Rest in Peace, Frank Deford. Thank you for your words and influence. The world of sports journalism will be forever forever influenced by his ground breaking work. What we do here and what we write will never compare to Deford’s body of work. However, our ability to do it is at least in part because of the path that he paved.
Frank made sport journalism more than just a box score. When sports journalism began to explore more than scores and injuries, people began to consume it on a different level. For that, Barstool Sport, the Dredge Report, and even The Players Journal will forever be in Frank Deford’s debt. So, while we may just be bloggers, people like Bill Simmons (knowingly) owe him their entire careers.
WashingtonPost.com: “Frank Deford, often considered the finest sportswriter of his generation for his detailed psychological profiles of athletes and coaches, but who also won acclaim for his novels, his frequent appearances on television, his weekly commentaries on NPR and for a heartfelt book about his 8-year-old daughter’s death from cystic fibrosis, died May 28 at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 78.
Mr. Deford (pronounced de-FORD) began his career at Sports Illustrated in 1962 and soon emerged as the most accomplished stylist on sportswriting’s brightest stage. He gained access to locker rooms and to the innermost thoughts of the world’s most famous athletes, yet many of his most memorable stories were about the forgotten moments of sports history.
After 27 years, he left Sports Illustrated in 1989 to launch The National, a daily sports newspaper that folded after 18 months. Since the 1970s, he was also a regular on the airwaves, often appearing on NBC, HBO’s Real Sports, on Miller Lite commercials and, for 37 years, as a weekly commentator on NPR.”