Gary Smith Is The Best Sportswriter In America

Sports comes to us in boxes," Gary Smith explains, "the perimeters of our TV screens or the boundary lines of fields and courts. As much as I enjoy what goes on inside the boxes, I've always had the urge to bust out of them."

In the most recent Sports Illustrated, Smith has a great profile of Gene Upshaw, head the NFL Player's Association, and his role in the league's lack of assistance for former players. We recommend that you read it now. And then maybe donate five bucks to the Gridiron Greats when you're done.

You should also contrast this article with ESPN blogger Bill Simmons' recent contribution to ESPN The Magazine, where Simmons gets to the real problem of the Roger Clemens steroids scandal: his own sacred post-college memories are ruined.

We like both writers, but for different purposes. A lot of people on the Internets, especially over at Dead Spin, despise Simmons for his hacktastic articles and probably his popularity. Some people even go as far to compare Gary Smith with Bill Simmons in order to devalue Simmons' worth as a sportswriter. But we'll be the first to admit it's a bogus comparison. It's like comparing Clifford J. Levy to Perez Hilton. Both are reporters in that they "report" on what can liberally be termed "news," but Levy actually investigates his articles, interviews people and focuses on social issues, whereas Hilton relies on second-hand celebrity gossip and publishes unverified reports accompanied by defaced photos. It's essentially the same with Simmons and Smith: Both are writers who deal in the realm of "sports," but Simmons writes about sports from his LA mansion, obtaining his limited insight primarily from television, an occasional conversation with one his ESPN cronies and (rarely) an interview. In fact, Simmons doesn't really write stories; he writes comparison articles ('86 Celtics vs. '07 Patriots) and perfunctory pop culture hackjobs ([So and so] is similar to [80s movie character]).

On the other hand, Smith's reporting (I know nothing of the man's life, unlike Simmons) hints at a veracity that teeters on the edge of obssession. He first and foremost writes about people, as evidenced by the broad array people he interviews and the way in which he uses the first person to deftly illuminate his subject. Smith's articles take on a literary quality that extends beyond sports. Against the odds, Smith manages to achieve a level of introspection in a field that resists going beyond the sheen and the sparkle of the game.

If we were forced to analogize, we'd put it this way: Simmons is the Rush Limbaugh of sportswriters, and Smith has taken up the throne David Halberstam left vacant. That works best because you can't really compare the two. They serve different purposes. One's writing centers on the writer, the other's writing centers on the subject. One has an ideology, the other investigates the ideology of the subject. One is self-absorbed, the other is absorbed in the subject.

That's the difference between the two. And Simmons never pretended to care about his subject more than his own glib thoughts about the subject. That, in a sense, is the essence of blogging.

UPDATE: We're late to the Gary Smith coronation game.