These Words Will Endure

Ted Murray’s dad, the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter, had a Christmas ritual years ago.

“Back in the days when we were living in the Palisades, he’d go out Christmas Eve,” Ted recalled the other day, “and he’d get the tree, get the lights and trimmings, get everything that night. By midnight, the tree probably cost him about $3. But he didn’t do it to get a deal. It’s just the way he did Christmas.

“That was part of the mystery of Christmas for us. If Santa was there, then the tree had to be there, too, and kind of show up at the same time. Santa brought everything.”

Ted’s dad won’t be here for this Christmas. He passed away in August, after spending 37 years of his life entertaining readers of this paper, making them laugh as often as he made them cry.

When he died, there was an incredible outpouring of grief and adulation. There was a large funeral and an even larger public tribute. More than 3,000 people at Dodger Stadium. Weeks and months went by, and people still kept talking about him, kept remembering stories about him.

And then, just before Thanksgiving, they put out a book with some of his columns from the 1990s. They called the book “The Last of the Best.” At this writing, it is the best-selling nonfiction paperback in Southern California, a totally unexpected result for those involved in the publishing of it.

That brought more outpouring of sentiment, more stories, more memories.

But it took a couple of letters to Ted’s dad’s boss, normally a Christmas Scrooge, to form the kernel of a thought.

One letter came from Gary Spiegel of Goleta, who wrote, in part:

“I recently received a copy of the book. . . . I found I couldn’t read it cover to cover like most people read books. I read it one article at a time, savoring it so it would last longer. . . . All through my high school years in the 1960s, his column was always the first thing I read in the morning. I had the impression I was special; it seemed he wrote only for me. . . .

“I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person. Like most everyone else, I knew him by what he wrote. . . . Thank you for publishing this book. It will be on the shelf only an arm’s length away to remind me that the city has lost one of its angels.”

The second letter was from John Allen Reed of Anaheim. His was shorter, but it contained a yellowing clip of a column Ted’s dad wrote Dec. 22, 1967.

“Since you now have a new generation of readers,” Reed wrote, “the thought occurred to me that it would be not only a tribute [to run the old column], but a pleasure to many readers.”

Well, that one really got Ted and his dad’s boss to thinking. And while they thought, and talked about this, they did what just about everybody else always seems to do when the subject gets around to Ted’s dad. They told some stories, poked the embers of some memories.

Ted talked about the time his dad, already in his 70s, had serious heart surgery, was near death and was kept alive mostly by the incredible skill of the surgeons.

“I remember when he finally came out of it, and he was weak and feeble and just kind of lying there,” Ted said. “I said to him, ‘Dad, you know, this would be a pretty good time to think about retiring.’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘You know, I think I’m gonna call Bill [Ted’s dad’s boss] and see what’s going on.’ ”

The boss remembered the time they had been playing golf, and Ted’s dad made an 80-foot putt that had to break about six times before it got to the hole. Ted’s dad, who liked to say that there was no calculator invented that could figure a handicap as high as his, never made a putt like that before or after. But when this one dropped in the hole, he walked over, nonchalantly picked it up and, without a word, went and sat in the golf cart. Eventually, his playing companion reached the cart, where he sat down and looked right at Ted’s dad, who smirked and said, “Once in a while, I miss those right.”

Ted told the story about the day when his dad, working then for Time magazine, was in a restaurant, doing his best to get an interview with Marlon Brando. The eggs they served Brando weren’t the way Brando wanted them, and the interview was getting a bit scrambled because of it.

So Ted’s dad said, “C’mon home with me. We’ll get the eggs done right.” And so, Ted’s dad showed up that morning at the front door of his home with Marlon Brando, who was greeted by Ted’s mom, Gerry, her hair up in curlers, and a look of horror on her face.

Brando got the eggs done right and Ted’s dad got the interview. Ted’s dad also got the cold shoulder for a couple of weeks from Ted’s mom.

Both Ted and his dad’s boss remember when Ted’s mom died. The boss was sitting in his office, a day after her death in April 1984. Totally unexpected and unscheduled, Ted’s dad’s column appeared on the computer screen. It began: “This is the column I never wanted to write, the story I never wanted to tell. I lost my lovely Gerry the other day. I lost the sunshine and the roses, all right, the laughter in the other room. . . .”

In the sports department, where all had simultaneous access to read it, there were tears that, for a magical few minutes, purged an entire department of the cynicism that is its operational lifeblood.

“I remember so well the day he wrote that,” Ted said. “We had all come home, the family was there, and he excused himself to go to his office and write. We couldn’t believe he was going to do it, but he said he had to write a piece on my mother.

“He was only gone about an hour, maybe less. It was the fastest column I ever saw him write. He asked me to go read it. I did and was just blown away. I told him that and he said, ‘There are a lot of tears on those typewriter keys.’ ”

Ted remembered growing up, going through the teenage years, when cars and friends and girls are the only things that matter. Then later, going away from home for a while and coming back and being ready to find out some things about life from his dad.

“Sometimes, all you want are some answers,” he said.

He remembered an especially tough time, when he went to his dad in the midst of problems with drugs, when life itself was pushing down around him and he even talked about suicide.

“I’ll never forget what he told me,” Ted said. “He said that three out of three people die, so why push it.”

It was a masterful line, from a masterful line-writer, and it never left Ted’s memory.

“Having him around was like having Moses for a father,” he said.

The more they talked, the more Ted and his dad’s boss headed toward the same conclusion. It was a difficult conclusion, because human nature preaches that the dead should be allowed to rest in peace and that their loved ones should be encouraged to retain the wonderful memories only in a corner of their minds so those memories don’t block the process of going on.

But Ted’s dad is an exception to that rule. He belonged first to his family, but a close second to the public he served, a public that, in its ongoing fascination with him, has become this giant sponge of desire for more, even after his passing.

Ted verbalized the conclusion first.

“You know, we shouldn’t let him go,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve felt like this.”

And so, a pledge was made, a sort of Christmas gift to the readers on this Christmas morning, 1998.

That pledge says that, when the time is right, when the subject cries out for it, when the story of the moment will be better served by doing it, we will resurrect columns by Ted’s dad. If Pete Rose gets into the Hall of Fame, if Arnold Palmer shoots a 62 in the Quad Cities Senior Open, if somebody runs the wrong way in the Rose Bowl, we pledge that Ted’s dad will return from the archives of this newspaper to the pages of this sports section. It may not occur as often as some of Ted’s dad’s biggest fans would wish, but it will occur.

The first offering, in the adjoining columns, will be the Christmas 1967 column sent along by John Allen Reed. It may be the best present we can give on this day, 31 Christmases later.

Back then, the headline read: No Bats, No Bikes.

Read it, and feel free to weep.