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RIP Dub

The news came as an utter shock to me today. Ralph Wiley, columnist, author, sports analyst, passed away this morning. I didn't know him, and he had no idea that I existed, but I felt this one. I was shocked and sad, for me, for sports fans, for the world. I was so affected that it surprised me all over again. But it's true, I feel a real and tangible loss.

I've raved often about Page 2 and it's singular focus on extending sports reporting and sports commentary to all things social, political, artisitic and even spiritual. Ralph Wiley was, for me at least, the vanguard of this movement. He was the Yoda of the Jedi writers who seamlessly melded athletics with poetry, music, film, society and culture. I religiously read his columns for more than two years, because something in him spoke to me. His writing had an undeniable rhythm and style, just like the jazz musicians he was always so eloquently comparing athletes to. I have feebly attempted to copy that use of cadence, that ability to tie a piece together with such lyrical ease, and I straight jacked his use of those asteriks to separate different passages of thought and especially his use of a ghetto alter ego to have imaginary conversations with.

I felt close to him because he always spoke for and to those whose perspectives were either misrepresented or disregarded by the mainstream. Even when I disagreed, his thought process matched mine. Most importantly, he opened my eyes to what sports and the world could be like if you had the courage to look at it from a different perspective. Sports and music, sports and film, sports and race, even sports and religion, nothing was beyond Wiley's scope. He brought out the humanity in the games we love, showed how sports can be personal extensions of our thoughts and desires, and collective expressions of our hopes and fears.

He was everything everyone said he was, but more than that his work showed me that a writer, any artist really, must take his work seriously. Your work can and will have an impact and that is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. I liked that he was so self-reflective at times. He knew the power of the pen, and he was confident in his ability to wield it. At the same time, he was unafraid to reveal himself and let the reader in on the possibilities and the limits of his words. Ray Ratto hit it on the nose when he said that Wiley, "didn't write or speak from his gut as much as he wrote and spoke for yours". Wiley was never afraid to speak up, his credo for the columnist was to put your opinion up front, don't leave the reader guessing. He was also never one to dumb anything down. He respected the intelligence of his readers and he challenged them with his thoughts.

I admired and respected his career. He wrote two books with Spike Lee (SPIKE LEE!!) one about basketball and the Knicks and the other about the making of Malcolm X. At the time of his death he was working with Lee on a follow-up to the basketball movie He Got Game. I had a hard time finding his books in regular bookstores ( I once saw a lone copy of Why Black People Tend to Shout at Barnes and Noble), but my first task now will be to go out and get my hands on as many as possible. I had barely scratched the surface of what Wiley had to offer, but just from his Page 2 work, I know I am lucky to have had the opportunity.

I would like to go through his archives and pay better tribute to him by sharing some of his best passages, but that will take more time than my heavy eyelids will allow right now. Upon first seeing the news report a couple of things sprang immediately to mind though. The first was just a parenthetical phrase he used in a column about the shooting death of a Baylor basketball player. In describing the victim's girlfriend he called her beautiful "(because being smart always makes the pretty ones beautiful)". The second was a column he wrote on Toni Smith , the Division II women's basketball player who in a quiet form of protest against the then impending war in Iraq, turned her back to the flag during the national anthem. And lastly, especially since re-reading it in writing the Iverson piece, the Urban Legend column linked to in the last entry. It contains some vintage Wiley:

"A barely six-foot guy? Becoming Herculean in the NBA? Is that possible?

It isn't. It's impossible. It's legend. Urban legend. The Kid came from nothing, with nothing. His mama Ann begged John Thompson: "Please. Save him. Save my son's life...

Can't tell you how many players with ability don't make much of anything out of themselves, who come from out of tough or harsh circumstances, places where life is cheap, staging areas of Hell, barrels of human crabs pulling you down while saying, "Me! Me! No Me!" Allen Iverson's will alone is very heroic. You can say it isn't, that he isn't anything but trouble, you can O'Reilly him, shout him down, try to kill him off by saying, in a fair and balanced way, that he is undeserving, and not the Answer, but the troubadours, barbers, kids and I will laugh at you if you do....

Please. Allen is "Rocky" for the people "Rocky" forgot.

For those in Philly, beyond Philly, stuck in staging areas of Hell, stunted by Section 8 housing, with time as their only luxury, time and imagination and endless blacktop ... even from so much nothing like this, something wonderful was made. The troubadours, barbers, poets, artists and children, they know. Ask your kid. Ask Bruce Hornsby. Ask Woody Allen. They know this genius when they feel it and sense it."

Posted by sheelpi at June 15, 2004 12:48 AM