He was a kick to be around, and an even bigger kick to read. SI hired Nack as its horse racing writer in 1978, but he soon demonstrated that he could write about most anything, all the while regaling colleagues with war stories (real and sports) and expounding on the joys of Fitzgerald, Yeats and Shakespeare. Nack chronicled Secretariat's Triple Crown season in 1972, and immortalized him in "Secretariat: The Making Of A Champion," a 1975 book that Red Smith called "the next best thing to watching Secretariat run." That's how he first came to meet Secretariat, a 2-year-old colt then stabled next to 1971 Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge at Belmont Park. At the office Christmas party in 1971, he got up on a table and recited the list of Kentucky Derby winners from Aristides in 1875 to Dust Commander in 1970, and the editor-in-chief promptly offered him a job as the horse racing writer. A horse racing fan growing up, he drowned out the sounds of fire during the Tet Offensive in 1968 by listening to tapes of races that his mother sent him.Īfter his tour of duty was finished, and the Louisville Courier-Journal turned him down, Nack was hired by Newsday as a city-side reporter. After graduating in 1966 from the University of Illinois, where he worked on the student newspaper with Roger Ebert, he enlisted in the army and became a public relations officer for Gen. But they were always worth it."Īctually, Nack came to sports writing a little late. "Anyway, his stories would always come in a little late.
True story - the SI business office once questioned his expense account because they couldn't believe anyone could drink that much coffee.
He took such voluminous notes, and it took him a while to get everything organized. "He would literally lock himself in a room, at home or on the road, with a pot of coffee for 24 hours. "He agonized over every story," Padwe says. And he would always tell the students that it was the reporting that drove a story."Īs for the writing, as good as the prose was, it never came easy. "He would do a class for me every year, never missed one. "He loved that part of the job," says Sandy Padwe, who edited him at both Newsday and SI and taught a sports journalism class at Columbia University for 26 years. First and foremost, he was a great reporter.
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