NBAE via Getty Images
John would appreciate this, I know he would.
As his longtime friend and co-worker, Dan Steinberg, said Friday on X, “Just about every piece he wrote about a retiring or dead sports great flashed back to a tale involving John Feinstein, by like the fifth graf. It was a running joke: how many grafs in this John Feinstein appreciation until we find the word ‘I.’ It was never very many.”
So, yes, I think John would like that it took me only five words to get to “I” here, in this John Feinstein appreciation that, horribly, is an tribute to his extraordinary life and not just his brilliant career.
John died Thursday at 69, and it was news that hit a lot of people especially hard: readers, certainly, who put 23 of his books on the best-seller list, all the way back to “A Season on the Brink” in 1986.