Listen to the full interview above via the podcast
For over 30 years, Gary Smith's words have garlanded the pages of Sports Illustrated.
But all good things must come to an end and the award-winning American sportswriter finally put down the pen in April.
Tonight the man dubbed "the best magazine writer in America" and "America's best sportswriter" joined us on Off The Ball to talk about his long and illustrious sports writing career.
"I fell in love [with sport] at a baseball game when I was about 6-years-old. I was outside playing and my mother was inside. The Phillies were playing the Cubs. It was the last innings, it was tied and she called me in and I'd never really tuned into baseball. I came in and watched it and I remember being transfixed by the drama and jumped on from there," said Smith, who then discovered a love for writing around the age of 12, which he then married with his love of sport.
"I got really lucky and then got into a magazine situation where I could really write about people and I became more interested in people, even more so than the sports and I was able to write four long stories a year where I'd really look at human beings who were in sport. But it was really more about the psyche."
Smith also spoke about the trailblazers at Sports Illustrated who inspired his own writing and he surmised that "I was really fortunate that niche had been carved a decade or two before I jumped into the game."
He also explained how philosophy and fiction informed his own writing and interview style, and how he took his readers into the psyche of his subjects including Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Andre Agassi and Magic Johnson.
While he admits that his type of writing career path is "fighting a strong current" in an era of instant access, he still thinks there is a real yearning for it, citing Grantland as an example.
"It still works better on paper," he added.
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