John Feinstein, sportswriter, columnist and author of dozens of books, including his most famous, “A Season on the Brink,” which chronicles the 1985 Indiana University men’s basketball team, died suddenly on March 13 at the age of 69.
Feinstein did not pioneer the genre of immersive sports nonfiction narrative — he was working in the tradition of predecessors such as George Plimpton (“Paper Lion”) and David Halberstam (“The Breaks of the Game”) — but he is perhaps the last of his kind, an observer and reporter who goes long and deep on his subjects in order to reveal insights that would otherwise remain hidden.
Feinstein is likely the last of his kind for several reasons. One, he was an enormously talented and hardworking journalist, who combined those skills with being a very able and deft writer. “A Season on the Brink” became a phenomenon because of its close portrayal of the explosive and sometimes abusive Indiana coach, Bobby Knight, a portrayal that Feinstein captured on the page with such fidelity that Knight sulked for years about Feinstein being, essentially, too truthful.
Feinstein was even skillful enough to capture me as a reader even when chronicling a sport I did not care about at all. “A Good Walk Spoiled: Days and Nights on the PGA Tour” (1995) manages to be fascinating even as — or maybe because — he reveals the star players of that era of golf as hollow men following in the wake of legends such as Palmer and Nicklaus.
Another way Feinstein is likely the last of his kind is his extraordinary productivity. In addition to his sports writing duties at the Washington Post, and frequent TV appearances, he published a couple dozen sports nonfiction books and half a dozen sports novels for young readers.
Feinstein was a writer. He wrote every day, and he wrote well, and readers benefitted from his stories being in the world. One of his lesser-known books “The Punch: One Night, Two Lives, and the Fight That Changed Basketball Forever,” about the moment Kermit Washington broke Rudy Tomjanovich’s jaw in an on-court brawl, is both emotionally moving and analytically astute. It tells the story of the individual men, and how the incident led to changes in the league that would pave the way for the global spectacle we see today.
Perhaps the most important reason Feinstein is likely to be the last of his kind is because the culture of sports news has significantly changed over the course of his career. The most prominent sports observers and commentators are “insiders” who feed off a constant supply of tips from interested parties shaping a narrative. Talking heads such as Stephen A. Smith reap salaries from ESPN that could cover the work of dozens of journalists to instead fire off “takes” that go viral for being inflammatory, rather than insightful.
The careful work of reporting has been supplanted by breaking tidbits on social media. I’m imagining what kind of deep-dive book Feinstein could have written about the recent shocking trade of Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers. But I have to recognize that there is perhaps no market for such a book as the world has moved on to waiting for the next scoop.
I recognize that I am starting to sound like an old man decrying the ways of youth, and maybe I am to some extent, but the death of someone like John Feinstein is a worthy occasion to consider not just his contributions to the world, but the kind of world that made those contributions possible.
A lot has changed over the years, and the losses may be larger than we think.
John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Stranger in the Lifeboat” by Mitch Albom
2. “Nexus” by Yuval Noah Harari
3. “James” by Percival Everett
4. “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown
5. “Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel that Survived the CIA” by Patrick Winn
— John S., Schaumburg
Mix of fiction and nonfiction so I could go either way, but the coin flip says fiction and the Biblioracle senses are sending up “Last Night at the Lobster” by Stewart O’Nan.
1. “The Heirs” by Susan Rieger
2. “What the Lady Wants” by Renée Rosen
3. “The Good Wife of Bath” by Karen Brooks
4. “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel
5. “The Autobiography of Henry VIII” by Margaret George
— Tobi-Velicia J., Forest Park
A great occasion to recommend one of my favorites, “Possession” by A.S. Byatt.
1. “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” by Ann Patchett
2. “The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawhon
3. “Mrs. Bridge” by Evan S. Connell
4. “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
5. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
— Sara L., Deerfield
Jennifer Haigh writes plain, old-fashioned, satisfying novels with a new one coming soon, but for now, I’ll go back to “Heat and Light.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.