Thread by @dcsportsbog

Ok here is my John Feinstein thread. It's gonna be long.

I saw someone praise him yesterday by saying he never made it about himself, which struck me as just about exactly wrong. He ALWAYS made it about himself. It's who he was, at least as long as I knew him

That's why he would pursue his crusades -- like against the NCAA's "corporate champions" and "student-athletes" -- in packed rooms, with everyone watching. Why he would blow past helpless security guards to talk to his famous friends.

And it's why 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

But that, of course, is also what made him a powerhouse. He wasn't polite, he truly didn't care what anyone thought about him, and he was going to go talk to whomever he damn well wanted to, which is also WHY he knew everyone. Everyone.

It's why he would tell me, Oh yeah, I'm going downtown to meet Steve Kerr for lunch today, or Oh yeah, Jim Larranaga called me a few months ago and asked me how we could fix basketball.

He loved sports, adored them, watched them constantly even when he wasn't writing about them, had an opinion about everything and everyone, and read the living crap out of The Post sports section, from the D1 stories to the agate type. He had opinions about all of that, too.

He loved Wimbledon, swimming, the Olympics, college basketball, the Naval Academy, West Point, the Mets, and people who returned his calls. And free pizza. And having the last word.

He was stubborn, sometimes to a fault, as in his neverending Strasburg crusade. And on an issue like that no fact or argument would ever pierce his certainty. He made judgments about people that you could never bend.

He wrote in detail about games he covered 30 years ago, without checking the numbers, and many times he would get them right, and many times he would get them wrong. In a world of neurotic writers consumed by self-doubt, he would file a column, call me and say "it's very good."

He read the comments. He cared about play. He would be happy his obit was on A1. He would probably argue it should have been higher on the page.

He also took sports fans places they never could have gotten on their own -- locker rooms and buses and back hallways -- and he captured something in those places that resonated and lasted.

And I think his biggest legacy is what those books did to a whole generation of people like me: Convinced them that taking readers to those places and telling them those stories wasn't a silly job, but was something real, and important, and worth aspiring to. That was me.

I read "A Season Inside" when I was about 13 years old and just falling in love with hoops, and I was transfixed, and I wanted to do that. And then, somehow, for five years, I became HIS EDITOR. And he drove me crazy. But he was unforgettable. In the best way. Not many people are

I dunno. Did he change this profession? Hell yes he did. Did he change my life? Hell yes he did. Was he often a total pain in the ass? Hell yes he was, and I think he would be disappointed if that wasn't part of his legacy. But will I miss him? Hell yes I will. I already do.