The story “Searching for Gary Smith by Sarah Perry from the Mayborn”, gives a brief summary of well-known Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith life. While moving through the story you learn about his achievements and important individuals lives he has interviewed. In the end though it is as if Gary is losing his touch and was never able to really figure his inner self out. Instead he tried to fulfill that need by his interviews with other people.

The lead that the story gives off is setting a scene as it describes the environment of one of Gary’s interviews.

The authors use of the visual, hearing, and feel senses as she describes the beginning of the story as Gary is in the car with Muhammad Ali makes you feel as if you were with them in the car with them in Los Angeles. “A balmy day in L.A., lanes of traffic, horns blaring. The car dances over the lane markers. Clack, clack, clack. The car weaves in and out, next to this car, then another. That was a close one.”

As you move a little bit deeper into the story you will find the nut graph which is what most of the story is based off. His happens to be the interviews he had with the famous figures, himself and why he penetrates people’s minds during his interviews. As you read through the story you find that all these points are addressed individually and how exactly they have impacted Gary Smith’s life. As you keep going you can finally dive into Gary’s mind which answers the question of “What kind of man thinks like this?”

But beneath Gary’s modesty and aw-shucks manner lies what people call one of the most penetrating minds in narrative nonfiction today. He uses poetry to delve into a young track star’s head, family history to understand a baseball owner, a psychological game to help a tennis legend understand himself, and a father’s vision to predict that a certain young golfer would flame out. “What kind of mind thinks like this?” wonders co-worker Rick Reilly in the introduction to Gary’s latest book Going Deep.

Overwhelmed by Gary’s personal profile I think there is a bigger issue. I believe it pertains to the reason why Gary goes in such depth about other people. He cannot figure out himself completely, so in order to satisfy his need to find information he does it through his interviews with other people.

There were several sources from Gary’s life that were placed throughout the story including Gary himself. In total as I went back and tried to decipher which ones were important I believe Bonnie, Jamillah, Mike Veeck, Sally, and Duke were the only ones.

Someone who I believe didn’t have his own quote was Agassi. When talking about Agassi’s life I felt like it was pretty boring and was just to give more description on Gary’s skills. It spoke about Agassi’s life with his former wife but also how he partially related to Gary.

I believe that the ending ties back to the beginning in a sense that Gary is always the one that is trying to get inside peoples heads, so there is background information that is given about him throughout his life. It names all of these important figures that he has extracted information from, but then he cant extract information from himself nor is he able to figure out the purpose of Ali falling asleep.

From this story I found it to be very entertaining while gaining some knowledge I never had know about certain sports figures. I grew up watching tiger play and it is kind of interesting how Gary called it back then that the machine would take over tiger eventually.

I like all the background details about certain sports individuals lives it was intriguing to see what exactly they would tell this reporter because he was so nosey.

The only thing that I really didn’t enjoy about the piece is the length of it, but if you really let yourself dive into the information and the people it pertains to you really don’t think about length. The first time I read it I was interested but I could see parts where people would be bored. It tends to be kind of wordy.