Murray Always Led the Field

When Jim Murray once held a seminar at The Times Orange County office, I blathered out like a star-struck teenager:

“Mr. Murray, most of us here read several newspapers daily. If we’re lucky, we might find a few lines in a week that are truly memorable. But we can pick up a Jim Murray column and find four or five gems in just a few paragraphs. My question is: How do you do it?”

Murray smiled and said, “Well, whenever I get stuck, I just reach over my shoulder and grab a line out of the air. Trouble is, the older I get . . . “--we all laughed as he made that reaching motion for us--” . . . the harder it gets to find something back there.”

Murray, who died Sunday night at age 78, was the best columnist I’ve ever read.

In my own public appearances as a columnist here in Orange County, one question I never fail to get: “Do you know Jim Murray?” It always opens the door for someone to talk about his or her favorite Murray sports column.

Though an avid Murray fan for years, I didn’t stop to think until about eight years ago what a writing genius he was. It hit me after I read a piece he did on Willie Shoemaker. Vintage Murray:

“Watching Shoe ride a horse was like watching Gene Kelly dance or Gauguin paint. It was art. You had the feeling he could win the Kentucky Derby on a Brahma bull. . . . Shoemaker came to the wire as if he were on a carousel . . . with a velvet touch and graceful pace that made every race a ballet, not a charge.”

Murray could write perfectly what the rest of us wished we might have thought first. Here’s Murray on golf champion Jack Nicklaus in his early, burly days:

“He looked like a sack of pork chops going down a fairway. His clothing fit him like a tent. He had this crew cut that made him look like a two-ton shaving brush. People thought he had come to paint the clubhouse or move the dining room piano when he showed up for a tournament.”

Murray was passionate about golf. Murray on Arnold Palmer: “He slashed at the ball like a guy beating a carpet. . . . He went after a course like a caveman. Palmer hit the ball in places where he had to chase the seals to play it . . . “

Murray after the death of his dear friend Ben Hogan: “For what Hogan meant, it’s the old story. For those who know golf, no explanation is necessary. For those who don’t, no explanation is possible.”

And on his beloved Pebble Beach golf course on the Monterey Peninsula: “Ah, Pebble! Murder in your heart, dagger in your teeth. Refugee from a King’s noose. Heartless wretch. Robert Louis Stevenson would love you . . . 7,000 yards of malice.”

Baseball was Murray’s lifelong love. He once wrote why: “It’s a game played by little boys in big men’s bodies. It’s corporate America. It’s also sandlot America. It’s a link with our past in a way no other sport is. Its critics say it’s too slow. . . . If you’re in a hurry, go to an airport. Baseball is to savor, to make last, like a pheasant dinner in a Paris restaurant.”

Murray on former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda: “Ring Lardner would have loved him. . . . Disney would have drawn and animated him.”

And Murray praising Dodger pitching great Sandy Koufax for retiring while he was still on top: “I wouldn’t want to see Rembrandt doing billboards. So go, Sandy. And thanks for the memory. This way, it remains the one I want.”

One Murray column five years ago got him sharply criticized in some quarters as sexist. It was about tennis star Gabriela Sabatini, and I thought it was brilliant:

“She has this air of sad mystery about her that kings leave thrones for. . . . She should be driving men mad in remakes of ‘Camille’ or on Broadway playing O’Neill’s most tragic heroines. . . . Forget Hollywood. You imagine Helen of Troy looked like this. Bathsheba. Eleonora’s Duse. Da Vinci would want to paint her.”

Some Murray columns had you laughing out loud. Like one four years ago, which stemmed from a day at Santa Anita during an earthquake: “The bugler was sounding the call for the third race as the temblor hit, but the horseplayers never even broke stride as they headed for the windows. They probably wanted to die even. . . . If someone asked a player, ‘What did you think of the earthquake?’ the response would probably be, ‘What race was he in?’ ”

I first read Murray when I was a reporter in Louisville. Every year Murray came to the Kentucky Derby and ripped the city as a rundown old river town. My colleagues seethed, but I always countered, Look how right he is! Besides, it was all in fun. Murray ripped a lot of places that needed a good dose of his curmudgeonly touch.

Four years ago, it seemed all of Oregon was angry because Murray dared to say the Oregon Ducks were about to take a whipping from Penn State in the Rose Bowl. (They did.) It was a marvelous reminder we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. Here’s some of what Murray wrote:

“A matchup like this should be covered by the Marquis de Sade. . . . It’s as one-sided as a flood. . . . Maybe Oregon should tell everybody they can’t make it. They got a dentist’s appointment. For the whole team.”

If Murray really did “reach over his shoulder” for his best lines, he saved many of them for the hapless Rams of Anaheim. On one poorly played Rams game: “The Rams didn’t have the ball often enough to know what color it was.”

My favorite Murray anecdote comes from his autobiography. In his early days as an entertainment writer, Murray had a date with Marilyn Monroe. But she was also seeing Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio off and on. When Joe walked into the restaurant where they were dining, Marilyn asked Murray if she’d mind if DiMaggio took her home instead of him.

Murray’s immediate thought: I have a chance to meet Joe DiMaggio, and you think I care who takes you home?

Somewhere in the Top 5 of the best Murray columns might well be one after his heart surgery three years ago, when he almost didn’t survive. Only Murray could cover his own story better than anyone else:

“When I ran out of breath just sitting down, I figured I had finally booked passage on the Titanic. I better learn the words to ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’

“A lot of people from Eugene thought I ducked out to escape facing the Oregon fans in the Rose Bowl. But I had my own bowl game going. Five quarters against an opponent that made the 49ers look sluggish. I might have set the record for goal-line stands.”

Murray once wrote that there would never be another Willie Shoemaker in horse racing. The same can be said of Jim Murray in the newspaper column-writing business.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com