Going Pro Again Again Sharp Tk
Washington Post Columnist
Sabbatum, June 6, 1998; Folio D01
6 or seven years ago Sports Illustrated named its all-time baseball team. Some of the most revered names in baseball history were on it: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays. I decided to write a column virtually the accurateness of the selections. And who meliorate to talk to than Shirley Povich, who had seen all of them play?
I named the position players, and then told Shirley that Christy Mathewson was chosen as the right-handed pitcher.
Shirley was outraged.
"Walter Johnson crushed Christy Mathewson," he said.
I told him I wondered about the left-handed bullpen. "They picked Warren Spahn," I said, "but I was thinking maybe it would be Sandy Koufax."
Shirley shook his caput disapprovingly. His clear option was Lefty Grove, and he started to explain.
"I was talking to Walter Johnson once. . . . " he began.
Time out! He was talking to Walter Johnson. Walter Johnson was born in 1887. His first year in the majors was 1907. They called him "Big Train," presumably because planes weren't invented notwithstanding.
"You lot talked to Walter Johnson?" I stammered. And I started grinning.
Shirley continued: ". . . . And Walter said to me, 'Shirley, that Feller kid is fast. But not every bit fast every bit Lefty Grove.'"
That Feller kid?
Feller will be 80 this twelvemonth.
About everyone was a kid to Shirley. He was 92. The famous Dempsey-Tunney "Long Count" fight that took place in 1927? Shirley covered information technology. He covered Connie Mack. He covered Sammy Baugh. He covered Babe Ruth. (During one rare Earth Series the Yankees weren't in Shirley saturday in the next seat over from Ruth in the press box. Ruth was in that location "covering" the Serial for a New York paper. I endeavor to imagine The Infant leaning over and saying, "Shirley, should I get with an adjective hither, or an adverb?")
To Shirley's everlasting credit, he also covered Cal Ripken, Evander Holyfield and Norv Turner. Shirley may have had one eye on the by, merely he always kept both anxiety in the present. A few months ago at a tiffin honoring his 75th twelvemonth of writing at The Washington Mail, Shirley best-selling what he had learned from immature Tiger Woods: "I realized I've been standing much too close to my tee shot — afterwards I've striking information technology."
I have been blessed in my career to have worked alongside the two finest sports columnists of all time, Carmine Smith and Shirley Povich. I worked with Blood-red at The New York Times, and with Shirley at The Post. They were elegant writers and urbane men, impeccably dressed and unfailingly polite. Gentlemen and scholars. Their skills with words and logic were so precipitous that when they took y'all apart in impress, you never felt the blade, yous but saw the claret.
I adored them both, and tried to copy their styles. People often said, correctly, that I couldn't even conduct their typewriters. But in fact I have. There were days when I carried Carmine's typewriter upwardly the steps to the press box in Yankee Stadium and Shea. I have carried Shirley's typewriter out to the machine from the press box at the Preakness and RFK. I felt honored to exercise it.
People often ask sportswriters about the athletes they have met, and the games they have seen. People desire you to share the secrets and explain the magic of sports. And they ever ask: What was your greatest thrill?
Mine came three years ago, the night Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's tape for consecutive games played. Oh, the game was great. And it was a perfect bear on that Cal hit a homer, and took that unforgettable victory lap. The spontaneous warmth of the moment, the smiles on the faces of everyone in the park, the sense of the bond between Cal and the fans — the sense that this reciprocal joy was what sports used to be, and should be once again — all that gives me chills still.
Just the great thrill for me that night was sitting next to Shirley Povich in the press box. There were 2 people in Camden Yards that night who had been in Yankee Stadium for Lou Gehrig's bye in 1939 — Joe DiMaggio, who was Gehrig's teammate at the time, and Shirley, who was there to write. At present, close to 50 years later they were back in a ballpark to come across Ripken surpass The Fe Horse.
I was on Shirley's right. Michael Wilbon was on his left. We are ceaseless yakkers, Wilbon and I. Usually, if we're in Baltimore, you tin can hear us on K Street. But on this evening we were spellbound in silence listening to Shirley talk about Gehrig and Ruth and DiMaggio. It was an oral history of the gilded age of baseball.
Everything well-nigh that dark was collectible, you lot may retrieve: Special souvenir tickets they didn't rip, special souvenir programs, even special game balls — with special orange stitching and a special "Streak Calendar week" logo banner.
Tardily in the game, someone hit a foul ball back to the printing box. I saw it heading right at Shirley, and reached for information technology. Fortunately, it missed Shirley, and landed softly in Wilbon's aplenty stomach. Wilbon held it aloft, to the thanks of the writers, and was stuffing it in his pocketbook when our sports editor, George Solomon, suggested to him that Shirley might want 1 of these special baseballs as a souvenir — considering Shirley was at Gehrig's terminal game.
Wilbon happily agreed, and handed Shirley the ball.
Shirley put it in his suitcoat pocket, and watched the rest of the game and much of the postgame ceremony. Around midnight he and George left Camden Yards to go dorsum to Washington. I was finished writing then, and I walked with them out to the parking lot. There, Shirley took the brawl out of his pocket, and with a movement practiced over almost ninety years, he began flipping the ball gently up and down with his left hand. And in that clear belatedly summer night, with that gift baseball in his hand, and a bound in his step, Shirley Povich was forever immature.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
Dorsum to the Height
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/general/povich/launch/tk6.htm
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