Life of Reilly

Rick Reilly, the mainstay of Sports Illustrated's back page, is a writer with a facile short game, but, as The Life of Reilly makes clear, he was born to go long. As entertaining, clever, witty, and, at times, irate as his rants and raves at the end of each week's issue can be, it's the sheer talent and bravura he displays in the features he's penned for the magazine that best exhibit why he's considered one of the finest sportswriters of our time. If his columns have a way of constantly poking you in the ribs, the longer pieces can sometimes take your breath away.

While The Life of Reilly covers the bases of all major and most other sports, Reilly's writing about golf is especially stellar, and three pieces alone--his chronicle of a round of golf with President Clinton, his account of O.J. Simpson's trials on public golf courses, and his reportage, on deadline, of Jack Nicklaus's sixth victory at Augusta--are worth the volume's greens fee. As beautifully as Reilly can paint the big picture, these pieces display his uncanny eye for detail, his skills as a reporter, and his inventiveness as a writer. On Nicklaus's improbable Masters title at age 46: "Maybe Nicklaus had drawn up a contract with Lucifer for one last major, for that slippery 20th that had eluded him since 1980, for a sixth green blazer. In exchange, Nicklaus would do pro-ams in Hades for the rest of his days. What else could explain it?" What else, indeed.

Reilly provides short postscripts to most of the pieces--some are just pithy, while others open windows onto the writer's craft. They're a nice touch, but then, Reilly's work, in general, is full of them. --Jeff Silverman