Though I’ve only met Bill Simmons once, for a brief few seconds at a book-signing event in Washington, D.C. several years back, like so many other aspiring and/or hobbyist sports writers on the interwebs, I’ve always considered him a role model — if not a hero — of sorts.
After all, he’s the guy who built an empire, largely on the premise of writing and talking about sports. It’s basically the dream job, if not dream life, for those of us with a completely irrational passion for sports — a description with which I would absolutely describe myself. Even to this day, I still have a copy of Simmons’ book Now I Can Die in Peace on my bed stand, and I use it as a reference manual, if not as a source of continued inspiration, for how to write sports columns which gracefully combine individual beliefs and passions with statistical and evidence-based arguments.