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Say it ain't so! First Steve Rushin leaves SI, and now Rick Reilly? Man, if it weren't for the, um, issue that comes out in February, with the, uh, all-stars, I'd cancel my subscription. Carl Westberg Jr.<br><br><blockquote><hr>Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:26:34 -0800<br>From: sdredge@yahoo.com<br>To: vision2020@moscow.com<br>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Giving Up the Life (Rick Reilly)<br><br>
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</style><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">He's off to live happily ever after. The end.<br><br>-Scott<br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Tom Hansen <thansen@moscow.com><br>To: Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020@moscow.com><br>Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 1:11:13 PM<br>Subject: [Vision2020] Giving Up the Life (Rick Reilly)<br><br>
>From the "Life of Reilly" (by Rick Reilly) column of the December 3,
2007<br>edition of Sports Illustrated -<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Giving Up the Life<br>By Rick Reilly<br><br>I was born the youngest of four, an attention-seeking missile, half
boy,<br>half caffeine and a leading cause of teachers' facial tics. But I
always<br>had one clear dream - to work at SI.<br><br>So why now, after 23 years, am I quitting?<br><br>I mean, we're talking more than 850 bylines - which is funny, because I<br>thought I'd never get to 10.<br><br>I came to this job 100 feet over my head and with no snorkel. I was 27
and<br>terrified of being fired. I'd gobble aspirins and down them with
coffee<br>until my stomach blew out and dumped me into the hospital. Twice.<br><br>I learned to control my fears with biofeedback - making one giant
breath<br>last 30 seconds, puffing my cheeks out on the exhale until I turned
slightly<br>purple. I looked like a nauseated puffer fish. When I made my first
TV<br>appearance, on a SportsCenter segment in 1988, my stomach was all
knives.<br>We were supposed to go live from my living room in two minutes, enough
time<br>to take a couple 30-second breaths to calm down. I was in the middle
of my<br>second when my then wife ran in, horrified.<br><br>"You're on the air!"<br><br>My earpiece had failed. The host had asked, "Rick, is your book an<br>indictment of college football?" Cut to me, peering into the camera
and<br>suddenly inhaling mightily. But the host thought I was thinking hard
about<br>his question, so he waited. The the slooooow exhale. Still waiting.<br>Purple. Surely, the answer was coming now? Nope, another suck-in.<br><br>"Well," the host deadpanned, "we know he's alive. We can see him<br>breathing."<br><br>Eventually, I switched to decaf, and realized how much fun this job
could<br>be. I got to smoosh cars in a monster truck, mush dogs in Alaska,
crush<br>balls with Tiger, chase Lance, face Ryan and race everything from a
blimp to<br>Indy cars.<br><br>One time I picked up the phone and heard, "Hold for the President,
please."<br>One of my pals, no doubt. The president of what, the Kiwanis?" I
sneered.<br>Only to hear a gravelly voice on the other end go, "What? No, it's
Bill<br>Clinton. We're just laughin' our asses off over here over whatchu
wrote!"<br><br>Best moment ever? In a men's shower. Hours after he led his Denver
Broncos<br>to a stunning win over Green Bay - ending his run of Super Bowl
humiliations<br>- I could hear John Elway whooping and hollering alone in the shower.
"You<br>know what?" I said to the old towel guy sitting on the bench next to
me.<br>"That's the sound of redemption. That's primal joy, man." He shrugged
and<br>said, "Nah, we ran out of hot water."<br><br>Still, the big names and big events weren't the best part of the job.
The<br>best part has been my e-mail inbox. I seem to have become the national<br>clearinghouse for stories about people overcoming disease, war or
tragedy to<br>achieve great things - tales of courage and resilience that would melt
an<br>executioner's heart.<br><br>I could tell only a fraction of those stories, but the ones I did write
have<br>stayed with me. You may read them once and forget about them, but I
hear<br>from my columns all the time. They call, they write, they tell me that<br>their lives just keep getting better.<br><br>Just one example from this year: Do you remember Sean Cronk, the kid
in<br>Everett, Mass., with cerebral palsy but could make tons of free throws
in a<br>row (SI, March 5, 2007)? He finally got into a game and won a playoff
with<br>one. Well, he's going to go to college, thanks to the guy I wrote
about the<br>very next week - billionaire Kenny trout, who flies his sixth-grade
Dallas<br>AAU basketball team in private 737s. Troutt called Sean's mom and
asked,<br>"Anywhere Sean wants to go, I'm paying." So Sean is going to junior
college<br>in the fall, with plans to transfer to UMass. Nice.<br><br>My favorite column, though, was not about one person but millions - the<br>impoverished Africans who benefited from Nothing But Nets, the
anti-malaria<br>campaign you and I started with the help of the United Nations
Foundation<br>(SI, May 1, 2006). Every week I hear about another kid donating his
bar<br>mitzvah money, a Brownie troop sending its lemonade profits, a family<br>choosing nets over Christmas gifts. We're at $16 million, and much of
that<br>has come in twenties and fives and rolls of quarters. Nobody does
teamwork<br>like sports fans.<br><br>Anyway, it's been my privilege to write for this elegant magazine and
its<br>wonderful readers. Now I'll find out if my little voice can carry in a<br>whole new way. You can reach me anytime at <a href="http://RickReillyonline.com" target="_blank">RickReillyonline.com</a>, and<br>beginning June 1, I'll be starting a new job, which includes writing a<br>column and working in TV. Of course, when I told my son Jake that, he
said,<br>"Dad, it's not gonna be high-def, right?"<br><br>Right. And I promise not to turn purple, either.<br><br>---------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Seeya round town, Moscow.<br><br>Tom Hansen<br>Moscow, Idaho<br><br>Came a tribe from the north brave and bold . . .<br><br>"Here We Have Idaho"<br><a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/HWHI.mp3" target="_blank">http://www.tomandrodna.com/HWHI.mp3</a><br><br>"I-D-A-H-O Idaho Idaho Go Go Go"<br><a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/Vandals.mp3" target="_blank">http://www.tomandrodna.com/Vandals.mp3</a><br><br><br><br><br><br>=======================================================<br> List services made available by First Step Internet, <br> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994. <br> <a href="http://www.fsr.net" target="_blank">http://www.fsr.net</a>
<br> mailto:<a href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>=======================================================<br></div><br></div></div></blockquote><br /><hr />You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. <a href='http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=CRM_WL_joinnow' target='_new'>Join in!</a></body>
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