Jim Murray, May 9, 1961

May 9, 1961: Unfortunately for the ladies -- and probably Alejandro Lavorante too -- this Latin lover will be doing his tango with the No. 3 heavyweight of the world, Zora Folley, Thursday night at the Olympic. This is a pretty drastic undertaking for a young fellow who has only had a baker's dozen fights and a few of us were questioning the wisdom of Alejandro's manager, Pinky George, in making the match. Career-wise, it would seem simpler just to drop Alejandro in front of a moving train.

Jim Murray, May 8, 1961

May 8, 1961: I was rooting hard for old John  Longden on Saturday. You knew it was his last long ride around Churchill Downs. John has won races under all kinds of conditions, including three at Jamaica one day when there was a guy somewhere in the crowd who had threatened to kill him with a high-power rifle. But you knew John and Four-and-Twenty couldn't make it.

From the Stacks -- 'The Long Season'

I haven’t read a baseball book since my mother gave away my trading cards of the Philadelphia Athletics and the Boston Braves. No, I’m not quite that old. I got them from a neighbor lady who was surreptitiously cleaning out her son’s room and I imagine they are still circulating on EBay.  On Jim Murray’s recommendation, I got a copy of Jim Brosnan’s 1960 baseball diary “The Long Season” from the library, and discovered that “Season” is as unlike the heroic sports biographies of my youth (“as told to Bob Considine”)  as a glossy travel book is to a group of airline pilots critiquing the world’s worst airports.

Jim Murray, May 5, 1961

May 5, 1961: The strange story of Gene Littler illustrates the elusiveness of golf. Seven years ago, this calm, compact young man was almost everybody's best bet to corner the game of golf altogether….  The top is a tough place to begin any career. Gene's game didn't exactly come apart, but he didn't make anybody forget Bobby Jones either, Jim Murray says.