Jim Murray: of Pulitzers and pretenders
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This is how it goes now in the life of a sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times, an existence also known as: living in the eternal shadow of Jim Murray.
You get some access to former basketball superstar Jerry West. You know there is a column there. You know he is one of those sports names that people always remain interested in. You go, you interview.
West is great, accessible, his normal tortured self, which makes him among the most interesting of subjects to write about. Other sports stars -- any normal person -- learns to rationalize defeats, setbacks. It is the way of survival. Not West. They still burn in him, even some of his high school games back in the 1950s.
His nickname shouldn’t be ‘Mr. Clutch.’ It should be ‘Mr. Glass Half Empty.’
You are excited. A writer who can’t get excited about a chance to attempt, once again, to capture the essence of such a fascinating character is not a writer at all.
So you sit down and write after an afternoon news conference, send in the column and then go to the evening dinner where West is being honored. You are feeling good about yourself, feeling good about your literary attempt.
Then you sit down at the table and there it is. A dinner program, with a reprint of a column on West by your old colleague, the late Jim Murray, one of only five sportswriters to win a Pulitzer prize.
You don’t want to read it because you know it will be humbling, but reading Murray has always been like eating potato chips. Once you’ve read one of his columns, you have to read another. And another.
There it was, from April 27, 1969. And here is a sample from the greatest sportswriter to ever live:
The first time you see Jerry West, you’re tempted to ask him how things are in Gloccamorra. The Lakers didn’t draft him, they found him -- under a rainbow...There are those who swear Jerry arrives for work everyday by reindeer. He wears the perpetually startled expression of a guy who just heard a dog talk...He has the quickest hands and feet of a guy without a police record. If they put a cap on him sideways and turned him loose on the streets of London, there wouldn’t be a wallet in town by nightfall.
There was more, another 20 inches or so. It just got better.
You ponder getting into another business, maybe dry cleaning or lawn mower repair.
You end up taking a deep breath, eating dessert and pondering the definition of immortality.
-- Bill Dwyre