Early life

Rushin grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota

Bloomington, Minnesota

Bloomington is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota in Hennepin County. Located on the north bank of the Minnesota River above its confluence with the Mississippi River, Bloomington lies at the heart of the southern...

, the third in a family of five kids. "Beer has long been in my blood, and not just in the literal sense," he wrote. "My ancestors were much practiced at naming bars." In 1946, his father's father, Jack Rushin, opened a saloon on Market Street in San Francisco he called Jack's. But the neon sign Jack Rushin ordered came back misspelled. Faced with a costly correction, he installed it unaltered, which is why San Francisco had—under different ownership—a famous nightclub of the '50s called Fack's. Rushin's maternal ancestry consists of a long line of big-league baseball players, firefighters, and bar owners named Boyle. His grandfather Jimmy Boyle (baseball) played catcher for the New York Giants

New York Giants

The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...

 in 1926 and his great-uncle, Buzz Boyle

Buzz Boyle

Ralph Francis Boyle , was an outfielder in Major League Baseball who played from through for the Boston Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers . Listed at 5' 11", 170 lb., Boyle batted and threw left handed...

, was an outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Their uncle, Jack Boyle

Jack Boyle

John Anthony Boyle , nicknamed "Honest Jack", was an American catcher and first baseman in Major League Baseball...

, had a long career with the Phillies, then became nearly as renowned as the owner of a bar in downtown Cincinnati. In 1954 Steve's father, Don, was a blocking back for Johnny Majors

Johnny Majors

Johnny Majors is a former American football player and coach. A standout halfback at the University of Tennessee, he was an All-American in 1956 and a two-time winner of the Southeastern Conference Most Valuable Player award, in 1955 and 1956. He finished second to Paul Hornung in voting for...

 at the University of Tennessee

University of Tennessee

The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...

. And Steve's older brother, Jim, was a forward on the Providence

Providence College

Providence College is a private, coeducational, Catholic university located about two miles west of downtown Providence, Rhode Island, United States, the state's capital city. With a 2010–2011 enrollment of 3,850 undergraduate students and 735 graduate students, the College specializes in academic...

 hockey team that reached the Final Four

Final four

Final Four isa sports term that is commonly applied to the last four teams remaining in a playoff tournament, most notably NCAA Division I college basketball tournaments. The term usually refers to the four teams who compete in the two games of a single-elimination tournament's semi-final round...

 in 1983.

He recalled his businessman father making him look up words in their big red dictionary so he could report on what they meant. His mother, Jane, was a teacher who thought his love of reading and writing meant he should become a lawyer. After her abrupt death on Sept. 5, 1991, of a disease called amyloidosis, Don took up golf at 57. "He and my mother had always played tennis – a couples' game of mixed doubles and tennis bracelets and Love-Love," Steve wrote. "But in mourning, Dad turned Job-like to golf, a game of frustration and golf widows and solitary hours on the range. On his first visit to a driving range, my father struck a steel stall divider with one of his drives, and the ball rocketed back into his privates, beginning a long history of violence and comedy – often combined – in the Rushin golf game." In Bloomington, young Steve watched baseball and football games at Metropolitan Stadium

Metropolitan Stadium

Metropolitan Stadium was a sports stadium that once stood in Bloomington, Minnesota, just outside Minneapolis. The area where the stadium once stood is now the site of the Mall of America...

, where he sold hot dogs and soda to Twins and Vikings fans (for one year he also took in hockey in the pine-green polyester worn by vendors at the Met Center, home of the Minnesota North Stars

Minnesota North Stars

The Minnesota North Stars were a professional ice hockey team in the National Hockey League for 26 seasons, from 1967 to 1993. The North Stars played their home games at the Met Center in Bloomington, and the team's colors for most of its history were green, yellow, gold and white...

).

"When I was 16, my father, with Wite-Out

Wite-Out

Wite-Out is a trademark for a line of correction fluid, originally created for use with photocopies, and manufactured by the BIC Corporation.-History:...

, rolled forward the odometer on my birth certificate so that I could sell beer at Minnesota Twins

Minnesota Twins

The Minnesota Twins are a professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They play in the Central Division of Major League Baseball's American League. The team is named after the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. They played in Metropolitan Stadium from 1961 to 1981 and the...

 games, where the official brand was Schmidt

Schmidt

Schmidt may refer to:* Schmidt , including list of people with the surname* Schmidt * Schmidt , a crater on Mars* Schmidt , in Kamchatka...

, whose brewery, in St. Paul, bore enormous, electrified letters that lit up at night," he wrote. "On those unfortunate evenings when every second letter failed to illuminate, you could drive by and see, like a beacon on the side of the brewery, a brazenly honest bit of beer advertising: SCHMIDT." He is a graduate of John F. Kennedy Senior High School

Bloomington Kennedy High School

Kennedy High School is one of two public high schools located in Bloomington, Minnesota, USA. Named after former president John F. Kennedy, it was opened in 1965 due to the rapid growth of Bloomington at the time. The school has been a member of the Lake Conference since the school opened...

 in Bloomington, and Marquette University

Marquette University

Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1881, the school is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities...

 in Milwaukee. In college, he once recalled, he "did not bring down the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...

 as my summer job. No, on my summer job, I worked at a Tom Thumb

Tom Thumb

Tom Thumb is a character of English folklore. The History of Tom Thumb was published in 1621, and has the distinction of being the first fairy tale printed in English. Tom is no bigger than his father's thumb, and his adventures include being swallowed by a cow, tangling with giants, and becoming a...

 convenience store and wondered what would become of my life, and if that life would involve Slurpees. Standing behind the counter in a red smock, I envied the hot dogs as they rode all day on that little hot dog Ferris wheel

Ferris wheel

A Ferris wheel is a nonbuilding structure consisting of a rotating upright wheel with passenger cars attached to the rim in such a way that as the wheel turns, the cars are kept upright, usually by gravity.Some of the largest and most modern Ferris wheels have cars mounted on...

."

Career

An inveterate reader of cereal-box side panels, Rushin cites as his earliest literary influences the copywriters at Kellogg's and General Mills

General Mills

General Mills, Inc. is an American Fortune 500 corporation, primarily concerned with food products, which is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. The company markets many well-known brands, such as Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Pillsbury, Green...

, as well as the New York sportswriter Oscar Madison

Oscar Madison

Oscar Madison is a character in The Odd Couple, which began as a Broadway play, then was a film and then a television series.In The Odd Couple, Oscar Madison is the everyman, and is a sportswriter for the New York Herald...

. After reading a story by Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff

Alexander Wolff

Alexander Wolff is a writer for Sports Illustrated and former owner of the Vermont Frost Heaves of the Premier Basketball League .He has written several books about basketball, among them Big Game, Small World , a look at basketball around the world...

 on the annual Gus Macker

Gus Macker

The Gus Macker 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament is a nationwide event for players of a variety of age and skill levels in the United States. Although every tournament is different, a typical Gus Macker event involves dozens of temporary courts set up in parking lots or closed-off public streets...

 three-on-three tournament in Michigan, Rushin struck up a correspondence with Wolff. He ended up writing an anthology of sports nicknames. From A-Train to Yogi, with Wolff and Chuck Wielgus. He joined the staff of S.I. in 1988, two weeks after graduating from Marquette. Within three years, at age 25, he became the youngest Senior Writer on the SI staff. In 1991, he was shuffled back to the Twin Cities

Twin cities

Twin cities are a special case of two cities or urban centres which are founded in close geographic proximity and then grow into each other over time...

 to cover hometown reaction to the North Stars' first appearance in a Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup

The Stanley Cup is an ice hockey club trophy, awarded annually to the National Hockey League playoffs champion after the conclusion of the Stanley Cup Finals. It has been referred to as The Cup, Lord Stanley's Cup, The Holy Grail, or facetiously as Lord Stanley's Mug...

 final in 10 years. The 15,000-plus crowds that jammed the Met Center for Cup games were a shock to Rushin, who hadn't seen a crowd that large in the arena in years—and certainly not when he and the rest of the Kennedy High Class of '84 held their graduation exercises there.

Three years later Rushin spent four months writing an epic feature for S.I.s 40th Anniversary issue. The story of his journey was divided into five parts, each exploring an essential aspect of sports in America. One section was a lament for recently razed Metropolitan Stadium, whose site became the Mall of America

Mall of America

The Mall of America, also called MOA and the Megamall, is a shopping mall located in Bloomington, Minnesota, a suburb of the Twin Cities, in the United States. It is located southeast of the junction of Interstate 494 and Minnesota State Highway 77, north of the Minnesota River and is across the...

 and housed more than 800 stores, making it the largest shopping center in the United States. "It's nauseating to think that above where Fran Tarkenton

Fran Tarkenton

Francis Asbury "Fran" Tarkenton is a former professional football player, TV personality, and computer software executive....

 once scrambled, there's going to be an Orange Julius

Orange Julius

Orange Julius is a chain of fruit drink beverage stores. It has been in business since the late 1920s. The eponymous beverage is a mixture of orange juice, milk, sugar, ice and vanilla flavoring.- History :...

 or a Gap

Gap (clothing retailer)

The Gap, Inc. is an American clothing and accessories retailer based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 1969 by Donald G. Fisher and Doris F. Fisher. The company has five primary brands: the namesake Gap banner, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta. As of September 2008,...

," he said. Rushin's essay – How We Got Here – spanned 24 pages and remains the longest-ever article published in a single issue of S.I.
At the magazine, he filed stories from Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

, Greenland

Greenland

Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

, the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

-Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 border and other far- and near-flung locales. He covered the World Series, the World Cup and Wimbledon. (And those were just the Ws). He ate his way around America's ballparks ("I had watched a fat man in a minor league ballpark in Colorado Springs spoon chopped onions and pickle relish onto his jumbo frank, then turn to me, a complete stranger, and say, "Vegetables") and rode a dozen rollercoasters in a day. (Happily, those assignments were not consecutive). His weekly column, Air & Space, ran from 1998 to 2007, and was often about sports. Rushin was named the 2005 National Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association

National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association

The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, or NSSA, is an organization of sports media members in the United States. It constitutes the American chapter of the International Sports Press Association ....

, and has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards.

He left S.I. in February, 2007 before returning in a contributing role in July 2010. He has since found a niche as an occasional contributor to Golf Digest

Golf Digest

Golf Digest is a monthly golf magazine published by Condé Nast Publications in the United States. It is a generalist golf publication covering recreational golf and men's and women's competitive golf. Condé Nast Publications also publishes the more specialized , and Golf World Business. The...

 and Time magazine, for which he writes back-page essays.
He is the author of the billiards guide Pool Cool (1990), the travelogue Road Swing: One Fan's Journey Into the Soul of America's Sports (1998), the collection The Caddie Was a Reindeer (2004) and the novel The Pint Man (2010). He has written numerous essays for The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 with memoirist and former Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated

Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...

 colleague Franz Lidz

Franz Lidz

Franz Lidz is an American writer and journalist.He was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio, and is a correspondent for GQ, Sports Illustrated, Men's Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Observer, AARP the Magazine, Slate and has written...

. Three of them appear under the title Piscopo Agonistes in the 2000 collection Mirth of a Nation

Mirth of a Nation

Mirth of a Nation is a humor anthology edited by Michael J. Rosen.* Mirth of a Nation ISBN 0-06-095321-7* More Mirth of a Nation ISBN 0-06-095322-5* May Contain Nuts ISBN 0-06-051626-7-External links:* * *...

: The Best Contemporary Humor.

Personal

Rushin is married to college basketball analyst and former basketball player Rebecca Lobo

Rebecca Lobo

Rebecca Rose Lobo-Rushin is an American television basketball analyst and a former player in the professional Women's National Basketball Association from 1997 to 2003...

. In S.I., Rushin had written how he had slept with 10,000 women one night. He was referring, of course, to a WNBA game he watched and subsequently fell asleep. Rushin later recalled how Lobo confronted him in a Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 bar after reading that story. "She asked if I was the scribe who once mocked, in Sports Illustrated, women's professional basketball," he wrote. "Reluctantly, I said that I was. She asked how many games I'd actually attended. I hung my head and said, "None." And so Rebecca Lobo invited me to watch her team, the New York Liberty, play at Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden

Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

. We both reeked of secondhand Camels. (And, quite possibly, of secondhand camels: It was that kind of a dive.) But my insult had been forgiven. It was—for me, anyway—love at first slight." He added: "She had the longest legs, the whitest teeth, the best-sown cornrows I had ever seen, and I imagined us to have much in common. I ate Frosted Flakes

Frosted Flakes

Kellogg's Frosted Flakes is a breakfast cereal first introduced by the Kellogg Company. It consists of corn flakes "frosted" or coated with sugar. The "Frosted Flakes" name is used by Kellogg's in United States and Canada. The cereal was first introduced in 1951 as Sugar Frosted Flakes...

 right out of the box, and she was on boxes of Frosted Flakes. I am ludicrous, and she was name-dropped in a rap by Ludacris

Ludacris

Christopher Brian Bridges , better known by his stage name Ludacris, is an American rapper and actor. Along with his manager, Chaka Zulu, Ludacris is the co-founder of Disturbing tha Peace, an imprint distributed by Def Jam Recordings...

. We were, I thought, made for each other."

Rushin and Lobo live with their four children in Western Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

. In May, 2007, he was the Commencement Day speaker at Marquette, where he was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters for "his unique gift of documenting the human condition through his writing." "Sometimes it pays to think inside a box. And so my daughter and I lay in that box and gazed out at the dozens upon dozens of tulips my wife planted in rows last fall. They bloomed this month, tilting ever so slightly toward the sun. And I thought how remarkable it is that in nature, life wants to grow towards the light."