What Made Murray Great? It’s a Funny Thing

Along with all the much-deserved praise for Jim Murray’s writing, a more serious appraisal of his true importance is in order. His output was his own, but his influence was felt through two generations of American sportswriters, and still is.

To my generation of writers (the same as his) and the next one (whose working lives started in the middle 1960s), he was one of the three great creators and teachers--by example--of how we approached our profession.

Red Smith showed us that it’s all right to be literate on the sports page. Jimmy Cannon showed us how to bring athletes alive as real people, not simply stereotypical cliches. Murray showed us the true difference between commentary and simple reportage.

All three knew how to be amusing. Smith found the humor inherent in any situation or a person’s characteristics, and expressed it in the highest order of prose. Cannon kept his insights and his humor in separate compartments, excelling in both but saving the funny stuff for specific columns devoted to generating laughs.

But Murray integrated his wittiness into everything he dealt with, by cleverness in language and sharp-eyed observation. The other two could be funny sometimes. He was really funny most of the time.

And in this respect, he went to the heart of what became the predominant style of sportswriting.

Two fundamental approaches always existed, the “life and death” over-dramatized view of whatever happened and who did it, and the “fun and games” aspect of what is, after all, entertainment to everyone other than the actual participants. Murray was the epitome of the fun-and-games school, and had by far the greatest effect on those who followed.

Their backgrounds were different.

Smith had been a baseball beat writer for many years and when he became a columnist, remained dedicated to telling a story, however beautifully.

Cannon had been a war correspondent and returned to sports adept at probing the psyche of competitors under pressure.

Murray joined the Los Angeles Times from the world of magazines, where satisfying the reader takes precedence over meeting daily deadlines.

So Smith told you what was happening, in his uniquely attractive voice. Cannon told you how participants felt--or at least seemed to feel--and how he himself felt about everything in the world in his “Nobody asked me but . . . “ pieces. But Murray gave you authentic “comment” in the best sense, not simply what happened or what it meant, but how it seemed to him and, by extension, all the other observers he was talking to.

Smith’s method was giving graceful expression to mainstream ideas. Cannon’s was the ability to startle you with unexpected insights. Murray’s was the fullest use of the humorist’s art--topical reference, word play, unusual and outrageous metaphor, an expert gag-writer’s sense of where the laugh really came, and a tremendous breadth of general knowledge to draw on.

The circumstances of time and place also made them different, and especially influential. New York, in the 1950s and ‘60s, was the unquestioned capital of the media world, headquarters for all radio-TV networks, wire services, nine daily newspapers, almost all magazines and advertising agencies. Smith and Cannon were being read, every day, by the most important decision-makers in those fields, as well as by ordinary sports fans. New York, in those days, set the tone for everyone.

Murray joined The Times in 1961, when Los Angeles’ identification with “Hollywood” was at its peak, a show-business culture whose value system was devoted to effective entertainment. Major league baseball and basketball had just arrived; much of the Hollywood community consisted of transplanted Easterners; local sports interest until recently had been essentially parochial. Now Murray was producing superb entertainment for an audience best equipped to appreciate it.

And of course, anyone else could appreciate it too. But the rapport his work established with that Hollywood mentality gave him a base no other place outside of New York could have provided in those days.

So all of us and our successors have been fashioned by these three, absorbing their techniques at least subconsciously. They showed us what to try to do. Like Smith, write well--not like him but as well as you can. Like Cannon, try to get below the surface. Like Murray, be clever--and always funny--about what you’ve been given a chance to observe.

Which leaves one thing you can blame Murray for. Trying to write like Smith or Cannon led to many failures but little harm. Trying to write like Murray, without his special talent, has ruined countless young sportswriters and spoiled many a sports section, not to mention radio and TV commentators.

Making jokes that work is a rare skill, a high art, extremely difficult, mastered by few. Unfortunately, almost everyone thinks he or she can do it, and blithely follows Murray’s lead. George Bernard Shaw had the same lamentable effect on drama and music criticism a hundred hears ago. His opinionated brilliance worked because he was Shaw, with Shaw’s genius, not because the technique was valid for the less gifted. Imitating the style works only if you’re as good as Shaw.

So Jim Murray has left us with a two-edged heritage, at once glorious and dangerous. He showed us how good sharp-witted sports commentary could be--if you can do it. He could. Let’s hope someone else can, but we can’t count on it.

Leonard Koppett is a former New York baseball writer and author of several baseball books. He lives in the Bay Area.