King Of The Sports Page

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 number one, 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."

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."

CINCINNATI: "They still haven't finished the freeway outside the ballpark...it's Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer."