An Ode To Jim Murray: `He Is The Reason I Became A Sportswriter

There comes a time, early in most boys' lives, when we realize we aren't going to play in the NBA, we aren't strong or fast enough to run the ball in the NFL, and our fastballs aren't live enough to carry us to the big leagues.

That knowledge doesn't slake our passion for sports; it just changes our direction.

I turned to sportswriting because I was a choke hitter. Not my bat, my throat. That line belongs to Jim Murray, who died Sunday at age 78.

Even before I really knew what I was reading, I read Jim Murray. He was one of the voices of my youth, like Mel Allen and Walter Cronkite, Red Barber and Claire Bee.

I grew up with his column, syndicated in the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal. I waited for the paper every evening and was eager to read what Murray had to say about the world I wanted to inhabit.

He took me to places I couldn't visit. Inside the stadiums. Inside the locker rooms. Inside players' minds. And more important, inside his heart and his humor.

The more I read Murray, the more I wanted to be like him. I wanted to go to the places he went.

More than I ever wanted to hit a baseball like Mickey Mantle or shoot a basketball like Jerry West, I wanted to write like Jim Murray.

Willie Morris called the sportswriters he knew "poets of the night." That's how I feel about Murray.

Reading him wasn't merely my introduction to sportswriting, it was my introduction to the beauty and rhythm of words.

I would read Murray out loud because I liked the way his columns sounded almost as much as I liked what they said.

"Arnold Palmer's rounds of play were never elegant exhibitions of stylish golf," he once wrote. "They were more like Dempsey-Firpo. He's-up! He's-down. Arnold and the course went after each other like sluggers in dark rooms, bulls in china closets."

I would read Murray and then I would try to rewrite him. A lot of us did.

He wasn't always right. I remember a column he wrote before the U.S. Open at tiny Merion Golf Club near Philadelphia.

Murray called the course a pitch-and-putt. Said the golfers were going to carve it up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Nobody carved up Merion, but, almost 30 years later, I don't remember the column because Murray's prediction was wrong, but because the column was so funny.

If you believed in the power of words, you believed in Jim Murray. You were drawn to his grace, his sharp needle, the energy in his sentences.

He is the reason I became a sportswriter; the reason many from my generation fell into this dodge. He was our professional father.

Murray changed the way we do our job. He wasn't part of the club. He didn't believe his job description included pleasing the owners and coaches and athletes he covered.

Murray wrote what he felt.

At his best, his columns were transcendent. He wrote about the death of his wife and the near-loss of his eyesight with remarkable humanity and without an ounce of self-pity.

I still try to write like him. I think about the sound of my words and the energy in my sentences.

Murray's columns always made an impression.

Two compliments mean more to me than any others I could receive.

"Your columns sometimes sound like Jim Murray's."

And, "You're the worst columnist I've read since Jim Murray."

For years I saw him in press boxes and was reluctant to introduce myself. I didn't want to make a fool of myself. I was afraid I would sound obsequious.

Finally, in the Los Angeles Coliseum before a Seahawk game with the Los Angeles Raiders, I saw him standing alone and, after quickly rehearsing a speech, introduced myself and thanked him for his inspiration.

He was as approachable as an uncle. He was just like his column, funny and smart and generous with his insight.

I told him then that I owed him more than he could ever know. I'm sure he'd heard the same thing from 100 sportswriters, but he acted as appreciative as if he were hearing it for the first time.

He was a wonderful man, an inspiring writer and the best choke hitter I ever read.