John Feinstein was one of my favorite sportswriters + a bunch of other recent RIPs
There are a handful of teachers and sportswriters who truly inspired me to become a newspaper sportswriter in my mid-20s. They include one of my journalism professors at Southern Illinois University Bill Ward, Buzz Bissinger and his Friday Night Lights, and of course the likes of Jon Wertheim and Frank Deford at Sports Illustrated.
But arguably my biggest influence was John Feinstein, whose books and Washington Post writings took us deep into the lives of athletes and others intersecting with the sports world. It didn’t matter if it was basektball, football, baseball, tennis, golf, or others, Feinstein wanted to know what drove these people towards winning and sometimes excellence.
He has passed away suddenly at age 69 of possibly a heart attack. But he also had gout and diabetes and, like most sportswriters I knew, had a terrible “always on deadline” diet. That lifestyle was one of the reasons I decided to move away from sports writing.
Feinstein was launched to fame in the journalism world with the publication of A Season on the Brink, a best seller about coach Bobby Knight and the 1985-86 Indiana University basketball team.
Perhaps my favorite Feinstein book is A March to Madness: The View From the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Feinstein was a living log of ACC basketball history, having watched all the way back to the 1960s, “when the ACC game of the week was televised in New York City on WPIX on tape delay.”
Even though he was a Duke graduate, Feinstein always treated the Duke-North Carolina rivalry with a professional reporter’s neutrality. UNC coach Dean Smith had won more games at the point that the book was written in 1998 than any other coach in history and the author said Smith would “literally begin squirming when you ask any question that is even a little bit personal. But I have tremendous respect for him and the program he has created.”
Making me now feel really old, Smith retired in 1997 before the publication of the book. But the elusive mindset and thinking of Smith was excellently captured, as Feinstein’s goal was to understand how each of the nine ACC coaches at that time operated. The short answer is that each and every one of them had a burning desire to play on “Monday night”—code language for the national championship game.
There was never much mingling between Smith and the other ACC coaches. “Part of it came from Smith being the target in the league for so many years. Part of it came from his shyness, which some coaches saw as aloofness.” The UNC coach and Duke leader Mike Krzyzewski had not gotten along since the early 1980s, when Krzyzewski often said that the refs played favorites with North Carolina (funny, it’s always seemed to this Tarheels fan that the refs are in Duke’s pocket).
A funny anecdote: one time a Kentucky coach accused Smith of calling him a sonofabitch, but the Tarheels coach—famously perhaps the only college basketball coach who never used cuss words, the exact opposite detailed in Feinstein’s book on Knight—said, “I smoke and I drink. If I cursed too, my parents would never speak to me again.”
Feinstein’s life story of former Wake Forest coach Dave Odom is probably particularly touching to me, as he grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina and went on to Guilford College in Greensboro, just like my own dad’s early-life trek. Odom always knew he would be a coach. He bounced around at high schools and colleges in North Carolina before becoming an assistant coach at Virginia when the legendary Ralph Sampson was there. Eventually he was named as Wake Forest’s coach, where he soon recruited Randolph Childress, Rodney Rogers, and one Tim Duncan. Odom saw potential in the “skinny kid from the Virgin Islands. Maybe, he thought, he could redshirt him a year to put some weight on him. Maybe, by his third year at Wake, he could be an effective player. Little did Odom know that the day he signed Duncan, his coaching life would be changed forever.”
Rick Barnes left Providence to coach the ACC’s worst team Clemson. He instituted a slow-down system and the team began to believe in him and also began to win. He also got in spats with Smith as the Jerry Stackhouse-Rasheed Wallace Tarheels dominated the Tigers in all three of their matchups covered in Feinstein’s book, with Clemson’s crowds going crazy over supposedly unfair refereeing and Smith allegedly talking to Barnes’ players on the court. Even the Dean Dome crowds shouted down Barnes constantly, and they are “about as mild as you will find, especially in the ACC.” At the end of the next season, Clemson stunned UNC with a last-second win in the first round of the ACC Tournament. Clemson’s rise had begun.
There have been plenty of other recent deaths of pop-culture personas, including:
Patsy Grimaldi, age 93, was the creator of possibly my favorite pizza place in all the U.S.—Grimaldi’s under the Brooklyn Bridge. Because of the long lines out the door, I try to make it a ritual to go there at an off hour in the afternoon when I’m visiting New York City.
Ken Rosenthal, age 81, was perhaps equally—but not as tastily—a part of my lifetime eating story. He worked to perfect sourdough bread and, in 1987, opened the first Saint Louis Bread Company in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. For years it was one of my favorite places to eat—especially for soup pouried into a round “breadbowl”—although it lost quite a bit of luster for me when it became the national chain Panera Bread. That said, it’s still often one of my favored ubiquitous choices for stopping alongside the interstate on long road trips.
Roberta Flack, age 88 of cardiac arrest, was born in the my fondly remembered Black Mountain, North Carolina, and while I don’t listen to her music much, “Killing Me Softly” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” (from Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me) are a couple of powerful ballad statements.
Gene Hackman, age 95, passed away in a very sad story that included the death of his wife as well in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The actor had so many great movie appearances, but among my favorites are certainly Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, and The Royal Tenenbaums.
Oliver Miller, age 54 of brain cancer, was a massive power in the middle for the Arkansas Razorbacks from 1988 to 1992 and went on to have a decent pro career.
David Johansen, age 75, was the lead singer of the cross-dressing New York Dolls whose song “Personality Crisis” is great. He looked and sounded like Mick Jagger, and I always had a little trouble getting past his derivative and spoofy persona.
Brian James, age 70, was more my punk speed. The lead singer of the Damned didn’t offer a whole lot more than the Dolls for me, but “New Rose” is one of my favorite punk numbers ever. I learned about it because of the excellent 1990s cover version by Don Fleming’s band Gumball.
Joey Molland, age 77, was the final surviving member of power poppers Badfinger, who were even more my speed, with gorgeous tunes like “Come and Get It,” “Baby Blue,” “Day After Day, and “Without You.”
Robert John, age 79, really didn’t make much to hold on to, but 1979’s #1 smash “Sad Eyes” is an awesome mashup of Christopher Cross and Air Supply, and I feel sorry for anyone who can’t grasp its yacht-rock glory.
Pamela Bach, age 62 by suicide, was not someone I could have picked out of a lineup, but, hey, any ex-wife of Baywatch’s David Hasselhoff needs to be recognized.