Tag Archives: Grantland

Bill, I’m sorry

I’m sorry I wrote you out of my life last week. I want to take it back. I know how cheesy this all must sound, me, making a big, dramatic farewell speech to you and then undoing it a week later. Because I know, everybody keeps telling me I have to make decisions and stick to them. When I was writing out that goodbye, tears streaming down my face, snot running down my nose, when I was in between sobs I recognized that, regardless of how much it hurts, I have to close this chapter of my life. Once I do this, there’s no going back.

And I tried, Bill. I really tried to put you out of my head. But I kept clicking on the Grantland home page. I’d turn around at work and the TV above the bar would be showing a clip of you talking on ESPN. I couldn’t hear what you were talking about, because all of the TVs are muted, and I don’t get why restaurants bother to have TVs on, if they’re just going to show a bunch of guys silently yapping away, without even the benefit of subtitles to give you the option of reading what the conversation might be about.

Anyway, it was a rough week. It felt similar to when my grandfather died a few years back. That sting of emptiness, the palpable sense of loss. Only, with my grandfather, I started to feel better after a few days, coming to terms with the inevitability of death, getting a small taste of my own mortality. With you it was different. Each day that passed since I told you we were through, the level of pain intensified.

I started waking up in the middle of the night crippled with regret. I kept reading and rereading my last letter to you. Why would I do something so stupid? Who gives up on a one-way correspondence with the Sports Guy after only two months? Bill, I realize that I’ve made a huge mistake, and if you’re willing to look past my very momentary lapse in judgment, I’d like to pick up where we left off: me, writing you a letter each week, begging you for a job, and you, blissfully unaware of my existence, hopefully one day stumbling upon this treasure trove of writing, you’ll be so overcome by my persistence, my faith in a dream, you’ll blurt out at your desk, “Hire this man!”

And your secretary will walk in and ask you, “Mr. Simmons, did you just say something? I was down the hall pouring a cup of coffee when we all heard you say something pretty loudly.” And that’ll kind of jolt you back to reality. You’ll explain that you were talking about me, this web site, the letters. Do it Bill, hire me to write for Grantland.

I really am sorry about last week. I hope that you can forgive me. Again, your feelings of confusion, frustration, and eventual forgiveness might be a little disjointed, depending on when you discover all of this, and in what order you decide to read these letters, if you read any of them at all. I guess it’s a little arrogant of me to assume you’ll have time for all of them. Maybe you’ll skip last week’s mistake and you won’t know what I’m talking about. Or maybe you’ll jump right to this week’s apology, and I’ll only have served to point you in the direction of that mistake. If I could just keep my mouth shut and stop talking about it for a second, perhaps we could both move on, pretend like it never happened.

I wish I could just go back and delete it. Well, I guess I could. But then what if you look at the whole list of letters and notice a gap where last week’s should have been? You’ll either think that I’m a slacker, not committed to my craft, or worse, you’ll assume that I have something to hide, which I kind of do. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should just write some generic sounding letter and put it where last week’s letter was.

OK, I think I might be over-thinking this. Bill, I’m sorry I abandoned you. It’ll never happen again. That’s a promise. I don’t care if I ever get a job at Grantland, I’ll still write to you every week, begging. Please, let me write for Grantland. Come on Bill, give me a job. I’ll write about anything you want. Anything.

I’m really, really, really, really sorry,

Rob G.

Dear Bill Simmons: Goodbye Forever

Dear Bill Simmons:

I’m not sure how much longer I can write these letters to you every week. I’m running out of stuff to talk about. In fact, that’s what I wrote about last week, that I was running out of ideas. That’s something you can’t get away with two weeks in a row. Maybe this isn’t going anywhere. You can only cover so much in an imaginary, one-sided relationship. I mean, I don’t really know you, not any better than anybody else on the Internet does. And while yeah, I know some stuff about some sports, mostly New York Islanders related hockey stuff, if I ever did get an interview with you, and you started asking me anything about the NBA, or the New York Rangers, or anybody besides David Wright on the Mets, you’d probably be pretty disappointed in the overall trajectory of the conversation.

Actually, that’s not true, I’m great at faking my way through most chit-chat, sports or otherwise. I know exactly when to say stuff like, “Yes,” and “Right,” and then I find the perfect moment to insert something cool that I read on Grantland. That’s how I found out about you, about the web site. It’s like, after so many years of standing at the periphery of group conversations, hoping that the topic of discussion might eventually turn to something other than sports, I found your writing, it drew me in, the way you can write about sports that doesn’t immediately cause me to lose consciousness.

That’s what I want to be a part of. Or, wanted to anyway. Like I was alluding to in the first paragraph, I don’t think it’s happening. I’ve been writing these letters to you every week on my blog for about two months now. And as the old saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, for two months, and if after that you still don’t see any progress, just give up on it dude, because how long are you going to keep it up for? Three months? A year? Just cut your losses and get out while you still can.”

I guess this is goodbye, Bill. I feel like I just got to imagine what it would have been like to have just gotten to know you. But whatever, I mean, just because you have a dream, doesn’t mean that it’s going to come true, right? And it’s not like I have nothing. Sure, I’m not writing for Grantland, having a wide, far-reaching audience of people being exposed to my work. But I have this site right here, this little blog. That’s something. Chuck Klosterman doesn’t write for me, but that’s cool, I don’t need Chuck. I don’t need you Bill. I don’t need anybody.

OK, I apologize, I was getting a little emotional there. There’s no need for me to be a baby about this, I just get a little overwhelmed sometimes with farewells. You’ve got your life, I’ve got mine. I’ll get through this. Maybe some day we’ll be walking opposite directions through a crowded city street. Time might start to slow down for a second as we cross each other’s paths. For whatever reason, we’ll make brief eye contact. I’ll give you a really subtle nod, a casual smile. You … well, you have no idea who I am, so even if you reciprocate the gesture, it’ll be totally hollow on your part, leaving you with a weird sense of, “Why do people keep nodding at me? What’s wrong with that guy?”

I could go on and on forever Bill, it’s like, some part of me never wants this to end. But it has to. Don’t try to talk me out of it. Or, if you’re reading this for the first time, but it’s years from now, I guess you can still call me up and offer me a job. But I have be realistic. You’re just way too popular for me to be constantly begging you for work every week from my very tiny, almost imperceptibly small corner of the Internet.

But it’s cool. I wish you nothing but the best in the future. If, by some bizarre twist of fate, I ever wind up creating an insanely popular sports and pop culture web site, and you for some reason fall on really hard times, struggle to find your way back to the top, but can’t get out from languishing in obscurity, and you start your own very small web site, and you start writing open letters to me every week, asking me for a job, I’ll totally make something happen for you. Even if I already have a different Bill Simmons working for me, even if he’s not even a writer, like he’s just an accountant or something, I’ll make room for one more Bill Simmons. I’ll even give you the good BSimmons@ email address and I’ll make that other Bill switch to BISimmons@. Unless you don’t feel like inheriting the other Bill’s spam folder. In which case … you know what? Let’s just say that we’ll cross that bridge if we get there.

Goodbye forever,

Rob G.

Hey Bill, are you reading this?

Dear Bill Simmons:

Man, sometimes I feel like I’m never going to get a job at Grantland. Like, I’ll keep writing you these open letters every week, but that’s as far as my one-sided relationship with you is going to go. But I don’t know what else to do. Maybe a year or so ago, I wrote a real letter to you, to Grantland. I went to the web site and went to the “Contact Us” page and there was an email address to the editors. And I don’t remember what I wrote exactly, but it was all professional, like, “Dear editors: This is a very serious inquiry seriously inquiring about writing for Grantland,” blah blah blah.

And look, I know that you probably get way too much email to respond to, I get it. So I’m not mad or anything, it’s not like I take it as a personal snub. But it’s incredibly frustrating, to want something so bad, to want to be a professional writer, just throwing yourself out there on the Internet, over and over again, never getting any sort of response.

It’s like, even these letters, this whatever it is that I’m doing on my blog every week. Dear Bill Simmons: please give me a job. And then I go onto Twitter and tweet you a copy of the link, knowing that you get tons of tweets, that there’s no way you’re able to even view every tweet you receive, let alone consider a response.

But I don’t know what else to do. And it’s you, it’s Gawker, it’s all of these other professional high-trafficked web sites that publish all sorts of cool stories written by authors who, when I click on their profiles, they all look like they’re my age, like it shouldn’t be totally inconceivable that I could be doing what they’re doing.

It’s a tough job, getting a cool job, a job where you get to make stuff and write stuff and somehow earn money from it, enough money that you could theoretically support yourself. So far I think I’ve made about seventeen dollars from my writing. I don’t know how you do it, Bill, how you’ve built this media empire all based on your words, writing about sports, about pop culture, about stuff that you love.

Man, this is a pretty boring letter so far, I’m aware of that. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t think of anything to say right now. Last week I wrote about how I’d start from the bottom and work my way up. That was pretty cool, at least, it was cool in the way that I didn’t really have to think about it as I wrote it. The words just kind of flowed through me from somewhere else.

But right now, man, it’s really a struggle to get these sentences into paragraphs. You must be able to relate, right? I mean, you’ve done it, you’ve made it as a writer. What do you do when you can’t think of anything to write about? I’ve read all sorts of stuff on the topic, and most advice from professional writers always boils down to the inspiration/perspiration argument, that talent is cheap but work is hard.

And yeah, it’s hard to get this letter out there, I don’t know what to say, I’m feeling each week like I’m making a fool out of myself, desperately invoking your name on the Internet, like you’re magically going to swoop down from cyberspace and elevate my status from professional waiter to professional writer.

But isn’t that the kind of guy you want working for you at Grantland? Just think, I’m not afraid of my own self-imposed Internet writing deadlines. I need to write a letter to you every week. Why? I don’t know. I just made up a deadline and ran with it. Can you imagine what I’d do for you? For Grantland? Give me a deadline, and I’ll stick to it. I’ll get something out. I’ll perspire all over the place.

I guess that’s all I’ve got. Not very entertaining, I know, but sometimes you’ve just got to be willing to write something bad in hopes of eventually being able to maybe write something good. In the meantime, please read this letter from last week, the one I was telling you about just before. Also this letter, about a dream I had where you and I both went to space. That was a pretty cool one.

-Rob G.

Bill, I think I was coming off as a little too strong

Dear Bill Simmons:

I’ve been going about this the wrong way, I realize that now. And I’m sorry, for harassing you like this, constantly with the begging, “Please give me a writing job.” That was really annoying of me. At the time I thought it was gutsy. But now I’m starting to see that it was too much. You can’t just go around asking to write for Grantland. There aren’t any shortcuts to all of the sudden having your work pop up online. You’ve got to start from the bottom and work your way up. Right Bill?

Which is why, Bill, please, give me a job at Grantland, but at the bottom. I want whatever is the worst job available. Actually, no, I want you to consider the worst job at Grantland, and then I want you to make a position even lower, and I’ll work my ass off, OK, I’ll work so hard that I’ll earn that promotion to former worst job at Grantland.

And then I’ll keep climbing, turning heads as I ascend that ladder, one rung at a time. I’ll network and stuff. That’s a thing you’ve got to do, right? You’ve got to network. I’ve got to get in there from the bottom and I’ve got to approach men and women above me and say stuff like, “Hey, I really admire your work. Is there any chance you’d be willing to let me buy you a cup of coffee while I pick your brain about careers and opportunities?”

Actually, even that sounds like I’m coming on a little too strong. I should have just kept it to coffee, none of that opportunity talk. That reeks of networking. You’re supposed to network, I get that, but I also get that you’re never supposed to talk about networking or make it seem like you’re networking. Because otherwise you look like you’re too hungry. I’m hungry, but I want to come across as totally full. But secretly ravenous.

You have a pretty decent janitorial staff at Grantland? Make me the janitor’s assistant. Or even better, make me the janitor’s intern. I’ll do it for free. After we finish mopping the bathroom floors and changing out all of the hand soap in the hand soap dispensers, I’ll be like, “Hey man,” to the janitor, I’ll say, “I’m really learning a lot here. Would you mind if I took you out for a cup of coffee after work?”

And I’ll do the whole networking process from the ground up, it’ll be subtle, I won’t say anything about my aspirations as a full-time member of the writing staff. Do you know if the bathrooms at Grantland use liquid soap? Or is it that foam stuff? I only ask because the foam saves so much more space, like there’s a lot less waste. You know what? Forget I asked. I’ll save it for day one.

While I have late night access to the building, buffing floors, emptying out wastebaskets, I’ll start pitching in around the office, fixing the printer jams, straightening out the bulletin boards on the walls, stuff like that. I figure it won’t be long until the higher-ups get wind of my go-getter attitude. We’ll be riding up on an elevator, all of you professionals in your suits and me in my janitor’s outfit, maybe I’ll have like a bucket and mop.

One of you guys might say, “Hey, aren’t you the janitor that occasionally answers line three if the secretary is overwhelmed? The one that takes really detailed notes and passes them on to exactly where they’ve got to go? Do you have any interest in trying out the administrative side of this business?”

And while, no, I really don’t want to be involved in administration, I want to be a writer, I’ll still take the offer. Because up is up, right? The closer I get to you Bill, the more chances there are of you happening to come upon me right as I’m juggling like eight administrative tasks in a row. You’ll raise your left eyebrow as you marvel at my professional office skills, and then the right eyebrow will lift accordingly as you realize that not only am I handling desk work like a pro, but I’m simultaneously changing light bulbs and separating recyclables that have accidentally been tossed in the trashcan.

“Oh it’s nothing,” I’ll try to act casually as you congratulate my willingness to tackle any problem, “I used to be a part of the custodial team, so I like to help out wherever possible.”

Naturally that’ll appeal to you, as a boss, you’ll see some of you in me, maybe you’ll be the one asking me out for a cup of coffee. And that’s when I’ll make my move, I’ll slip in how I’m an aspiring writer, how it’s always been a dream of mine to write for Grantland. You’ll have to give me a chance. I’ll have already proved to you through my other duties and responsibilities that I’m up for the job.

So yeah, sorry for coming off as too strong. I just want it so bad, to write for Grantland. I’ll do anything. I’ll start from even lower if you want. You could have me standing outside getting coffee and running errands for those guys who hold up signs on the streets advertising discount-parking rates at nearby garages. Come on Bill, I’m super serious. Give me a call.

Venti with milk and five sugars,

Rob G.

Come on, Bill, give me a call, for real

Dear Bill Simmons:

I’m not going to lie, I thought I would’ve had a full-time job at Grantland by now. Which is … well, whatever, you’ve probably got hundreds of would-be employees dedicating full columns on their blogs every week begging you to give them a shot as staff writers on one of the greatest sports and pop culture web sites of all time. I guess I’m just going to have to wait here patiently until you realize I’m exactly the writer you guys need to elevate Grantland to the next level.

No, even higher up, at least three levels higher than where you guys are currently at. And don’t get me wrong, it’s a great site. I’m not trying to say that it’s necessarily lacking in anything, you know, besides me as a staff writer. Bill, I’m like Butch Goring on the 1980 New York Islanders. Would they have gone on to win four Stanley Cups in a row without Butch? I mean, they still would have been a championship caliber team, so maybe. But then again, maybe not.

That’s me Bill, I’m the missing piece of the puzzle at Grantland. I get along great with everybody. Just think, you could’ve sent me to Sochi and I could’ve gained inside access to behind-the-scenes operations and special guests interviews. Like who? Like, I don’t know, maybe President Putin? Why not? I could have done it. Sure, I don’t speak any Russian, but I speak a better language: the all-encompassing dialogue of friendship.

And English. Seriously, everybody speaks English. I would’ve just kept walking in his direction pretending that I’m a lost American tourist, and then when I got close enough, I would’ve whipped out a microphone and my Grantland press pass and I would have been like, “How do you justify the use of authoritarian tactics on your own people? Why didn’t that fifth Olympic ring open up like it was supposed to? Where’s the rest of that meteor that fell out of the sky last year?”

His guards would immediately spring to action, holding up walkie-talkies, trying to restrain me and drag me out of the building. But Vladimir would stop, because despite whatever the international community says about him, he’s a man that respects power. He’d look me in the eye and he’d say something in Russian, at which all of the guards would release me. Some other Russian guy would come up to me and say something like, “President Putin admires your courage. You will be granted exclusive interview. Where are you from, the Times? New Yorker?”

And I’d just say, “Grantland.” Of course I’d call you up immediately and give you the exclusive. Just think about how much worldwide coverage you’d get, Bill Simmons, one-on-one with Vladamir Putin. And that’s just the start. If you go back to my 1980s New York Islanders analogy, I’ll keep getting better and better, our working relationship, hopefully I’ll grow to earn your respect just like I would have the Russian President.

I’m getting carried away. Who knows if you’ve even read any of these letters yet? My big worry is that I’m going to be doing it for years, letter after letter, and then one week I’m going to go on vacation or something. I’ll say, eh, I guess I could just skip one week. I mean, what are the chances that Bill Simmons is going to discover my blog on the one day that I decided not to post him an open letter? And then that would be exactly the day that you’d find your way here.

And seeing nothing of immediate interest, you’d scan my pages of text before writing me off as just another amateur Internet guy. After maybe ten or fifteen seconds, you’d click x on the web browser before you even got a chance to see all of these letters, to you Bill. Obviously I’d have no way of ever knowing if that were to be the case, but I have a pretty vivid imagination, and just the possibility of that happening is enough to keep me writing every week, regardless of if I’m on vacation or not. And that’s what I’ll bring to Grantland. I’ll work around the clock, never taking a break, barely sleeping, I’ll throw all other relationships and activities to the curb and make being one of your staff writers my only priority.

Let’s do it Bill. Call me up. Maybe you can get me to Sochi before the gold medal hockey game.

Love,

Rob G.