by John Walters

NOTES ON GRANT WAHL

The news hit me as most news hits us nowadays, on Twitter, Friday night. My former SI colleague, Grant Wahl, had died while covering the Argentina-Holland quarterfinal at the World Cup in Qatar. Surprise, if not shock. And yes, your thoughts race as to why and hopefully you’re experienced enough to wait and let the facts, as they emerge, tell the story. A few quick thoughts on Grant, whom I always liked and with whom I was always friendly, if not a close friend:

• Of all the memorials and tributes I’ve read thus far, no one has mentioned something most obvious: the way Grant looked. And I write that because Grant pretty much looked exactly at the age of 48 as he’d looked at the age of 24 (or about the age when we first met). I recall a conversation the two of us had in my office once where he told me that he’d started going bald as an undergrad at Princeton and that “when my mom saw a photo of me with my hair falling out, she cried.” Grant told the story with a laugh and to be honest, I always thought Grant looked terrific, handsome, with his shaved skull. It was a tad unusual for someone in his twenties, but with Grant’s clean, Germanic features, his appearance mirrored his intention: like stainless-steel countertops in a busy midtown restaurant kitchen, Grant’s appearance provided the hint that this was a work surface, that there was no room for silliness or idle amusements.

Also, the look— I mean it, Grant barely looked any different in photos from Qatar as he had his first year at Sports Illustrated—also made him appear ageless. Timeless. It worked for him.

• In the spring of 1998, Grant and the fellow Princeton alum with whom he shared an office, L. Jon Wertheim, co-wrote an investigative piece, “Where’s Daddy?”, that created tectonic shifts at the NBA’s league offices, in SI’s relationship with Larry Legend (Bird), and in the 18th floor “bullpen” at SI, where young fact-checkers (a.k.a. reporters) all amicably (most of the time) competed against one another to be the baby tortoises who made it from the nest to the surf before being gobbled up by preying avian creatures.

The piece, an idea that the two had hatched themselves, was executed to perfection. Wertheim has a law degree, and you can marvel at the investigative work that the duo did as they combed paternity suits that had been served to a number of NBA players. True story: at a certain point some editor noted that all of the players involved were, well, not white. So it was determined that for balance they should find/add a white NBA player. That’s how Larry Bird, whose situation was not quite, “Let’s meet up at my Four Seasons suite and knock boots,” was added to the story. Bird, I believe, has not spoken to SI since. About that I may be wrong, but I know he didn’t speak to the mag for quite a long time after.

Anyhow, for two fact-checkers to produce a bonus piece (the internet would call it “long-form”) and also one that, in a pre-web era, went as viral as something could in those days, was remarkable. I was already a staff writer by then, but all of us who had yet to achieve senior writer status were put on notice. These two youngsters were about to move to the front of the line. Wertheim, as you probably know, is now the No. 2 guy at SI while also being a correspondent for 60 Minutes.

There’s been plenty of chatter about his LeBron James cover story (“The Chosen One”) from 2002 or 2003. And yes, it deserves mention. But “Where’s Daddy?” is the story that launched Grant’s (and Jon’s) career.

• Grant had an ingratiating goofy laugh. At least when I knew him. He was friendly. Grant was as ambitious as anyone I met at SI—and that’s saying something—but he was also unpretentious and that goofy laugh helped make him less, well, Princetonian. I remember running into him at the Olympic women’s gold-medal match in Athens in 2004 and we had a wonderful chat. We both marveled at how lucky we were. A few years later, before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when my job was to write copy for Mary Carillo and to come up with our segment ideas for our show, I pitched “The Grant Wahl of China,” in which Grant would visit our studio to provide soccer insights and wisdom on the two Olympic tournaments. Grant loved the idea and was all in on doing it. Mary and I had done silly stuff (in terms of naming segments) for our show in Torino at the 2006 Winter Games, Olympic Ice, and the show had been critically and popularly acclaimed. Alas, our producer in Beijing did not quite share our slightly irreverent senses of humor (curiously, she too was a Princeton alum) and I had to inform Grant that it would not come to pass. I believe that’s the last time we spoke.

• The truth, hopefully, will emerge about the why of Grant’s passing at such a relatively young age. He obviously looked fit enough. What I can say from experience, from working at five Olympics or from spending extended time covering college football’s bowl season or even one March Madness in an RV with two colleagues, is that it’s quite possible to beat up your body covering such special events. Weeks of not enough sleep and too little exercise and the constant pressure to report and to write add up to the type of stress that can age you 10 years in three weeks. Too, Grant was at a point in his career in which he was literally working for himself so there may have been a feeling that there was no possible way to do enough. Grant Wahl working for Grant Wahl could translate into a workaholic nightmare. I’ll reiterate, it’s too early to know. But most of us sportswriters put ourselves, or are put through, those insane hours for weeks at a time when we are in our late twenties or thirties. Grant was in his late forties. I don’t know what happened; I can only say that three weeks of covering an international sporting event, much less the signature event in your chosen field, and then heaping on top of it the not-sticking-to-sports intrepid writing and reporting that Grant was doing, well, it’s a lot.

• I gave plenty of thought to Grant’s life, his career, and his untimely passing this weekend. What returned to me again and again is that here was someone who died doing what he loved (in a lighter time you’d write that it would’ve killed him to not know who won that Argentina-Netherlands matchup, but, you know…) and spent his entire adult life doing what he loved. And traveled the world doing it while being compensated extremely well for a sportswriter. Grant is gone far too soon, of course, and my heartfelt sympathies go out to his lovely wife, Dr. Celine Grounder, and his brother, Eric. Celine was a frequent presence at our SI hoops games back in the day and she stood out not only because she was smart and beautiful and kind but also because none of the rest of us had a girlfriend or wife. And here she was in residency but she still found the time.

Grant pursued his dreams, worked hard to achieve them, and was rewarded with a life that likely surpassed even his expectations. Be sad that he is gone; but also know how extremely fortunate he was. Grant certainly did.

Finely Aged Brandi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpNqR-ff_TQ

If you missed Brandi Carlile’s performance on Saturday Night Live this weekend, it was an all-timer. The Seattle-born and raised musician knocked it out of 30 Rock and into orbit with her delivery of “The Story,” an original that was actually released back in 2007.

Carlile, 41, has long been that artist that most of us know we should be following more closely. I’d put her on my map a few years back as an act I desperately hoped to see in person because of her authenticity and her rare, rare talent. When I saw how she devoted so much space and energy to paying tribute to Joni Mitchell at last summer’s Newport Jazz Festival, it only fortified those feelings.

Saturday night, then, served as a long, long overdue national lovefest for Carlile. How had she never before appeared on SNL? And I LOVED that she opened with “The Story,” her “Born To Run.” The song is a classic; you can imagine Patsy Cline or even Dusty Springfield singing this in the Sixties and it becoming an all-timer in the female musical canon.

Sure, “The Story” is now a teenager but most of America had never had the privilege to hear it live and this song more than deserved its moment in the spotlight. I thought about all those years Carlile has toiled, in smaller venues and with much less fanfare (and income) than far too many of her fellow female brethren. She’s a musician, not a brand, after all. I imagine she’s thought of that many times herself. Watch that moment at about 2:32, the break after the guitar solo. Brandi takes a moment to look down and let forth a gigantic smile. That’s validation, long overdue.

You see the smile that’s on my mouth
It’s hiding the words that don’t come out
And all of our friends who think that I’m blessed
They don’t know my head is a mess

Perhaps it’s my age, but far too many musical acts on SNL greatly disappoint. Last weekend, the musical act was the high point of the show.

One more item: the guitarist and bassist are the Hanseroth twins, Phil and Tim, and they’ve been with Brandi since pretty much the very beginning. Now the three of them, and their families (spouses, kids) all live on a big farm an hour or so outside of Seattle. How very Neil Young of her. But then, you can see Neil’s influence in her music. That grunge guitar solo sandwiched between two ethereal high-pitched verses brimming with insight and pathos… where have we heard that before? (Try, “Down By The River”).