Afternoon Baseball

My friend John from school emailed me today with the subject line "Wiley." I figured he was sending me an article on Ralph Wiley, the ESPN.com columnist. When I opened the email however, it was about how he had died.
52. Of heart failure. He just wrote a column 4 days ago.

I always liked reading him because he came with the knowledge, often first-hand, of these athletes and of many athletes from decades past. He wrote in a style I can't even define; suffice it to say it was unique, dazzling, but never dominated the substance of what he got across.
Thrown for a loop. I remember reading his reflections on Dick Schaap when that legend passed away. Reading it again tonight, it was haunting and almost disturbing in a way. Both were linked by friendship, "The Sports Reporters," and a life of sports journalism. Both were also linked by rather sudden and far too early deaths.
For myself, I only experienced them at the very end, in a limited fashion. Schaap, through seeing him interview or reading him intermittenly, and Wiley through reading his columns--dynamite as they were, only a small shadow of the work he had accomplished through his days at SI and his numerous books.
Page 2 bears a gigantic hole now. Not just because they are down an NBA and NFL man--that is a loss (in football particularly after their blacklisting of the overbearing but space-filling Gregg Easterbrook last year). But they are losing the epitome of the offbeat, original, better sports journalism that inspired the creation of Page 2 and had just been returning in the past few months with the Entertainment Tonight filler exiled to Page 3.

But life goes on. Someone will get a chance to fill that space. It won't be easy for them, and perhaps not for many readers. But there will be a blueprint that can't be duplicated but can still inspire.