Tag: Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

   Call it what you will but it will forever be known to us as the Bob Hope Desert Classic — or just The Classic, if you will. Over 60 years, the players have changed but the name remains the same . . and it seems as if they’ve returned to the original, as it should be. No longer the Humana Whosiewhatsit or the Chryslers Whatsitcalled, this year for the 60th, it’s just the Desert Classic.

   We’ll let golf writer Larry Bohannan’s column from the Nov. 1 Desert Sun explain it:

   “The desert’s PGA Tour event is bringing back a familiar name and an all-too-familiar situation: looking for a new title sponsor.

   “The 60-year-old tournament, to be played Jan. 17-20, will be renamed the Desert Classic, a throwback to when the event was called the Bob Hope Desert Classic from the 1960s to the 1980s.”

   Jeff Sanders, executive director of the event for tournament operator Lagardere Sports, told The Desert Sun: “As for the Desert Classic name, the tournament was known as either the Bob Hope Desert Classic or the Bob Hope Classic from 1965 through 1985, with Chrysler’s name added to the title in 1986. The Challenge part of the title was added when Humana took over the title sponsorship role in 2012.”

   “That’s where the brand equity is. It’s where the legacy is,” Sanders said. “That’s where everything is. This is the Desert Classic. It’s sunny skies with palm trees around beautiful golf courses surrounded by mountains. This is the Desert Classic.”

   Previously committed to the field is two-time winner and World Golf Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson, who serves as the tournament’s ambassador. Other past winners committed to the field include Pat Perez, Bill Haas, Jason Dufner, Jhonattan Vegas and Hudson Swafford. Past major championship winners Graeme McDowell and Charl Schwartzel and 2017 Presidents Cup member Kevin Kisner, world No. 18 Patrick Cantlay and former U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson also are expected to compete.

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1974, SPORTS

Copyright 1974/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

There’s Still Hope

   The badge of success in show business used to be a telephone in your car, a radio on your yacht, a butler, a ringside table at the Mocambo, seven or eight divorces and a string of race horses or polo ponies.

  Nowadays, you’re nobody without your own golf tournament — and your own disease. We expect any day now to read about the “Tammy Wynette Classic formerly known as the Masters.” Or, “The Broderick Crawford U.S. Open, all proceeds to go to a bird hospital, or the fund for Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”

  The Hartford Open got along for 20 years before it became the Sammy Davis, Jr. Greater Hartford Open. The Danny Thomas Memphis Open benefits the hospital of St. Jude’s. This week, we will have the Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open. Two weeks ago, we had the Andy Williams San Diego Open. So far, we haven’t had the “Engelbert Humperdinck British Open.” But, Jackie Gleason has his own tournament. So does Dean Martin.

*****

  Bing Crosby started it all. Bing’s tournament was originally a frivolous outing for his pals on the golf tour and his pals in the movie industry. Someone brought a case of whisky, someone else brought the clams. It got out of hand only when television came along.

  It was Bob Hope who first demonstrated that marquee power moved a tournament into the mink and Cadillac class. The Palm Springs Open was a nice little tour event where everybody shot 61s and the sponsors lost money and 150 or so people showed up to buy $5 season tickets and drop ice cream cones in the sand traps until the community came to Hope with its hat in hand a dozen years ago.

  The people wanted two things: a TV sponsor and money for a hospital.

  Hope is a unique guy. He probably knows more millionaires by their first names than the Secretary of the Treasury, but he manages to go through life like a drugstore cowboy with nothing more on his mind than chewing gum and cracking wise. Bob is a confidant of generals, prime ministers and presidents, but he manages to convey the impression he just put down the pool cue, or just got caught tip-toeing out of the wrong stateroom on a cruise.

  Under him, the Bob Hope Desert Classic became a gaudy, money-making carnival. Every boardroom in the country is empty for the weekend of the Hope Classic.

*****

  Bob Hope, of course, is the Armed Forces’ real commander-in-chief. He is General Laughter. In Korea, he got to Inchon before the Marines. “You must come to all my invasions,” he told the troops, wading ashore grandly. “I tried out four jokes on the Koreans; no wonder they’re ready to give up.”

  I rode around the course with Bob where he was playing with cronies Bob Bixler, Jim Chambers and Pollard Simons. “I hope I’m not butting in on a big betting game.” “Not at all,” Bob assured me airily. “This is just a friendly game. We’re just playing for Texas.”

  “How long have you been playing?” I asked. “Would you believe when this round started, we had wooden shafts?” demanded Bob. “What time did we tee up?” he asked. “Eleven o’clock,” someone told him. “Yeah, but what day?” cracked Hope. He turned to a companion. “Would you believe Polly once spent a week in a sand trap? At that, he said it was better than being in Cleveland.”

  A companion flew a shot over everything and it headed vaguely for the horizon. “Don’t worry,” soothed Bob. “They’ll stop it at the border.”

  Hope has been playing golf since 1928. He has been playing to audiences since birth. To be laughed at, a comedian must first be loved. Hope’s great talent is that he can bring a smile to the hopeless. Only once in nearly a half century of entertaining did an audience stone him. A few home front jackals hissed at a ball game — because he visited hospitals full of shot kids. For Hope, it was a little like being bitten by your own dog, or being sued by a guy you saved from drowning because you lost his hat.

  Now 70, Hope is still a tireless monologist — at an age when most people would just be tiresome monologists. He still gives you 18 holes of golf and 180 one-liners en route. He does the equivalent of a $250,000 show for free at his tournament.

  He once seethed when a magazine said he was one of the nation’s 25 largest corporations. Because money isn’t that important to Hope. Audiences are. His wealth is a billion laughs. Locked up in fool-proof vaults — the hearts of his countrymen. His monument is not a golf tournament, it’s a smile.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1974, SPORTS

Copyright 1974/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

Woody’s Own War

   A lot of people were surprised to hear that Woody Hayes suffered a heart attack last spring, because they didn’t think he had one.

  When a stranger wanted to know if the incident had mellowed the old coach, the answer was, “Well, he called off practice for the day.”

  A visitor once wanted to know why a reporter didn’t stand up to Woody Hayes, and the answer was, “I can’t. I’ve got relatives in Germany.”

  When a Woody Hayes squad was circled around him at the start of a game once, a youngster in the press box asked an old-timer what he thought Woody was telling them. “Not to take prisoners,” was the cynical response.

  Woody Hayes’ Ohio State squad is not a team, it’s a horde. It is going through the Big Ten like Attila the Hun through the gates of Rome. When someone wanted to know which way the team got back from the Rose Bowl practice session each day, an observer said, “The usual way — by goose step.”

  Lots of guys lock the press out when their team loses 42-17, as Woody Hayes did in the Rose Bowl once. But Woody locked the TEAM out.

  Coach Hayes, whose idol is Gen. Patton, also slaps his troops in the heat of battle. He throws projectors at assistants, stomps on his wristwatch and once crumpled a pair of eyeglasses in a bare hand. George C. Scott gets the role if they make a movie.

  There are new books about him in the stalls this fall, ‘Woody Hayes and the 100-Yard War,’ by Jerry Brondfield, and ‘Buckeye, a Study of Coach Woody Hayes and the Ohio State Football Machine,’ by Robert Vare.

  Brondfield’s is a little more on the advocacy side, but he points out that to understand Woody you have to understand Columbus, Ohio, a place where, if you buy a piano at a certain music store, they throw in a free shotgun.

  Hayes’ success is no secret. He leaves no coal mine unturned in his search for players. He goes after great players like a playboy after chorus girls. Millionaires like John Galbreath and Jack Nicklaus help the program. You couldn’t throw a handful of birdseed in any direction in Ohio without hitting a crack football player. The state even raises them for export. Millionaires are not supposed to lure kids with new convertibles anymore, but there is no rule preventing them from hiring kids in the summer to count paper clips at $10 an hour or to guard the portrait of the company’s founder for $15.

  But Ohio State has always had great football players. It was good coaches that were in short supply. “You would think,” a sportswriter once complained, “that a state that could produce seven presidents could produce ONE football coach.” But in its long history, Ohio State produced only one coach before Woody Hayes who could be said to be successful. And Paul Brown didn’t stay around long enough to produce what is usually referred to in football as “an era.”

  Vare points out that football grosses $3.5 million at Ohio State, but coach Hayes makes only $29,000 a year. He used to hand out part of that to his players till they caught him at it. Three times he has turned down raises because he is stopping inflation that way. He once turned back a car because he didn’t wait to contribute to pollution. He has lived in the same modest house for 20 years and drives a pickup.

  There is less of an air of sanctimonious hypocrisy about Woody than some coaches. “Some coaches play on the emotions of the kid,” a longtime friend confides. “But Woody really believes it.” The most famous story about him is that he once pushed an out-of-gas car across the Ohio state line because he couldn’t bring himself to buy anything in Michigan.

  His attack is about as subtle as a brick through a plate-glass window. He regards the forward pass as subversive. He didn’t throw a pass until there were only 61 seconds to play in the Michigan game last year. Just as he suspected, it was intercepted.

  Still, his team, or rather teams, have averaged 47 points a game this season. On Nov. 23 his team meets Michigan in what may be the most thunderous collision since the Titanic. Woody intends to be the iceberg. Since the game is in Columbus, which becomes Convulsion, Ohio, for the day, Michigan can be expected to be down 14-0 by the kickoff. And no team can spot Woody Hayes’ 14 points and hope to escape alive, not even the Miami Dolphins — and maybe not even the Red Army.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

Jim Murray used to say that you can’t write about golf and horse racing every week or you’ll lose the truck drivers. So, this week is for the blue-collar working folks out there. Those with dirt on their jeans and callouses on their hands. The ones who root for the guy on the back of the bull, not the bull. We’re going to the rodeo!

This week concludes the 60th Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. The Super Bowl of ropin’ and ridin’. Where eight seconds is an eternity and being able to walk away is considered a victory. Today we take you back to November of 1962 when Jim Murray wrote about the animals that the rodeo competitors are up against. That was the first year the NFR was held in Los Angeles. LA played host to the event until 1964 when it was moved to Oklahoma City. It stayed there until 1985 when it was moved to its current home, Las Vegas.

The 2018 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas runs through Saturday.

from Thursday, December 6 through Saturday, December 15.

——

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1962, SPORTS

Copyright 1962/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

On Bull Throwing

   The next time you go to a game and get to your feet to cheer a tiny safety man who brings down Jim Taylor in the open field, try to imagine what would happen if Taylor weighed twice as much and had horns and two more hooves.

  And if you ever have to face Sonny Liston in the ring, take comfort in the fact, at least that after he knocks you down, he probably won’t try to bite and kick you. At least, I hope he won’t.

  Rodeo cowboys aren’t so lucky. They’re the first guys since the Roman Christians who have to fight wild animals for a living.

  And these are not just ordinary wild animals. These are the Mafia of the animal world — four-footed rubout artists. They should show up wearing pin-stripe suits and pearl fedoras. If they were human, they’d get the electric chair.

   Rodeo stock is drafted as carefully as NFL players. Scouts comb the country for the national finals looking for the meanest, orneriest cayuses they can find. Any animal that missed a chance to step on a baby carriage or push an old lay’s wheelchair down a cliff is automatically rejected. Any sign of sentimentality is fatal. These are horses you can’t feed a lump of sugar to — or they’d take your hand with it. Brahma bulls which would use you for silage if you didn’t get out of their way.

  Some of the bucking horses picked for the National Finals that opens at the Sports Arena next week have killed more cowboys than Billy the Kid. The calves get YOUR liver for a change.

  It has been said a rodeo is unique in that the bull throws the man for a change but the nationals are unique in that it is a contest of pure champions. Both man and beast are the best at their specialties that can be found. No third-round draft choices need apply. You have to be one of the 15 top cowboys in your event to qualify. And this is not left to a sportswriters poll. To prove you belong you have to have won more money at rodeo than No. 16.

  There are six events in the finals: Bull-riding, Bareback Bronc Riding, Calf Roping, Team Roping and Steer Wrestling (better known as “Bulldogging”).

  Now, high among the things I never expect to do is ride a bull. Those dagger-horned cross-bred Brahmas might be the answer to a cow’s prayer but the cowboy on his back offers up a prayer of another sort. He is one ton of hate – a 4-H club of his own, head, hooves, hate and heave. You’re on him only eight seconds but if you play it right, that’s enough.

  You don’t have to rowel a bull to get him sore. But you’re expected to do this to a bucking bronc. This is a little like being asked to spit in the eye of an opponent at the introductions or telling him you think his wife’s pretty ugly and so are his kids; but a cowboy on the scent of first money would rather find a rattler under his saddle than a sweet-tempered horse.

  Some of these critters are so long in the teeth that they might have got mustered out of the army by General Grant himself but their claim to fame is they have been ridden by men for years but these guys’ total elapsed time on horseback wouldn’t be enough to hard-boil an egg. These equine octogenarians are to rodeo what Man O War was to racing.

  They give these brutes names like “Midnight,” “Homicide,” “War Paint” and “Sidewinder” because, compared to them, Jack the Ripper loved people. If all the human bones they broke were laid end-to-end it would look like an explosion in a paleontology museum but at that, they’re not a patch on the Brahmas. A superannuated bull rider named Freckles Brown was far in the lead in his specialty this year with $18,675 won to Nov. 1 when he got aboard a freight-car-sized bull named Black Smoke.

  When he got off, his vertebrae were rearranged, and his yearly take might just be enough to pay for the six weeks in traction. At 41, Freckles is the oldest living bull-rider in captivity but the bulls sometimes seem determined he not get any older.

  On bull or bronc, the cowboys spend their time in the spotlight somewhere between the animal’s back and the sky. Also, they have to be careful with their spurs that they rake the animal’s neck and not their own.

  I come from a long line of horse-haters. My people followed the horses either with a scratch sheet or a broom and shovel. Either way, you find out what double-crossers they are. And bulls, I can take or leave alone — preferably the latter.

  When I wrestle, I prefer an opponent you can tap on the shoulder and say, “OK, I give up. You’re hurting me.” But to win the All-Around Cowboy which is the Most Valuable Horse and Cow Fighter Award, you have to be good at two or more of these events. Also, of course, you have to survive them. The Rodeo Cowboys Association frowns on posthumous awards. Gives the game a bad name. Its proper name, of course, but a bad one.

  But I wouldn’t miss this horse-and-bull Olympics at the Sports Arena Dec. 4 to 10. Ninety of the best cowboys against a couple hundred of the worst outlaws on four feet has to make the Rose Bowl look like a spelling bee.

  I’ll tell you something else: It’s nice to go to a wrestling match that isn’t fixed for a change. If these are fixed, I have to say those steers are awful good actors when, in truth, they’re bad actors.

  I also want to see the year’s leading All-Around Cowboy. Dean Oliver, go legit. Dean, you may remember, is the Idaho boy who used to hide in the ditches and ambush the cows going home to milking to practise his bulldogging. Things went all right till they started to give buttermilk. So next week it’ll be nice to see Dean getting paid to do something he used to get shot at for.

  So, fetch me my Stetson and shootin’ arn, son, I’m going into town to see thet thar “row-dee-oh” and I’m laying 8-5 on the bull. At least, I know he’s trying.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1989, SPORTS

Copyright 1989/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

He Could Have Had More Than Garden of Roses

   For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” — JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

  I was reminded anew of the poet’s lament the other day. I was interviewing this fellow for whom it all went a-glimmering years ago.

  You remember that scene in ‘On the Waterfront,’ where Marlon Brando takes his brother’s hand reproachfully off his arm, looks at him with these big sad eyes and says “I coulda been a contendah! I coulda been somebody!”

  Well, that’s kind of what it was like. Sad. Heart-rending.

  Years ago, this fellow — I will call him George, although I think his nickname was Slick back in those days — was the silkiest-fielding first baseman you ever saw. He could go to his right, he could go to his left. You couldn’t throw the ball over him or under him. He had a gun for an arm. He wore the latest thing in equipment, a George McQuinn-model mitt called the Claw.

  He played for Yale but the scouts came around by the score. They hadn’t seen anything this slick around the bag since Hal Chase, Joe Judge, Joe Kuhel. His own idol was Lou Gehrig.

   He had missed a couple of years as a fighter pilot in the Second World War but that only meant he was more mature, steadier, more reliable, not given to anxiety. He could have been great.

 Around first base, he was a combination of Frank Merriwell and Dink Stover. Flawless, graceful, sure-handed. He was left-handed, which is what a first baseman should be.

  At the bat, for some unaccountable reason, he hit right. Maybe it was ideological.

  Whatever it was, he couldn’t hit the curveball.

  Well, look. That can be learned, right? Not everybody rolls out of bed with the ability to hit .350. Not everybody is Ty Cobb. George batted .264 his senior year and helped Yale get to the College World Series, no less.

 Everyone figured a few seasons at Binghamton and Newark and it would be Yankee-Stadium-here-we-come! I mean, the good life. Old Dependable. The new Iron Horse.

  Well, we all know how those things work out. Wife, child. You need a job. You put the dreams on hold.

   Then they want you to go into the family business. Well, in this case, the family business was politics. George’s father was a U.S. Senator. Duty called.

  There was no time to iron out the kinks in the swing, spend the hours in the batting cage, go for the brass ring. It was the salt mines for him. He never got to wear the Yankee pinstripes; he wore the three-piece kind. With the old school tie.

  It was speeches on the hustings, handshakes from the backs of trains, smoke-filled rooms, a stint in the oil business. He had to put away the old uni, hang up the George McQuinn glove, put the old lineup cards in a trunk. Just another guy who never made it to the bigs.

  Oh, he’s not starving, or hanging around bars, telling guys how he went 4-for-5 off Hubbell or took Allie Reynolds downtown.

  He lives in this big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. He has a chauffeur. He has his own airplane. In fact, he has his own air force.

  But, he makes — what? $200,000 a year? Something like that. You think Don Mattingly would play for that? Will Clark makes that in a month.

  In case the guys he used to rob of hits down the line or help make the 3-6-3 double play have lost track of him, he has done all right. I mean, it’s not like being the All-Star first baseman or having a locker in Yankee Stadium or your own bubble-gum card, but George found work all right.

  He’s the President of the United States.

  Now, that’s an OK job for a guy who was the president of the debating club, or the campus wheeler-dealer. But, George Herbert Walker Bush could have been somebody. He could have been in a lineup with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Billy Martin.

  Casey Stengel could have been yelling at him: “Hey, Bush! Is that a name or a description? Don’t the Yales throw curveballs?”

  Life could have been a blast.

  You know, when the President of the United States calls, you drop everything and go. I mean, you never know. He may need you. It’s well known that I know exactly what to do about Noriega, the Middle East, the balance of trade. I could handle the Soviets in my sleep.

  I know he’d want to keep my visit a secret. So I slept at the J.W. Marriott instead of the Lincoln bedroom. No use letting Sam Donaldson get wind of it.

  I like it that people don’t know that I’m an expert on international relations.

  They even did a good job of pretending not to know who I was at the White House’s northwest gate, as usual. It was roped off when I got there. The president of Egypt was just leaving.

  There were about 10 of us sportswriter-sportscaster types on hand. I was pretty sure I was the only one who knew what to do about Angola, though.

  With Presidents, you try the oblique approach, though. I cleared my throat. “Mr. President, what did you bat at Yale?” I didn’t want to rush things. Plenty of time to get into Lebanon.

  Well, when I tell you the next 40 minutes were spent in discussing baseball, you have to know our President is a master of camouflage — don’t forget, he used to be head of the CIA — or, and here is the conclusion I came to, he still thinks wistfully of what might have been. He’d rather be running the World Series than the world.

  There have been lots of football players in the White House — Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford. Even a tennis player, Woodrow Wilson, a rail-splitting champion, Abe Lincoln, and a horseback rider-boxer, Teddy Roosevelt. But, there has never been a baseball player.

  It suddenly occurred to me, the President enjoyed the sensation of being asked by a lot of guys with notebooks things like, “What kind of a pitch did you hit?” “Why didn’t you swing at that fastball?”

  He was just like a guy sitting in front of his locker with a beer meeting the sporting press after a game in which he’d just gone 4-for-4 — or popped up ball four to lose the game.

  So if you’re stuck in a 9-to-5 job you hate, if you have to run the family business when you would rather run the Dodgers, take heart. George Bush, who was one of the best there ever was at digging out low throws and taking the cutoff to throw the guy out at the plate, spends all day talking to people who never even heard of Lou Gehrig.

  Nicaragua never came up. When someone wanted to know if the government should step into baseball expansion, the President gave the idea short shrift. There are a lot of things wrong with the country, but the Chicago Cubs ain’t one of them, seemed to be his notion.

  And the prisoner of Pennsylvania Avenue was hustled off to talk about the bustout in East Germany. You had the feeling he’d rather stay and talk about the 1953 Yankees. After all, if it were’t for a lousy break here and there, he could have been one of them. He could have been a star.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

SUNDAY, JULY 1, 1979, SPORTS

Copyright 1979/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

If You’re Expecting One-Liners, Wait a Column

   OK, bang the drum slowly, professor. Muffle the cymbals. Kill the laugh track. You might say that Old Blue Eye is back. But that’s as funny as this is going to get.

  I feel I owe my friends an explanation as to where I’ve been all these weeks. Believe me, I would rather have been in a press box.

  I lost an old friend the other day. He was blue-eyed, impish, he cried a lot with me, laughed a lot with me, saw a great many things with me. I don’t know why he left me. Boredom, perhaps.

  We read a lot of books together, we did a lot of crossword puzzles together, we saw films together. He had a pretty exciting life. He saw Babe Ruth hit a home run when we were both 12 years old. He saw Willie Mays steal second base, he saw Maury Wills steal his 104th base. He saw Rocky Marciano get up. I thought he led a pretty good life.

  You see, the friend I lost was my eye. My good eye. The other eye, the right one, we’ve been carrying for years. We just let him tag along like Don Quixote’s nag. It’s been a long time since he could read the number on a halfback or tell whether a ball was fair or foul or even which fighter was down.

  So, one blue eye is missing and the other misses a lot.

  So my best friend left me, at least temporarily, in a twilight world where it’s always 8 o’clock on a summer night.

  He stole away like a thief in the night and he took a lot with him. But not everything. He left a lot of memories. He couldn’t take those with him. He just took the future with him and the present. He couldn’t take the past.

  I don’t know why he had to go. I thought we were pals. I thought the things we did together we enjoyed doing together. Sure, we cried together. There were things to cry about.

  But it was a long, good relationship, a happy one. It went all the way back to the days when we arranged all the marbles in a circle in the dirt in the lots in Connecticut. We played one-old-cat baseball. We saw curveballs together, trying to hit them or catch them. We looked through a catcher’s mask together. We were partners in every sense of the word.

  He recorded the happy moments, the beauty of a Pacific sunset, snow-capped mountains. He allowed me to see most of the major sports events of our time. I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t drift away when I was 12 or 15 or 29 but stuck around over 50 years until we had a vault of memories. Still, I’m only human. I’d like to see again, if possible, Rocky Marciano with his nose bleeding, behind on points and the other guy coming.

  I guess I would like to see a Reggie Jackson with the count 3 and 2 and the Series on the line, guessing fastball. I guess I’d like to see Rod Carew with men on first and second and no place to put him, and the pitcher wishing he were standing in the rain someplace, reluctant to let go of the ball.

  I’d like to see Stan Musial crouched around a curveball one more time. I’d like to see Don Drysdale trying not to laugh as a young hitter came up with both feet in the bucket.

  I’d like to see Sandy Koufax just once more facing Willie Mays with a no-hitter on the line. I’d like to see Maury Wills with a big lead against a pitcher with a good move. I’d like to see Roberto Clemente with the ball and a guy trying to go from first to third. I’d like to see Pete Rose sliding into home headfirst.

  I’d like once more to see Henry Aaron standing there with that quiet bat, a study in deadliness. I’d like to see Bob Gibson scowling at a hitter as if he had some nerve just to pick up a bat. I’d like to see Elroy Hirsch going out for a long one from Bob Waterfield, Johnny Unitas in high-cuts picking apart a zone defense. I’d like to see Casey Stengel walking to the mound on his gnarled old legs to take the pitcher out, beckoning his gnarled old finger behind his back.

  I’d like to see Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali giving a recital, a ballet, not a fight. Also, to be sure, I’d like to see a sky full of stars, moonlight on the water, and, yes, the tips of a royal flush peeking out as I fan out a poker hand, and yes, a straight two-foot putt.

  Come to think of it, I’m lucky. I saw all of those things. I see them yet.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963, SPORTS

Copyright 1963/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

A Nation In Shock: A Dreadful Day in Dallas

    A sniper crouches behind a parapet. His enemy is himself; so he is going to kill a friend. He is going to clear the shadows out of his own deranged mind by sending a bullet into a clear one.

  A nation is shocked, then shamed. The White House is black. A young widow on a television screen is a reproach to all of us. The fruit of hate is death. People who prey on fears have done their work well. Sanity is sentenced to death. Stability is sent home in a coffin. A man who stands on principle, lies on a catafalque. Lunacy gets legions; logic loses its life.

  A promising young statesman who, with his nation, survives a confrontation at the missile-head with the most dangerous power the world has ever known, cannot survive a single shot out of a grooved barrel and a twisted mind. His ultimate enemy is not a foreign despot but a homegrown idiot. The political persuasions of the assassin are a camouflage. His allegiance is to hatred. On a dreadful day in Dallas, he pays his tribute to it, salutes his master in the way he knows will please it best.

  The world of sport is as heartsick as the world, period. The nation does not want to play, it wants to cry. Regardless of political belief, the loss is total because it is the loss of a people’s esteem. Violence is the coin of barbarism, not Americanism.

  This is being written to you on Friday some hours after our president has been flown home for the last time, the tan of the Texas sun still on his cheeks, a widow who must wonder if she won’t soon awake from this terrible dream, alongside.

 All of us will always remember what we were doing when the numbing news came. I was, as I usually am, writing a column. It was about fun and games, cowboys and cow ponies, rodeos and riatas. This weekend is no time for fun and games. It is time for a nation to take stock, not wave pom-poms, yell “push ‘em back!” or care very much who goes to the Rose Bowl.

  It is a time to care what goes into our young’s minds, not what goes into their shoulder pads and cleats. The bullet that put an exclamation point in history and another wreath on a family that has already sacrificed another son in the war for men’s minds, put a moratorium on the frivolities of the playing fields.

  Sport lost a friend in President Kennedy. Fitness was a big a passion with him as freedom. If the free weren’t fit, he held, they wouldn’t long be free. The jokes were about touch football, but games were an obsession with him, not a game. He chided staffers who were fat and unfit as he chided a nation that was morally that way.

  He welcomed athletes to the White House, not for their notoriety but for their example. Ambush is not a sport in this country. There are no P.E. classes in firing squads. You don’t get letters for shooting in the back.

  A period of mourning is altogether fitting, not because our President is martyred because every president is martyred — we exact the ransom of health, family, privacy and, sometimes, sanity, from all of them and especially from the best of them — because there is too little time. Prosperity can’t unite us, maybe tragedy can.

  This country is a volunteer country. Sometimes, that’s just its trouble. But I am proud that sport can find in itself the morality to join in the mourning, put away the footballs and the ice skates, suspend the bucks and stand silent and bareheaded along with the rest of the country. It didn’t just happen to our president, it happened to all of us.

  Lincoln, as usual, said it far better than the rest of us. “It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work . . . that from this honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that this dead shall not have died in vain.”

  I hope that those of you who know me as a man, who would rather find a wisecrack than wisdom, will not be offended by the emotion. It’s just that I am sorry for the President, for Mrs. Kennedy, for their fatherless children. And I am sorry for all of us. I heard a young man on the television say “Today, I am ashamed to be an American.” That is not right. Because Jack Kennedy was not ashamed to be an American. The man who fired the shot was. And should be.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

SUNDAY, MAY 2, 1993 SPORTS

Copyright 1993/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

Kings Have a Cool Hand in Luc

It was less a game than a dock fight. The hockey version of a Rocky movie — all offense.

  The goaltenders might have been Laurel and Hardy. They couldn’t stop a beach ball. This is the way Charlie Chaplin would have played the part. Goals flew in from all over the place. Most of the night, the goalies looked like guys trying to fight off a cloud of bats.

  No one ever likened the 1993 Los Angeles Kings to the 1927 Yankees, but after consecutive nine-goal victories, you have to wonder if Murderers’ Row has taken to the ice. Eighteen goals in two games is the wildest kind of long-ball hitting for this sport. Most teams don’t score 18 goals in a month. Some teams couldn’t score 18 goals into an empty net.

  To be sure, Calgary’s Jeff Reese proved to be the next best thing to an empty net, a turnstile goalie. A measure of his ineptness can be found in the fact that the Kings in one period — the second — had four shots on goal and three of them went in. He gave up six goals in 13 shots and nine in 23. That is the rankest kind of generosity.

  Calgary might as well have had a snowman with a carrot for a nose, hunks of coal for eyes and a stovepipe hat in the crease. He ministered to the Kings’ growing reputation as a pack of wild-swinging, hip-shooting bad guys playing desperado hockey. Home-run hitters. Knockout punchers. Bomb throwers.

  The left wing, Luc Robitaille, takes issue with that image.

  “No,” he shakes his head. “It’s more like, we get the lead, and then they have to take chances to get even and they get reckless. When they do, we know they’re over-committed, over-extended and we take advantage and strike quickly.”

  However it was done, it put the Kings into May still alive in the NHL tournament, a first for the franchise.

  An even more curious factor in the Kings-Flames game Thursday that moved the Kings into the division final against Vancouver was that it was done with Robitaille getting no shots on goal.

  If you think that isn’t unusual, you haven’t been paying attention. Because, almost unnoticed in the evolution of the team, Luc has become the cleanup hitter of the Kings. Larrupin’ Luc.

  Hardly had Robitaille settled in as a King when Wayne Gretzky became one. This is like joining the Yankees about the same time as Babe Ruth, or playing left field with Willie Mays in center. Your chances of being overlooked are good to astronomical.

  Gretzky, of course, is Babe Ruth, the most potent force ever to play this game, with the most goals ever scored in a season, 92; most assists, one season and lifetime, 163 and 1,563, respectively, and more records than the next five guys combined.

  Still, if Robitaille were on a team not overshadowed by a legend, he would be approaching superstar status himself. This season, he scored more goals, 63, and piled up more points, 125, than any other left wing in history.

  If he played for Montreal, he would be on billboards and giving interviews in his native French. In L.A., they find out he’s a hockey player and they ask him if he knows Gretzky personally, or they pronounce his name “Robo-telly” instead of the correct “Robo-tye.”

  No one calls him “Rocket” or “Punch” or “the golden Gorilla” or “the Great One” or even “King” or “Boom Boom,” but the goalies know who he is.

  He comes out shooting. He leads the Kings annually in shots on goal — 265 this season, 240 last year. His nickname should be “Two-Gun.” Billy the Kid never pulled the trigger so much.

  But what he lacks in press attention, he gets on locker-room blackboards. Hockey has a sub-tier method of recognition. Enemy teams might even let the great Gretzky get loose on the point in key situations, but Billy the Kid Robitaille usually finds a posse surrounding him. Guarding Robitaille is a growth industry.

  The theory for years has been that, if you bottle up Gretzky, someone is open somewhere. But when Robitaille doesn’t get a single shot to rattle off the nets or the goaltender’s pads, attention to him is being paid somewhere.

  Luc is used to being overlooked. He wasn’t fast. He didn’t have this 100-m.p.h. slap shot. He had all his teeth. His face didn’t look like a zipper. So they drafted him along about the time they were signing the Zamboni driver, 171st.

  But Robitaille always had an instinct for the end zone — on this case, the net. Skating under a clock, there were dozens ahead of him. Skating through a line of enforcers or going in the corners with a team called the “Bullies,” he was as fast as he had to be. When he got the puck, he tended to disappear. Marcel Dionne, no less, once commented on his balance, “You can’t knock him off the puck.”

  If hockey had a three-point shot, the Kings’ final victory over Calgary would have been double. Gretzky’s first score was a slap shot from the blue line and Jari Kurri’s smash to make the game 4-2 was a 50-footer with more air time than a tee shot by John Daly.

  The Kings have now found their niche. When you can airmail in nine goals in only 23 shots one night and nine in 35 on another, you don’t need stick-handling or behind-the-net smuggling. You just open fire. Send the other team into bunkers or diving for cover. If you get the other guys toe to toe, you win.

  If they’re going to play grip-it-and-rip-it, Robitaille can play that game, too. He has 348 lifetime goals, no current threat to Gretzky’s 765, but when the Kings can fire in nine a night, the chances are that Robitaille is diverting the attention of someone somewhere on the ice.

  A guy who was drafted 171st and then went out and became rookie of the year, and who has all his teeth and ears after seven years and 476 penalty minutes, is a force. If the Kings are going to come into town in these playoffs now like the James Gang with a reputation for a fast draw and shooting first, the guy they call “Lucky” will be riding shotgun.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

OCTOBER 13, 1988, SPORTS

Copyright 1988/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

Here’s a Team Not to Be Taken Lightly

  Wow! Look who’s in the World Series!

  That funny little team that couldn’t, did. The over-achievers beat the under-achievers.

  Give my regards to Broadway. But tell them I won’t soon be there. Tell all the gang at 42nd Street to eat your heart out. The boys from Hollywood are the new boys of summer.

  How’d they do it? You tell me. I mean, we’re not talking the 1927 Yankees here. This was a team that had more holes than a Chinese checkerboard. They lost their most charismatic pitcher, they traded away their key slugger. They lost 89 games last year. They had to rely on a pitcher who was that baseball staple, the player to be named, a throw-in. All Tim Belcher did was become a live candidate for rookie of the year.

  They weren’t supposed to be in the playoffs. When they got into them, they drew a team that had beaten them 10 out of 11 times during the season.

  They hung off more cliffs than Pearl White. They kept getting tied to the track and escaping in the nick of time. It wasn’t a series, it was a serial. They got their best relief pitcher suspended. And they won. They got their big hitter lamed. And he won for them.

  God must love the Dodgers. The gamblers sure didn’t. Whenever the Dodgers needed a break, they got it. The Mets were rallying? A ground ball jumps up and hits a baserunner. They’re down to their last out against one of the great pitchers of all time? A lead-footed catcher who hits a home run only every other eclipse of the moon jacks one out of the lot.

  Someone asks the broadcaster if outfielder Kirk Gibson should be the team’s most valuable player. No, says Vin Scully, it should be Tinker Bell. This team has a fairy godmother. The manager suggests it is a team from Lourdes. It is enough to make you believe in flying saucers. Or Santa Claus.

  But, in the final analysis, it wins because the enemy underestimates it.

  Consider this: Dwight Gooden of the Mets is a pitcher for the ages. He can hang up some pitches that not even Lourdes can take care of.

  And what he was doing sitting in the dugout as this winner-take-all seventh game began is something for his manager to explain, not me.

  Dr. K had 2 days of rest. If they were saving him for Game 1 of the World Series, you would have to wonder which one.

  As a matter of plain fact, he did pitch. Too late. Mets manager Davey Johnson apparently thought his second-best pitcher was enough for this ragtag lineup of Dodgers non-hitters. Gooden got the role of mop-up

pitcher in this contest.

  It was a serious miscalculation. Ron Darling is a fine pitcher. But he’s no Doc Gooden. Very few pitchers are. Ron Darling doesn’t scare you. Doc Gooden does. Doc Gooden could scare Babe Ruth.

  You don’t put Doc Gooden in a game that’s already 4-0 with the bases loaded. Not unless you want to throw away the 1988 pennant. The Mets might have lost the tournament in the dugout.

  The Dodgers knocked them out in the second round. It wasn’t a Mike Tyson knockout. The Dodgers got five runs on only four hits, all singles. One of them was a popped bunt that might even have been catchable. The Mets contributed two errors and an uncounted fielding lapse. That’s the Dodgers way to play baseball in this year of our Lord, 1988. In the immortal words of the golfer Lloyd Mangrum, the Dodgers can say sweetly, “Are we playing how? Or how many?”

  But, golly gee, aw shucks! The Dodgers won because they have this character who looks as if they found him on his way to a fishing hole with a pocket full of hooks and worms. You see Orel Hershiser and you look around for the dog. He looks more like a scoutmaster — or a scout — than a ballplayer. The rest of the club is squirting and swigging champagne, Orel is looking around for a cookie and a glass of milk. His idea of dissipation is a chocolate malt.

  But what a pitcher! Orel Hershiser threw his ninth 1988 shutout Wednesday. As Gooden would have been, he was pitching on two days of rest.

  Hershiser has been more important to the Dodgers than luck this season. When Fernando Valenzuela left the lists with an over-used arm, Hershiser turned into a combination of Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson. They not only couldn’t beat him, they couldn’t score on him. It got so, if

someone got to third, he wanted to stop the game and take the bag home with him. He was baseball’s Big O. Another pitcher might be Goose, Hershiser was Goose Egg.

  Superstars usually walk around before a game with a faintly aloof, even disdainful air about them, as if they were above it all. Hershiser was walking around Wednesday like a kid collecting autographs. He stopped to chat with writers, he waved a bat, compared golf swings with a broadcaster and, in general, acted as if he were about to pitch a softball game at a family picnic. He managed to convey the impression of a kid looking into a candy store window. Lucky to be there.

  You get the feeling Orel Hershiser thinks pitching to Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry and Kevin McReynolds is more fun than a day at the zoo. He probably can’t wait to see what Jose Canseco does with a sinker. You get the feeling he’d like to pitch again tomorrow.

  He’s the reason the Dodgers, the funny little team that was supposed to finish fourth, is in the fall classic. They may not last much longer than Michael Spinks, but they’re playing with house money.

  They don’t leave everything to chance. Their manager didn’t leave Orel Hershiser in the dugout, didn’t trust the ball to his second- or third-best pitcher, however rested. He led with his ace. Mr. O (for Out) Hershiser. That’s H as in Happy. The best piece of luck the lucky Dodgers had.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

THE LOS ANGELES RAMS: HOME AGAIN

A History of LA’s Team from the Voice of the City

Los Angeles Times Sports Columnist Jim Murray columns 1961-1995

Proceeds from book sales benefit the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation journalism scholarship program.

JMMF Federal Tax ID number is #94-3331025

To purchase, please call:

(800) 934-9313

ISBN: 9780182212095

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 1983, SPORTS

Copyright 1983/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY

A Name Is Only a Name

   In the National Football League as in the American West, there have always been names to strike fear in the hearts of men. What names like Cochise or Cody or Crazy Horse meant to the early settlers, Butkus of Bubba (as in “Kill, Bubba, kill!”), Karras or Marchetti meant to football players.

  Youngblood is such a name. It denotes the left end of the Rams, a guy who paws the ground before he charges like a corrida bull or a wounded moose, a guy who shakes quarterbacks upside-down till they cough up the football. It’s a name that would turn the wagon trains around on the plains or send a chill over a frontier saloon or empty a main street at high noon.

  Youngblood was a name to keep young quarterbacks awake the night before the big game or make offensive tackles wish they had gone into sales.

  You would think its owner would be this big, scowling, antisocial hulk, a churlish cretin who was a cross between a guy who collects bad debts for the Mafia and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Youngblood would really mean Badblood.

  But the real Jack Youngblood would be a big disappointment to the Dalton Gang or the warriors of Cochise. He doesn’t seem mean enough to be Jack Youngblood. He smiles a lot. He has these dimples. He hardly ever gets mad. He looks like a collar ad, a cross between Robert Redford and John Wayne. He always looks as if he’s enjoying himself, as if it was fun peeling all these blocking backs off and throwing them over the sidelines. He laughs when he swallows up the quarterback. You’d think it was ballroom dancing instead of modified murder. Most defensive ends look as if their feet hurt or their pants were too tight. Jack Youngblood looks as if he just heard a good joke or is learning the tango.

  He’s the Rams’ Good Humor Man. He goes through life as if he is passing out popsicles. His mayhem has a kind of impersonal quality to it, like a surgeon who is not hurting you on purpose.

  He’s as durable as a diamond, as indestructible as an ingot. He has the center of gravity of a kewpie. You might knock him off the line of scrimmage but never off his feet. He has played in 171 consecutive games, two of them on a broken leg.

  He is the last of the Super Rams, the last link with the gaudy era of the Fearsome Foursome, the Secretary of Defense, the annual best team-in-the-league — on paper — Rams. When they were the Rams, not the Goats.

  “When I first came up, they had players like Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Diron Talbert, Coy Bacon, Fred Dryer, Hacksaw Reynolds, Larry Brooks and Jack Pardee. You were lucky to get a suit,” Youngblood was recalling the other day.

  The signature of the Rams was always the pass rush. It was the best west of Pittsburgh and south of Lombardi’s Green Bay. And Youngblood kept that tradition alive through four head coaches and almost twice as many line coaches. “(Head Coach) Tommy Prothro was aloof, cerebral. He almost never had personal contact with us, Chuck Knox was macho. He wanted a show of hands of guys ready to play. He thought defense won games and offense just tried to keep from losing them. Ray Malavasi was an astute tactician who trusted people to give 100%. Naturally, they took advantage of him.”

  As to changes in the game, Youngblood remembers principally that they took the left hook and the right cross out of it. It wasn’t football, it was pugilism. The all-purpose head slap. “You practiced it in the gym on the heavy bag and the light one. You came through the line of scrimmage like Rocky Marciano. You hit everything that got in your way right in the helmet. The advantage of the head slap was, it made the guy either turn his head or close his eyes or both.”

  Youngblood recalls that when Deacon Jones got through an afternoon of knocks to the head, his opponent had a permanent ringing in his ears, as if he had spent the day in the Liberty Bell.

  When they outlawed that, the line of scrimmage resembled less Dempsey-Tunney than Veloz-Yolanda. Now the Rams are going to the three-man front or the volleyball defense. Will it neutralize the vaunted Rams pass rush, will the coaches opt for a newer, more stylish attacker? Will Jack Youngblood stop laughing?

  Jack Youngblood smiles. “I can play for them (the Rams), all right. The question is can I play for me?”

  In other words, Jack Youngblood has to meet Jack Youngblood’s standards, not the league’s.

  It’s not likely the syllables will come to mean Jack Oldblood, then. It’s likely they will still have the same effect on the league as smoke signals to a wagon train. A man who can play a Super Bowl on one leg can probably play a three-man front on crutches and the consonants in the name Y-o-u-n-g-b-l-o-o-d will still cause offensive tackles to blink their eyes or young quarterbacks to run for their lives event if he’s only got two other renegades instead of three.

Reprinted with the permission of the Los Angeles Times

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 60753, Pasadena, CA 91116

———

THE LOS ANGELES RAMS: HOME AGAIN

A History of LA’s Team from the Voice of the City

Los Angeles Times Sports Columnist Jim Murray columns 1961-1995

 Proceeds from book sales benefit the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation journalism scholarship program.

JMMF Federal Tax ID number is #94-3331025

To purchase, please call: (800) 934-9313

ISBN: 9780182212095

———

What is the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation? 

  The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, established in 1999 to perpetuate the Jim Murray legacy, and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism. Since 1999, JMMF has granted 104 $5,000 scholarships to outstanding journalism students. Success of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation’s efforts depends heavily on the contributions from generous individuals, organizations, corporations, and volunteers who align themselves with the mission and values of the JMMF.

Like us on Facebook, and visit the JMMF website, www.jimmurrayfoundation.org.