Remembering Bill Reynolds, a legendary R.I. sports columnist, author, and basketball star

For more than 30 years, Rhode Islanders started each Saturday by reading Reynolds’ column, “For What It’s Worth.” While focused on sports, the bullet-format column also took aim at State House bigwigs and the summer invasion of Connecticut license plates, mixing in trivia, movie reviews, and references to the Independent Man and that familiar everyman, “Bunky.”
As news broke about a crooked politician or a stupid criminal or some other bizarre only-in-Rhode Island moment, Bill Reynolds would stand in The Providence Journal newsroom with a YouGottaBeKiddingMe grin on his face, providing a one-word reaction with an emphasis on the first syllable: “Outstanding.”
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For good reason, his one-liners and wry commentary will come to mind as Rhode Islanders learn that Reynolds died on Thursday at age 78.
But, for what it’s worth, Reynolds was so much more.
He was a Brown University basketball star: Nicknamed “Shooter” and named co-captain of the 1967-68 men’s basketball team, he poured in 909 career points, ranking seventh in school history when he graduated.
He was a New York Times bestselling author: My bookshelves are lined with classics such as “Fall River Dreams,” “Basketball Junkie,” “Cousy,” “Hope: A School, A Team, A Dream,” and “Lost Summer: The ‘67 Red Sox and the Impossible Dream.” And he wrote two other books with former Providence College, Louisville, and NBA coach Rick Pitino.
He was a mentor — a genuine, kind, thoughtful man. Never pompous or condescending.
I worked with him for 16 years at the Providence Journal, and my most vivid memories are of him sitting on the edge of my desk, saying, “Tell me what’s going on.” He listened to you. He got it. He was funny. You didn’t want the conversation to end. You could see why he was such a good reporter.
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And he was a spectacular writer. Not just solid. Truly talented.
Don’t take my word for it. Read the start of this column he wrote in 1986:
Teddy couldn’t believe it when he saw the obituary July 17th. It said Angelo S. Izzi, 73, of Carroll Towers, Smith Street, died at Veterans Medical Center. It said he had been born in Providence, served in the Army in the Korean War, and recently had been deployed as a security guard at Wells Fargo for nine months. Fifty-three years condensed into four paragraphs. What it didn’t say was that once upon a time Angelo Izzi was a prize fighter.
The man knew how to tell a story.
And many of those stories are collected in a book that just came out on June 15: “Story Days: Highlights from Four Decades Covering Sports.”
Pick any story from that collection — the one about Marvin Barnes or Pedro Martinez, the one about Lamar Odom or Dave Gavitt — and you will learn not just about the wins and losses, the stats and the standings, but about the people that opened up to Reynolds, telling him their stories.
As a writer, as a reporter, as a basketball player, and as a person, Bill Reynolds was — in all sincerity: Outstanding.
Bill Reynolds Glenn Osmundson/The Providence Journal/Glenn Osmundson/The Providence Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
Sports reporter and columnist Kevin McNamara worked at the Providence Journal alongside Reynolds for 32 years. When they’d walk into the Dunk, Fenway, or Madison Square Garden, people would seek Reynolds out — players, coaches, other writers, he recalled. “Billy not only knew everybody, everybody liked him,” he said.
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The “For What It’s Worth” column produced a glossary’s worth of familiar phrases, McNamara noted. For example, the phrase “A Full Rhode Island” could be defined as “when a crooked politician gets pinched at Scarborough Beach for stealing Del’s lemonade,” he said.
But McNamara, now a WPRO radio talk show host, said the columns that made a bigger impact on him were the ones Reynolds wrote about people.
“He was a people person,” he said. “He could go off on Pete Rose and the betting scandal and the sports news of the day. But when Bill Reynolds was at his best, he was writing about people.”
Reynolds could write about the famous coaches or the star players. But, McNamara said, “He really enjoyed the Horatio Alger stories — the first-generation kid from Hope High who is a track star and going to college, someone who grew up in the inner city and used sports to better their lives.”
And Reynolds worked at his craft. “I can’t tell you how many Saturdays I’d walk into the newsroom and you’d have one person answering the phone and Bill Reynolds in sports, and no one else,” he said.
“There are very few sports columnists in the history of New England who will live on,” McNamara said. “Bill Reynolds is certainly one of them.”
“Story Days,” a new book that compiles columns written by longtime Providence Journal sports columnist Bill Reynolds, who died Thursday, July 13. Handout
Retired Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan said many sports writers were envious of Reynolds because he was a legitimate college basketball player in addition to being a fine writer.
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“Had he been only a mediocre writer, we would have said, ‘Yeah, he’s just a jock,’” he said. “But he was a superior writer. If I was home, I could take a photo of the Bill Reynolds section of my bookshelf.”
Ryan recalled running into Reynolds at Durfee High School in Fall River, Mass., when Reynolds was writing “Fall River Dreams,” which chronicled the Durfee team’s quest for the state championship and introduced us to future Boston Celtics player Chris Herren. “I just loved ‘Fall River Dreams,’” he said. “It was a masterpiece because it captured the whole culture, the tradition at Durfee.”
Reynolds would later write “Basketball Junkie” with Herren, telling the story of how the star player nearly lost his life to drugs but now inspires others to fight addiction.
“He was a really good writer,” Ryan said. “The people of Rhode Island were served very well by Bill Reynolds. He was funny and wry, just a wonderful guy. It’s a sad day in the journalistic community.”
Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy remembered Reynolds as a talented but humble writer, someone you wanted to be around. “If you were covering an event and he was there, it was just a better day,” he said.
He said he loved reading Reynolds’ books, which he said brought a “Friday Night Lights” feel to local high school basketball programs in places such as Fall River and Providence.
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Reynolds had an uncanny ability to detect BS, Shaughnessy recalled, but he was not a bomb thrower. “He was not provocative or confrontational, but he was on the right side of everything,” he said. “If he supported anything, you knew you were on solid footing.”
“It’s a giant loss,” Shaughnessy said. “A giant loss for Rhode Island and Providence and all of us in the industry.”
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @FitzProv.