Jim Murray, Sports Classic

Jim Murray dedicated one of his books to “every guy who ever struck out with the bases loaded, took a 10 count, fumbled on the goal line, pulled a three-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.” In other words, Jim Murray’s kind of guys, from Boston to L.A., and each of them lost a best friend when Murray died Sunday night at 78.

His Times column was a must read in the morning, or in that bar at 2 a.m. Baseball, boxing, the ponies, golf, especially the latter, made up the theater of sports for which Murray wrote the script. Even tennis, which he noted “has a scoring system invented by Lewis Carroll.”

He was just as sharp about cities, to their chagrin: “Minneapolis and St. Paul didn’t like each other and from what I could see I didn’t blame either one of them.” A big time in Cincinnati was “to go downtown and watch haircuts.” Los Angeles was not spared: “Our oranges are imported.”

Heroes were humbled: “Arnold ‘Red’ Auerbach was born in Brooklyn of Jewish parents, ate Chinese food, drank Coke for breakfast . . . and saw absolutely nothing funny about life.”

Not so the Pulitzer Prize-winning Murray. Humor was his scalpel. But for all his sharp wit, he was a self-effacing man. Particularly in front of a three-foot putt, he would agree.