John Feinstein believed that honest reporters did better than anything else.
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Fearing his anger even at this distance, I will do my best to make sure this tribute to man is not gentle. John Feinstein had no tolerance for banal, soft, calm. He was on your face. Whatever he said or wrote was straight. That is why he and Bobby Knight, Indian Feinstein’s legendary coach revealed to such a depth A season on the eve, were such a good match. In football, Doug Williams, the same. In golf, Tom Watson. In newspapers, Bob Woodward. That’s some fifty. Straight, straight, straight, straight,.
A quick note about evewhich was published in 1986. Onesh one of the best sports books ever and paved the way for Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Friday lights and other historical books with sports passing through them. The book was edited by Jeff Neuman, who until recently edited Met the golf playerA publication of the Met Golf Association in New York. Feinstein and Neuman worked together again A good broken walk, A report of time lid for professional golf as it was in 1994. Both books reached a wide and thirsty audience. About 30 years ago, my wife and I were visiting John and his wife, Mary, at Shelter Island, NY, where John had spent a lot of wine. (Christine and I got married at Shelter Island.) The house was new, airy and spectacular, though I was somewhat amazed at how close it was with the high sign. John said: “This is the house that A good spoiled walk built. “Maria took the house in divorce.
If you were sitting next to John as a stranger on a train, you would know before the conductor arrival that your security friend had no use Tiger Woods. He would also tell you, a Humblebrag for sure, that the feeling was mutual. Feinstein withdrew from athletes (and those in their orbit) who realized that the reporter was a representative for the fan, and that the fan added immensely to the life of the athlete. In other words, our collective fear is an extraordinary part of the whole equation. Feinstein found Woods and his camp were selfish and far away. His love for sports and his admiration for the sports done is what made John so good in writing the sport and those in it.
In everything that covered Feinstein-and this was almost any ordinary sport, including swimming, patriot league basketball and military academy football-he withdrew from athletes you can call traders of pathological truth.
A stranger on a train, by the way – not a plane. Feinstein stopped flying after the 9/11 attacks. But he must have recorded a million miles of air before that. Feinstein was a complete reporter even before he graduated in Duke in 1977. He died, from natural causes, to his brother’s home in McLean, VA., On March 13. He was 69 years old. He was not, from a distance, a healthy eating. He had more than his share of stress, deadline and otherwise. But in his sixties he could swim a mile in 20 minutes strange. Most people can’t swim 200 yards. Go figure.
You can’t. You can’t understand anything, though for some fun reporters, and challenges, is trying. Feinstein was not built for this. He did not play a detective of personality-Disorder. His thing was to discover people as they are, as he found them.
He believed that honest reporters – in sports, in politics, in war areas, in the arts and anywhere else – did better than anything else. He came out in Washington Postwhere the sun as a disinfectant is in the paper DNA. It is not ironic that Feinstein himself had to be extremely careful in the sun. Simplyni just an observed fact. He often wore floppy hats while covering golf and tennis tours. His thing was for the athlete to speak, transcribe the words and use them with mind – or not.
He was always in time. Every day of his life. It was the life he chose. A sports writer is a public person who works behind the scenes. His father, in his own way, led a similar life. Martin Feinstein was the first executive director of the Kennedy Center for performing arts and an eternal impressario of music. He reserved acts, he collected money, got musicians in hotels and restaurants and taxi. He did what he had to do to make sure the show continued. He loved the opera very much. Mars of March is a type of opera; Martin’s son, who covered dozens of tours, would tell you this.
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John Feinstein wrote 50 books, including novels for young readers, and if you put all his pages of gratitude in a single volume, you will have 51. He wrote thousands of magazines and newspapers and offered a thousand hours (a rough assumption) of TV and radio comments. He was a word car, written and spoken, whether he was paying for those words or not.
If you only knew him from his regular visits to the NPR with the legendary Red Barber baseball broadcaster, you have a feeling of Feinstein as a listener. Barber knew things and had seen things that Feinstein would never do, and John engaged the old man beautifully. All good reporters are good listeners.
But he wanted to speak, and I imagine that the line between speaking and writing was a thin for John. In various press tents over the years, many of us in the oppression trade have encountered something that my colleague Alan Shipnuck called “becoming Feinsteined”. This referred to John by planting himself, as a oak, in front of you, his stomach practically at the back of your laptop screen, as he would pontestify for some semi -interesting subjects for 20 minutes or much longer. Shipnuck and I compiled a system with which if any of us were getting engaged, we would call the other, creating a light one.
Sorry, John – should take that.
By the way, the verb is well inserted. John Fine-Steen. There was a high editor who somehow missed both parts and turned John’s surname into Feen-Stine. Well, mistakes are part of life. Every time and again, someone would tell me how much they enjoyed A good spoiled walk And I would ask if I would have plans to write another basketball book or tennis book or detective novel. I always let it slip.
There will be a memorial service for John at the Congress Country Club, outside Washington, DC, Tuesday afternoon. John lived for years inside and around Washington. You can’t go to a golf event at Congress and don’t see Feinstein. A print tent joke was that John could get worth one year Golf Columns (12, then) from a single visit to Kemper Open in its years at Congress and other DC courses. Give a slightly clumsy man. Its production was the eighth wonder of the world, in a tie with astrodom.
Golf Gig was spread to a similar Golf Digest. He was a regular golf channel for a while. You would read it in Tennis Mag and other magazines. John had a 50-year relationship with Washington Post. For years, wherever you have seen John, you have seen Dave Kindred, a proper legendary. Post Sports columnist and one of John’s closest friends. Harvey Penick said that if you want to become a better burst, it depends on the good places. John began practicing a version of journalism for that in the 1970s.
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Like Feinstein took a heavy dose of the deceased, excellent Post Sport Columnist Shirley Povich (Maury’s father) as a college reporter, two of my young colleagues, Zephyr Melton and Dylan Dothier, met with Feinstein while in college.
After John died, Zephyr wrote this on x: “John Feinstein was the first sports writer I have ever watched. As a child, I devoured his books ya and later read every golf book he ever wrote. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would not have followed this career path if not for his work. RIP in an industry legend.” Zephyr wrote a Feinstein profile for a class as a university at the University of Texas – and took Bob Woodward to comment on Feinstein for this part. This is the soul, a child! The email makes the world more democratic.
In the spring of 2012, when Dylan was a mahogany in Williams, Feinstein visited the Rural Campus at Uptate Massachusetts to give a conversation. Dylan offered this report with text 13 years later:
“I ate Feinstein. He came to Driscoll Dining Hall with a group of us who worked in sports information – then held a conversation that night. I remember he thought he was somehow two things: a sports writer, but also ready to be at the D3 school campus. We talked about being good enough.
