He Was Murray’s Eyes

In the summer of 1979, Chuck Garrity, assistant sports editor of The Times, assigned me to work with Jim Murray, who had been on medical leave because of serious eye problems. There was a lot at stake.

The editors wanted to get Murray’s column back in the paper. The sports section had been without him for nearly six months, and they were worried about a possible decline in readership. Because of his blindness, caused by a detached retina in one eye and a maturing cataract in the other, Murray was having doubts about his career. At 59, he thought it was over.

But Editor Bill Thomas told Jim that The Times would do whatever was necessary to get him writing again. Murray’s wife, Gerry, urged him to give it a try, and he agreed.

My job was to read to Murray, drive him to games, help him with interviews, then drive him home.

On my first visit to his house, he said, “I hope this isn’t going to bore you.” I thought, “Is he kidding?” How could anybody be bored working with Jim Murray? But he was being his decent self.

I told him, “Don’t worry, I want to do this.”

So, armed with the latest in small tape recorders and a new pair of eyes (mine), Murray went back into the game.

One of our first assignments was at the Forum, where Murray interviewed a shy Magic Johnson. The Lakers had flown him out from the Midwest to play in a couple of summer league games. He had two agents with him, and they answered most of Murray’s questions. Johnson, only 19, sat and drank orange juice.

Murray asked him, “Magic, do you have any goals?” Johnson quietly answered, “All I want to do is play basketball.”

I found out quickly that reading out loud and walking Murray around places I wasn’t familiar with weren’t easy.

When Walter O’Malley died that summer, Murray, looking for information for a column, had me read a long article he had written for Time magazine on the Dodgers’ owner. I lost my voice halfway through the story.

On our first trip to the Rams’ camp at Cal State Fullerton, I got too far ahead of him and Murray wandered off a walkway, slamming his shin against a rusty sprinkler pipe. It opened a deep cut.

George Mennefee, one of the Rams’ trainers, bound up Jim’s leg, but it later became infected and he had to see his own doctor more than once. He liked to rib me about the incident, especially when we were with his cronies.

During our rides to and from assignments, we talked about anything and everything: sports, music, writing, newspapers, stories he had covered for the Examiner, Sports Illustrated and Time magazine, the people he had met.

On writing his column, he had a hard and fast rule: “A column has a beginning, a middle and an end. You say what you have to say, then get out.”

He said he preferred to observe the person he was going to write about rather than talk to him or her because he could learn more about the person that way.

He told me he’d watched Maury Wills in the Dodger clubhouse once and said, “There was a purpose to everything Wills did. Nothing was wasted.”

Once he had me watch Davey Lopes before a game at Dodger Stadium. I wrote down everything Lopes did, which I thought was fairly routine. Later, Murray interviewed the second baseman and got a good column.

When we went to Dodger or Angel games, we usually got to the ballpark about 4:30 for a 7:30 game. The visiting team’s bus usually arrived about 5.

In the visitors’ clubhouse, Murray had his favorites: Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Tommy John, Willie Stargell, Vida Blue and Joe Morgan. On the home teams, they were Steve Garvey, Jerry Reuss and Don Sutton of the Dodgers, and Rod Carew and Nolan Ryan of the Angels.

In the press box, we sometimes had to follow one of Murray’s rules: “If you don’t have an assigned seat, sit somewhere until they ask you to move.”

During the game, Jim watched the play through an optical device that looked like a small telescope. He couldn’t see the entire field through it, so when a ball was hit past the infield, I had to tell him what happened: “That one was in the gap in left-center, just out of the reach of the center fielder.”

“DiMaggio would have had it,” Murray said.

When he had to write his column after a game, he did it in longhand, in big letters, then I typed it and sent it to the office on a machine called a Telecopier.

The baseball season ended with our trip to the World Series, the Pirates against the Orioles. It was one of the greatest times of my life.

During our first night in Baltimore, Jim met Red Smith, Tom Lasorda and John McNamara in our hotel lounge. Soon, they were telling stories, one-upping one another. I wish now I had had a camera so I could have taken a picture of Murray sitting next to Smith, the two greatest sportswriters of all.

The Series was a classic, the Chuck Tanner-led Pirates playing against Earl Weaver’s great Orioles. Pittsburgh won in seven games and Willie Stargell hit a dramatic home run in Baltimore that led to the Pirates’ victory. On the plane from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, Murray introduced me to Stan Musial, one of my boyhood heroes.

The year ended with USC going to the Rose Bowl, the Rams finishing their last season in the Coliseum, the Lakers starting a new era with Magic Johnson.

The Rams made it to the Super Bowl, giving the Steelers all they could handle before losing. When I drove Murray home from the game that night in late January 1980, Gerry was waiting at the front door. She waved and said, “Thanks, John, for taking care of my husband.”

For me, it was an honor--and a privilege.