Booked Up in a World of Literature

I have a confession to make. I never really wanted to be a sportswriter. (There will be a short pause here while a few thousand of you chorus, “Well, you sure got that wish!”)

You see, when I first took up pen and typewriter, what I wanted to be was Hemingway:

“He raised the gun and thought ‘This is a good war, the last real and true and good war. It is a war to cherish on the cold nights when there is no war.’ The killing saddened him. ‘The killing saddens me,’ he thought as he pulled the trigger. ‘I have killed too many but I kill well and true and good. It’s all in the elbow.’

“Hearing the wind come up from the river, he turned. And it was Pilar. ‘Come here, Daughter,’ he said gently. ‘And let’s not talk of anything but let what happens happen. It is a good war, though the killing saddens me.’ He felt the old pain of killing again. ‘The bell tolls for them,’ he told her. ‘Don’t say anything, let’s just enjoy the war, the last real and good and true one.’ He looked at her. ‘Her eyes are the color of a lion’s,’ he thought. ‘The one I killed in the Serengeti.’

“He felt the old sadness. ‘I’ve killed too many lions,’ he thought. ‘It’s better to kill men. There are more of them.’ He held her tight. She had the hurt look in her eyes of the bulls of Pamplona who don’t know why they’re here. ‘They shave the bulls,’ he told her. ‘They dishonor the corrida , they blunt the horns and cut the wine. Let’s just lie here and not say anything. Tomorrow, the wind will bring the tanks and it will be a war just like any other war. And the killing will start again.’

“He was silent. ‘I kill good,’ he thought. ‘The way the great ones do. It’s all in the concentration.’

“ ‘I don’t want to know how many you have killed,’ she told him. ‘A hundred and eight--eight confirmed,’ he told her gently. ‘I try not to wound. It’s in the follow-through.’ They looked at each other and he felt the earth move.”

Well, those are the kinds of things I wanted to write. Or, maybe, a travel adventure:

“Evening fell as we came down the hills into Mombasa and we could hear the drums as the sun set redly over the Kalahari. And I knew on the morrow we would either have the gold or the buzzards would be circling above us and the fire ants making a meal of our bodies . . . “

Alas! I’m never going to be Papa Hemingway. Dostoevsky. Dickens. Even Jackie Collins.

I’ve got a book out, my third. But I don’t expect it to be made into a mini-series. If it gets banned in Boston, it’ll be because of something I said about the Celtics, not sex. The sexiest thing in there is Mary Decker or Fanny Blankers-Koen.

There are no nude scenes, unless you count locker room interviews. There’s no part for Robert Redford. There are plenty of villains, most of them wearing Raider uniforms. The only love interest in it is my granddaughter.

It’s not one of those how-to books. I don’t even tell you what the high post is in basketball. Largely, because I don’t know.

It’s not an adventure book. Unless you think lying 3 in a sand trap or trying to hit off a rock in the Pacific Ocean is high adventure.

It hasn’t got one of those spy plots. In fact, it hasn’t got any plot. It’s not one of those shoot-em-ups. Nobody gets killed. When it talks of “hit men,” it means Pete Rose.

It’s not one of those kiss-and-tell books, either. No kissing. If people don’t know by now that Babe Ruth drank and Steve Howe snorted, I’m not going to disabuse them.

The Book of the Month Club hasn’t been on the horn. It won’t be translated into Russian. Turgenev can rest easy. So can Gogol. It’s not going to put anybody in mind of James Joyce, but at least you can understand it. It’s not going to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It’s not literature but it does have an introduction by Vin Scully, which may be. It won’t make a musical.

Still, it’s a book. It’s got a catchy title, “The Jim Murray Collection” (Taylor Publishing Company). It’s not one of those motivational books, either. It won’t help you to sell vacuum cleaners or climb the executive ladder.

Still, I play the cards I’m dealt. I’m not going to write the Great American Novel, I’m stuck with the American League. I’m going to learn how to play games with the critics the crafty way the movies do. When someone says “May be the most boring book of all time!” I’ll get the scissors out and turn it into: “May be all time!”

It’s not a complete waste of time. You’ll learn to tell which side your bread is buttered on--the side that hits the floor--and you’ll learn Murray’s First Law, “Whatever can go to New York, will.” Get ready for a Yankees-Mets World Series the next few years.

I’m going to have to take myself more seriously is what I’m going to have to do. I think I’ll grow a beard, if I can, and start wearing a scarf instead of a tie, and a sweater with canvas patches on the elbow, and tweed slacks and saddle shoes and start smoking a pipe and start discussing Proust, whoever he is, and boring everybody to death at cocktail parties even if I’m not a real author.

I’ll tell people I’m doing a study on the analytical curve of the home run since 1900, or the split-finger fastball as a metaphor for society.

I dedicated the book to “every guy who ever struck out with the bases loaded, took a 10-count, fumbled on the goal line, double-faulted, missed a layup at the buzzer, pulled a 3-foot putt or bet into a pat hand of aces full--and every guy who ever closed a bar alone at 2 o’clock in the morning.”

To that I’d add, “And every author who wasn’t Hemingway.”