Murray, Jim. Jim Murray, An Autobiography. New York: MacMillan 1993. Print.
First Sentences:
I was a Depression child. With all that connotes. That means you never trust the system again. You know what can happen to it. That means you go through life never able to fully enjoy it. That means you have a ever-present sense of foreboding....I never quit a job in a huff. I swallowed guff. I don't recommend it. It's just the way I was.
Description:
Growing up in Southern California in the 1950s through the '70s, every day for me started with reading Jim Murray's sports column in the Los Angeles Times. He introduced me to the back stories of athletes, games, and sports history, all with wry wit and biting comments that made sports so much richer. What a wonderful introduction for a kid into the world of great writing, humor, and sports (or even today as an adult).I recently discovered Murray had written his autobiography, cleverly titled: Jim Murray: An Autobiography. In this fast-paced book, Murray only sparingly writes about himself beyond his early life, preferring to focus on stories about the sports figures he had encountered and the condition of various sports themselves.
Notable among the few stories about his youth are recollections about when he saw Babe Ruth hit a homer, or arranged neighborhood boxing matches among kids, or learned about the reality of sports from his Uncle Ed:
Never take money from an amateur -- unless he insists ...
Never play cards with a man with dark glasses or his own deck ...
Never make change for a guy on a train ...
Murray prefers to throw the spotlight on the athletes he encountered and commentary on various sports throughout his career on the LA Times, Time, Life, and Sports Illustrated.
Time didn't linger at what happened. They wanted to know why it happened....They wanted the globally significant. And the writing had to be of a high literary order.
It's quite a world of people he covers in depth, including Walter O'Malley. Muhammed Ali, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Pete Rose, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Henry Aaron, Al Davis, Jack Kent Cooke ("a man in a hurray...as unstoppable as a glacier"), and so many more.
He offers several brief anecdotes about Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Ty Cobb, Magic Johnson, Sonny Liston, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Ted Williams, and on and on. Each tidbit is a gem of insider info into what makes that person unique, funny, talented, or ultra-driven.
The longest portions and best observations are reserved for the sports themselves that he loves:
- Golf -
- Golf is the most maddening of games....The bleeding is internal in this sport.
- Auto racing -
- [column headline] Gentlemen, Start Your Coffins
- Baseball -
- Baseball was always loath to enter the twentieth century. Baseball will always be three of more decades behind the rest of society. That's part of its charm.
- Boxing -
- Jake LaMotta used to say he fought Sugar Ray Robinson six times and won all but five of them.
- Basketball -
- At the college and high school level, it used to be just something to go through to get to the dance afterward. The pros used to play wherever they could pass the hat and make bus money.....
There are pieced aplenty about my favorite Southern California teams (the Rams, Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, and Kings) and my boyhood baseball idols: Maury Wills (companion to Doris Day, who knew?), Jim Gilliam, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Steve Garvey, and Tommy Lasorda.
I liked baseball. It was the right mix of competition, contemplation and calibration for me. A ball park is still one of the great relaxing venues. It is a great place for the leather-lunged fan to work out his aggressions but there is an undertone of "I'm just kidding' in the baseball fan's torrent of abuse.
There is a really funny chapter detailing his columns which contained disparaging reflections about the cities hosting sporting events that he was covering.
- Long Beach, CA - The seaport of Iowa
- Los Angeles - Underpoliced and oversexed. Its architecture has been (accurately) described as "Early Awful"
- Philadelphia - A town that would boo a cancer cure...a place that even the British gave up without a fight.
- Oakland, CA - You had to pay fifty cents to go from Oakland to San Francisco. Coming to Oakland from San Francisco was free... that's all you have to know about Oakland.
- Cincinnati - If the Russians ever attacked, they would bypass Cincinnati, as it looked as if it had already been taken and destroyed.
There are some serious portions as well. He devotes a chapter each to his onset of blindness, his son's battle with drugs, and the death of his beloved wife. All are presented with genuine emotion and thoughtfulness as he contemplates the reasons behind these situations and his own role in each.
If you are a sports fan or just an admirer of clever, witty, insightful, and always humorous writing, I highly recommend getting to know Jim Murray and his brilliant observations of the games of the world.
There is no cult in the world like a busload of fans on their way to a home game....The home team wins, the world's gonna be all right. Food tastes better. Wives look prettier. Work gets easier.
Happy reading.
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
Murray, Jim.. The Jim Murray Collection.
The best collection of his columns covering baseball, boxing, tennis, hockey, strikes, and sport figures.
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