Christian Stone: There was something Bourdain-like about the big, soccer life Grant Wahl led

Grant Wahl could throw a dinner party. He and his wife, Céline Gounder, hosted them monthly for Grant's Sports Illustrated colleagues. The idea wasn't to bring together a collection of the familiar, but to gather a group of co-workers who might know little about the others, if they knew anything at all. The invite list offered no deference to one's place on the masthead; in fact, it was deliberately anti-hierarchal, designed to confirm to the freshly-hired web producer that they were every bit the VIP that the most senior editor was, maybe more so. Grant cooked, Celine chose the wine and the two of them made everyone in the room feel like the president of France.

From the late spring day in 1996 that Wahl walked into Sports Illustrated HQ, he relentlessly championed inclusion and his colleagues, especially younger ones and those further removed from the levers of corporate governance. Wahl, who died early Friday