Jim Murray ...

LETTER FROM A ROOKIE'S WIFE

Dearest Darling:

How are you? . . . I am working now at the Bon Ton Grill. . . . All the fellows from the box works ask for you and say, 'Boy, I bet if that old husband of yours could only see you in them net stockings he'd bat a thousand. . . .'

The other night was election night and the bar had to be closed; so I had the whole gang over to our house. . . . The party wasn't as noisy as the papers said. . . . I didn't see why the police came. . . .

I sure want you to meet Cesar [a new roomer]. . . . [He] feels terrible he had to take this long business trip just the time you come home. . . . He'll come back. He has to; he has the car.

Faithfully yours, Cuddles

Back in 1961, before the Computer Age, writers on the road would type hard copy, and Western Union would wire it to the home papers. Except for Murray's stuff. The guys from Western Union would come back to Jim looking befuddled. "Hey, Murray," they would ask, "you sure you want to say this?"

Says Murray, "I think they kept waiting for 'and then, his bat flashing in the sun, the Bambino belted a four-ply swat,' and it never came."

What came instead were one-line snapshots that a hundred fulminations couldn't top. Elgin Baylor was "as unstoppable as a woman's tears." Dodger manager Walt Alston would "order corn on the cob in a Paris restaurant."

It was the kind of stuff that the guy with a stopwatch hanging from his neck hated, but almost everybody else liked -- especially women. "I love your column," one female fan wrote him, "even when I don't know what you're talking about."

Murray became nearly as famous as his subjects. Once, during a tournament, Arnold Palmer's golf ball rolled into a gully, leaving him an impossible shot out of a thicket. Just then he saw Murray in the gallery. "Well," Palmer said, "you're always writing about Hogan. What would Hogan do in a situation like this?"

Said Murray, "Hogan wouldn't be in a situation like that."

In 1969 Texas and Arkansas met in Fayetteville in a classic battle for No. 1, a football game attended by President Nixon. After the game Murray was slammed into a chain-link fence by a Secret Service man who apparently thought Murray looked suspicious. Murray found himself a foot off the ground, suspended only by his collar. Just then, Nixon walked by.

"How ya doin', Jim?" Nixon said.

"I'd be better," Murray said, "if you could get this monkey to put me down."

ON CITIES

LONG BEACH: "The seaport of Iowa . . . a city which, rumor has it, was settled by a slow leak in Des Moines."
CINCINNATI: "They still haven't finished the freeway outside the ballpark . . . it's Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer."
SAN FRANCISCO: ". . . it's not a town, it's a no-host cocktail party. If it were human, it'd be W.C. Fields. It has a nice, even climate. It's always winter."
ST. LOUIS: " . . . had a bond issue recently and the local papers campaigned for it on a slogan PROGRESS OR DECAY, and decay won in a landslide."
OAKLAND: ". . . is this kind of town: You have to pay 50 cents to go from Oakland to San Francisco. Coming to Oakland from San Francisco is free."
BALTIMORE: ". . . a guy just standing on a corner with no place to go and rain dripping off his hat. Baltimore's a great place if you're a crab."
LOS ANGELES: ". . . underpoliced and oversexed."


Murray and nuclear waste dumps have a lot in common. Everybody likes them until one shows up in the backyard.

Take the state of Iowa. When the University of Iowa got stuck on its ear in the Rose Bowl this year, Murray felt for the losers:

"They're going home, so to speak, with a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge and a watch that loses an hour a day and turns green on their arm."

That ruffled Iowans so much that two weeks later, Governor Terry Branstad began his state-of-the-state message (as if he didn't have more pressing issues) with a comment for Murray: "Jim, we're proud to be Iowans. . . ." he said. "We're tough and we're coming back."

No, no, Governor! You're taking it all wrong. To have your nose tweaked by Murray is to be hockey-pucked by Don Rickles. Look on it as a privilege. You're one of the lucky ones. Some people roast celebs. Murray roasts America. He has zinged every place from Detroit (". . . should be left on the doorstep for the Salvation Army") to Munich ("Akron with a crewcut!").

In fact, Murray maintains Spokane once got to feeling neglected and wrote in asking for the treatment. Always helpful, Murray wrote, "The trouble with Spokane . . . is that there's nothing to do after 10 o'clock. In the morning. But it's a nice place to go for breakfast."

Besides, if Murray had dropped dead as thousands have asked him to, sports wouldn't be the same. He has championed dozens of causes, many as stark as black and white, and they've made a difference in the nation's landscape. It was Murray's badgering of the Masters, for instance, that helped that tournament change its no-blacks stance: "It would be nice to have a black American at Augusta in something other than a coverall. . . ."

He was incredulous that Satchel Paige was having difficulty being inducted into the Hall of Fame: "Either let him in the front of the Hall -- or move the damn thing to Mississippi."

He championed the cause of the beleaguered, retired Joe Louis: "As an economic entity, Joe Louis disappeared into a hole years ago and pulled it in after him. He cannot tunnel out in his lifetime. He owes the United States more than some European allies."

Crazy, isn't it? For a man half blind, Murray sure could see.

I lost an old friend the other day. He was blue eyed, impish, he cried a lot with me, laughed a lot with me, saw a great many things with me. . . . He had a pretty exciting life. He saw Babe Ruth hit a home run when we were both 12 years old. He saw Willie Mays steal second base. . . . He saw Rocky Marciano get up. . . . You see, the friend I lost was my eye. . . .
July 1, 1979

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The beginning of the end announced itself in Miami, three days before the 1979 Super Bowl. "Funny how dusty the air is in Miami," Murray said to Dallas Cowboy linebacker Thomas (Hollywood) Henderson. "Been like this all week."

"What do you mean, Jim?" Henderson said. "It's as clear as a bell out."

The retina in Murray's left eye had become detached -- and that was his good eye. The right one had carried a cataract since 1978, leaving him only peripheral vision. Now both eyes were out, and Murray was legally blind. Over the next year five operations on the left retina could not restore it.

"At that point, I did not care," Murray says. "I would like to have died, actually. When you're blind, there's no quality to life."

I guess I would like to see a Reggie Jackson with the count 3 and 2 and the Series on the line, guessing fastball. . . . Rod Carew with men on first and second and no place to put him, and the pitcher wishing he were standing in the rain someplace. . . . Muhammad Ali giving a recital, a ballet, not a fight. Also, to be sure, I'd like to see a sky full of stars, moonlight on the water, and yes, the tips of a royal flush peeking out as I fan out a poker hand. . . . Come to think of it, I'm lucky. I saw all of those things. I see them yet.

Funny, he didn't feel lucky, even as sympathies stacked up in his hospital room. Once, when Murray had just come out of surgery and was not allowed visitors or phone calls, the phone did a funny thing. It rang anyway.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Jim? You O.K.?"

"How'd you get through?"

"Persistence."

Reggie Jackson does, after all, have a heart.

As for Murray, he had lost his, and it wasn't until six months later that he got it back. Unable to see the keys on a typewriter, he began to use a tape recorder. Writing a column with only the sound of your voice is something like assembling a 1932 Ford roadster wearing boxing gloves. "It wasn't very good," Murray says. "But to me, it was a hell of an achievement."

With no chance to repair the left eye, doctors in December 1979 decided to remove the cataract from his right. That worked until the retina detached from it, too. Retinas 2, Murray 0. The right retina was finally repaired on Jan. 18, 1982, and Murray's vision, albeit tunneled and precarious, came back.

Who knew there would be times when he wished it hadn't?

To my three sons, Ted, Tony, and Ricky, who have never read my columns and doubtless won't read this book, and my daughter, Pammy, who won't, either. To their mother, Gerry, who not only read, but, bless her, laughed at all the jokes.
"The Best of Jim Murray"
Dedication, 1965


Rearing teenagers in the late '60s and early '70s was a bitch, though the Murrays seemed to have done O.K. Tony pitched for Cal and, at one time, had scouts bird-dogging his games. Ted and Pam were good kids, and Ricky, the baby, was a delight. "He could play the piano like an angel," Murray says.

His father got him a job at the Times, and everything seemed fine. Many were the days Ricky would call his dad and laugh about the day's column.

"I don't know what happened," Murray says. "Dedication is hard on a marriage, hard on family life. Maybe it was the column. Maybe it was the Malibu beach scene. Maybe it was all of it."

In the early evening of June 6, 1982, Jim and Gerry came home to find a business card sticking out of the door. It was from the county coroner.

CALL RE: CASE NO. 82-7193.

Case No. 82-7193 was better known as Ricky, age 29, dead from an overdose.

"I think about it all the time," Murray says, fingering that card, wrinkled from the years it has been in his wallet. "I don't know if I should say this, but it was always easy for me, the column. It's not like I spent long, long hours on it. I had plenty of time to be with my family. . . . "But I don't know. You lose a son and you think, 'Was I a lousy father?' But then, when you're a semifamous father, that's another load to bear."

There was one load yet to go.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. I was supposed to die first. . . . I had my speech all ready. I was going to look into her brown eyes and tell her something I should have long ago. I was going to tell her: "It was a privilege just to have known you."

I never got to say it. But it was too true.
April 3, 1984

Toward the end, because of the treatments, Gerry wore a wig. One day, on the way to Palm Springs, they stopped at a coffee shop and, for some reason, she wanted a milk shake, the first she'd had since high school. They sat there and had a few laughs. And when they'd stopped laughing, Gerry tipped her wig cockeyed for a few more laughs.

Two nights later, she got up from bed and fell; she faded into a coma and stayed there from January through March.

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Four times a week, Murray would write his column and then spend the rest of the time at the hospital with Gerry. Sitting down at the typewriter with sorrow staring back at him was de rigueur for Murray. Through Ricky, through blindness, through Gerry, the show went on.

"I have sat down and attempted humor with a broken heart," he says. "I've sat down and attempted humor with every possible facet of my life in utter chaos. . . . Carmen was announced. Carmen will be sung."

What was hard was trying to write over those infernal voices, trying to forget the doctor's voice on the phone. The first X-rays showed the cancer hadn't spread. But there had been a mix-up at the clinic, just like in the movies. What in fact had happened was just the opposite. "Sorry," the doctor said. "The cancer has metastasized."

The cancer has metastasized.

"The most terrible collection of syllables in the language," Murray says.

Gerry died on April 1.

That figures. You write punch lines your whole life and then the last joke is on you.

Writing a column is like riding a tiger. You don't want to stay on, but you don't want to get off either.
March 12, 1961

Not 10 minutes down the hill from Murray's house is the Hotel Bel-Air, where a famous low-calorie-beer company is holding a dinner for the stars of its next 60-second sports celluloid extravaganza. Murray is invited, so he arranges for a ride (he can't drive at night) and makes an appearance. What the hell, as Murray says, might be a column in it.

Walking in, Murray turns heads. For some in the sports world, seeing Murray come into a room without a guide is sufficient reason for a celebratory dinner. "How ya feelin', Jim?" asks Red Auerbach. "How you makin' out, Jim?" asks Bob Lanier. "Everything O.K. with you, Jim?" asks Bob Uecker.

Over in the corner, Boog Powell cannot quite get up the courage to say hello. "I've never met him," says Powell, "but I've read his stuff for years. And he's written about me, I don't know, half a dozen times, but I've seen him in a locker room only twice. He's a great man. I'm one of his biggest fans."

This is how it is now for Murray. He is in that the-legend-walks-and-talks-and-eats-breakfast stage. The Last King of Sportswriting, boys, sitting right over there.

But Murray the writer has seldom seemed younger. He was named the nation's best columnist for 1984 by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Odds are that Murray will go on winning awards three years after he is buried.

Why he has never been awarded the Pulitzer Prize is an unsolved mystery. Then again, only three sportswriters have won it -- Red Smith, Dave Anderson and Arthur Daley -- and all three worked for The New York Times. "If Murray worked for the Times," says Dan Jenkins, author of Semi-Tough, "he'd already have three."

Murray doesn't care. "Gerry's gone. So what?"

He misses her. "I'll be watching TV once in a while and I'll see somebody we knew, and I'll say, 'Gerry, come take a look at. . . .' And then I'll catch myself."

Two years after Gerry died, friends are still telling him, "Why don't you move out of that house? It'll help you to forget." And he answers, " 'Cause I don't want to forget."

So he fills his days at home, in a house that is far too big for him, the lights always turned on low. He's a steel ball in a giant pinball machine, banging around off the walls, nothing much in the refrigerator, stacks of books and untended mail cluttering up the counter space. No room in the house really means much to him anymore except the corner of a small downstairs bedroom where he writes his column by the light of a lamp and a window. It strained his eyes to make out the tiny print on his portable computer, so someone hooked up a magnifying monitor. It is chilling to watch him with his back to the door, his shoulders hunched over an eerie green light, writing jokes for the greater Los Angeles area.

And Murray never misses a column. "What else would I do?" he says.

A tour of the house is really more of a tour of Gerry -- here we are at the Masters, at Pebble Beach, at the Dunes, at Madison Square Garden -- until you arrive at a three-by-five photograph on the piano.

"This is my favorite," he says. "I don't know if she'd like it or not. But I like it. Look at those eyes. Look at them. There's just no jealousy in those eyes."

He fingers the frame, clears his throat.

"The final curtain is pretty bad, isn't it? The last scene, the last act, is pretty bad." Pause.

"Put it this way," he says. "It'll never sell in Dubuque."

You laugh. But Murray doesn't. He just smiles.

Fooled 'em again.

-30-

 

I never met Jim, but in recent years, I've actually become somewhat friendly with Murray's second wife, Linda, who is a very nice woman. The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation offers, each year, a number of scholarships to aspiring collegiate sports writers and hosts a golf tournament and a banquet.

It's a good cause, if you're interested.

http://www.jimmurrayfoundation.com/

 

Double Down, thanks for posting the Reilly story.

One of the stories in the Times' special section shortly after Murray's death did a story on the various cities he ripped. Classic lines ... all of them.

 

Tremendous thread. Spent the past hour laughing and crying as I perused all of the wonderful Murray columns that I hadn't read in years.

Thanks to all for contributing. I've read his stuff since my grandfather started sending me clips in the Sixties. Loved him then. Loved his writing even more now.

I'm also struck by the scarcity of quotes in his columns (he didn't need them) and the depth of his reporting. The background he did made him an authority on every subject, and with his unparalleled gifts as a writer, the need to actually quote people would have been an unnecessary diminishment of his prose.

I'd sure love to have read his take on modern day sports topics such as Barry Bonds and Michael Vick and Lance Armstrong and Donaghy, et. al.

Most of us go quietly in the night and leave nary a ripple. This guy is still the standard by which all others are compared. It's gratifying to know his words, which entertained so many older folks who have also passed, are still resonating with many of us now. What greater tribute can be paid to a writer than that?

 

She's a very nice lady. Hosts a pour at her PGA West condo for writers every year during Bob Hope week. Two years ago, Jay and Bill Haas showed up for dinner, helping themselves to copious quantities of Linda's lasagna.

Couldn't have been nicer.

 

did this murray fella also work radio for paul allen?

 

He was old enough to work with FRED Allen.

 

Good point on Cannon, Mr. Sullivan. Cannon has to be mentioned as a Top 3 sports columnist along with Smith and Murray. While Smith was eloquent and authoritative, Cannon was streetsmart, identified with the workingclass and had an uncanny ability to touch the essence of people he portrayed. He "kept it real" before the term was invented and abused to the point of cliche.

 

Ben Hecht would know.

 

Wasn't he a little...old .... for you?