A Great Writer With Awful Luck

Jim Murray was a spectacular human who suffered some spectacularly horrific luck for a Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist. He lost a beloved son to drugs. He lost a beloved wife to brain cancer. He lost all the sight in one eye and much of what was left in the other. Even when he was persuaded to write a brilliant autobiography, he somehow wound up with only a tiny fraction of the money due him.

But Murray was blessed too, even as he blessed us with what many consider the finest sportswriting ever. He found a second wife he loved dearly. He became a loving grandfather. Finally, with his death Sunday night, he avoided the fate he dreaded more than anything.

“I just hope my eyesight outlives my heart,” Murray said more than once.

So it did. The Los Angeles Times’ properly revered columnist, 78, died Sunday night while watching TV at home with his wife Linda. In medical terms, his aorta burst--such an ironic death for a man who filled so many hearts with both his writing and his humility.

Great as Murray’s work was, I was touched even more by the person. For reasons forever a mystery, Murray practically adopted me when I met him at my first World Series, between Los Angeles and Minnesota in 1965. He took me everywhere, introduced me to everyone. I felt like an art student perched on Michelangelo’s palette.

The more one came to know Murray, the deeper the appreciation. I never met anyone who knew as much about as many things as he did. Murray capitalized upon a semi-invalid childhood by reading everything from Charles Dickens to Encyclopedia Brittanica. He talked as knowledgeably about William Shakespeare as he did about Sandy Koufax.

Thus, I and the other incredibly fortunate few would sit enrapt as Murray swung from tales of Humphrey Bogart (“He liked to pretend he was a product of the slums . . . he was the son of a Park Avenue doctor . . . about as tough as a ballroom dancer.”) to college football coaches (“I sometimes think the last stand of dictatorship in this world is the college football coach. His word is law, his rule is absolute, his power is unlimited. His legacy is academic chaos.”).

All this time, understand, Murray blended self-effacement with a sort of fake wise-guy act. A few hours after we experienced the 7.1 Richter Scale earthquake during the ’89 World Series in San Francisco, I gravely informed Murray we would have to watch out for aftershocks.

“They won’t be anything,” he said. “Forget it.”

“But, Jim, this seismologist on TV . . . “

“Who are you going to believe?” he demanded in mock rage. “Me or him?”

Inside, Murray remained among the most private of men, almost Howard Hughes-ian in details of his private life. And remember, this was within a circle of newspaper people who not only want to know everything but usually insist on telling you everything.

Murray didn’t tell people how good he was. He showed them.

At an early Super Bowl in New Orleans, I somehow sustained an arm injury. He hauled my typewriter to the game for me. When I whimpered that we were going to be late, he said simply, “If you’ve seen one kickoff, you’ve seen them all.”

After the game he saw me trying to type with one finger at the end of my good arm. “Tell you what,” he said, as though it happened every day. “I’m done, so you dictate your column to me and I’ll type it and off she goes.”

That was the heart of James Patrick Murray.