Power of Caring
  presented by CIGNA

I once asked Jim Murray if he kept a few extra columns in the bank for days when he had the flu or a tee time or an incurably blank computer screen. "Of course not!" he yowled. "What if I die one ahead?"

On Sunday, Jim Murray, the greatest sportswriter who ever lived, kissed his gorgeous wife, started to put on his pajamas, said, "Linda, something's wrong," and collapsed. The doctor was there in five minutes, but it was too late. Jim had died of a heart attack. He was 78.

He got his wish, though. He didn't have any columns saved up. Too bad. We could use a few laughs right now.

Murray on huge Boog Powell: "They're going to make an umbrella stand out of his foot."

On how they ought to begin the Indianapolis 500: "Gentlemen, start your coffins."

On baseball: "Willie Mays's glove is where triples go to die."

On Roger Staubach: "Square as a piece of fudge."

On Elgin Baylor: "Unstoppable as a woman's tears."

Murray could write anything; sports just happened to get lucky. He was Time's Hollywood correspondent in the 1950s, and the stars loved him. He drank with Bogey, played cards with the Duke, dined with Marilyn. He carried a solid-gold money clip given to him by Jack Benny. Murray could've made millions in the studios. He used to moonlight doctoring dialogue for Jack Webb. I'll pulverize ya! the script would say. Murray would change it to, Say, how'd you like to end up as six feet of lumps?

He wrote the nation's best sports column for 37 delicious years at the Los Angeles Times, but, come to think of it, the column was about sports sort of the way Citizen Kane was about sleds.

Murray on an unfinished highway to a stadium in Cincinnati: "It must be Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer."

On New Jersey: "Its principal export is soot."

On Philadelphia: "A place to park the truck and change your socks."

Murray's Banned-McNally became so famous that Spokane begged to be done. "The trouble with Spokane," the compliant Murray wrote, "is that there's nothing to do after 10 o'clock. In the morning."

Murray never went on The Sports Reporters, never had his own radio show, never even liked his picture to be in the paper. But he had more impact than any sportswriter since Grantland Rice. The 10-shot cut rule in golf was Murray's idea. It was Murray who shamed the Masters into finally allowing Lee Elder to play, in 1975. ("Wouldn't it be nice to have a black American at Augusta in something other than a coverall?" Murray wrote.)

One time, at a U.S. Open, Arnold Palmer found himself in a ditch. He was trying to figure out what shot to play when he looked up and saw Murray. "What would Hogan do in a situation like this?" Palmer asked. Murray looked down and said, "Hogan wouldn't be in a situation like that."

It wasn't all laughs, yet through heartache, illness and sorrow, Murray wrote on. His son Ricky died of a drug overdose, and Jim blamed himself in part. The love of his youth—his first wife, Gerry—died of cancer 14 years ago, and I thought Jim would never turn the lights up in his house again, until Linda came along. His eyes had this annoying habit of going out on him. He dictated the column blind for six months and was still better than anybody in the country.

America tried to tell him. He won a Pulitzer. He's in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was named National Sportswriter of the Year for 12 straight years, 14 in all. There was a little dinner honoring him a few years back. Nothing special. Kirk Douglas showed up. Dinah Shore. Barron Hilton. Some couple came in to hand Murray the Richstone Man of the Year community service award: President and Mrs. Reagan. Yet Murray was so humble that when you left him—even if you were the third-string volleyball writer in Modesto—you couldn't remember which of you was the legend.

Finest man I ever knew.

Lately, I was waiting for Jim to retire and hoping like hell he wouldn't. "Writing a column is like riding a tiger," he used to say. "You'd like to get off, but you have no idea how."

Rotten luck. He finally found a way.

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Past Editions of Life of Reilly

Issue date: August 24, 1998