Ralph Heygood Wiley Jr. (April 12, 1952 – June 13, 2004) was an American sports journalist who wrote for ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twi ...

'' and

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

's Page 2. He was well known for his distinctive literary tone and his writings on race in America.

Early life

Born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

, Wiley attended

Knoxville College Knoxville College is a historically black liberal arts college in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, which was founded in 1875 by the United Presbyterian Church of North America. It is a United Negro College Fund member school. A slow peri ...

from 1972–75, where he played college football. After suffering an injury, he landed his first professional journalism job at the ''Knoxville Spectrum''. He was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.

Career

Upon graduation, Wiley earned a position at the ''

Oakland Tribune The ''Oakland Tribune'' is a weekly newspaper published in Oakland, California, by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group. Founded in 1874, the ''Tribune'' rose to become an influential daily newspaper. With the declin ...

'', where he quickly climbed up the ranks from

copy boy A copy boy is a typically young and junior worker on a newspaper. The job involves taking typed stories from one section of a newspaper to another. According to Bruce Guthrie, the former editor-in-chief of the '' Herald Sun'' who began work ther ...

to beat writer and eventually became a regular columnist. In 1980, he coined the famous phrase "Billy Ball" to describe the managerial style of

Billy Martin Alfred Manuel Martin Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989), commonly called "Billy", was an American Major League Baseball second baseman and manager who, in addition to leading other teams, was five times the manager of the New York Yan ...

. In 1982, he was hired by ''Sports Illustrated'', where he wrote 28 cover stories over a nine-year period, mainly about

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...

, football, and

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

. Wiley published several books during the course of his career, including '' Serenity, A Boxing Memoir''; '' Why Black People Tend To Shout''; and '' By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of Making Malcolm X'', with

Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...

. Additionally, Wiley wrote articles for '' GQ'', '' Premiere'', and '' National Geographic''. He was a weekly contributor to ESPN's Page 2, where he wrote more than 240 columns. His presence on TV included

's ''

The Sports Reporters ''The Sports Reporters'' was a sports talk show that aired on ESPN at 9:30 a.m. ET every Sunday morning (and replayed at 10:30 a.m. ET the same day on ESPN2 and 11:30 AM on ESPNews). It featured a roundtable discussion among four spor ...

'' and regular guest appearances on '' SportsCenter''.

Style

Wiley was famous for his well-regarded essays on race in America. He was known for his ability to mix street vernacular with literary references, and for his witty, erudite, and sometimes forceful writing style. When writing for ESPN's Page 2, in skirting the line between sports journalism and literary fiction, Wiley wrote many articles in the third person, featuring discursive, jazz-inflected prose and dialogue conducted between himself and a fictionalized character whose identity the writer left deliberately obscure.

Death

Wiley died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

at the age of 52 on June 13, 2004, while watching Game 4 of the

2004 NBA Finals The 2004 NBA Finals was the championship round of the 2003–04 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, and the conclusion of the season's playoffs. This season's NBA Finals was contested between the Western Conference playoff champion ...

. Survivors included his companion, Susan Peacock of Orlando; his mother, Dorothy Brown of Washington; a son from his marriage to Holly Cypress, Colen C. "Cole" Wiley; a daughter from his marriage to Monica Valdiviez, Magdalena Valdiviez-Wiley; and a half brother, Samuel Graham of Memphis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiley, Ralph 1952 births 2004 deaths American sportswriters African-American writers People from Memphis, Tennessee Journalists from Tennessee 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people