Bob Considine, himself a distinguished journalist, wrote the foreword for Shirley Povich’s 1969 biography, “All These Mornings.”
“Shirley led me by the nose ring, taught me how to sit down in the press boxes of the land and, consequently, the box seats of the world,” Considine wrote. “He taught me how to report what I observed with as much dignity and decorum as I could muster.
“He is one of those relatively few users of the Queen’s English who can write a simple declarative sentence. What a gift! Someday I’m going to ask him a great favor. I’m going to ask him to let me carry his typewriter.”
Povich, who died last Thursday at 92, was one of the great sportswriters of his or any time. He wrote an estimated 15,000 columns, all for the Washington Post. Although he “officially” retired at 74, he continued writing occasional pieces. His final report, filed from his home last Wednesday, ran in Friday’s editions. His column outlasted him by one day.
He was “prolific and profound,” wrote Leonard Shapiro in the Post obituary, but he was more than that. He was great. He wrote with an elegance and wit equaled only by John Lardner and his good friend, the late Red Smith.
He was always eager to help the newest novice. Current Post columnist Michael Wilbon tells of his first meeting with Povich: “I didn’t have a car, and he was giving me a ride for a closed-circuit viewing of a Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran fight. I was assigned to write a story about the reaction of local fans and was clearly scared to death.
“And Shirley said, `Kid, it’s natural to be nervous. I remember the first fight I ever covered.’
“During what couldn’t have been more than a two-second pause, to give me a little chance to guess, I prepared myself to say `Joe Louis-Max Schmeling.’ Shirley continued, `It was Dempsey-Tunney in 1927, the Long Count Fight.’
“I was dumbfounded the rest of the night; awe completely replaced my own silly fears. And so like everybody else who dreamed of making a living as a sportswriter, I idolized Shirley Povich, loved him, treasured him, pinched myself that he knew my name and that I got to sit next to him at games, genuflected at every single encounter with him. He wanted young writers to treat him like everybody else. I’ll admit I couldn’t. And every year he lived it became less possible.”
There were years when the Post didn’t dominate Washington’s newspaper scene. “For a lot of years, Shirley Povich carried the paper, and that’s no exaggeration,” observed Ben Bradlee, the Post’s retired executive editor.
Former Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who grew up in Washington and frequently was panned by Povich, said, “He was the best damned sportswriter I ever read.”
Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon acknowledged they didn’t like the Post but subscribed only because of Povich.
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Povich won hundreds of awards and also achieved a small measure of fame in 1962 when he was included in Who’s Who of American Women. It was a mistake that received national attention. His friend, Walter Cronkite, telegrammed him to say, “Miss Povich, will you marry me?” And Red Patterson, a former New York baseball writer, wired, “My Dear Shirley–and to think we roomed together in Miami.”
A California paper had his picture grouped with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Eleanor Roosevelt. Time magazine ran a photograph of him smoking a cigar. The publishers quickly apologized, relieved to discover he wasn’t planning to sue.
“As a matter of fact I was delighted, wasn’t embarrassed at all,” he recalled in an interview for “No Cheering in the Press Box.” “For years I’ve known it’s no longer a man’s world. I was glad to be on the winning side. But the next year they dropped me–like I’d married a stripper. The snobs. They never put me back in.
“I have often been asked if I was bothered by the name of Shirley. Well, heavens, it was such a boy’s name in Maine where I grew up. I went to school with three or four boys named Shirley. And the golf pro–he was named Shirley Liscomb. One day, in high school, there was this strange new girl named Shirley Johnson. We though that was odd.
“I was named after my grandmother, Sarah. In the Orthodox Jewish faith, a child is named after someone deceased. I was the eighth child and they were running out of boys’ names. They had already used Abe, Julius, Morris and Burt. My parents wanted something close to Sarah, and they took the Yiddish transliteration of Sarah, which is Sorella, and said, `Gee, that’s close enough to Shirley.’ “
A dapper dresser and a lifetime golfer, Povich had a 75-year run with the Post. He championed many causes. In 1946 he wrote a 15-part series in support of integrating major-league baseball–a year before Jackie Robinson’s debut.
He also had a long-running feud with George Preston Marshall, owner of the Washington Redskins, over the team’s all-white roster. Covering a Cleveland-Washington game, Povich wrote, “Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday.” In another column, he noted “the Redskins colors are burgundy, gold and Caucasian.”
I, too, worshiped at the shrine.