The more he wrote, the more he embarrassed the rest of us. But we loved Jim Murray, anyway, because he was as wonderful a person as he was a sports columnist.
There have been too many funerals lately. The epicenter of mourning seemed to be Chicago because so many of our legends–Mike Royko, Harry Caray, Sid Luckman and Jack Brickhouse–died within mere months of each other.
But it hurt just the same when Jim Murray was buried Friday, for he was the reluctant king of this profession. He had crafted, and I do mean crafted, a column for the Los Angeles Times since 1961 and until he passed away at age 78 last week.
Those of us who attempted to reach for Murray’s standard of daily excellence pretty much had two options: Try to imitate his style and fail miserably, or veer off in another direction, only to realize that we were all Mario Mendozas compared with Babe Ruth, anyway.
Murray’s name was forever invoked in press boxes throughout the nation, most notably when he wasn’t present. There might be a daffy play or a bizarre occurrence, and invariably, one of us typist-clerks uttered what the rest of us were thinking: How would Murray handle this?
That Jim would say it better was a given, but the ultimate badge of honor was that he stood above the egos and backbiting of an increasingly cutthroat business. He was the modest genius, even when, in absentia, he humbled us.
A mean streak has infiltrated this profession, in part, one supposes, because athletics have shed just about every vestige of innocence. But Jim, with that eye for fun, didn’t go there, which is not to say his thick goggles were rose-colored.
On the contrary, when a player or owner or circumstance deserved criticism, Murray was in the front row. But he didn’t deal in bile and bilge. No, he did it the hard way. He did it with insight and humor, so uniquely that the object of his disaffection was often reduced to mush, either agreeing or chuckling along with Murray, or both.
Perhaps this is why, at a time when the adversarial relationship between the media and the sports industry has never been hotter, performers routinely sought out Murray. If he was standing around the batting cage at a World Series, ballplayers who ran away from the rest of us either renewed acquaintances with Jim or introduced themselves.
At first, I thought this was a West Coast thing. So many jocks from Southern California grew up reading him in their youth. But it happened on the East Coast, too, and at venues where there was no coast. When Jim posed a question during a mass interview at the Masters, the golfer at the podium perked up. It’s called respect.
Jim was a throwback and proud of it. (“What’s the Internet?”) Yet he was also as contemporary as tomorrow’s headlines. He could have sat at home and authored columns that glowed. But there was Murray, trudging along in the rain, covering a U.S. Open he could have watched on television.
Murray was too busy thoroughly entertaining his readers to think he was bigger than the games about which he wrote. He treated the rest of us accordingly. At his home, during a Super Bowl party or a Bob Hope Classic, we’d gaze at his Pulitzer Prize or all those letters from the White House. But Jim brushed off his walls of fame.
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“Ready for a beer?” he’d ask. “Light or high test?”
Sparky Anderson, the former manager, said it all the other day. Murray could make you cry over your corn flakes Monday morning, then make you collapse in a heap of laughter Tuesday morning. Most of all, you couldn’t wait for breakfast with Jim on Wednesday morning.
Murray spared nothing until the end, and that’s the upside of his departure. We’ve savored so much. He will be quoted and remembered forever, in absentia. There will be no statue of limitations on enjoying what he wrote or wondering what he might have written. He’s gone, but not his soul.
I don’t know if they have newspapers up there, but if they do, they’re going to have one great sports section because they’ve got one special man.