   · There is no point talking to a 5-iron
   · The Kenyan with the most impossible name to pronounce will win the race
   · All other Kenyans will finish 2-through-10
   · Media company lawyers do not get paid to get your joke. They get paid to kill it
   · Even if there are 1,000 people in front of you enjoying your after-dinner speech, you will focus on the lady who’s asleep
   · The guy you need the most to finish your story will be last out of the shower
   · Every hate e-mail starts with “I’ve enjoyed everything you’ve written, until _____”, and ends with “hope you die in a fiery ____ accident”
   · Ninety-seven percent of athletes are lovely people and really boring columns
   · If you’re not adding some tiny good to the world, then you’re wasting everybody’s time

Up on stage, there will be a bottle of Macallan scotch from every year I’ve been alive. Each person will come up to the stage and take a shot from the year they met me, then smash the glass. If you don’t drink, we probably never met.

For flowers, I’d like the purple kind. They’re pretty.

MC Vin Scully (he’ll outlive us all) will get up and open—cold—with Sentences That Have Never Been Uttered in the History of the English Language. I have a whole collection I’ve been saving and they’ll be perfect coming out of Vin’s velvet voice box. A few sentences nobody’s ever uttered:

   · “Tiger, meet my sister.”
   · “Shaq, you shoot the technical.”
   · “Tebow says go screw yourself.”

Then Vin is going to open it up for speeches.

But be warned: Rip me, roast me, rave about me, but don’t be boring. I’m going to have Nate (No Neck) Syzmanski standing there. If you’re dull, he’ll disconnect the mike and “encourage” you off the stage.

If Charles Barkley shows, I’d like him to get up and tell about the time we were driving along and the steering wheel came off in his hands. Or the time we were walking along in Barcelona in 1992 and looked back to see 200 people following us.

I’d like John Elway to tell about the time we were playing golf and he tripped on a tee marker at the top of a steep par 3 and tumbled 30 feet cleat-over-baseball-cap. One of the best up and downs of his life.

And it’d be great if one of my buddies got up and read some of the dumb quotes I’ve had to stand there and write in my notepad. Do you know how hard it is to write about people who make their livings with their bodies, not their brains? For instance:

   · “Oh, man, you’ll never get up this thing in the winter.”—Wayne Gretzky’s Canadian friend, surveying Gretzky’s steep L.A. driveway
   · “We got our backs to the driver’s seat.”—Otis Armstrong, RB, Denver Broncos
   · “I’ve won championships at every level, except high school and college.”—Shaquille O’Neal

Oh, and I want a bunch of Nerf footballs in the crowd. I want people to just stand up and go, “I’m open!” and then have somebody wing one at them. I want Elway to have his own basket of them.

Now, I’ve taken the liberty of writing my own obit. If you’ll just send it to the papers and the websites and whatnot:

RICK REILLY, 56, sportswriter, died this week of one thing or the other. He probably had it coming.

Reilly published or posted over 2 million words in his 37-year career, most of them making fun of Barry Bonds and the size of his head.

At least Reilly tried to tell the truth in his stories and columns. He might not have always done it, but he tried. He also tried to make it all add up to something. He tried to make you laugh or cry or treat somebody better. Or worse. Once in awhile, he pulled it off.

Reilly was a very odd sportswriter in that he didn’t really write about sports. He wrote more about people who played sports than the sports themselves. The high school stud quarterback who took the loneliest girl under his wing. The blind woman who travels by bus, train and sidewalk to every Yankees game. The sports-fan kid who was supposed to be 17 and looked 80.

Reilly covered every major sporting event except the Indy 500, and every minor one, including the world sauna championship, in which he placed 103rd. He saw over 100 countries, including some behind the Iron Curtain that no longer exist. He went to every state but North Dakota, although he’s not really welcome in Nebraska, possibly because of this joke he told in Omaha:

Q: What do you call a hot tub full of Nebraska cheerleaders?

A: Gorillas in the mist.

He got decent at the piano for a while. Knew enough magic to annoy you. George Clooney made one of his movies. He had a TV series that lasted one episode. Had his own interview show that lasted 15. Helped raise over $50 million to fight malaria via Nothing But Nets, which he came up with because he was desperate for a column one week.

He saw the northern lights. He ran with the bulls. He saw the best people could be and the worst. He loved writing about big people acting small and small people acting big. He liked writing about the star of the team, but he preferred writing about the nobody at the end of the bench. He wrote short, medium and long, which was probably what he did best, but it’s probably also why he’s dead at 56. He always said every one of them takes a year off your life.

The son of an alcoholic, he made his own way. He could’ve done better. He could’ve done worse. His main deal was trying to write sentences nobody had ever read before, entertain people, and not have to get a real job. Also, to his undying credit, he never was on one of those everybody-yells sportswriter shows.

Oh, and he once took $5 off Arnold Palmer on the golf course.

When the speeches are done or the scotch is gone, whichever comes first, we’ll drive up to the graveyard in monster trucks. It’s going to be great. I’ve arranged for junker cars to be parked along the way—marked with a giant orange X—and every truck gets to go over at least one of them. You’re welcome.

At the grave site, there’ll be an L.A. taco truck—best eating known to man—and it’s carta blanca. Leaving the grave site and getting a quesadilla is not only OK, it’s encouraged.

After my caddie says a few nice words, such as, “He had a loop in his backswing you could drive a Mack truck through, but at least he tipped OK,” everybody can bring one item to throw down into the grave, depending on whether you liked me or hated me. A few items I’d like to see thrown in:

   · My 7-Eleven smock. I worked there for a while before I got the writing gig. I have also been a grocery bagger, rental-shop clerk, lawn mower, book packer, parking hut attendant, flower deliverer, bank teller, gas jockey, and car washer. Got fired from most of them. I kept the smock to remind myself that writing is all I can do.
   · My 100-plus photo collection of people choking me, including Michael Phelps underwater. Made for funny pictures, except for the time Eli Manning didn’t realize it was supposed to be a joke.
   · My laptop. I don’t want anybody reading some of the columns I started and ditched. “Why Ryan Leaf Is About to Turn This League on Its Ear.” “At 30, Phil Mickelson Is Done.” “25 Reasons I’ll Never Tweet.” Things like that. Plus, my wife has the kind of body that keeps whiplash specialists in business and I don’t want anybody clicking on the “My Pictures” tab.

Speaking of my wife, it’d be nice if she lost it at some point and dove on top of the casket as it’s being lowered. But by then I figure she’ll be too busy fending off advances from my single buddies. Or not fending them off. I can’t blame either of them.

Then I’d like to leave this note for my kids: “Sorry I spent your inheritance. Love you. Hope you have as much fun as I did.”

Lastly, I want the tombstone to say:

Here lies Rick Reilly

1958–2014

Tried to write well

Anyway, that’s it. Don’t feel sorry for me. It wasn’t long, but it was a blast. And look at it this way, I FINALLY made deadline.

—

(P.S. I bet my buddy Two Down O’Connor, The World’s Most Avid Golf Gambler, $100 that I’d break par before I died and I never did. So he’s going to come up and pretend to sob over my coffin, but he’s really going to be taking the C-note out of the inside left breast pocket of my black blazer. The bill is in there, just make sure I’m wearing it.)

Flaws

(Big People Acting Small)

It’s All About the Lies

January 27, 2013

Among my e-mails Wednesday morning, out of the blue, was one from Lance Armstrong.

Riles, I’m sorry.

All I can say for now but also the most heartfelt thing too. Two very important words.

L

And my first thought was . . . “Two words? That’s it?”

Two words? For fourteen years of defending a man? And in the end, being made to look like a chump?

Wrote it, said it, tweeted it: “He’s clean.” Put it in columns, said it on radio, said it on TV. Staked my reputation on it.

“Never failed a drug test,” I’d always point out. “Most tested athlete in the world. Tested maybe 500 times. Never flunked one.”

Why? Because Armstrong always told me he was clean.

On the record. Off the record. Every kind of record. In Colorado. In Texas. In France. On team buses. In cars. On cell phones.

I’d sit there with him, in some Tour de France hotel room while he was getting his daily post-race massage. And we’d talk through the hole in the table about how he stared down this guy or that guy, how he’d fooled Jan Ullrich on the torturous Alpe d’Huez into thinking he was gassed and then suddenly sprinted away to win. How he ordered chase packs from the center of the peloton and reeled in all the pretenders.

And then I’d bring up whatever latest charge was levied against him. “There’s this former teammate who says he heard you tell doctors you doped.” “There’s this former assistant back in Austin who says you cheated.” “There’s this assistant they say they caught disposing of your drug paraphernalia.”

And every time—every single time—he’d push himself up on his elbows and his face would be red and he’d stare at me like I’d just shot his dog and give me some very well-delivered explanation involving a few dozen F-words, a painting of the accuser as a wronged employee seeking revenge, and how lawsuits were forthcoming.

And when my own reporting would produce no proof, I’d be convinced. I’d go out there and continue polishing a legend that turned out to be plated in fool’s gold.

Even after he retired, the hits just kept coming. A London Times report. A Daniel Coyle book. A U.S. federal investigation. All liars and thieves, he’d snarl.

I remember one time we talked on the phone for half an hour, all off the record, at his insistence, and I asked him three times, “Just tell me. Straight up. Did you do any of this stuff?”

“No! I didn’t do s—!”

And...

Praise for Rick Reilly, Tiger, Meet My Sister..., and Who's Your Caddy?

“Rick Reilly is one of the funniest humans on the planet, an indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray, and Lewis Grizzard, with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson.”—Publisher’s Weekly  
 
“Don't get started reading this book.  It will take three burly men to pull you away from it.”—Bob Costas, NBC commentator for Missing Links

“You don't need to know your bogeys from your birdies to find at least three laughs per page in this novel.”—The New York Times Book Review for Missing Links

“Snappy prose, believable characters, and the funniest take on blue-collar hacking and gambling since Dan Jenkins's The Glory Game at Goat Hill...it's social satire and pure irreverence that keep this story in the groove.”—Los Angeles Times for Missing Links

“Reilly could write about lawn bowling and make it funny, informative, and entertaining. You never know what the next page is going to bring.” —Los Angeles Times for Who’s Your Caddy?

“You might not think the story of a man carrying Tommy Aaron’s golf bag for 18 holes could make you laugh out loud, but you’d be wrong. Who’s Your Caddy? is funny enough to coax a chuckle out of Vijay Singh. A great way to read about the game—and its people, too.” —Charlotte Observer

“You don’t have to know much about golf to get a kick out of this book. Reilly learns a little about golf, and a lot about people.” —The Buffalo News for Who’s Your Caddy?
 
“[Reilly] knows and delivers a good story when he sees it . . . readers can’t help but be touched by the sheer ingenuity of many of these games and the sheer courage of many of the participants.”—Booklist for Sports from Hell

“Reilly was the closest thing sportswriting ever had to a rock star.”—Chris Chase, USAToday.com

“Often, Reilly’s is so good, it almost is painful for sportswriters like me to read him.”—Ed Sherman, The Sherman Report

“Reilly made you think, made you cry, made you LOL, made you get to know a subject, made you love sports and hate sports and love him and hate him. Above all, he made you read him, every column.”—Jay Marriotti, SportsTalk Florida