 
THE POET

The Life and Los Angeles Times of Jim Murray

By STEVEN TRAVERS

COPYRIGHT (2013)

Contents

The Daily Travers

A Depression kid

". . . Beyond the darkness the West"

Noir and marriage

Show biz is not a business

Murray, Nixon and Checkers

Sports Illustrated

The Times they are a changin'

Decade of change

The Column

Civil war

Halcyon days

Visionaries

The poet of Brentwood

Love, tragedy, redemption

A Times to live and a Times to die

The great scribe in his twi-light years

Sic transit Gloria

One-on-one with Bill Dwyre

Famous last words

The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

Jim Murray's career

Bibliography

Index

Photo captions

1. Plaque honoring Jim in the Dodger Stadium press box. Jake Downey.

Jim Murray's introduction to the Baseball Hall of Fame, 1988. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

With hotel magnate Barron Hilton, 1997. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Jim poses with race legend Mario Andretti and actor James Garner, Beverly Hilton Hotel, 1996. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

From left: Tom Lasorda, Linda McCoy-Murray, Jo Lasorda, and Jim Murray, "Sports Spectacular," Century Plaza Hotel, 1996. Jim had a heart attack the next day. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Jim with Roy Firestone in Hawaii (1994). Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

In Ohio with native son Jack Nicklaus in 1995. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Jim at the podium. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Golfer Al Geiberger and Jim. John Rountree Photos and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Jim and Linda McCoy-Murray with Chris McCarron at Santa Anita. McCarron was the subject of his last column in 1998. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Two legends: Murray with tennis star Rod Laver at Indian Wells in 1998. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

"It's never over till the fat lady sings 'it's déjà vu all over again' at a place nobody goes to 'cause it's too crowded." With fellow wordsmith Yogi Berra during the twi-light years. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

2. In 1995 with Gene "the Singing Cowboy" Autry, 1995. Marc Glassman and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

In the spring of 1996, the great scribe posed with ex-Trojan Mark McGwire at Dodger Stadium. Big Mac hit 70 homers that year to set the all-time mark. Mitchell Haddad and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

On the job at a sold-out Coliseum for a 49ers-Raiders game, 1980s. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Jim and Linda McCoy-Murray pose with Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley and his wife, Annette, at the Historical Society of Southern California Jack Smith Community Enrichment Awards, the downtown L.A. Biltmore (1997). Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

The best of the best. Poets Murray (77) and Vin Scully (69), both recipients of the Richstone Caritas Awards, at the Beverly Hilton. Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Stars all lined up: Jerry West, Mel Durslag, Vin Scully, Roy Firestone, Jim Murray. Alan Berliner and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

3. Rod Laver and Jim Murray in their respective primes. Jim Sloan and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

Murray interviews baseball legend Roberto Clemente shortly before the Hall of Famer's untimely death in a plane crash while delivering supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims on December 31, 1972. The Tidings Photo.

4. The great Murray posed for this photo, used on the cover of his 1993 autobiography. Jim Cornfield and Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.

5. Jabari Brown, left, counselor at the USC Annenberg School with his Murray Scholars.

To the memory of Jeff Prugh; a mentor, an inspiration, and a friend

The Daily Travers

When I was a student at the University of Southern California, my roommate was a big, strong former Trojan pitcher who, like me, was finishing school after having played

minor league baseball. His name was Terry Marks. One day Terry was reading Jim Murray's column in the Los Angeles Times. Murray was writing about some horse at Santa Anita, as I recall. I think the headline read something like, "This Big Horse is a Little Psycho."

Terry thought that was pretty humorous. He also thought the term "Big Horse" was a good nickname for me since I was 6-6 and between 230 and 240 pounds at the time. He also thought I was "a little psycho." The nickname "Big Horse" quickly morphed into "Big Horace," and from there just plain "Horace." When we hosted an open party one night and I imbibed a bit too much, getting a tad on the loud side, Terry said I was "a regular Miss Manners." From there I became known as "Horace B. Manners . . . and the 'B' stands for 'Bad.' " To my USC friends, I am still known as Horace, courtesy in a roundabout way of Jim Murray.

After graduation I made a road trip to New York City, Washington, D.C., and then to Europe – London and Paris – with my lifelong pal Brad Cole. Eventually, all the fun and games came to an end. I returned to California and took a job for the stock brokerage outfit Charles Schwab and Company, Inc. in the Wells Fargo Building at 7th and Flower Streets in downtown Los Angeles. I quickly realized the world of finance was not for me.

Bored and, frankly, with time on my hands once the markets closed at one o'clock, I started banging out "stories," letters and random thoughts on an electric typewriter on my desk. If my boss wandered by I told him I was writing letters to clients and prospects. In fact, I was writing about sports, politics and life. I would put my missives in an envelope, addressed to "Mr. Bradley T. Cole," who had stayed in Paris. In addition to whatever I wrote, I cut out that day's Jim Murray column from the Los Angeles Times and enclosed it. I then sealed the letter and used the Schwab postage meter. In those days roughly 85 cents was enough to send a normal-sized eight-by-11 envelope to France. I sent a letter virtually every business day for a year. Nobody at Charles Schwab ever found out, as if I cared.

Brad Cole was an actor, writing, producing and starring in a stage play in the Parisian English theatre. His brother Darren and friend Tim Silano were co-producing the play. They were having a blast in the City of Lights. After being there a year earlier, I was now bored stiff working for Charles Schwab. Knowing they were receiving my missives was a small excitement for me.

Later they all told me how each day they eagerly awaited the mail for what came to be known as the Daily Travers. Most of all they appreciated the enclosure of Jim Murray's columns. In those pre-Internet days, for three sports-crazed kids from L.A. it was a touch of home; of the Dodgers, the Trojans, the Lakers. It was also the beginning of my writing career. I was inspired by Jim Murray, whose columns I had been reading since I was a kid.

I left Charles Schwab and Company, Inc., eventually pursuing a writing career. Along the way, Jim Murray passed away in 1998. When that happened, the Los Angeles Times was inundated with letters of praise and remembrance from readers. I knew that Jim was one of three Los Angeles sports figures who stood out. If anybody ever wanted to carve out Mt. Rushmore-style depictions in the Hollywood Hills or Mt. Wilson, they could do worse than Jim Murray along with John Wooden and Vin Scully. Maybe General George S. Patton, Otis Chandler and William Mulholland, too.

Anyway, I wrote a letter to the Times. That Saturday the paper devoted two whole inside pages to these letters. My friend Doug Caravalho called, excited.

"Hey, you're letter about Jim Murray was printed in the Times," he said. "Hey, that is how he wrote."

There it was, from "Steven Travers, Hermosa Beach." It read something along the lines, "Jim Murray was the greatest sportswriter who ever lived. Who could forget his stirring descriptions of sports legends of the green plains, the way he told us, 'USC was not a football team, they were the Wehrmacht on the march in 1939, Patton taking the Low Countries, or how some coach was, 'To his sport what Napoleon was to artillery, Caruso to voice control'? "

That inspired me. This is my 17th published book, not to mention screenplays, stage plays, newspaper, magazine and web articles, and the movie production of my book One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation.

I have many inspirations, but two were writers and colleagues for the Los Angeles Times. I never personally knew the great Jim Murray, although I felt I did, just like all those who read him most every day. The other was his associate, Jeff Prugh, who I did know as a dear friend and mentor.

I hope this book is worthy of both their memories. I want to thank them, as well as the good folks at Potomac Books; Jim's widow, Linda McCoy-Murray, and Bill McCoy of the Jim Murray Foundation.

STEVEN R. TRAVERS

USCSTEVE1@aol.com

redroom.com/member/STWRITES/

(415) 455-5971

A Depression kid

The life of Jim Murray mirrored the American Century. His career symbolized the importance of America in every way. Murray moved west as the American West became the great trendsetter of the country and the world. His ascendance rode astride a time when the West as a global entity battled and eventually overcame the forces of Communism. Murray's modest demeanor in many ways reflected the reluctance of his country to ascend to heights of power greater than Alexander's Greece or Rome at its most glorious. Like his adopted city of Los Angeles and his country, he saw changes and realized it was his responsibility to make for a better future, to shape that future. In so doing, he moved beyond provincial comforts, taking on larger social issues. In so doing he ruffled feathers. His world was sports. This was a metaphor for the game of life.

The 78 years encompassing Jim Murray's life between 1919 and 1998 may well represent the greatest and most profound changes in the annals of Mankind. When he was born, the "war to end all wars" was recently **won** by the United States and its allies in Europe. World War I was in many ways a battle to determine who would ride the whirlwind of the Industrial Revolution. Murray was born into a country of heavy immigration. The United States was now the most powerful of all nations, but reluctant to acknowledge they were in fact greater than the British Empire in decline.

Air flight was new. Great discoveries in science, medicine and technology were being made. Perhaps America's greatest gift to the world, the gift of leisure and a better life, were symbolized in the first decade of Murray's life by the dawning of a "golden age" of sports led by Babe Ruth, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and the building of sports palaces given grandiose monikers like the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.

Murray would observe warfare expanding from cavalry charges into mechanized air assaults. He saw the "aero plane" become jets, battle become a global chess match of missiles and nukes. He saw a horse 'n' buggy mode of travel become freeway culture, moving to the city of its greatest use. He saw silent movies become "talkies," the telegraph evolve into the telephone, the cell phone, and the Internet. He saw typewriters phase into computers. He saw his profession, journalism change from a scramble to find a phone, reading copy to an assistant editor, into the ability to send and change text anywhere, at any time, at any length, from any location.

Murray grew up as America grew up. Intrinsically, like so many Easterners he sensed the future was in California. He arrived as a post-war baby boom was underway. The Los Angeles he found in 1944 was provincial but ascending. It became an Electoral juggernaut, the city and state of the future. National political trends were formulated no longer in the back rooms of Tammany Hall, but in the broad expanses of the Golden State, propelled by populist anti-Communism and the power of political fundraising.

Murray's newspaper, the _Los Angeles Times_ , became the paper of influence in a brave new world. The established order diminished while Murray's Los Angeles and the state of California were the cutting edge of societal evolution. Like his country, Murray's California became too big, overblown, over-extended. With wry Irish wit and cutting humor he observed and wrote about all of it. To the shallow-minded, it seemed he was writing about sluggers, halfbacks, putters, and all form of sports impresarios. These were merely aliases. He was writing about America.

****

He was born on December 29, 1919 in Hartford, Connecticut. This meant he was an impressionable kid, not quite 10, when the Great Depression hit in October of 1929.

Much of what makes America great emanates from lessons learned during the Great Depression. Much of what detracts from American greatness comes from lessons of the Great Depression now forgotten.

Jim Murray was a product of the Depression. It dominated his sense of self, his writing, his career. It was a rude awakening for Murray and his country after the hubris of the 1920s. Flush with victory in Europe, the Roaring '20s were a time of great prosperity. Murray grew up in Connecticut, the burgeoning "bedroom community" of the New Rome, New York City. This was where the action was. Wall Street. Yankee Stadium. The Yale Bowl. The American lifestyle was embodied by a new kind of man, well dressed and coiffed, daily riding high speed trains into Manhattan, where he mastered business, manipulated markets in his favor, then returned to country leisure in towns with Biblical names like New Canaan. Then, in 1929, it all came crashing down.

Jim Murray was of Irish Catholic stock. He was not of the elite, the "blue bloods" of East Coast aristocracy. They lived in tony suburbs. They were not the Irish, but of old English bloodlines, worshipping not at Catholic Mass but in Episcopalian splendor as in the Bushes of Greenwich, scions of the Brown Brothers Harriman Wall Street dynasty. The Irish were still looked down upon, but this was changing. While the Bushes were reputed to be related to the royal families of England and Holland, the Murray's came from the humble county of Sligo, Ireland in the 1870s.

The Irish fought well in the Great War. Men like Joseph P. Kennedy saw politics as the road to new power and respect in America. In 1928 a Catholic, Al Smith was given the Democrat nomination for President. He did not win but it was a tremendous change from the old order of things. Still, the class distinction of Irish Catholicism on the East Coast overshadowed the life of Jim Murray from his birth in 1919 until his move to the wilds of Los Angeles, California in 1944.

But being Irish also meant being literate. It was in Jim Murray's blood. The angst of Irish poets, of W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Jonathan Swift, and George Bernard Shaw, were the influences of a young Irishman long before the days of television and the Internet. If Manhattan was the home of commerce, the New England countryside was the 20th Century home of American letters. Indeed, Connecticut was the breeding grounds of wordsmiths. Mark Twain wrote _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ in Hartford.

After Dutch explorer Adriaen Block visited the area in 1614, fur traders from the New Netherland colony set up trade at Fort Goede Hoop (Good Hope) at the confluence of the Connecticut and Park Rivers as early as 1623. They abandoned their post by 1654. Today, the neighborhood near the site is still known as Dutch Point. The first English settlers arrived in 1635. Their settlement was originally called Newtown, but was renamed Hartford in 1637. The name "Hartford" was chosen to honor the English town of Hertford, home of Samuel Stone, one of the settlers.

The leader of Hartford's original settlers came from what is now Cambridge, Massachusetts. Pastor Thomas Hooker delivered a sermon that inspired the writing of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, a document (ratified on January 14, 1639) investing the people with the authority to govern, rather than ceding such authority to a higher power. Hooker's conception of self-rule, embodied in the Fundamental Orders, went on to inspire the Connecticut Constitution, and ultimately the U.S. Constitution. Today, one of the Connecticut's nicknames is the "Constitution State." On December 15, 1814, delegations from throughout New England gathered at the Hartford Convention to discuss possible secession from the United States. Later in the century, Hartford was a center of abolitionist activity. Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of Lyman Beecher and author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, lived in Nook Farm, part of the Asylum Hill section of the city.

Almost 400 years old, Hartford is among the oldest cities in the United States. Following the American Civil War, Hartford took the mantle of the country's wealthiest city from New Orleans. In 1868, Mark Twain exclaimed, "Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, Hartford is the chief."

Hartford is home to the nation's oldest public art museum (Wadsworth Atheneum), the oldest public park (Bushnell Park), the oldest continuously published newspaper (Hartford Courant), the second-oldest secondary school (Hartford Public), and until its closure in 2009, the sixth-oldest opera company in the nation (Connecticut Opera). It was always a commercial city, its proximity to New York and Boston making it a hub of sorts in New England.

The Ados Israel Synagogue was founded in 1872. Over the following decades, as Ellis Island immigration brought floods of Europeans to the American East Coast, Hartford took on a diverse face.

On the week of April 12, 1909 the Connecticut River reached a then-record flood stage of 24 feet above the low water mark, flooding the city and doing great damage. Hartford became the state capital city. It is located in Hartford County on the Connecticut River, north of the center of the state, 24 miles south of Springfield, Massachusetts. Greater Hartford is the largest metro area in Connecticut. Insurance was an up-and-coming industry in the 1920s and 1930s. Hartford became its epicenter, nicknamed the "Insurance Capital of the World."

President Theodore Roosevelt endeavored to make the United States a "modern power" early in the 20th Century. When America helped the Allies win World War I, they became the most powerful nation on Earth. Great Britain still thought of themselves as the world's most powerful empire, but they were a "paper tiger," their best days behind them even though they refused to admit it. But the U.S. had no desire to pick up the mantel of empire. Under Republican leadership the U.S. adopted an "isolationist" policy, preferring to stay out of international affairs.

America in the Roaring '20s was a strange twist of politics, religion and morality. On the one hand, Prohibition was the law of the land. On the other hand, the liquor business grew as never before. Christianity and organized crime **grew** side-by-step as if in a morality play. Probably because of the carnage of war, many became spiritual, looking for answers. Evangelical Protestantism took on a strange racial twist. In the South, the Ku Klux Klan made a "comeback" of sorts.

Anti-Papalism also sprouted up. This had a tremendous effect on American sports. The University of Notre Dame had the most famed college football team in the nation. Coach Knute Rockne became alarmed at anti-Catholic sentiment directed towards his team in rural settings such as Lincoln, Nebraska. He endeavored to play marquee games in big cities with large Catholic populations. Thus did the Fighting Irish legend grow when they competed against Army at the Polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium in New York City, or against Southern California at Soldier Field in Chicago or the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Athletics represented a new kind of nationalism. Nobody saw this dynamic more clearly than Adolf Hitler. He recognized that sports could be used as a propaganda tool to promote his political ideology. He also saw sports as a veil for military conflict. The same sorts of sturdy young men who starred on the fields of play would naturally be most likely to succeed on the fields of battle.

Hitler became alarmed. The "flower of German manhood" had been badly deflated in World War I, but he was further alarmed by the fact so many of the "best Germans" had in the 19th Century emigrated to America. They became farmers and settlers in Minnesota, Michigan, and throughout the Midwest. Worries that they would not fight for America in the Great War proved false. By 1929, he was shown newsreels of American sports exploits. Hitler blanched when he saw numerous All-American football players at Michigan, baseball stars, and others were German-Americans with names like Schultz and Gehrig. He knew his plans for world take-over would have to be achieved not by defeating the wounded British, but by overcoming the "sleeping giant," America. If so, he knew we would be highly formidable. Our sports dominance foreshadowed military dominance.

The American economy exploded. Never in history had the masses, the "regular public" been able to live so well as America in the 1920s.

Jim Murray's Uncle Mike bought a home on Pequot Avenue, a "lovely old place with cupolas hanging off it and elm trees all over the yard," wrote Murray in his autobiography. It was filled with papers.

"What's this?" Uncle Mike inquired of the real estate man. He determined the previous owner was "a slob." Uncle Mike instructed him to burn all the papers. They were the writings of the famed playwright Eugene O'Neill, author of the classic _Long Day's Journey Into Night_.

Jim's father was a druggist. That was the same profession held by Clyde Morrison, the father of a great American Murray admired, then growing up in Southern California. Clyde Morrison's son became John Wayne. Murray's father lost his business. He divorced his mother. According to lore, Mr. Murray was arrested for selling "bootleg" whiskey without a "prescription." During Prohibition, one of the ways to buy liquor was by prescription from the pharmacy, thus engendering the term "medicine" for alcohol.

"Dad simply paid off the wrong people," recalled Murray.

Irish stereotype or no, Mr. Murray was a drunk. Jim discovered this when he went to boxing matches with him. His father constantly went to the "water cooler." Each time he returned, his eyes were redder, his gait less steady, his speech slurred. The "water cooler" was filled with "bath tub gin." It was young Murray's first realization that Prohibition "prohibited" nothing. It infused his image of the fight game for the rest of his life.

For this among other reasons, Jim was sent to live with his grandparents. If life with father was unhappy, life with his grandparents and numerous uncles was glorious. The house was filled with banter, betting and sports enthusiasm. It was the training grounds of a young columnist. Jim found them to be funny and irreverent. His earliest recollection was of Jack Dempsey's boxing matches. Jim found the heroes of the New York sporting scene to be gods. Later, when he met the likes of Dempsey and Carl Hubbell, he practically genuflected in their presence.

Sports dominated his life from the beginning. His father, uncles and grandfather took him to the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium for games and boxing matches. He listened to Ted Husing and Graham McNamee's broadcasts on a crystal set radio. He claimed to have learned math by computing earned run averages and batting averages. His arithmetic teachers were not the nuns at his parochial school, but the daily league standings, where he learned to determine how many games St. Louis trailed the Giants out of first place. It took Murray forever to learn the Apostle's Creed, but compound fractions came easily by virtue of its necessity to sports statistics.

Murray experienced two bouts of chronic illness in his youth. When he was only three or four years of age, he experienced what was then called "Saint Vitus' Dance," which could also be called a nervous breakdown. Later he had a more serious run-in with rheumatic fever. This was not to be trifled with. One year before his birth, a flu epidemic spread in part by soldiers returning from the war killed 50 million people. Childhood diseases were rampant in the 1920s.

Pleurisy and pneumonia complicated his recovery. The Catholic Church administered last rites. The young boy hovered between life and death. Unable to get out of bed long before the age of television, he amused himself by reading. He did not merely read about sports. Adolf Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ was an international Best Seller of the mid-1920s. John Gunther recognized he was a political figure to be reckoned with. Murray claimed to know all about Hitler before most Germans did. He read about the long military traditions of the German people, developing his lifelong fascination with "the Hun." He would inculcate his writings with militaristic descriptions of football teams "on the march." He developed romantic notions of Ireland, which under Michael Collins recently gained independence. Murray corresponded with Irish Prime Minister Eamon De Valera.

He read all the great sports and adventure stories for young men; Jack Armstrong, Frank Merriwell, _The Rover Boys_ , Lester Chadwick's _Baseball Joe_ series, Zane Grey, and others. Murray never had a desire to play professional sports. When he recovered from bed rest he did play baseball in school, and even made the freshman team at Trinity College, but his dream was to be a fight promoter.

"Don't think, you can only hurt the ball club," was a common refrain of managers. Murray said his vivid imagination would have been his undoing as an athlete. He knew he would always think about the importance of the game, his mind filled with statistics informing him the odds against success, thus preventing him from achieving any. Dodgers announcer Rick Monday often recalled teammate Rollie Fingers, who was so "dumb he didn't know any better" than to throw a "yak slider" on three-two, striking out a man out with the bases loaded. Murray knew all too well the dangers therein.

Murray enjoyed being a spectator. He roped off a ring with clothesline and organized boxing matches of neighbor boys. He occasionally participated if a substitute was needed until a kid named John McMahon pulverized him. Some of Murray's earliest sense of _pathos_ for the "man in the arena" came from an eternal bout, lasting two minutes waiting for the bell to ring, all the while his nose bleeding, lip cut, knees made of rubber, and "trying not to cry."

This experience helped Murray form an aversion to psychiatry. You just get back up and keep swinging. Football coaches call it time to "suck it up." Sports taught him these lessons. Told later in life he had "issues" stemming from being "dumped" on his grandparents at an early age by his parents, Jim just said as far as he was concerned he was loved, even "spoiled." He learned to adapt, which he said all children are capable of out of necessity. Told he lived on the "wrong side of the tracks," he felt instead to be one of the "luckiest guys in the world" living next to railroad tracks. Years later, Murray's description of a train whistle in the dark night gave a sense of faraway seduction to his writings. When he moved to fancier digs in West Hartford he found it far less exciting than life at the tracks or the lumberyard.

Murray was highly disciplined from an early age. In his autobiography he returned to the theme of "psychobabble." He was told he toed the line because his situation was precarious. If he slipped up he would be shipped off to a reformatory or some such unwanted destination. Murray rejected that theory. He was organized, intelligent and boring by nature, but surrounded by opinionated Irishmen. He became observant and a great listener. He saw the whole picture.

Murray formed a conservative point of view this way. He listened to the Irish constantly complain of "slumlords," but rejected the notion they were rich folks extorting money from the poor in a zero sum world of haves and have-nots. Accompanying his grandfather to repair the houses he rented out, young Murray observed that the tenants often damaged the property through drunken rages and fights. Sub-standard dwellings were most often the fault of the tenant, not the "slumlord." Murray always saw empty bottles stacked to the ceiling. It was the "slumlord" who repaired their damages, not the other way around. They often did not pay rent.

"Jim took great pride in property," said his widow, Linda McCoy-Murray. "It was something you have pride in and take care of, whether it be houses, the family cars. People would go into those apartments his grandfather owned during the Great Depression and they'd pull the toilets away from the wall. There'd be holes in the wall. Jim just hated people on the dole, the welfare state. If you didn't own something you took no pride."

But on October 29, 1929, the tables began to turn. On that infamous Black Friday, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Jim Murray was not yet 10 years old. He had been fed the false notion that all was well. Despite coming from a broken home and living next to the railroad tracks, he was convinced "the poor" were somebody else. The following decade hit him like a ton of bricks. The Great Depression shaped Murray's outlook on life forever.

Economists and political scientists differ on the extent and effect of the Great Depression. Using some statistical measures, it never actually ended until after World War II. The exploding economy of the 1920s trickled to a standstill. Government programs replaced _laissez-faire_ financial policies.

Sports and Hollywood (spurred by the "talkies" replacing the silent film era) became escapes of the American public. Some Americans found solace in religion, but many turned from the long-held belief that America was the new Promised Land, a Christian nation given special favor by God. Communism and its atheistic notions of a man-made Utopia found root during the Great Depression.

Adolf Hitler was a keen observer of America. Instead of making note that, despite the economy the U.S. continued to churn out dominating athletic heroes, he instead determined that the Depression weakened our military, our national resolve, and our willingness to defend a "failed" Democratic-capitalist system. He went forward with his war plans. Had the United States not appeared so weak in the 1930s, it is highly possible Hitler never would have tried to take over the world in the first place.

The lessons of the Great Depression were not lost on young Jim Murray. It meant "you never trust the system again," he wrote in the second line of his **1993** autobiography. When he went on a payroll, he never went off one until the day he died.

The Great Depression made Murray into a "good soldier" willing to "swallow guff" because he knew what unemployment did to marriages and families. He stated that in 1939, had somebody offered him a contract paying him $32.50 a week the rest of his life, he would have signed the paper without hesitation. People who said money was not important "always had plenty of it," he noted. Murray was a "terrible businessman" who never argued over a contract.

After Black Friday, Murray's father and two sisters moved into their crowded tenement. Four families shared a one-bathroom dwelling. Murray's mother lost her job and had to move in with her family, but without her daughters. The irrepressible Murray managed to make "lemons out of lemonade." Calling it his "Broadway phase," he began writing plays, pressing his sisters into chorus girl duty. He called one of his creations the _Nevertheless Show_.

His grandfather's house was "standing-room-only" . . . the "roster" consisted of himself, his two sisters, his divorced father, his grandparents, two cousins and two uncles, including, of course, Uncle Ed, the one who cheated at dice, a man so bored by work that "he couldn't even stand to watch people work," according to Rick Reilly in a marvelous 1986 Sports Illustrated profile.

Jim roomed with his Uncle Frank, who owned a diner and dance hall. They stayed together in a "made-over attic." Frank was a character who smoked fat cigars and told ribald tales. He loved the fight game. Jim's Uncle Ed was a gambler, perhaps the original "Fast Eddie." These slick-talking characters became refrains in a Damon Runyon world described over and over again by Jim Murray for decades.

Eddie occasionally brushed with the law, usually for minor vices. He was one of those fellows who believed "working stiffs" were fools. A James Cagney look-alike with a sixth grade education, Eddie became the "black sheep" of the Murray household. He fought with his brothers, scandalized his sisters, and loved to drink. Young Jim loved the guy. Over time, as Jim grew older he quarreled with him. In learning to stand up to his uncle he came to an understanding of human nature. As Jim became a teenager, he asked Uncle Ed to teach him the intricacies of gambling and dice tossing. He refused, pointing to the schoolbooks in Jim's hands.

"You'll make more money with them than you'll ever make with a pool cue," he told him.

Murray liked to write. His first recognized work was a 50-word essay on his handpicked American Legion all-star team. For winning the contest, he received a razor. He was 10.

When Jim worked his way through college, he once saw Ed at an illegal gambling house called the Greek American Club. Ed admonished his nephew, saying these sorts of places were for low-lifes, not bright, smart kids like him. Eventually, young Jim came to realize that while Ed spent his life looking for "marks," in the end Ed was the "ultimate mark." He lived a destructive lifestyle.

When World War II hit, the factories around Hartford brimmed with activity. Ed increased his gambling operations, but the authorities began to crack down on those trying to swindle soldiers and government workers. He moved his operation to Florida, but was in over his head dealing with big-time Mob operators. Eventually he came back to Hartford, but one night ran into trouble when he wrapped his car around a streetcar pole. When the cops investigated, they were directed to Jim, but he was innocent. Everybody just clammed up. In the end there was not enough evidence to charge Ed or anybody else. It was the "code" of the streets.

It was Ed who sensed it was time for young Jim to lose his virginity. He took him to a brothel in New York where a gum-chewing hooker named Rosa showed him the "promised land." He taught him that most of the fights were fixed. Jim was formed in large measure by these facts of life. Between Ed and his parochial school education, he came to understand the nature of man, or what Bible scholars call Original Sin. Some of the "words to live by" Ed taught his nephew included:

"Never bet on a dead horse or a live woman.

"Never take money from an amateur – unless he insists . . .

"Never play a house game whether it is a race track, a roulette wheel, or just a tired guy cutting a pot . . .

"Never play cards with a man with dark glasses or his own deck . . .

"Never make change for a guy on a train . . .

"Never play a man who's better than you . . .

"Never buck a slot machine – they don't make them for _you_ . . .

"Never play a guy named 'Lucky' – at anything . . .

"Take your time chalking your cue – they'll wait."

Eddie passed away at age 51. Years later, Jim recognized him as the stereotype of a million East Coast small timers in _The Hustler_. When he met "Minnesota Fats" he found out he was really "New York Fats," a fellow named Rudolf Wanderone, who was rotund and sweaty, married to a voluptuous women he understandably did not trust.

When New York Fats found out Jim was from Los Angeles, he identified him as somehow symbolic of the movie industry. He complained to him "them Hollywood bastids" made use of his life and likeness in the movie, starring Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman. Told he was going to sue 20th Century Fox, Murray gave Wanderone sage advice. He advised a lawsuit against a movie studio was an exercise in futility. Instead, he should "own" the character. Wanderone did just that, identifying himself as "Minnesota Fats." He made good money as a TV billiards celebrity. Murray felt badly for his Uncle Ed, who was cut out of the same cloth but never cashed in.

Hartford is halfway between Boston and New York City. The pull and glamour of the Big Apple was impossible to ignore. Murray saw Babe Ruth hit a home run. New York was Yankee Stadium; Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio; the Giants vs. the Dodgers; and heavyweight boxing matches at Madison Square Garden and the Stadium. Murray described walking down the hill from the Grand Concourse, seeing the House That Ruth Built for the first time. He recalled it being tantamount to Lancelot seeing the Holy Grail glimmering in the distance.

During those Depression-era days, round-trip train fare to New York City cost $2. Murray stayed at the YMCA for $.25 cents, and ate T-bones costing half a dollar. A box seat at the Stadium cost $1.65. All of this was "big money" in those days. Murray's first Major League game was a double-header between the Yankees and Philadelphia Athletics on Labor Day in 1934, the heart of the Depression. Connie Mack's dynasty was gone, having traded Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Jimmy Dykes and other stalwarts in order to meet payroll due to the Depression. Only Jimmie Foxx remained an Athletic.

With rain threatening, Ruth hit what Murray estimated to be about his 700th career home run. The crowd was modest. There were cheers as Ruth trotted around the bases, and that was it. Murray and his companion, Alvar "Red" Craft, looked at each other. It was anti-climatic. After hearing for years and years about the mighty Babe, Murray expected great fireworks. It was a lesson that stuck with Jim Murray throughout his career.

"It was, looking back on it, my first lesson that the event itself had to be dramatized," he wrote. "We were there, in a sense, because we had been lured there by years of purple prose. The home run itself was hardly a cataclysmic event. But Grantland Rice made you think it was."

After Ruth's shot, the rain came down hard. This horrified Murray. If the game were rained out before it was made official after five innings, it would not count. The teams played the entire double-header in a downpour because they refused to lose the gate receipts to refunds. Murray's early experiences with big league stadiums were wet ones. A year later he ventured to the Polo Grounds, but the double-header was rained out.

He turned his attention to the Red Sox. Owner Tom Yawkey was unable to match the Yankee payroll. The egalitarian Murray was formed by this reality. He began viewing the Yankees as a hegemonic sports empire. His sense of fairness was insulted. Years later he wrote a piece for _Life_ magazine called "I Hate the Yankees," finding fault with their riches and power in favor of the little guys. He also wrote "rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel."

That statement became one of the most famous in baseball history, only it was not attributed to Jim Murray. It was credited to Red Smith, before Murray perhaps the leading sports columnist in the nation. Of the discrepancy Murray simply stated, "Journalism is, at best, an imprecise science."

But Murray's ventures to big league stadiums were few and far between. They cost money he did not have. He returned to Hartford and followed minor league ball. Through this he came to understand how difficult it is to make it. Many fine prospects passed through, but only one, Sebastiani Sisti, **ever** played in the Major Leagues. He hit an undistinguished .244 lifetime.

In 1938, when he was 18 years old, Murray's father took him to the World Series between the Yankees and Chicago Cubs. According to Murray, even the Yankee Stadium crown booed the home team as they relentlessly destroyed Dizzy Dean and the Cubs in four straight lopsided games. Murray's "hatred" of the Yankees and all they stood for was complete. He was a Depression kid who rooted for the underdog.

When it came to football, an Irish Catholic kid like Jim Murray gravitated to Notre Dame. Prejudice against his religion and even national origin was still quite prevalent. It got worse in the 1920s after a period of improvement. The potato famine of the 19th Century led to widespread Irish immigration to America. With that came widespread resentment. World War I slowed European immigration, but the Apocalyptic nature of the fight, combined with a modern age infused by flappers, jazz and a new sexuality, aroused strong Evangelical emotions. In the Midwest and South, Protestant passions aroused the strong anti-Catholicism that spurred Knute Rockne to turn Notre Dame into veritable barnstormers. Murray said some people thought "Catholics should be drowned at birth."

Notre Dame was _the team_ on the East Coast. After them came Army and the Ivy League. The National Football League took years to catch up. Because the Irish played USC, Jim Murray quickly became well aware of the Trojans' football greatness. The University of Southern California was the only school competing evenly with Notre Dame. Murray continued to root hot and heavy for Notre Dame, but like any good Irish fan developed a grudging respect for Southern Cal. This respect and knowledge of the school's traditions served him more than well in later years in Los Angeles. But it was not until the 1940s, when Murray's world expanded beyond his Irish neighborhood and Catholic parish, that he realized love of the Fighting Irish was matched by equal parts hatred of them.

Murray got a lesson in the cross-pollenization of ethnicities, rivalries and friendship. He be-friended an Italian kid named Joey Patrissi. Joey was a Sicilian who threw left-handed. He was convinced the best players were southpaws. Murray was an Irish rightie, firm in his conviction that right-handers were superior. Joe DiMaggio was an Italian right-handed slugger who broke orthodoxy. Ted Williams was a part-Irish lefty. He helped disabuse Murray (and Joey) of their natural prejudices.

Murray's relationship with Patrissi helped form his political and professional choices. Sports, he discovered, could be discussed with great passion and conviction, but with little real rancor. Religion, politics and race; that was a whole different story. It was one of the reasons he gravitated to sports writing. When he covered Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he once interviewed famed director George Stevens. Stevens was unreceptive until the discussion turned to baseball, whereby he happily named his favorite all-time players. Only when Jackie Robinson entered the game did the nature of sports fandom and reporting begin to change. In the 1960s Murray was willing to transition from a neutral "fan" to a partisan when the issues mattered.

Long before Strat-O-Matic or "fantasy baseball," Murray created a baseball board game using a standard deck of cards. He tinkered with them until they resembled real-life averages and probabilities. As he grew older, he discovered his statistics, while not as offensively exciting as he wanted, more often were accurate. He never lost his childlike fascination with games.

"I suppose I never grew up," he wrote in **1993**. "That's all right with me. That's the nice thing about sports. You can be Peter Pan." Real life never seemed to affect Murray prior to his arrival in Los Angeles in 1944. He gravitated to reporting in Connecticut as a campus correspondent for the Hartford Times while in college, then as a general assignment, police and Federal beat reporter with the New Haven Register from 1943-44. He graduated from Trinity College in 1943.

Trinity was a mere extension of his childhood, which despite the Great Depression and brushes with more than a few unsavory characters, was remarkably innocent. He never left Hartford. Trinity was more of the same; a Catholic institution absent the sort of rowdiness or sexual hi-jinx of a more worldly institution. But Jim Murray read books featuring European history. He wanted to be a war correspondent covering the front lines in Europe or the Pacific, but rheumatic fever in his youth made him 4-F. He was very disappointed. Since he could not see Europe, he endeavored to move far away.

"I wanted to be as far away as I could when the casualties started coming in," he said. "I didn't want any mothers leaning out the window and saying, 'Here's my son with a sleeve where his arm used to be. What's the Murray boy doing walking around like that?' "

Murray would soon discover a very worldly world.

". . . Beyond the darkness the West"

"I think Jim Murray saw California the way many outsiders do," recalled his longtime friend, Los Angeles City Coulcilman Tom LaBonge. "Those of us who grow up here take it for granted. Others see this image, and they come out here, and they find it. The Rose Bowl, 90 degrees on New Year's day, snow-capped peaks in the distance. It's like a Frank Capra movie, Shangri-La."

Indeed, this image had been painted to millions long before Jim Murray made the trek west. The Los Angeles Times printed a mid-winter edition, distributed nationally, filled with glorious imagery of January sun-bathers, low-hanging fruit, and all other inducements, but always appealing in that while it was exotic, it was not that exotic. In L.A. the people looked just like the Midwesterners and Southerners they left behind. The promotions were tinged with subtle racism, referring to the Southland as the "white spot," WASP, Christian, All-American. San Francisco, on the other hand, was considered rough-hewn, union-heavy with grubby dock workers and Socialists, its Barbary Coast bars and brothels a distinctly un-holy environment.

1944 was a time when California seemed to be a completely different country, almost a different continent, from the rest of America. This conception still held to some extent. The story of California; its growth and rise as an important state politically, culturally and in all other ways, is inexorably tied to Jim Murray's story. Murray was drawn to the place as were millions of Easterners. They were searching for . . . something. A dream, a vision, a new way.

Over the previous century, people were drawn by many things, some more concrete than others. They were drawn by gold, which was found in the foothills near Sacramento. They were drawn by a peaceful new life after the turbulence of the Civil War, slavery and Reconstruction. They were drawn by warmth and sunshine after desultory Eastern winters. They were drawn by second, third and fourth chances, an opportunity to re-invent themselves. They were drawn by Hollywood, by sports success, and the wild surf. They were drawn by beautiful women and happening nightlife.

Many tried to put into words what this experience meant. Some, like John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair, painted a grim picture, disabusing the notion of an egalitarian paradise, preferring instead to say that capitalism was a failure. But most tried to describe the openness of the place, the expanse of the West. Murray was attracted to this notion, although this form did not generally inculcate his writings. Perhaps the man who best described it was Jack Kerouac. An East Coast native, he came out west after World War II, describing it in a new free form writing style in his classic _On the Road_.

"Beyond the glittery street was darkness and beyond the darkness the West," Kerouac wrote of his wanderlust. "I had to go." Then there was Jim Murray who, while not single-handedly doing so, as much as anybody symbolized the changes that came to the Golden State and its most important city, Los Angeles.

The story of California has always been one of by myth and lore, from the 1849 Gold Rush to the endless strands described in Beach Boys songs. It was a state where people re-made themselves. On the East Coast, people were identified by their ethnicities, religions, family connections, and place in society. A business failure more often than not meant just that, failure. It could be a stigma never rebounded from. In California, Eastern failure was just "preparation."

The nature of California was formed in the 30 years after discovery of gold in the late 1840s. Many people are unaware of the profound influence of the Civil War on the state. Technically, California supported the Union and even sent troops to fight, but for the most part the state was unaffected by its strife. This made it a place to escape to from previous acrimony. But war politics could not be avoided. It started with the Trans-Continental Railroad.

The building of the railroad started before the war and was completed shortly after it ended, but North-South politics had a profound impact on its building. The main advocate of the railroad was a Republican Senator from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. His largest contributors were the railroads. The Trans-Continental Railroad were actually two competing lines, both run not by the government but by private enterprise. It was a great competition to see who would finish first, with great benefits to the winner. However, government cooperation was essential.

A look at the map reveals the easy way to build a nationwide east-to-west line would be through the Southern states, below the rugged Rocky and Sierra Mountain ranges. It would connect through the prairies of Texas, to the deserts of Arizona and Southern California, most of which is flat, easy terrain. Its ultimate destination would be the sleepy pueblo of Los Angeles, which would instantly become a major international hub of commerce.

Senator Lincoln adamantly opposed the idea. Why? If it were built through Southern states, slaves would erect it. For reasons that history has made quite obvious, Lincoln did not allow that to happen. Instead, the railroad was built by . . . the Chinese. The powers that be saw they built the Great Wall of China and determined if they could accomplish that, they could build the railroad. They were right.

The building of the railroad over the Rockies and Sierras, leading not to Los Angeles but to San Francisco, shaped the future of California in ways felt today. Completed shortly after the Civil War, it connected a nation, making it possible to traverse the continent in a matter of days instead of months. Coming on the heels of so much displacement due to war deprivations and Reconstruction, it offered sometimes irresistible opportunity to start a new life.

Northerners, often from Boston and New York, had the ways and means to take the railroad to San Francisco. Their customs and politics became the dominant customs of San Francisco. They tended to be liberal and secular. An "anything goes" mentality pervaded San Francisco, given the moniker Barbary Coast because of its freewheeling immoralities; prostitution, gambling, human sin.

Over time, the railroad lines connected the coastal cites of San Diego and Los Angeles with San Francisco. Later, Southerners and Midwesterners began traversing the country to California. Repulsed by the Union influence and liberalities of San Francisco, they settled on Los Angeles. Its warm climes and mystic scenery gave it a Shangri-La quality they identified as a new Promised Land. Los Angeles was considerably more conservative and Christian.

Before the Giants and Dodgers, or USC and Cal, the two California cities were natural rivals because the people who lived there were considerably different. San Franciscans looked down on Los Angelenos. Los Angelenos thought San Franciscans to be elitists.

At first the "rivalry" more resembled England quashing a colonial uprising, absent real violence. San Francisco became an international port of call. Los Angeles was little more than a Catholic mission, a Spanish pueblo. The first hint of change came in 1880 when the University of Southern California was founded in a mustard field in a fashionable residential neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, which in those days was just about all there was of Los Angeles. There was no "downtown" beyond a Mexican neighborhood centered on Olvera Street. Beyond the USC campus were orange groves to the sea. To the northeast, canyons, arroyos and mountains. To the east, endless desert.

But USC was the first private university in the West. It was the very first event in Los Angeles meant to say to somebody, "Hey, look at me, I am a city." But the founding of Leland Stanford, Jr. University, built by one of the railroad barons, quickly displaced USC. Football was popularized. A rivalry between the University of California and Stanford assigned imprimatur to both colleges. In 1905 Stanford was called "national champions" by some services. From 1920 to 1923, California's Wonder Teams saw few if any equals in all the annals of grid history.

But in the 1900s, Los Angeles made another bid for recognition. The railroad did not make it the first destination, not merely to avoid the slave issue, but also because there was little fresh water there. Lakes, rivers and mountain snowmelt surrounded San Francisco. But William Mulholland, the chief engineer in Los Angeles and one of the so-called "city fathers," was determined to make his town a world class one, as well. He determined a plan to bring in fresh water. An ambitious aqueduct was built diverting millions of gallons of drinking water from the Owens River Valley. Controversial, oft vilified as in the film _Chinatown_ , it ranks with the building of the railroad among acts of American ingenuity simply unthinkable in any other country.

Eventually, the aqueduct spawned such projects as the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Thus did the West and the South modernize. It was this modernization that enticed Easterners like Jim Murray to come give it a try. Murray was really ahead of the curve, coming in 1944. The war was not over yet, but two world wars were really early "advertising posters" for California. Soldiers trained in the state during and after World War I. General George S. Patton predicted correctly that war with Germany would first be fought in desert conditions, as in North Africa. He trained tank men in the sands east of Los Angeles.

Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and nurses traveled through L.A. and San Diego. Many fell in love with it. When World War II ended, they moved there. The automobile was now king. Eventually, a Federal highway system brought an influx of new citizens as the railroad did a century earlier.

From the earliest beginnings, sports were an integral part of life in the West. The Cal-Stanford rivalry was a big hit with national implications from the earliest times Walter Camp decided such a thing as national implications existed. In 1919, USC decided they, too, wanted to have "national implications." They hired "Gloomy Gus" Henderson. Henderson was the most successful high school coach in Seattle, Washington. The Alaskan gold rush created a population boom in the Pacific Northwest. This resulted in Washington being the so-called "football capitol" of America in the late 1900s and 1910s. Henderson recruited some of the best prospects from Seattle. The result was USC developing into a national power over night.

In the early 1920s, the West Coast dominated college football. Cal's Wonder Teams, Pop Warner's Stanford Indians, and the USC Trojans, were all powerhouses. The rivalries were as intense then as today, maybe more so. The stakes were high. Prestige was attached to collegiate football prowess.

In 1923, the Rose Bowl moved from a parade grounds in Pasadena into a new palace. Cal and Stanford also built huge stadiums. Stanford tried to lure the Rose Bowl up north. Pasadena responded by building the Rose Bowl to keep the game in the Southland. That same year, USC moved into the marvelous Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

In 1926 under new coach Howard Jones, USC separated themselves from the pack by starting a rivalry with Notre Dame. This made USC, not Cal or Stanford, the pre-eminent West Coast power. Later, when UCLA emerged as their biggest rival, Cal and Stanford responded with jealousy and false accusations. In 1932, Los Angeles literally chose not to "participate" in the Great Depression, hosting a successful Olympic Games showcasing USC and the city as an impressive international metropolis.

Southern California became a place that produced great athletes. It was its greatest export. East Coast sports fans rooted for players from the West Coast starring for the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and other champions. Various theories were offered. Some said the sunshine and vitamins in the low-hanging fruit literally made for bigger, stronger people. Others put forth the notion that the lure of Hollywood produced great athletes. Physically impressive men and women came out to make it in the movies, met each other, were married, and produced physically impressive offspring.

But perhaps the most important product in California was a sense of Democratic social justice. On Jim Murray's East Coast, neighborhoods were divided by race, ethnicity and religion. The Jews and the blacks lived separately. The Irish and the Italians were rivals. The Protestants were above all of them. But on the West Coast, integration was in place. It was advanced beyond other regions of the country or even the world. The University of Southern California's first All-American football player was a black man named Brice Taylor in 1925. When UCLA opened for business, they immediately welcomed blacks. Capacity crowds at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum watched games between the Bruins, featuring the likes of Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington, against the integrated Trojans. These were manifest social statements.

Who built Los Angeles? Above and beyond all other "city fathers" and visionaries was the Chandler family and their _Los Angeles Times._ The patriarch of the family was General Harrison Gray Otis, a Civil War soldier who rose to the rank of general and strongly supported American expansionism via the Spanish-American War. His daughter married a man named Harry Chandler, who succeeded his father-in-law as publisher. When it is said the Otis-Chandler family _built_ or _shaped_ L.A., that they did so in their _image_ , that is not an exaggeration. More than the moviemakers, the railroad men, the engineers and the aerospace executives, it was General Otis, the Chandlers, and their newspaper who did it by dint of pure _vision_.

"No single family has dominated any major region of the country as the Chandlers have dominated Southern California," historian David Halberstam was quoted saying in Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and the Their Times, a 2009 PBS documentary.

"They did not so much foster the growth of Los Angeles as invent it."

They created a brilliant marketing and advertising campaign, boosting the image of an Eden in the West mostly to Midwestern farmers, who they enticed to come to their fair city, where boundless land for the taking at cheap prices was available. They could abandon the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska for the sunny year-round climes of California.

In so doing, the Otis-Chandler family _created_ their own political constituency. They wanted white, Protestant, hard-working, honest men, knowing that such men were, naturally, conservative Republicans. They did not want Jews and Catholics. They did not want con men, grifters and gamblers. They wanted industrious farmers who would build they dream city. They got what they wanted.

The Otis-Chandler family and the _Times_ got what they wanted because _they_ were staunchly conservative Republicans, Protestant Christians (WASPs), adamantly anti-union, and wealthy. They were at the center of the social order, but lived quiet lives of good health. Drinking and excess were looked down upon. Every aspect of the city's growth could be attributed to, or was largely supported by them: the growth of USC, then the creation of UCLA, the building and growth of the docks and harbors, the building of the aqueduct, the expansion and modernization of downtown, the building of the Rose Bowl and the L.A. Coliseum, the social order of Pasadena, San Marino and Los Angeles, the rise of the movie business, the expansion of the suburbs, the building of roads, highways and train lines, the erection of Union Station, and other civic landmarks. The politics of City Hall were controlled by the Otis-Chandler _Times_. The newspaper was bombed by union anarchists, which General Otis exploited for all he was worth to create not just a staunchly non-union company but hardcore union antipathy among the general population.

The Otis-Chandler _Times_ was all about boosterism. Through the Rose Parade, the Rose Bowl game, football, the Olympics, Hollywood and all attendant activity, they created a vision of a better life. The purpose – whether primary or secondary – was to attract millions of new Los Angelenos. These new citizens would subscribe to their newspaper, but also invest and buy into the land they owned and their many other enterprises they built or invested in. The Otis-Chandlers bought virgin land knowing it would be worth millions with the growth they promoted, which it did. If L.A. was a self-fulfilling prophecy, they were its Prophet Isaiahs. Their boosterism did not end at the Los Angeles city border, the L.A. County line, or anyplace for that matter. They built Southern California, wresting political, social and cultural power away from Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. General Otis despised San Francisco for its prostitution, drunken ways, gambling and inveterate immorality. He and Governor Hiram Johnson despised each other publicly. The Otis-Chandlers were fiercely protective of America, capitalism and private property rights. The rich who could afford to live at the ocean were the only ones deserving of it. It was not to be divided equally.

They promoted a robust, Theodore Roosevelt-vision of America as a major power, a military juggernaut, and a land of immigrants. The Otis-Chandler family and the _Los Angeles Times_ joined with William Randolph Hearst in a jingoistic, adventurous view of the American ideal. They promoted growth and business. When oil dominated the Southern California land boom of the 1920s, they backed it regardless of environmental issues or accusations of greedy capitalism run amok. They wanted to expand outward and build roads to accommodate the car culture they invested in. When two world wars came they supported entry and the building of adjacent military installations in the Southland and on its harbors. They welcomed the workers who backed the war effort and the soldiers who stayed to make a post-war life.

The center of the Los Angeles social order was San Marino, a wealthy enclave of the horse set near Pasadena. The Otis-Chandler family was its titular head. San Marino-Pasadena was the home of General George S. Patton. It was WASP, old money mixed with new, a social construct imitating the salons of Manhattan and Boston with a touch of Charlotte and Atlanta thrown in for good measure. It lacked _effete_ ways. Its people were rugged individualists. Many were military officers – hunters, horsemen - veterans of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. There was such a strong Southern culture even the children (like George Patton himself) carried the accents of their parents (General Otis, however, was a staunch Lincoln-Union man). The area's geography – rugged canyons, foothills, mountains - gave its young men and women ample opportunity to ride horses, fish, and live off the land. These traits marked almost all the Chandlers.

Harry Chandler's son, Norman Chandler took over as the third publisher of the _Los Angeles Times_. The current _Times_ retro-baroque-rococo downtown headquarters opened up in 1934. The Chandler dynasty was strengthened by the perfect social marriage of Norman to the Buffum's department store heiress Dorothy Buffum. It was like most of the Chandler marriages, if not arranged, approved. To be a Chandler (once Harry took over the paper and the family, they were _Chandlers_ , not Otis's) was to be at the very top of the list in Los Angeles. Invitations were not extended to just anybody. The family protected its name, its interests, its businesses, and its friends with a fierce pride, using the _Times_ as a bulwark of those protections.

Norman was a quiet, dignified man. Despite the power he wielded, he was enormously fair, lacked racial prejudice, and did not throw his weight around. He used his influence and got his way, but did not run a Tammany Hall-style political machine. Hypocritical or not, the Chandlers looked down their noses at the kind of corrupt machines run by the Democrats: Boss Tweed in New York, Joseph P. Kennedy in Boston, Tom Pendergast in Kansas City, the Mob boys in Hot Springs, Arkansas, or the Jim Crow South.

They believed in an honest, muscular, Christian form of Republicanism unique to the West. They made decisions for the community because they _were_ the community, but they were, at least most felt they were, benevolent . . . not dictators or emperors, not kings, but rather the ruling class ruling out of a sense of _noblesse oblige/_

The Chandler's were vehemently anti-Communist, determined to use their position and newspaper in the promotion of their city and state as nationally prominent. They were cheerleaders for Los Angeles and the American Way. The _L.A. Times_ was _not_ a great newspaper. It was considered a joke in some quarters. It was blatantly biased in favor of the Republican Party, locally and nationally. It was viewed as a bastion of conservatism fighting the Eastern establishment and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

There are two ways to look at the Chandler _Times_. Their detractors, then and now, would call them greedy, grubby land-grabbers, kingmakers, corrupt, selfish. Probably accurate, but not the whole story. It is true that the Chandlers, in league with William Mulholland and the other "city fathers," all but raped the Owens River Valley in order to create an aqueduct delivering the fresh water Los Angeles needed in order to grow into a metropolis.

It is true they orchestrated shady land deals in the San Fernando Valley, secretly buying thousands of acres, often at cheap prices, the true value unknown by the farmers they bought the land from.

It is true that they fought a violent war against unions, a class battle pitting their vision of freedom and capitalism vs. a "fuzzy" and "Eastern European" (read: Russian, Jewish) version of Socialism and anarchism; a jingoistic, race-baiting, Red baiting struggle fought via complete propaganda in the pages of the newspaper they owned.

It is true that the unionists bombed the _Times_ building, killing some 20 people, and it is equally true that while it was the work of a relative few, General Otis painted the entire nationwide union movement under a single brush, attaching blame to them with coast-to-coast coverage and implications. It is true that the Otis-Chandler family created a rivalry and hatred of San Francisco, the symbol of all they felt was unholy with their unions and Godlessness.

It is true that the Chandlers created sweetheart deals, benefiting all the way from the growth of the airline industry in Los Angeles, via recruitment of the Douglas Aircraft Company, working closely with Howard Hughes, and others who created what would come to be known as the Military Industrial Complex; all with a pay-off in untold billions to those on the inside.

It is true that they used the film industry not only for purposes of boosterism but also for "patriotic propaganda," always benefiting their hand-picked conservative Republican candidates. They were tight with MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, creating sweet scenarios. The movie people showed influential newsreels in their theatres promoting the Chandlers vision of L.A. These newsreels strongly opposed such leftists as the Socialist Gubernatorial Candidate Upton Sinclair, depicting foreigners with Russian accents supposedly poised at the state border waiting to enter California as soon as Sinclair or some other undesirable was elected.

It is true that while Harry Chandler, and later Norman Chandler, kept their hands clean, avoiding the fray of retail politics, their man Kyle Palmer was as much a kingmaker as any political boss in either party in the history of America. Palmer was a high-living Tennessean who used his Christianity when it served his purposes. He was a segregationist. He was "just a newspaperman." His titles and promotions were not grandiose, but his influence was immense.

Where a Joe Kennedy or Tom Pendergast made decisions in back rooms, Palmer used his paper to sway _public_ opinion. Ultimately, he used Democracy and created modern political marketing and campaigning tactics. But he did the bidding of the Chandlers. Nothing happened at City Hall or Sacramento that the Chandlers did not want to happen. Governors Goodwin Knight and Earl Warren could not make a move without the Palmer-Chandler- _Times_ approval. Ultimately Palmer created Richard Nixon.

David Halberstam, one of the great writer-historians, wrote about all of this in his seminal work _The Powers That Be_. Halberstam wrote of it in jaundiced manner. His politics swung to the left. He was amused at these tactics of a by-gone era, but clearly disapproved. When he wrote of it in the late 1970s, after Watergate, he certainly had reason to disapprove. But history in its stretch and scope allows for a greater, longer view.

There is a large constituency that will always read of the excesses of General Otis, the Chandlers and the early _Los Angeles Times_ , determining they were corrupt and it is good riddance they are gone. These are the people who take the simplistic view that in the culture clash between white settlers and native Indians, all moral blame is to be attached to the white settelers. But those settlers built the West with their blood, sweat and tears. They found something and out of nothing made it grand. They did things nobody else could do. Had they not built what they built, the world would be a lesser place.

The Otis-Chandlers understood this because they built L.A. out of nothing. They ruled because they had _earned the right_. It was not handed them. They had the vision. They built the aqueduct, the roads, did the drilling. It took hard work, money, investment, effort, and they were the ones behind it. Nothing was handed them. They felt they were doing "God's work" in the noblest sense of the concept. Indeed, they did view their role as spiritual, the country they inhabited a virgin land bestowed upon them by a benevolent Lord who deemed them worthy of it, a new "chosen people" given dominion over a New Jerusalem, and all the creatures that "creepeth upon the Earth."

They were infused by an evangelical fervor to accomplish their mission. Original Sin being what it is, they were subject to corruption because, as Lord John Dalberg-Acton observed, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." However, they had benevolent desires. They believed in America, her freedoms, her liberty, her Constitution. They believed a man could achieve the American Dream and no place more easily than in their Los Angeles. Their desire for wealth and power did not, at least in their minds, interfere with the idea that all were welcome to this opportunity. Otis and Palmer had their prejudices, but never enacted real roadblocks to this dream against blacks, Jews or Catholics as in the Jim Crow South. Norman Chandler and his offspring were outright liberal in their views in this area. All believed in the concept of a "rising tide that lifts all boats."

So, they used propaganda techniques. They over-stated American greatness and the paradise of Los Angeles. But even today their ways, while outrageous, still resonate with a certain kind of righteousness. First, they knew their enemies: Socialists, anarchists, Communists, the left, were lying and using far more outrageous propaganda. It was a war between good and evil, literally, and they were willing to over-state their cause because their cause was just.

For decades their excesses and those committed by those on their side of the political aisle were impugned by the left and the modern media that grew in opposition to them, but over time archives were opened, facts about Communism became available, that told us things even David Halberstam did not really know in the 1970s. There _were_ Communists in Franklin Roosevelt's and Harry Truman's Administrations. There _were_ Communists using their influence in Hollywood _._ The unions _were_ infiltrated and sponsored by Moscow.

100 million humans were murdered by this ideology, maybe more. In retrospect Harry Chandler and Louis B. Mayer winking at each other while newsreels disparaging Upton Sinclair played in movie theatres appear quite innocent. In fact, one is prompted to shout, "We should have done more. We should have fought them harder. We should have been more ruthless." All is fair in love and war, and it _was_ a war. The Otis-Chandlers knew this and, ultimately when all is examined, fought as soldiers on the right side of these issues. What excess was really not acceptable if it could prevent the slaughter of 100 million?

This does not even count World War II, a tragedy of epic proportions, but the truth is there were beneficiaries. Los Angeles, California, the _L.A. Times_ and the Chandler family were as much winners of this monumental event as anybody. It was a new world, their world. In the Robert Towne-Roman Polanski classic _Chinatown_ , Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) asks Noah Cross (John Huston) what he was ultimately buying with all his money.

"The future, Mr. Gittes! The future," Cross responds.

The Chandlers harnessed the future.

There were many reasons why men and women like Jim Murray came in droves to the West Coast. For Murray, he was looking for opportunity. Circumstances, some beyond his control really, led him to California. The natural landing place for an aspiring writer of his generation was nearby New York City. No doubt had he ended up there, his talent would have shown through. Murray would be counted among the great pantheon of Big Apple scribes running from Grantland Rice to Ring Lardner to Red Smith to Jimmy Cannon to Jimmy Breslin.

Perhaps it is merely a romantic notion to conceive that Murray sensed a change in California that drew him there. His later writings, touched with social _pathos_ and willingness to promote the cause of racial equality through sports writing, may have been spurred by the legend of USC, of Jackie Robinson, or a state that was unquestionably ahead of the curve. It was in California where a man or woman could earn his or her place through merit, regardless of family connection or even race. Instinctively, Murray was drawn to such an environment.

When Murray graduated from Trinity College in 1943, he was 23 years old. He was well educated and extremely literate. He was grounded by a Catholic education and life experience leading him to "do the right thing," to live as a moral man, to help others, to "love thy neighbor as thyself." But he was not naïve. The Great Depression taught him practical realities about money and security. His uncles, the pool halls and gambling dens of his Hartford youth, infused in him a wise guys' angle on things. He had been to New York City enough to have a big city understanding, and therefore to be worldly.

Perhaps his love of history and current events shaped him as much as anything. He read of Caesar's Rome, Alexander's Greece, of the British Empire and America's story. He was obviously well aware of events in Europe and the South Pacific. The newspapers and newsreels were filled with breathtaking descriptions of General George Patton "rolling like a juggernaut" through the beaten _Wehrmacht_ , heading straight to Berlin and eventual, ultimate victory. Announcers like William Shirer and Lowell Thomas used colorful descriptions of the war, a panoply of "blitzkriegs" and "lightning strikes." These descriptions would influence the eventual Murray writing style. He would borrow war imagery to describe a powerhouse that "was not a football team, they were the _Wehrmacht_ rolling into Poland in 1939." A team on a winning streak was "Patton's Army rolling through the Low Countries."

As a young man, his dream was to be a dramatist. "I didn't set out to be a sports writer," he wrote. "I was going to be Eugene O'Neill. Hemingway. Hell, Tolstoy. I was going to stand Broadway, Hollywood, the Old Vic on its ear." This well may have been what led him to Los Angeles. That was the place to write screenplays for Hollywood. All other considerations, of California's "egalitarianism" may well have played no practical consideration in Murray's "decision" to move there. In the end, fate and opportunity were his reasons.

Noir and marriage

Raymond Chandler (no relation to the newspaper family) wrote lurid novels about cops, corruption, and murder in the Los Angeles of the late 1940s. His and other like stories were captured in B movies of the era. This created a form of identity in Los Angeles. It was as if Hollywood drama and real life intersected.

Such was the case when a young woman on the fringes of the Hollywood scene named Elizabeth Short was murdered shortly after World War II. She was a marginally attractive brunette who hung out in L.A. bars. A lot of military personnel were in those bars at the time. She was not quite a hooker, but not quite on the up and up, either. She took money for "favors," which might be a dance or two, some companionship, maybe a little more. Like so many, she longed to get into the movies, hoping in her nocturnal wanderings she would meet a director, a producer, an agent; somebody who would take a liking to her, help move her up the ladder.

Most never make that connection. Eventually, they move on, getting married, taking a job, going back home. Elizabeth Short had the bad fortune of running into a psychopath. Not only was she killed, her body was actually sawed in half, left on display in an open field near Crenshaw Boulevard. Naturally, it made for enormous headlines and lurid photos. Between the Chandler novels and the "Black Dahlia murder," as Short was dubbed by the press, this became an enduring symbol of Los Angeles.

L.A. was the land of milk and honey, Shangri-La, Lotus Land, La La Land, even the Promised Land; whatever pejorative many gave it. But it was not Heaven. It had its sunny side, its USC Trojans glory, its movie star hype, its glamour and allure of youth and beauty and sex appeal, but it had a distinctively dark side. The "Black Dahlia" was its dark side. It was this dark side that in the beginning was Jim Murray's stock in trade. On the train bound for  Los Angeles,  Murray talked his way into a job as a reporter and eventually became a rewrite man for the Hearst-owned Los Angeles Examiner.

"Los Angeles was a wildly exciting place," he recalled, when he first went to work there as a reporter for the _Examiner_ beginning in 1944. "There was seldom a dull moment . . . I fell in love with Los Angeles then, an affair of the heart that I doubt I will ever outgrow and it was the _Examiner_ that brought us together."

This was a very instructive statement. Much of Murray's charm over the years would be his unrequited _love_ for Los Angeles. He would not be provincial. He would write about everybody and everything, no matter the geographical basis of the subject. But he took sides, and L.A. was the winner in his mind. He did not reminisce that the East Coast or, by approximation, New York was better, as many transplants did.

"Those were gory, glory days for  Murray," wrote Rick Reilly.

"There was seldom a dull moment," Murray recalled. "And if there were, the front page of the Examiner never admitted it."

He specialized in murders. He wrote ". . . we slept with our socks on, like firemen waiting for that next alarm." Once he covered a story about a little girl who was run over by a truck and lost a leg. Murray took the $8 he had left from his $38 paycheck and bought her an armful of toys.

The big paper in town was the L.A. Times. Secondary papers like the Examiner had to sensationalize the news in order to compete. Murray's boss was Jim Richardson, a "one-eyed, iron-lunged, prototypical Hearst city editor," he recalled. Richardson was a "tyrant," but recognized Murray's talent right away. He made Murray the youngest re-write man in the Hearst chain.

This irritated Reggie Tavener, a competing Examiner writer. Tavener once was L.A. Christian evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson's press agent. He told Murray she was a "practicing nymphomaniac." This may well have been the inspiration for the book and movie Elmer Gantry, which did not shock the public with graphic descriptions of the young woman's sexual meanderings, but rather used Burt Lancaster as a foil for Original Sin.

Tavener quit when Murray became Richardson's so-called "bobo." Murray and Richardson were able to score a scoop for their paper by identifying Elizabeth Short's body by process of a new technology called wirephotoing, which later developed into fingerprinting. The FBI had a lab in Washington and was able to determine who she was.

Richardson then instructed a reporter named Wain Sutton to telephone Short's mother in Massachusetts. "Don't tell her what happened," Richardson said. "Tell her that her daughter's just won a beauty contest at Camp Roberts. Then get all the information on her."

The mother gaily provided details of her daughter's life to Sutton. When Sutton had all the particulars, he put his hand over the phone and stared at Richardson. "Now what do I do?" he asked.

"Now tell her," Richardson "purred," according to the description Murray gave.

"You miserable son of a bitch," Sutton remarked. Richardson smiled.

They had theirs, a tremendous scoop, and one of the single most lurid tales ever told. Richardson was "such an unholy combination of Attila the Hun and a literary light," wrote Murray, that another rewrite man named Hank Sutherland once dubbed him "Half-Oaf, Half-Elf."

In 1947 John Reece, a City Hall reporter, was "inspired" by Richardson to write the following poem, called "The Rewrite Man."

"The rewrite man was writing the death

Of a miserable Skid Row whore

From the after effects of a drinking bout

Some two or three weeks before.

"The facts were simple and dull and brief

And he had it almost done,

When suddenly came the raucous voice

Of James H. Richardson.

" 'On that murder case,' the Great Man said,

'You can give it lots of play.

Go into the mystery angle, too,

For we're short of news today.'

"The rewrite man gave a startled cry

At the mention of mystery,

And, round-eyed, turned to the desk and said,

'Were you addressing me?'

" 'Of course,' said the Man, and his voice grew thick,

'Some merciless sadist slew

This innocent child of East 55th,

Though he probably loved her, too.

" 'Get into your lead that ghastly smile

Playing pitifully on her face;

And, in saying how she was slain, hark back

To the torso murder case.

" 'And somewhere high in your story tell

Of the marijuana ring

That made this maid in the seventh grade

A wretched, besotted thing.

" 'Oh, yes, in your opening sentence quote

MacArthur on the flag,

Ignoring the coroner calling her

A syphilitic bag.

" 'Write wistfully of the cocktail glass

That broke as her body fell.

The artist will alter the photograph

Of the gallon of muscatel.

" 'Mention the wilted, yellow rose

To tincture it with romance,

And refer somewhere to an evening gown,

Forgetting she wore no pants.

" 'The barroom bum she was living with

We'll call her mystery man.

And try to mention the Japanese

And the Communists, if you can.

" 'Get excited about the drama here

Of passion and crime and greed,

Write a good objective story, and

Get all of it in your lead.

" 'Give me the take as soon as you can,

I want to give it a look.

But don't start in till you've got the facts,

Then hold it to half a book.'

"The rewrite man, with a ghastly leer

That the Great Man didn't see,

Started again, and finished at last

At 25 after three.

"The climax came the following week;

He was gratified to get

The prize for the finest writing to

Appear in the overset.

"MORAL

"It served the bastard right, of course,

As philosophers will note,

For being a rewrite man at all

When he could have cut his throat."

This poem became an urban legend of sorts. Before the Internet allowed such things to maybe or maybe not be sourced more easily, it was passed around newsrooms from coast to coast. Murray said Reece was inspired to write it on a slow news day when Richardson handed Murray a note about a routine Skid Row suicide. Murray wrote a straight obituary. Richardson handed it back to him requesting greater "oomph."

Murray gave several stabs at it, all to Richardson's dissatisfaction. Finally Murray wrote, "John Jefferson, 51, tired of it all, stepped off a chair into eternity." Richardson looked at it and realized he had "driven me too far." He dropped the story in the wastebasket and told Murray to get a cup of coffee. There was a pathos to Murray and writing that did not lend itself to the sort of lurid, scandal sheet style of Jim Richardson and his ilk. Richardson realized then and there Murray's talents would lead him beyond this "ink-stained wretch" style of reporting, to greater things. Certainly Murray's compassion for humanity would shine brightly in his long career as a columnist.

"In many ways, those were my happiest journalistic years," Murray wrote. Despite Richardson's dark side, he had fun at the Examiner, a Hearst paper that the "literati looked down their noses at." Murray said the "world was in flames" from the paper's perspective. He saw the dark side of the City of Angels. It was good preparation for his Hollywood writing, which came a few years later.

"We told it all in dripping red headlines," he recalled.

L.A. was a kind of Camelot, Murray reminisced, a place every G.I. saw and pined to return to, the city serving up a "sensation a day." Sometimes people in his profession failed to see the larger picture. The day America stormed the beaches of Normandy, a press agent named Milt Stein came into the Examiner's offices. All he cared about was selling Shirley Temple's first screen kiss. When the article came out the next day alongside images of soldiers lying dead on the beaches of France many nasty letters ensued.

Murray covered a Las Vegas scandal in which an Air Force officer named Cliff Henderson jilted his wife in favor of a chorus girl. His wife shot him dead. During his stay in Vegas, Murray was a guest of Bugsy Siegel's at the Flamingo Hotel. Murray was stunned how handsome he was. One look at the Flamingo and he knew, no matter how rocky its early days, it would be a smash hit. It was.

While Siegel is known as the father of Las Vegas, his town was Los Angeles. It was the town Jim Murray hung out in. Murray saw Siegel hanging out at swank Hollywood nightspots with the Countess Di Frasso and film sirens. He took himself "too seriously," according to Murray. The Examiner insisted on calling him Bugsy, a term he hated. He protested vehemently. Jim Richardson henceforth referred to him in print as Benjamin (Don't Call Me Bugsy) Siegel.

But Siegel was murdered a year later at the Beverly Hills home of his mistress, Virginia Hill. Why? "Cost overruns," according to Murray. The Mob thought he was skimming from the top, but did not seem to realize this was a standard form of accounting among companies doing business with the War Department. All of this led to President Dwight Eisenhower's warning of the Military Industrial Complex years later. But the Mob was not the War Department.

The Office of Price Administration put a lid on war prices. Murray wrote what he said was his longest lead. "The long serpent of moving vehicles that was Connecticut's transportation system writhed in agony and seemed in imminent danger of paralysis today as government shutoff of gasoline dwindled supplies to a trickle."

On another occasion he wrote a lead about a young couple that committed joint suicide via a pact "a la Mayerling." It started out, "They tried to tell them they were too young . . ." Shortly thereafter, a popular song using Murray's lead as its title was written in "tin pan alley." "Maybe I should have gotten a cut," Murray deadpanned.

He covered the Overell trial in Orange County, forced to live in a Santa Ana hotel much of the time. A furniture heiress and her boyfriend blew up her parents because they objected to the boyfriend, but slick lawyering acquitted them.

"I became impressed with how fiendishly difficult it is to prove guilt in a capital case well defended," he wrote about a case some 50 years before the O.J. Simpson trial.

In 1945 a young lady named Gerry Brown arrived in Los Angeles from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was a fabulous pianist who had been featured in a radio show in her hometown. She hoped to make it in the entertainment business as a musician. She was unable to bring her piano with her, so she regularly went to a place called the 575 Club, located at 575 South Fairfax Avenue near Hollywood. She asked the owner, Cy Miller, if he would mind her playing on certain evenings.

She was a pretty, dark-haired girl with olive skin and large, luminous eyes. She had a quick smile, a great personality, and a lovely, expressive face. After Miller heard her play he offered a salary, but she did not want to be tied down to a schedule. She played for free. Gerry quickly developed a following at the 575 Club.

It turned out Jim Murray was a regular at the 575 Club. The young reporter, recently arrived in town from Hartford, Connecticut himself, was looking for a "drink and a pickup." Murray made advances. Gerry rebuffed him. Friendly repartee was as far as it went, but he was a regular and they were friendly.

One night Murray went on a double date with a friend, Ed Laurent and "two dental hygienists." For some reason this became the caricatured profession of single women on the make, but apparently was their actual profession. They headed out to the Paris Inn. At some point Murray found a phone and called the 575 Club to check on the action. Cy Miller told him, "I've got Gerry Brown here expecting you. I've convinced her you were crazy about her but I can't keep her much longer. She's skeptical. If you can get over here in the next five minutes, she said she'd like to meet you."

To the chagrin of the two dental hygienists, Murray "never flew out of a nightclub so fast in my life." So did Laurent, apparently unimpressed with them and preferring Murray's company, wherever it led them.

"I'm coming, too," Laurent said.

"Why?"  Murray asked.

"Because those two girls were mad enough to kill one of us, and it wasn't going to be you. I have just left the two maddest dental hygienists in captivity back at the table," he explained. Driving an 11-year old Pierce Arrow, Murray hit 6th Street, ran three stop lights, broke the speed limit by 20 miles an hour, and arrived at the 575 Club just as Gerry was leaving.

The rest is history. Theirs "was a 38-year date," wrote Reilly. "The Murrays appeared to be happiest at the piano, with Gerry playing (she was an accomplished pianist) and Jim belting out maudlin Irish songs."

"If the phone rang at two in the morning, you knew who it was," said Tom McEwen of  The Tampa Tribune. "It was the Murrays saying, 'All right, what do you want to hear?' And you'd say, 'Well, whatever you feel like.' And  Murray would break into "Galway Bay.' "

They had four children, three boys (Ted, Tony, Ricky) and a girl (Pammy). Murray made $38.50 a week when they were married, but was always employed, respected in his profession, and "upwardly mobile." He induced a raise to $50 when the Associated Press tried to hire him away.

Murray called Gerry "the most beautiful person I have ever known in my life," but it was her soul that Murray found most attractive. She was a truth-teller, his moral compass. After working for Jim Richardson, he needed something like that. To him, marriage to her was a "privilege."

Murray felt lucky to find love and marriage. Jimmy Cannon said he could not marry because he was wedded to his column, living in a mid-Manhattan hotel. That could have happened to Murray. But the first 15 years of their marriage were "right out of Ladies Home Journal," Murray wrote. Gerry had a position with a doctor. They were a team.

"Looking back, it was the best of times, probably the happiest of my life," Murray wrote in his memoirs, but added that memory is always assuaged by the prism of nostalgia. The tiny, sun washed apartment they lived in was too small, but when they moved to the affluent confines of Malibu and Brentwood he remembered "only the sunshine."

Show biz is not a business

In 1948 _Time_ magazine hired Murray to be their Los Angeles correspondent. 40 people were interviewed and considered. Murray was hired. It was not an easy decision. Murray flatly admitted that he loved working for the _L.A. Examiner_ , but moved to the stodgier, literate _Time_ for the money. He was signed on for $7,000 a year plus fringe benefits.

" _Time_ didn't linger at what happened," Murray wrote. "They wanted to know why it happened." They did not care about "hibiscus murders," but rather the "globally significant."

_Time_ and _Life_ magazines were at the heart of the huge media corporation run by Henry Luce. Luce was a global thinker, as was his wife, the respected international diplomat Clare Boothe Luce. Everybody wanted to write for them during this era. America was at the center of everything, the impetus of power, diplomacy and intrigue. If the Chandler family saw themselves as "shapers" of the American West, Luce and his ambitious wife saw themselves as molders of a sort in what Luce himself was just beginning to call the American Century.

If Harrison Gray Otis and the Chandlers who followed him viewed themselves as on a mission from God to shape and create a city and a state, to promote a country, to implement a new de Tocquevillian vision, a new way of thinking in which each individual can be a rugged individualist, his own king, unburdened by fealty to the state or monarchy; well, the Otis-Chandlers were small fry in comparison to Henry Luce.

If ever a man lived who viewed his holy mission in the world as one to promote the cause of America and with it a sense of global freedom and Democracy, it was Henry Luce. He was utterly evangelical in his enthusiasm to carry out this mission. He lived in precisely the right time and in precisely the right place to have the maximum impact on the world he seemingly ruled.

Luce was raised by his strict Christian missionary parents in China in the early part of the 20th Century. It was an austere, terribly exciting existence. His life was one of total discipline and purpose. His families' Christianity was Calvinistic, the strictest kind of Christianity. They believed in pre-destination. All good works were strictly acts demanded by a God who wanted only their complete worship. These works were not "points" on a Heavenly scorecard earning their way to eternal salvation. Each human was damned to hell. If it was the good pleasure of God in His eternal wisdom, his plan, then a person was graced by salvation by His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who paid for their eternal sins in whole. If a person had faith and performed good works, these were most likely signs they were saved by grace, but there was no guarantee. Faith was all you really had. To believe that any rights, Church customs or works "earned" one a ticket to Heaven was seen as the sin of pride or vanity, and could end up with the poor soul being told on Judgment Day, "I never knew you."

Luce saw total poverty and deprivation in China. What a task, to save the souls of these poor people, one by one. Of course, they could not save anybody's soul. If they were pre-destined in Calvinistic manner then they were saved. If it was Luce and his family who brought them to the Word this was His will. But the sheer magnitude of the country and the task left Luce with the completely Messianic conviction that God had tasked him with his greatest mission. He was special. The mission was so enormous only the most special of God's children could hope to carry it out. But how does a poor missionaries' son in China have this kind of reach, this kind of power and influence?

In America, of course. Seeing vast poverty and deprivation in China, he was painted the most glorious picture of America. It was the shining city on a hill, God's Promised Land, a paradise on Earth as it is in Heaven . . .

God guided him each step of the way. He was sent to private school in the U.S., made fun of because he lacked sophistication, wealth, manners or the slightest sense of family connection. But he was brilliant, so it was on to Yale. Somehow, his talents shone so brightly, his potential so great he was invited into Skull and Bones, an organization seemingly available only to the offspring of Senators, Presidents, and corporate chieftains.

Now given the imprimatur of connections, the reputation of brilliance, polished by Yale and considered a can't-miss young man of the world, he set out to make his vision a reality. He would spread God's word using new, sophisticated Western methods of mass communication. God's good pleasure would be made manifest by using the country He blessed above all other previous nations and empires, the United States of America.

Luce created Time and Life magazines. They were immediate hits. Then World War II started. His magazines were no longer dispensations of news, photography and popular culture. They were now heralds of righteousness in an epic struggle against Satanic forces. Luce never blinked an eye. He was destined in Calvinistic manner for this very purpose, just as George Patton realized he was in "precisely the right place, at precisely the right moment in history" to destroy the Third Reich and bring freedom to Mankind. Luce, Patton; they were mere conduits of God's will.

Luce was Rupert Murdoch times 10. He was the patron of the Republican Party and conservative America. He was a kingmaker who directed the GOP away from "Mr. Republican," Ohio Senator Robert Taft (son of President William Howard Taft), crafting the election of General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

But Luce took a particular interest in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his Westernized wife, Madame Chiang. He became their sponsors. China was his special mission, for obvious reasons. He used all the powers at his considerable disposal to help Chiang's Kuomintang defeat Mao Tse-tung's Communist hordes. Communism . . . atheism . . . in his beloved China. Surely this was Luce's reason for being.

After World War II, civil war sprung up in China. Chiang was defeated and China went Red. To Luce it was tantamount to failing God, to being cast into the lake of fire. Why? How? Recriminations on an international scale. But it was his falling out with his favorite correspondent, Theodore White, which symbolized Luce's role in the 20th Century.

White was a Jew whose talents were so great he overcame his religion, for Time was a WASP organization all the way. He was simply too good to keep down, but he found fault with both Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. They were not good leaders, the country was deprived, their military was in tatters, they were losing key battles and provinces to Mao's "Long March." To write openly of this was abhorrent to Luce, who needed to paint a glorious picture in order to keep sponsoring the Nationalists; money, political favor, military backing, public sentiment. Because White revealed the truth, Luce theorized at least in part, his beloved China was lost to the worst scourge ever to envelop humanity. His China was in hell.

Just as General Otis and the Chandlers can be criticized for their propaganda in building Los Angeles into their image of what it should be, Luce is roundly viewed as a jingoist of the worst order. His magazine, Time took a huge left turn after he left, even asking "Is God Dead?" in the 1960s. But just as the Chandlers fought anarchists, Socialists and their union soldiers, Luce fought Communism on a global scale. Just as David Halberstam did not know the full extent of Communist atrocities in the 1970s when he wrote disparagingly of the Chandlers in The Powers That Be, White surely had no clue what they were ultimately capable of in the 1940s or in his great work, Thunder Out of China.

Luce did. It was inherent, from his days in China, from his missionary work, from seeing evil up close, eye to eye, knowing it exists, what it is, how it works. He felt like St. John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. To non-believers and those whose politics are different from Luce's, his Pentecostalism is the product of a mad man, a nut who hears voices. To many who truly do believe, his worldview is crystal clear. This is as much a reason for the cultural divide as any, as it is virtually a chasm that cannot be crossed unless the Holy Ghost infuses the non-believer with Truth.

For Luce, a special knowledge reserved only for certain men and women, he among them, a vision, and the great frustration at seeing the intellectuals and dilettantes of this vain world, the Teddy Whites, who find only moral relativism and, unknowing at least in Luce's view, therefore do the devil's bidding.

Luce died in 1967. Mao's Cultural Revolution started one year before that. It is estimated that 55 million humans died under the Chinese Communists, mostly between 1966 and 1976. Luce was a man who saw this Apocalypse coming and tried to stop it before it happened. He was a prophet, but could not fully predict the horrors of it all. He knew Theodore White was "right," in that he was a good writer seeking the truth as a journalist, but he saw his own duty as being above that. He was a propagandist because God needed a propagandist, and saw White as the oh-so-smart, oh-so-sanctimonious fool whose good intentions paved the road to hell.

To work for Henry Luce was the pinnacle of his profession. Jim Murray took the opportunity.

"Murray longed to be a foreign correspondent – 'and wear a trench coat and carry a Luger' but when Time called with $7,000 a year, he took it," wrote Rick Reilly. "Over the years he worked on a dozen cover stories on such subjects as Mario Lanza, the Duke, Betty Hutton and  Marlon Brando."

Murray was assigned coverage of the comings and goings of the Hollywood film industry. Instead of writing _for_ Hollywood, he wrote _about_ Hollywood. In some ways it was _apropos_. He always preferred to be a spectator to a player. He liked watching and writing about sports more than actually playing the games. Now he was commenting on movies and movie stars, not subjecting himself to the whim of directors, actor's egos, shooting schedules, and the fickle opinion of the ticket-buying public. He had the security of a paycheck from _Time_. This fit his desires perfectly. He was not paid as well as a top screenwriter penning blockbusters, but he got a check every first and 15th of the month, whereby the screenwriter might go months or more in between gigs.

Murray arrived in what was still Old Hollywood. It was the movie industry first and foremost that put Los Angeles, California on the map. Hollywood was an international construct. Everybody knew the stars of the day. German soldiers discussed the merits of Betty Grable with American POWs. It was the new art form, America's contribution to world culture as surely as Greek plays, Renaissance art, and English literature.

D.W. Griffith's _Birth of a Nation_ (1915), while racist in content, was considered the first truly great film. In the 1920s, Rudolph Valentino, Tom Swift and Clara Bow were icons of the silver screen. When "talkies" came into vogue, the writer became a valuable commodity. Broadway suddenly was interested. The spoken words of the stage were now magnified a thousand-fold. Stars like John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper and Katherine Hepburn were larger than life. In 1939, Hollywood reached its apex with _Gone With the Wind_ leading a parade of classics that have long stood the test of time.

The Hollywood Murray found was still solidly the studio system. The age of the independent star, the _auteur_ director and the genius screenwriter were not yet a reality. A boy genius such as Orson Welles, trying to buck this system, found himself ground down by the studios. Slowly but surely directors like Frank Capra, Howard Hawkes and John Ford would emerge as independent visionaries, but the show biz world Murray found was dominated by moguls-slash-producers. The _producer_ was the visionary, the artist. Everybody else was an employee under his thumb. Such men were David O. Selznick and Irving Thalberg, all powerful neo-gods of a refined process, now an assembly-line industry rivaling steel and car production.

The power of moguls such as Cecil B. DeMille and Darryl Zanuck cannot be compared to anybody on the modern scene. A Cary Grant, a Clark Cable or a Humphrey Bogart achieved an illusory fame. They were certainly rich, operating on a high plane, but were completely controlled by the studios under whom they were contracted. Slowly but surely the William Morris Agency eventually began to negotiate contracts that gave them more independence and production control, but it was really not until the late 1960s that the studio system finally lost its great power in favor of artistic control by the actual _artistes_. Only then did individual actors, writers, and directors attain unimaginable wealth.

Jim Murray was the cinema correspondent for _Time_ magazine. This gave him considerable power. His opinion of an actor's performance, or viability of a film, helped make or break its nationwide box office potential. Murray loved it. He described himself as "movie-struck." Directors were constantly at his office, promoting themselves.

Henry Luce, the all-powerful head of _Time_ and _Life_ , decided that three or four times a year, his magazine cover should be graced by a movie figure, preferably a beautiful woman. It was the age of military heroes and politicians wielding power unseen since the days of Caesar Augustus. Be-ribboned images of Dwight Eisenhower or Douglas MacArthur mixed with statesmen such as Harry Truman and George C. Marshall. Often photographed from below, they appeared more like Washington monuments than flesh-and-blood people. Hollywood stars provided a relative human touch.

Murray was tasked with picking out the "next big thing" in show biz. To be selected for a _Time_ cover story was tantamount to instant success and credibility. It was a long, long ways from Uncle Ed and his gambling habits. Murray found himself mingling with, and courted by, the likes of Cary Grant or Marilyn Monroe. He had aisle seats for the Academy Awards and invites to the hot premieres.

"It was pretty hard to keep your feet on the ground in that rarefied atmosphere and I'm not sure I did," he wrote.

Frank Gifford was an All-American football player at USC at the time. Later a Pro Foothall Hall of Famer with the New York Giants, then a staple with Monday Night Football, "the Giffer" worked in the movies in the 1950s.

"Murray was a big USC fan," recalled Giffford. "He interviewed me or spoke or called me and would ask me things all the time. He originated out of New York and had a great sense of humor. He was one of those 'must read' people. He wrote about me a lot, starting with when I was at USC, maybe in my senior year. He'd come out to practice. Everybody liked him. He was a really good writer. I think he liked me. No one was afraid to talk to him for fear that he'd carve you up or something. He was not like that. Today they're all attack dogs.

"When I was at USC one of the great recruiting things they had going for them was there were so many people associated with the school within the movie industry. They could get you a guild card and work as extras. There was always extras work. You'd call SAG and they'd bring you out and we'd start at five o'clock in the afternoon. There were a lot of war movies in those days and the more hazardous the stunt or extra work, the higher the pay. What they considered hazardous for instance was rolling in front of a tank. I loved that stuff. I'd get $18.75 a day as an extra, what they'd call a 'bit of business' or a 'bump up,' then up you to as high as $75 or $100 a day depending on the hazard level. By the time I was ready to graduate, I was doing well in the films. If I was not drafted by the Giants or the Rams, I'd have stayed in the movies, I might have done something else. I worked in the studios when I came back from my first year in pro football getting my degree in night school."

Then came television. The impact of TV on America and the world has few rivals. Perhaps not even the Internet affected life as much as television. It certainly created paralyzing fear. At first, movie moguls believed TV would destroy the big screen, as "talkies" ended the silent era. Television created a heavy scythe. Aside from box office receipts, it threatened sports attendance, radio coverage, newspaper subscriptions, and the way politicians did business. It was all seeing, instantaneous, and naked. Eventually, TV came to be a tool working hand in hand with other media, but its immediate affect was elimination of the B movie.

Just as a music concert had lead-up bands, or a big fight was preceded by smaller bouts, people spent entire afternoons and evenings in movie houses watching not merely the feature attraction, but a smaller film showing some hopeful of the future. Hollywood went for blockbusters, such as _Cleopatra_ or _Ben Hur_. The B movies became _Rawhide_ or _Maverick_ on the small screen. Eventually, TV created more work for actors and writers than before, but at first this ancillary benefit was not understood. Technology was constantly improving. Cinemascope made the theatre experience vastly improved over TV. Three-dimensional films were tried but did not catch on.

Murray's marching orders were to find sex goddesses to grace his magazine's cover. This was difficult. Leading men such as William Holden, Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando and Paul Newman dominated the era. The top-of-the-line actresses were talents but not "cheesecake" material: Betty Davis, Kate Hepburn. He managed to find a few, among them Ava Gardner and Rosemary Clooney, but it was a struggle.

It was in his search for a sex symbol with enough star quality to justify a _Time_ cover, Murray came across Marilyn Monroe. Norma Jean Mortenson grew up in the San Fernando Valley and attended Hollywood High School. Married and divorced from an L.A. cop, she became the mistress of a shadowy party-giver named Joe Schenck, a big wig of the movies. He kept beautiful women around to decorate his pool parties. Murray attended one of the _soirees_ in the company of sportswriter Vincent X. Flaherty. She was wearing a tight white bathing suit, "Five-feet six inches of whipped cream, a sweet little girl smile," wrote Murray of his first reaction. Schenck whistled and asked Murray if he wanted her. If this description is accurate, she was apparently as available for sex as a porn chick on set, a fluffer.

Marilyn's sex life has been dissected upside and down. She seemed incapable of saying no. She was surrounded by powerful men she believed needed to be satisfied in order to further her career. Jim Murray, a leading movie journalist, was a man who could affect many careers. She well may have thought he could make her a star. In his 1993 book, _Jim Murray: An Autobiography_ , the author tells the tale without specifying what he did about Schenck's offer. He did not write that he turned him down.

Marilyn slept seemingly with everybody; actors, writers, producers, band leaders, critics. She apparently had no real morals, reportedly having numerous abortions. She was something between a nymphomaniac and frustrated, unable to achieve orgasm. Her active sex life was an effort to find one, but she had unsatisfactory physical sensations. This may well have been her ultimate psychological undoing. Once Frank Sinatra invited her to the Cal-Neva Club at Lake Tahoe. A huge orgy-cum-gangbang was rumored to take place, with Marilyn said to take on all the men of the Rat Pack and more, seemingly incapable of saying no while Sinatra directed the "action" like a porn director. This rumor may or may not be true, just as rumors that silent film star Clara Bow taking on the entire USC football team in wild orgies orchestrated by John Wayne were false.

According to legend, director Joe Mankiewicz put her in _All About Eve_ with Bette Davis as a practical joke on Schenck. Nobody thought she had acting talent. She was strictly for eye candy and pleasure. Those talents may well have been what spurred Mankiewicz into casting her. With almost no lines, she dominated a scene with Davis and Anne Baxter merely by sitting on the stairs during a party scene. Thousands of letters poured in asking who the blond bombshell was. The term "bombshell" was all the rage. A war term, it was used to describe the affect of the new French swimsuit, the bikini. The bikini was named after a South Pacific atoll called Bikini Island, obliterated by an Atomic bomb test. Men were "blown away" by the sight of women in the new two-piece swimwear.

Murray pitched his boss on a story about her in _Time_. This would lead to a larger, bigger photo spread in _Life_. In preparing for the interview, Murray dug around. He discovered Marilyn's background to be dismal. She was virtually abandoned, her mother institutionalized. She was shuffled to foster homes. If she sought love in the bed of powerful men, it was not entirely a matter of immoral behavior. She had severe issues from childhood.

Murray picked her up at a hotel on Olympic Boulevard. He waited while she prepared herself in front of the mirror. He "dated" her enough times to develop a routine. He would tell her dinner was for seven, but make reservations with the restaurant for 8:30. He brought magazines to read while she changed her mind about her hair or her dress. With luck they made the restaurant by 8:45. His first date with her was at an old Mob-owned restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, Alan Dale.

His dinner date, really a business meal, an interview with the sex symbol, was "not exactly an AP news flash," wrote Reilly. "Murray was  Time magazine's  Hollywood reporter from 1950 to 1953, and you could throw a bucket of birdseed in any direction at Chasens and not hit anybody who didn't know him. He has played poker with  John Wayne ('he was lousy'), kibitzed with  Jack Benny (who gave him an inscribed, solid-gold money clip) and golfed with  Bing Crosby (later,  Crosby sent him clippings and column ideas)."

One night Murray noticed out of the corner of his eye a "famous former athlete" enter the restaurant via a side door. Escorted to a private dining area by the owner, a screen was placed around his table. Marilyn started looking around.

"What's wrong?"  Murray asked. Then Marilyn leaned over.

"Do you mind if you don't take me home but I go home with a friend of mine?" she asked.

"Only if you introduce me to Joe DiMaggio first?" he replied.

"O.K." She waved to a man across the room who sheepishly made his way to the table.

"Jim, I would like you to meet  Joe DiMaggio."

Murray noted early on the difference between Hollywood celebrity and sports celebrity. The movie stars and studios courted publicity. It was the lifeblood of their business. Athletes did not. Certainly athletes like DiMaggio and Ted Williams did not need anybody to tout them. Their fame was secure, far and wide. The DiMaggio-Monroe marriage, which lasted about a year, was symbolic of the difference.

Marilyn flaunted herself, craving attention. DiMaggio was private. Marilyn entertained the troops in Korea. Upon her return she exclaimed, "Joe, Joe, you never heard such cheering."

"Yes I have," deadpanned Joe D.

The actors and entertainers were celebrities. Athletes were heroes. Some, like DiMaggio and particularly a select group of real New York icons, were heroes on par with astronauts, warriors and political figures.

Ultimately, Murray's meanderings with Marilyn resulted neither in romance for the writer or a cover story for the celebrity. Murray never found real substance in Marilyn. Eventually she studied her craft under "method" acting teacher Lee Strasberg in New York. There was _some_ talent in her, but it was limited. It was never bigger than her bustline.

But Murray was one of the first to recognize the screen presence of John "Duke" Wayne. Wayne grew up Marion Morrison in Glendale. He played football for Howard Jones at USC. After injuring his shoulder in a bodysurfing accident at Newport Beach, Morrison lost his scholarship. He took up acting at Fox Studios.

Morrison arranged for USC football players to be extras in Hollywood screen epics. They were Napoleon's _Grand Armee_ or Biblical legions. Through Morrison Trojan players attended Hollywood parties. It was a tremendous recruiting tool unavailable to any other coach in the nation. According to aforementioned legend, "it girl" Clara Bow had an insatiable sexual desire, inviting the entire USC football squad to "service" her at her Hollywood hills pad. It was all made up. She dated quarterback Morley Drury, who reported "nothing happened." That did not stop the rumors from swirling for decades. As recently as 1999 _Los Angeles_ magazine reported it as fact. The Internet has managed to keep the story alive, but also had the affect of de-bunking it as myth started by a fired secretary.

Morrison changed his name to John Wayne and became a big star, but was not considered an actor of depth along the line of a Fonda or a Bogart. But Murray's job was to keep tabs on box office records. He knew that Wayne was the most popular actor in the world. The elites of Hollywood and New York favored more stylized artists, but in the "sticks," which were pretty much everywhere else, the Duke was number one. Murray began lobbying for big John Wayne coverage, but his New York bosses did not know who he was.

"Nobody in Rye or Mamaroneck or Old Greenwich ever went to one," he wrote of Wayne's movies. "It was a hard sell. The editors wanted to put Kate Hepburn or Clare Bloome on the cover, somebody they wouldn't have to apologize for at the Harvard Club."

Finally _Time_ gave Wayne his due for _The Quiet Man_. Murray loved him, a man's man who lived in a man's world of poker, cronies and Baja pigeon shooting. Murray felt Wayne in part posed as a rugged macho man in to cover up for his given name of Marion. His size and football background added to the image, but Murray discovered an intellectual under his muscles. Wayne never said "ain't" until a movie script made him say it. He was an A student, a high school valedictorian who made excellent marks at USC. Wayne was deeply patriotic and, like another conservative, Ronald Reagan, enmeshed in politics.

The myth of conservative racial prejudice was exemplified by Wayne's penchant for marrying Latino women and taking holidays in Mexico. When he was injured at USC, his black teammate Bruce Taylor took his position, but there were no reports of hard feelings on Duke's part, toward Taylor or Coach Jones.

"He was as right-wing as Bank of America," wrote Murray. Murray covered Hollywood during some of its most controversial years. It was the age of the Blacklist.

In 1947 Los Angeles-area Congressman Richard M. Nixon accused a dilettante Democrat State Department doyen, Alger Hiss, of spying for the Soviet Union. The case ripped open political wounds that have never really healed. Nixon's House Un-American Activities Committee gave rise to McCarthyism, the Blacklist, and investigations into Hollywood's complicity with Communism. Wayne and Reagan led the charge to root out Communist elements from the entertainment industry.

Wayne's most famed director, John Ford was almost as right wing, but had a real "sadistic" streak, according to Murray. Ford bullied Murray during an interview, but when the writer threatened to walk away Ford laughed, admiring Murray's willingness to stand up for himself.

Despite Wayne's desire to use movies as a tool of patriotic propaganda favoring America, Murray found him uncomplicated, self-deprecating and funny. Wayne never made more of his movies than what they were, joking that he "won" the war playing heroic figures, but the pinstripers at Foggy Bottom "gave it all back at the peace table." He said Hollywood publicists named him All-American in 1960 after being a second-stringer in 1925. When Harvard lampooned his conservative politics he arrived to pick up his "award" on top of a tank. Wayne always played characters the public rooted for with one exception, when he let Montgomery Clift be the heroic figure of _Red River_. He was approachable, a trait Murray said many stars had in those days only when they needed the press.

It cannot be overstated how tremendous was the impact of the cowboy on the world's psyche. Such a figure was a wholly unique, new character on the world stage. Europeans of the 20th Century especially, were enamored of this romantic image, embodied by the Duke. Living in huddled masses, nameless faces, automatons, merely numbers in mass crowd scenes bowing in fealty to a totalitarian dictator like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, they saw in the cowboy a master of his own destiny. Rugged, individualistic, living off the land in prairie splendor, answerable to no man, only to God and his willingness to make do; such a concept was unthinkable through 2,000 years of monarchs and militarists forcing farmers to pay homage and tribute to their pagan idols. Such was the most iconic of American characters, and it was in the West where he thrived.

Murray's admiration for Duke Wayne was part of his on-going admiration for the University of Southern California. Murray could not help but give the Trojans due credit for holding their own with mighty Notre Dame in the 1920s and 1930s. In Hollywood, he discovered the industry dominated by USC men and women. Starting with Wayne, many Trojan football stars were actors, producers and studio workers. Aaron Rosenberg and Jesse Hibbs were successful producers. Wayne constantly fought ex-teammate Ward Bond on screen. Bond was always the friendly Irish priest or saloon-keep who, after a punch-up with the Duke, shared a shot of whiskey with him. It was still an innocent time. It was Jim Murray's time.

The admiration for Duke was returned. "Lots of fellows don't put in the care and effort that you do yours," Wayne wrote to Murray in a letter dated February 28, 1952.

Murray found Humphrey Bogart the opposite of Wayne. With the Duke, what you saw was what you got. Bogart resented his Park Avenue upbringing. The son of a doctor, he pretended he was a "dead end kid."

"He was about as tough as a ballroom dancer," said Murray.

Murray said that it was not uncommon for the city desk to receive reports of chair swinging, ash tray-throwing fights from some Figueroa Street wine joint between Bogart and his tempestuous wife, Mayo Methot. Murray met Bogart at the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, where he received treatment for head cuts after taking a bar stool to the head by his wife. Bogart apparently only got tough after a few drinks, and then with women at that.

"He was the kind of guy who'd get nasty after a couple of drinks," Murray told Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated in 1986. "What's the old line? 'A couple of drinks and  Bogart thinks he's  Bogart.' That's how he was . . . But I remember when he was dying, his wife,  Lauren Bacall, would allow him only one drink a day, and if I was coming over he'd wait, because he knew I'd have it with him."

Murray got to know the famed L.A. restaurateur Mike Romanoff. Romanoff claimed lineage to the Russian royal family. He was not related but refused to concede despite facts presented to him showing otherwise. Murray said covering the egos and idiosyncrasies of the movie crowd was "great preparation for covering Al Davis."

Murray frequently inter-acted with Marlon Brando. Once he watched the actor one-up a producer he was being sued **by** for walking off the set of _The Egyptians._ On another occasion Murray spent an hour knocking on Brando's door and staring in his window while Brando sat inside, laughing at his discomfort. Finally the actor emerged, bent over in comedy.

"You'd go knock on  Brando's door,"  Murray said, "and you'd knock and you'd knock for an hour and he'd never answer it. But as soon as you walked away, he'd fling it open and cackle like a rooster."

Brando loved boxing, a subject he tackled as Terry Malloy in _On the Waterfront_. After being interviewed by Murray, Brando wrote a touching personal letter to him. Perhaps his publicist as an act of necessity prodded him, but the words appear heartfelt. For all of Brando's grand standing in the acting game, at the time he was misunderstood. He was a "mumbler," a method man when the likes of Laurence Olivier paid little credence to the style. Brando was a "roughneck," an image he would not break until he performed in William Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_.

"I appreciated, more than any other aspects of the experience, two things; one of which is the new perspective he lent me of myself in relation to the world about me and second is your having been as honest and devotetedly thorough as you were," Brando wrote. "Most of all I think it was your lack of preconception and your insistent openness of mind that made it the most pleasant experience with the press to date." Apparently, Jim Murray took the time to understand the genius actor, and perhaps the actor saw the genius of the writer, as well.

Murray said most of the movie crowd was sports mad and many studio moguls' inveterate gamblers, which made sense. "Hollywood was the biggest gamble of them all," he wrote

"When the Dodgers came west," he wrote, "Dodger Stadium had more stars on the club level than the back lot at MGM."

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were actually questioned over possible Communist affiliation. Arnaz thoroughly destroyed any whiff of Red sympathy when he testified that as a youth in Cuba, the Communists came to confiscate his family's property. He hated them and as a Christian despised their atheism. Murray wrote about and supported the couple, whose TV program _I Love Lucy_ revolutionized the _genre_. He received a Christmas card from them in 1952 in which they wrote "may every day of the new year abound in life's treasures."

After writing a flattering piece about Rosemary Clooney, the singer wrote to him. "A hundred thousand roses couldn't have been sweeter than Time magazine's was to me this week," she wrote on February 19, 1953.

Murray created a jaunty "Hollywood style" of writing. It was distinctly different from the staccato rat-tat-tat of the New York scribes. It is difficult to easily pinpoint the East Coast writers, but perhaps the best way is not through written words but spoken ones. First would be the newsreel descriptions of Madison Square Garden boxing matches, or Lowell Thomas's stylized descriptions of American war victories as heard by millions of moviegoers.

Or better yet were the words, on the page and then on TV, of New York gossip columnist and Red-baiter Walter Winchell, who narrated the famous 1960s television program _The Untouchables_. It was almost as if a new age of people, particularly on the West Coast, thought this style to be a thing of the past. New voices were emerging, on the silver screen, in the broadcast booth, and on the printed page.

Actors like Brando and Jimmy Stewart took time in between sentences to convey emotions and emphasis, a change from the fast pace of a Bogart or Jimmy Cagney, who sometimes seemed to be trying to set a _Guinness Book of World Records_ for most words spoken in succession, which he seemingly achieved in the film _One, Two, Three_. Of Stewart, Murray wrote that the Republican ex-fighter pilot "should have been President."

The new style was symbolized in particular by the mellifluous tones of Brooklyn Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. In the literary world, Jack Kerouac's _On the Road_ revolutionized the _genre_ in the 1950s. Murray was no Walter Winchell. He was much more a columnist's version of Scully, whose path he would cross in a few years, a press box marriage made in Dodger Stadium after the Dodgers, like Kerouac and Murray before them, took Horace Greeley's advice to, "Go west, young man."

His original desire to write stage plays and screenplays, while not realized professionally, nevertheless gave him a dramatist's edge to his work. Every column was a story, a three-act play. His words were set pieces of poetry. One could imagine Brando or Clint Eastwood reading his columns aloud for effect. Perhaps Murray's Hollywood experience was what separated him from the other great columnists, most of whom were located on the East Coast. In coming out West, he seemed to separate himself physically and through wordplay from the old ways he grew up with. The professional journalism world he lived in was one of screenplays, premieres, actors and movie jargon. The movie world was far more attuned to sports than the Broadway scene in New York, which tended to be more _effete_ with a heavier British flavor. Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s was distinctly different from today.

Many of its big names had served in the military. Some were roustabouts who fell into acting after traveling in the circus or the merchant marines. Film school and drama schools were almost non-existent. The assembly line of acting hopefuls they now produce did not exist **then**. They were more likely to be rough-hewn characters, fans of the fight game, the track and the pennant chases. Women were "dames" cut out of the Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett mode; Barbara Stanwyck, strong women who needed strong men.

The baseball-movie connection was strong until the 1980s. Tom Lasorda's office at Dodger Stadium was often filled with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Don Rickles, and Danny Kaye. But when the Pittsburgh Pirates' drug scandal surfaced, baseball opened the clubhouse only to accredited journalists.

According to Murray, nightlife was tame in Los Angeles when he arrived. The show biz crowd was insular. Rather than party at clubs like New Yorkers, attending the Stork Club, 21, the Latin Quarter, the Copacabana, Toots Shors, or other hot spots until all hours, Hollywood preferred private homes for dinner and movie screenings. Hollywood was an early-morning town, with film crews on the set at the crack of dawn. Broadway was a nighttime endeavor. L.A. was spread out, making drunk driving perilous. In New York the in crowd was usually a short taxi ride away.

The arrival of the Dodgers changed that. Bo Belinsky of the Angels became the most recognized night denizen in sports. The building of the Forum turned basketball into a star attraction. USC, the Rams and the Raiders always brought in movie people. When Hugh Hefner moved his _Playboy_ mansion to Los Angeles, his legendary parties became a staple of the sporting crowd.

Murray, Nixon and Checkers

Murray was always referred to as a "literate man," an educated fellow, a guy who knew about history and politics. Part of this came from his natural desire to read about these subjects, starting at a young age and lasting all his life. But his years at _Time_ magazine added to his frame of reference on current events, too.

Hollywood coverage naturally bled into politics, since the McCarthy era encompassed the Blacklist. Many members of the entertainment industry were caught up in it, whether they liked it or not. But Murray was often tasked with assignments beyond the film industry, sometimes straying into politics or other issues.

The Christian Murray was impressed by the phenomenon of the Reverend Billy Graham. In 1949, he was all the rage, touring the nation via tent revivals. The Hearst newspapers were touting Graham. _Time_ , despite Luce's conservatism, had liberal editors who disdained the country Christianity of Graham and his followers. If the rival Hearst organization favored Graham, by God they did not.

Murray saw with his own eyes how powerful Graham's message of salvation was. He reached the apex of his popularity in Los Angeles, a telling fact. Many were unable to pin a label on L.A. Its role as a movie town glamorized it, but among the citizenry it was a conservative, Christian city that tended to vote Republican. Many have argued they were swayed in this manner by the biased, right wing _Los Angeles Times_ , but the evidence suggests the populace liked the Chandler approach, rather than being mesmerized by it.

In 1949, L.A. was filled with migrants from the South and the Midwest. Army veterans, who tended to the right and were more likely to believe in God, were moving there in droves. Murray understood this dynamic before almost anybody.

A British man named Eldon Griffiths was an editor at the magazine. A liberal at the time (he later became a leading Tory in his home country), Griffiths satirized Graham. _Elmer Gantry_ was a popular book and later film of the era. Graham was characterized as a real-life Gantry. Murray argued that Graham was the real thing, but lamented, "Editors would have rejected John the Baptist."

The liberalism of the magazine, however, did not make it all the way upstairs. To men like Henry Luce, the fall of a great peoples to atheistic Communism was a Biblical tragedy, one of the "signs and wonders" of the forthcoming Armageddon on top of the creation of Israel, unquestionably prophesied in _The Holy Bible_ as a necessary precursor to the End Times.

Murray directed his pleas to the headman. It worked. He spent two weeks with Graham, who was so open he even let the scribe peruse his accounting books to verify he was not skimming the public. The resulting story was very fair to the preacher. Luce fell in love with him, making him a recurring phenomenon over many years. Murray received all of $20 for doing the Lord's work.

In 1952, Murray was given a total break from the movie scene. Some of Murray's colleagues over the years have said Murray was a "liberal" because he took the right side of the integration issue in the 1960s. Not wanting to alienate half his readership, understandably Murray played his politics close to the vest. Based on his memories of Graham, John Wayne and Richard Nixon in his autobiography, one gleans that Murray was at the very least conservative by nature, a Christian, and probably a Republican, albeit a moderate unwilling to swing too far one way or another. He may have switched parties later, but this is conjecture.

The question was posed to his widow, Linda McCoy-Murray. Whereby many who knew him well over many years were unsure, _guessing_ he was a moderate Republican, Linda was quite sure.

"He always said he was a Democrat until he made his first $40,000, then he became a Republican," she said, laughing. "Yes, he was a 'Los Angeles Republican' of the era, in sync with the politics of Otis Chandler and the Times."

The 1952 Presidential election was a watershed in U.S. history. A study of that year would be worth a long, in-depth book on its own. From Murray's point of view, it represented the year California became the most important state in electoral politics. As California's influence grew, so too did California journalism and with it, Jim Murray. In 1948, California Governor Earl Warren was tapped by Republican candidate Thomas Dewey as his Vice-Presidential running mate. In the closest election held up until then, Dewey was barely edged out by incumbent Harry Truman. Had Dewey won, Warren would have become a leading national figure, very likely his successor. Nixon would have been shuffled into the second tier of history. Instead, Nixon was elevated to the front of the class. History would not be the same.

The original San Francisco-liberal, L.A.-conservative dynamic going back to the Trans-Continental railroad and subsequent migratory choices of Northerners, Southerners and Midwesterners, was essentially unchanged in the 1950s. San Francisco's role as an important port of call made it a dockworkers' union city. The spread out nature of Los Angeles was a microcosm of Westward expansion; entrepreneurial, a town of rugged individualist's who trended to vote GOP. Even the movie moguls of the era were self-made conservatives who achieved the American Dream against long odds. Some were descendants of Jewish _schtetls_ , escaped from Czarist and Communist Russia. To them, America was paradise. They considered it their religious duty to protect and promote the American Way in their films.

1952 was a seminal moment for the Grand Old Party. The dominant American political party ranging from the age of Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to the Roaring '20s, they were dealt a hammer blow by the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt was viewed as an iconic figure, leading us in World War II. The Republicans were desperate to get back in power. A perfect storm took place in 1952.

First, President Truman fired the great hero General Douglas MacArthur, who wanted to take the Korean War all the way to Peking. The public turned on Truman, who lost all hope of winning re-election. He chose to retire. McCarthyism was in full swing. The Democrats were on the defensive for "losing" China to the Communists and Mao Tse-tung in 1949, and now handing half the Korean peninsula to the enemy. "Who lost China?" was an accusing Republican mantra.

The McCarthy era – symbolized by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy – was rooted in a Naval intelligence operation beginning in 1943. The Soviet Union first signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. The Germans broke the agreement, attacking the U.S.S.R. in 1941. By 1943 the Soviets had repelled the Germans. Considered our "allies," the Soviets could not be trusted. Prior to Russia's victory, the U.S. Navy began an espionage operation to read Soviet cable traffic, attempting to determine whether they were going to sign a separate peace with the Germans with disastrous consequences to the U.S.

Called the Venona Project, the operation did not find evidence of Soviet complicity with the Nazis, but did discover something even more shocking. They found out that leading high-ranking Democrats in the Roosevelt Administration were paid Soviet spies. The operation traced its roots to the 1920s! Naval investigators personally showed evidence to President Roosevelt that several of his top White House aides were traitors. Roosevelt's response was to say, "(Delete) you." What this means is subject to conjecture. It does not appear Roosevelt disagreed with the fact Communists worked for him. He either did not care, or as some of his historical detractors on the right would say, he actually thought it a _good idea_.

The Navy made a decision. They knew the war, the military and the country would exist after Roosevelt was out of office. Out of self-preservation, perhaps the best kind of patriotism, they secretly ignored Roosevelt's order to stop gathering facts of Democrat espionage for the Soviets, since their own lives were in danger if they did not. They funneled their findings to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover did not publicize it. He could not afford to let the Russians know he knew what they were doing. Therefore, the Democrat spies continued to spy.

Enter Congressman Richard Nixon and Whittaker Chambers. Nixon represented a suburban Los Angeles district stretching from sections of Orange County into L.A. County, including Artesia and parts of Los Angeles city proper. The _Los Angeles Times_ backed him. Kyle Palmer was his sponsor. His highly conservative anti-Communist views were in lock step with those of Norman Chandler and his newspaper. The _Times_ whole-heartedly supported General MacArthur and Senator McCarthy. Their bias was palpable and beyond journalistic ethics then or now.

Nixon was a freshman, having entered with a class including Massachusetts Representative John F. Kennedy, who was "a brother" to him. Looking for an issue, it arrived in his lap in 1947 when Chambers told him a high-ranking Democrat, Alger Hiss was a Communist spy. It was too much even for Nixon to believe possible, but he looked into it.

Chambers was a rumpled former _Time_ editor before Murray arrived at the magazine. A Baltimore native, he turned to Communism in the 1920s. His turn from it in confluence with a Christianity at least as fervent as Henry Luce's made him a favorite of the boss, but created many enemies among his liberal peers.

He had edited the _Daily Worker_ until his Soviet handlers told him he was to go underground as a spy. He was paired with a "handler." He did not know the man's real name until he was given a position with the Works Projects Administration by FDR. The handler was Alger Hiss. Hiss was a Harvard lawyer from the right family with all the right connections. He was polished to a high gloss. Hiss rose within FDR's administration, helping to shape the infamous Yalta Agreement credited with handing most of Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of Joseph Stalin. He was a top State Department official who formulated many policies favoring the Russians at the United Nations. He was a hero of the left. As Hiss moved up in Democrat circles, he distanced himself from Chambers.

After the Soviets signed their non-aggression pact with the Nazis, Chambers was shocked. He had a Christian epiphany. When he came to know the truth of Jesus Christ, the manifest evil of Communism became a self-evident truth for Whittaker Chambers. He approached the FBI, telling them what he knew about Hiss. J. Edgar Hoover already knew about Hiss from the Venona Project. To Chambers's great frustration, however, the FBI did not pursue a public case against Hiss. They calculated that they could learn and gain more by watching him closely to get higher into the Soviet spy apparatus.

Chambers did not realize this. Neither did anybody else other than Hoover and a few "spooks" at OSS and Naval Intelligence. Venona was not publicly verified until the Soviet Union collapsed and their archives revealed. Then and only then did the _New York Times_ stop calling Chambers a liar and for Hiss's exoneration.

Thinking an evil man was doing dirty deeds at the highest levels of the U.S. government, Chambers took his evidence to Congressman Nixon in 1946-47. The suspicious Nixon went to Hoover with Hiss's accusations. Hoover told him he could not publicly support an investigation of Hiss. To do so would disrupt on-going high-level operations against the KGB. But Hoover told the Congressman Chamber's accusations were accurate. Nixon was on his own, but on the right track. Nixon then made his accusations known via the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). That was when the "fit hit the shan." McCarthyism, for lack of a better term, was on full bore even though it was three before years the Senator attached himself to the cause.

The period between 1947 and 1949 focused in large measure on Hollywood. With the cooperation of Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, numerous writers, directors and actors were exposed as paid spies, members of the Communist Party, or "fellow travelers." It was not until the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case, Mao's victory in China, and the Soviets successful exploding of the Atomic bomb courtesy of secrets fed them by Berkeley physicist Robert Oppenheimer, that the investigations became overtly political. The Hiss case was at the heart of it, with sides taken. The Democrats and the left solidly backed Hiss. They hated Nixon and Chambers. Hiss may well have gotten away with his crimes, but Chambers kept ultimate proof of his guilt in a Maryland pumpkin patch. The "pumpkin papers" ultimately convicted Hiss. Chambers's book, _Witness_ was one of the most powerful ever written. It and _Atlas Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand were staples of conservatism, albeit traveling in different social circles, in the 1950s and beyond.

By 1952, Nixon was a hero of the right. The American public observed all of this, concluding to some extent that the Republicans were patriotic defenders of freedom, the Democrats more likely to be untrustworthy, even spies. Unquestionably, 1952 was bound to be a Republican year after two decades of Democrats in the White House. The head of the ticket was their Senate leader, Robert Taft of Ohio. General Dwight Eisenhower disrupted his destiny, in large measure due to the efforts of Henry Luce.

Recruited by both parties, Ike announced he was a Republican like virtually all the prominent World War II generals. His decision to run for President in 1952 meant his election was a _fait accompli_ insuring GOP sweeps. When he tapped Nixon as his running mate, it had profound implications.

First, it was a sop to the right and McCarthy's supporters. McCarthy himself had more power in the Senate than he would have riding Ike's coattails. Second, coming four years after Earl Warren was Dewey's running mate, it indicated the newfound power of California and the West.

Presidents generally came from New York, Ohio or the South. The post-war suburbanization of California created not just sports juggernauts, but an Electoral one as well. Thus did Richard Nixon begin to wide the whirlwind. Jim Murray was assigned to witness it.

Since Nixon was a West Coast guy, _Time_ wanted somebody with West Coast sensibilities to cover him. There were already wholesale accusations of liberal bias in the East Coast media. Murray saw it immediately. Murray contacted a writer named Ernie Brashear, who did a two-part series on the candidate for _The Nation_. Brashear told Murray he wanted out of the third part of the series.

"I have asked <editor> Frieda Kirchway to take my name off of it," he told Murray. "They say some things about Nixon I didn't find to be true and I don't want my name on fabricated news."

Brashear was ashamed to admit that he knew the _Los Angeles Daily News_ , the _New York Post_ , and _Frontier_ magazine were planning a big smear piece on Nixon to hit for maximum East-West effect. That night on a whistle-stop train tour, Murray had "a Bourbon or two" and warned Nixon's people, William Rogers and Jim Bassett, of the pending scandal story. They were prepared for it.

"It's going to backfire," they told Murray.

The scandal was the infamous 1952 "slush fund" story. A group of Pasadena Rotarians supposedly maintained a fund to keep Nixon "in style." Richard M. Nixon was a poor man. He came from nothing. He was dirt poor growing up. He worked his way through Whittier College and Duke University Law School, where he attended on a scholarship. He was a struggling attorney who entered the Navy during the war before he could establish a solid practice. Before he could build one after the war he was recruited by these same businessmen to run for Congress in 1946. He was a "slayer" of liberal icons; New Deal Representative Jerry Voorhis, Alger Hiss, "pink lady" Senate candidate Helen Gahagan Douglas. Now he was almost a heartbeat from the Presidency, since Ike's victory seemed a sure thing.

Rogers and Bassett under-estimated the scandal. The _Washington Post_ and the _New York Times_ both urged Eisenhower to drop Nixon. Murray understood the media and the public well. It was his job through years of analyzing movie likes and dislikes. Apparently a supporter of Nixon, Murray pleaded with Rogers (later the U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of State) to "meet the contretemps head on." The Nixon people kept thinking it would blow over. It never did.

Murray was along for the ride while Nixon made stops in front of heckling crowds. Nixon tried to convince the crowds how poor he was, but it did not work. The train was scheduled to go all the way to Seattle, but at two o'clock in the morning at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Nixon came downstairs. He told the assembled press boys (probably dragged from the bar and the beds of campaign groupies) that he was flying back to Los Angeles to address the issue on nationwide television.

Eisenhower waffled on whether to stick with Nixon. He was famous for making last-second decisions, as with his D-Day orders only after every scrap of information was made available. It was frustrating to Nixon.

The Nixon campaign and press contingent was scheduled to fly from Portland to L.A. on a Monday morning. His speech was scheduled the next day at five P.M. _Time_ went to press on Monday night. If they waited until Friday, Nixon's speech would be a week old by the time it hit the streets. Murray was called by a taciturn national affairs editor named Max Weeks, "a very forbidding character, one of the lions of the company," according to Murray.

Weeks was beside himself. The "slush fund" was the biggest story of the year, and the most important national magazine in the country assigned not an experienced political reporter to it, but a green West Coast movie reviewer! Weeks's orders were explicit: find out whether the candidate was taking himself off the ticket . . . before the candidate announced whether he was taking himself off the ticket!

"How am I supposed to find that out?" Murray screamed at Weeks.

"Just do it." It was not a Nike commercial. It very well could mean Murray's job.

The whole way back to L.A., Murray was in misery. Nixon was boxed off from the press, in lockdown. Bill Rogers, TV producer Ted Rogers and his wife, Patricia Nixon, "protected" him from invaders. Murray figured the candidate would eventually have to use the rest room. He planted himself outside the door. Sure enough, Nixon came by.

Nixon liked Murray. He probably sensed that the writer was a supporter, and at the least a fair man who would not print lies as _The Nation_ had done. Murray was a Los Angeleno now, making him somebody Nixon was comfortable with as opposed to the "elites" from Harvard he always despised. But their shared love of sports was the tie that binds, especially a mutual fondness for the USC Trojans. Nixon courted his wife, Patricia, a USC student of the 1930s, during football games at the Coliseum. He knew Murray to be a huge sports fan. This may have been the reason he gave the young writer a big break.

"Richard Nixon was a big USC fan," recalled Frank Gifford. "Once he called me up. My wife at the time answered the phone and said it was Richard Nixon. He came on and said, "I think we've met, do you remember me?" He was campaigning with Eisenhower. He wanted me to campaign for him and I took him to Yankee Stadium, got him tickets. He loved sports and would use athletes, particular with California backgrounds or affiliations, to campaign with him."

"Dick," Murray pleaded of the 39-year old junior Senator, "the magazine wants me to find out what you're going to do tomorrow night." He explained the deadline dilemma. Nixon gave him due consideration, then told him to check with Jim Bassett. Bassett later came to Murray's seat, kneeling next to him.

"What would you do if your family had obligations, debts to pay, but you never took any bribes and struggled along, if your wife and your mother wore cloth coats, and you had a big mortgage?" Bassett did not tell Murray Nixon was planning to fight for the ticket or step down. At first Murray wondered why he was getting this story from the campaign aide, until it dawned on him. Bassett was "giving me the speech." It was the same speech Nixon gave during the train stops. It was the "fighting Nixon," an image the young Congressman and Senator cultivated since coming home from Naval service at Bougainville in the South Pacific.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Murray found a phone to call _Time_ , assuring his editors that Nixon was staying on the ticket. The press contingent was at the Ambassador Hotel that evening. Murray repaired to the Press Club for some libations. Bill Best of United Press International found him there. Best told him UPI was coming out with a "rocket," announcing Nixon's resignation from the ticket. Murray knew that at this very moment million of copies of _Time_ were rolling off the presses with the opposite announcement. He determined that he was the "Fred Merkle of journalism," a reference to a New York Giants rookie who failed to touch second base after a supposed game-winning hit, costing his team the 1908 pennant while earning a name still living in infamy.

Murray called Bill Rogers, explaining his predicament. Rodgers went to check with the candidate. Four minutes passed, with Murray envisioning a career as a cab driver or hamburger cook. Rogers came back. He sounding annoyed. "The candidate says, quote, Murray's got the story, what's he worried about?"

It turned out UPI's "source" was a baggage handler who told them the Nixon campaign luggage had not been checked on the train. The theory was that the campaign, if there was still a campaign, would continue as a whistle-stop. It was to continue, but not by train. They were planning to fly to Montana after the speech. It is also possible Nixon felt some affinity for Murray and wanted to give him a break. He probably felt a certain kinship with Henry Luce in the days before _Time_ turned really leftward. He also may have felt the UPI was an "enemy" media organization.

Whatever his motives, Nixon made his speech, one of the most famous in history. It has come to be known as the "Checkers speech." With Pat Nixon sitting to his side wearing a "respectable Republican cloth coat," Nixon provided embarrassing details of his personal finances and debts. He was not wealthy by any means. Finally the candidate explained that his supporters did give him one thing, a dog named Checkers. It was a Cocker Spaniel. His small daughters, Julie and Tricia, "love the dog." Nixon said that no matter what, he was not going to give it back. It was brilliant, pulling at the heartstrings of America.

General Eisenhower wavered over whether to keep the young Senator on the ticket until Nixon finally reached him in Wheeling, West Virginia, telling the former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces it was time to "(deleted) or get off the pot." After the "Checkers speech," Ike gave Nixon his endorsement. He was on his way. Relieved to have the pressure off him, Nixon broke down on the plane to Montana. He started to weep on the shoulder of Copley papers writer Frank Kuest. Then Nixon eyed Murray. He turned on him, calling him a "stinking intellectual," and therefore one of the enemy. This made little sense in light of everything that happened. Murray just shrugged it off as campaign pressure.

In the aftermath of the "Checkers speech," Bill Rogers credited Murray with understanding the gravity of the accusations against Nixon before anybody else did. "We should have listened to him," he stated.

Murray indeed was a Nixon man. In 1960 he flew home from a Hawaiian vacation just to vote for him even though "I loved John Kennedy." He felt he owed Nixon, for the scoop Murray created for _Time_ by correctly calling the "Checkers speech" when so many others got it wrong. It was an enormous step forward in his career. 1960s social angst and eventually Watergate presumably led Murray on a different path, but his original instincts tended toward moderate conservatism. After all, his uncle was a landlord and Murray saw with his own eyes that the "poor" and the "dispossessed" renting his apartments often made their own trouble, only to blame the "slumlord."

Richard Nixon served two terms as Ike's Vice-President. He lost to Kennedy in 1960, defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968, but was booted out of office amidst the Watergate allegations in 1974.

Murray enjoyed politics. In his autobiography, the chapter describing his adventures of 1952 was called "I Could Have Been Secretary of State." He was well respected for his knowledge of politics, literature and history. He might well have made a good diplomat. Just as he preferred to watch sports rather than play it, he had a mild temperament and could have used that to his advantage in settling disputes. Perhaps Luce would have elevated him to the role of national political correspondent, but he had other special plans. After the election ended, Murray returned to his movie coverage.

"I think my years at _Time_ solidified whatever style I came to use and be known for," Murray opined. The magazine was often lampooned for its unique style. Wolcott Gibbs of the _New Yorker_ wrote a spoof, saying, "Backward reeled the sentences till reeled the mind." The Luce brand, pioneered by an iconoclastic co-founder of the magazine, Briton Hadden, was unorthodox and staccato, a written version of Walter Winchell, of Lowell Thomas, or Graham McNamee's radio broadcasts. It was not Murray's ultimate style.

Murray compared going from the Hearst _Examiner_ to _Time_ with moving from a honky-tonk to Park Avenue. It opened doors to his career, without question. At the time it was a Republican publication, but a fair one. But in the summer of 1953 his life and career took a big turn.

_Sports Illustrated_ **  
**

A man named Ernie Havemann called Murray. Havemann was a leading _Life_ magazine journalist. At first Murray figured he was coming west to do a feature on a movie star and wanted Murray to grease the skids. Instead, Havemann asked Murray if he wanted to come back to New York and work on a "top secret project."

It was not the first time Murray was approached about a change in career. An editor named Willie Schamm asked if he wanted to write for a "culture magazine."

"My interest in culture was minimal to nonexistent," according to the self-deprecating Murray. He declined. But Havemann's "top secret project" was a new national magazine called _Sports Illustrated_. Murray's early years, rooting for Notre Dame, going to New York to watch Giants and Yankees games, and the influence of his sports-mad uncles, rubbed off on him. His education and intelligence led him to more highbrow work in entertainment and politics, but he was also tapped as being one of the few writers under the _Time_ and _Life_ umbrella who really knew sports.

Others in the company vied for State Department assignments. Murray was usually tapped to cover the sports angle when the magazine decided to go in that direction. He had covered golfer Ben Hogan and Olympic sprinter Mel Patton. He wrote about Stanford decathlete Bob Mathias and USC shot-putter Parry O'Brien. His geographical location played a large role in his sports assignments.

The West Coast was by the 1950s arguably the capitol of American sports. In 1941, the St. Louis Browns decided to move to Los Angeles. A few hours later came news that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. That was the end of L.A. expansion, but after the war the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams established themselves as successful franchises. The 1932 Olympics had been a great success. USC and UCLA were dominant football powers.

The Dodgers and Giants had yet to move to California. The 1950s was a "golden age" of sports in New York, but below the surface the future obviously lay out west. The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee and drew huge crowds playing at a stadium with excellent freeway and parking access. It was the age of the automobile. The Polo Grounds and Ebbetts Field were not conducive to car travel. One of Eisenhower's first moves was to create a Federal highway system. America was driving west. California was the future.

While New York was the media capitol, the majority of great American athletes in all sports came from California. Many of the prominent New York stars were from the Golden State: Frank Gifford, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Joe DiMaggio, Billy Martin. Others of the era included Ted Williams, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzalez, Bob Mathias, Bill Sharman; the list was long. The sun-splashed fields of the golden West produced the most stars. The population was growing. The development of athletic talent was in the West. USC and UCLA were on the verge of riding this crest of talent over a two-decade period of collegiate sports dominance never equaled in history.

The West was ahead of the curve in other ways. Its school systems were considered superior. Integration was common in the West. Its neighborhoods were cleaner, safer and newer. Ethnic hatreds and rivalries were less prevalent. This manifested itself in a more harmonious sports culture. The result of this was that great black athletes such as Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, Frank Robinson, Willie Stargell, Joe Morgan, the Johnson brothers (decathlete Rafer, 49er safety Jimmy), Ollie Matson, Joe Perry, and numerous others, emerged from California. The trend in California was in the suburbs. This was now a national trend.

"The suburbs were growing about five times as fast as the central cities, and there were notably dramatic differences (San Francisco, New York, Cleveland) where central cities were actual losing population while their suburbs were growing phenomenally," recalled later _Sports Illustrated_ managing editor Sidney L. James. "At the same time, the length of the work week was becoming progressively shorter and average vacation time was doubling, with a new wrinkle, winter vacations, fast becoming an accepted routine in upper white echelons. Prosperity was definitely and seemingly permanently on the rise, especially among those who were moving to the suburbs. And these new suburbanites had more time and money on their hands than ever before."

Economists came up with a new term: discretionary income. A combination of time and money meant boom times in the world of sports. The same thing spurred sports growth in the Roaring '20s, but that was not remotely comparable to the explosive post-war boom in the 1950s.

The creation of _Sports Illustrated_ was a natural. America in the 1950s was a nation of prosperity and leisure never seen in human history. The Roman elites enjoyed games and recreation, but never had so much affluence passed on to the general population. The sense of victory after World War II gave Americans a feeling of conquest. As the post-war 1920s saw the building of huge stadiums and a sports craze, so did the 1950s revive that _wanderlust_. Hugh Hefner tapped into this mindset during this period when he started _Playboy_. We had fought wars and won. We had overcome the Great Depression. The rest of the world was split asunder by Communism, or was in re-building mode after a terrible war. America built everything, produced the cars, the planes, the gadgets of a new world. We had the money to spend, to travel and be entertained. Sex and sports were now national pastimes. Beautiful women, Hefner correctly reasoned, were like trophies, spoils of war. Higher education produced a literate populace.

Jim Murray had covered the sports scene in the West, as well as other features including Detroit Lions quarterback Bobby Layne and Notre Dame's John Lattner. "I knew the field," he stated.

So it was that in 1953 Murray took a train to New York. The project was originally code-named "Muscles." Henry Luce (who insisted on being called Harry) was enthusiastic about a sports magazine, but nobody else was. Murray discovered great pessimism over its prospects.

"When a sports assignment in  Los Angeles came up at Time,  Murray got it - by default," wrote Rick Reilly. "His proclivity for sports was so strong that, in 1953, when  Henry Luce decided to launch a sports magazine,  Murray was asked to help start it up."

Most of the gloom-and-doomers thought it would be too expensive, but Murray argued sports did not cost that much. He was making around $15,000 at the time, and few made more. He theorized that a reporter could take the subway to the stadium, was fed free food by the team, and given good access to the players because the clubs needed the publicity. Compared to chasing politicians all over the world the daily expenses of sports reporting was cheap.

"How much could you spend interviewing Sal Maglie at Ebbetts Field?" Murray asked.

The sports magazine was "a Godsend" to Murray. His talents were obvious. It was believed he was too valuable to continue writing about movie stars, but proposed career moves meant transferring to places like Boston, which horrified him. He loved Los Angeles; all its nooks and crannies and idiosyncrasies. The city has an odd way of attaching itself to some people.

It is a maligned town. Many Northern Californians and Easterners profess to hate it and all it stands for, whether that be the University of _Spoiled Children_ , Dodger fans leaving early, excess immorality in Hollywood, fake boobs, or the perception of an illiterate, soulless population living in a vast wasteland without a center.

But there are many who love it in the style of Jack Kerouac, seeing poetry in its hills, its nightclubs and expanse, its Jim Morrisonian excess. Murray was one of those people. In the early 1950s, obviously on the move as a writer, he fended off efforts to advance which most often would have meant a move to New York or possibly even an international locale. He wanted to stay in L.A. with Gerry. He turned down offers to be a bureau chief for much more money.

Those "in the know" tried to tell him he was committing career suicide if he thought he could stay in Los Angeles for the duration. But Murray knew that while Washington was the capitol of world affairs, New York the capitol of business affairs, London the capitol of international affairs, and Paris the capitol of love affairs, the future was in Los Angeles. The confluence of movies, television, new technology, sports, Electoral votes and a myriad number of other factors made this an obvious trend. But regardless of all that, he knew that it was where the action was when it came to sports. It was the future of sports.

He was now a sportswriter. L.A. was the place to be. _Sports Illustrated_ allowed him to consolidate his place in the Los Angeles sports community. He also sensed, having written about politics and movies, that it was all inter-twined. He knew that somehow he could write about all those things – about greater society – through the prism of sports. Intuitively he felt that he could have a more positive, subliminal affect on his fellow man than he could writing it "straight."

Murray found himself given major responsibility for the early launching of _Sports Illustrated_. Havemann was detached to write the story of the Kinsey report, a provocative look at the sex habits of Americans. Despite his early role in _S.I._ , he was not confident of its success. Then Luce left the country. His wife, the esteemed Clare Boothe Luce, was an ambassador.

Luce put Sidney L. James in charge of the project. James immediately identified Murray as enthusiastic about it. He was in on the ground floor. Throughout the rest of 1953, Murray was part of the team creating _Sports Illustrated_. At first they created mock-ups used to attract Madison Avenue advertising dollars. During Christmas Luce sent Murray a letter thanking him for his hard work and assuring him the magazine was set for publication on schedule.

The name of the magazine was not a given. Murray suggested _Fame_. The idea was that the Luce umbrella include magazines titled _Time_ , _Life_ , _Fame_ and _Fortune_. During this time, Murray came up with a brilliant idea. He told company president Roy Larsen they should take out the unused parts of a weekly backgrounder he wrote called the "Cinema Letter," add it to the unused parts of the "Washington Memo" (gossip from D.C.), background material from the European bureau, and the overset from the "People" section of _Time_ , creating a celebrity magazine: _Fame_. The board voted it down.

"If I may say so immodestly, _People_ magazine today is exactly what I suggested in the early '50s," Murray wrote in 1993, adding that its success was well known.

Had Luce's company started _People_ in 1954, they may have put Murray in charge of it. His background as a film writer made him the natural choice. He easily may have never become a _bona fide_ sportswriter. Murray learned valuable lessons working for Luce in Hollywood. One was that readers are interested in _people_ , not _things_. Once an aerospace writer proposed a story about a break-through in fuselage technology. Murray told him the story was dull unless he could get readers interested in the inventor's story.

Luce understood this inherently. When in fact the Mercury space program began in the early 1960s, he created profiles of each astronaut and their families. It was the personalization of the space program – John Glenn, Alan Shepard, President Kennedy – that Luce used to create some of _Life_ magazine's greatest sales. The great space photography also helped. All of it was captured in the 1983 film _The Right Stuff_ , with the actor portraying Luce famously declaring his astonishment at "an astronaut named Gus?" when told Virgil Ivan Grissom's nickname was Gus.

Over the years _People_ , supermarket tabloids, _Entertainment Tonight_ , _Hard Copy_ and Fox News have succeeded focusing on glamour and high-level gossip to one extent or another.

"In all the years I covered him, I never once had anyone come up to me and ask me how Sandy Koufax gripped his curveball . . ." Murray once wrote, adding that hundreds did want to know what he was "really like."

A _Sports Illustrated_ vice-president named Dick Neale felt he could buy subscribers by offering free gifts to lists from other magazines. Murray disagreed. He felt promotions were a good side benefit, but ultimately a magazine succeeded on the strength of good writing. Television and newspapers provided the score; _Sports Illustrated_ told the reader _why_ his team won or lost.

"There's no other reason for sport's existence," he wrote. "It's an extension of the opera stage, the traveling troubadours, the acrobats, trapeze artists. The only difference is, you keep score. The sports fan knows the score."

The launching of _Sports Illustrated_ in August of 1954, its initial edition with Milwaukee Braves slugger Eddie Mathews on the cover, began a huge tidal wave of sports on the world stage. It had the effect of "nationalizing" sports as radio did in the 1920s. This combined with television and Westward expansion, creating a sports juggernaut.

Perhaps the greatest effect of all this was to expand sports well beyond New York City. Until the 1950s, New York dominated most aspects of sports. In the 1900s and 1910s, the New York Giants under manager John McGraw were a great dynasty. College football was an East Coast affair dominated in large measure by the Ivy League and Army.

This trend did not change much in the 1920s and 1930s. The Giants continued to be a power in the National League, but the Yankees cast a shadow on sports unlike anything ever seen. It was only when Notre Dame came to play at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium that they became a mythic national team. Pro football was not a really big thing. Basketball was barely followed.

In the 1940s and 1950s, New York increased its stronghold. The Yankee dynasty became an empire, a baseball version of political hegemony. Beyond the pinstripers, the Dodgers-Giants rivalry reached its all-time apex. It was an age of three superstar center fielders, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider. Pro football was now highly popular, its greatest team the New York Giants of Frank Gifford.

But in the late 1950s a seismic shift occurred. _Sports Illustrated_ did not cater to a New York audience. It was popular in the provinces. Americans began reading glorious sports tales from across this great land. Then the Dodgers and Giants moved west. Now it was truly a National Pastime.

"When Sports Illustrated came along it was a big thing," recalled Frank Gifford. "It was the first major publication that focused totally on sports. Now you have all sorts of magazines, two or three for each sport, but Sports Illustrated was a big break-through. Now everything's the electronic media, they don't want to wait until the weekend to see what's going on. I wonder how he would do in this kind of world.

"When I first came, in all honesty I was not sure who the New York Giants were. I knew there was a team in New York City; there was a football team that played at the Polo Grounds, but football was not much of a sport in New York at that time. It was not until we won the 1956 NFL championship, through television, Sports Illustrated, and the nationalization of our sport, that changed everything. My first few years in the league I'd come home to Bakersfield every off-season and people would ask, "Where have you been?" Then they started televising the games nationally and that all changed. This had the effect of making the league a powerhouse, and not just in New York. It did not have to rely on New York for ratings and interest.

"I shared Mickey Mantle's locker at Yankee Stadium and would run into him in Manhattan now and then. Baseball players and football players are a totally different breed, maybe because the football players all come from a college background while the baseball players are more rural, their minor league experiences are very small town."

Television was originally centered in New York City, but Hollywood was where the real talent was. The influence of the media began to move west, too, along with the highways built by President Eisenhower. Jet air travel played an enormous role, of course.

By the 1960s, the New York power base was broken up to some extent. The Yankees dominated until 1964, then fell apart. The Giants gave way to Vince Lombardi's Packers. A great rival of the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers made their mark. The San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers had their most competitive decade as rivals. Their success spawned the California Angels, the Oakland A's, the Oakland Raiders, the Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Kings, and others.

College football truly became national; Oklahoma, Alabama, Southern California, Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska and others threatening the top perch once seemingly reserved only for Notre Dame and a few elites. The East Coast became almost obsolete in the college football world. The Ivy League no longer was relevant. In college basketball, once huge in New York, the game shifted to the West: USF and then UCLA. The NCAA replaced the old NIT as _the_ showcase tournament.

Jim Murray's West symbolized this new world. Its burgeoning population, political significance, great weather, geographical beauty, and cultural relevance were topped by the imprimatur of Hollywood glamour. Murray rode the crest. No longer was New York the center of the world. L.A. was not that, yet, but they were getting there. When the Dodgers moved to L.A. everything changed. Los Angeles was now a big league town.

Nobody in the media was better suited to describe what it all meant than Jim Murray. Perhaps because he too was from the East Coast, but by the mid-1950s was comfortably suited in the City of Angels, he understood and gave voice to it. His style was almost patrician in tone. He was well read and understood the impact of history. In the 1940s and 1950s, many writers referred to Rome. America stood as a powerful symbol of Roman power. Our old enemies, Germany, Japan or anybody it seemed who stood in our way, were now modern day Carthaginians or Gauls.

Hollywood was in its most epic era. Cecil B. DeMille and Darryl F. Zanuck created blockbusters depicting these glory days. It was impossible not to pick up on the language of the movies, especially if one lived in L.A. and mixed with the movie crowd, as Murray did.

The USC Trojans, featuring a song called "Conquest," mascots dressed like gladiators, played in a stadium named after the original, with classic architectural column designs meant to evoke images of Greece in its grandeur and Rome in its glory. It was a time of hyperbole and color. It was Jim Murray's time.

Murray finally tried his hand at screenwriting when he was asked to write the remake of Ben Hogan's life story. "Jim loved Ben Hogan," recalled Murray's good friend, Bill Caplan. After weeks struggling with it, he finally gave up, forced to tell Hogan himself he could not get it done. The movie was never re-made.

But Murray wrote often of Hogan, beginning with a 1949 piece for _Time_. Hogan was at the top of his game, transforming golf. The magazine went so far as to plan a cover story on him, which in 1949-50 was quite unusual. Some very important things were happening in the world. The Soviets were now our enemies all the way, ready to explode their first Atomic bomb. China was "lost" to the Communists. Hollywood and Washington were crawling with Russian spies, Commies and "fellow travelers." During a serious time, the magazine decided to lighten the subject matter on occasion.

Hogan was probably the first golfer ever to get a _Time_ cover. Sports editor Marshall Smith was enamored of him. He sent Murray to do a story. The deadline for the story was fast approaching when Murray found Hogan practicing at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. The three-hour time difference worked against him. Murray waited with an open phone line for Hogan to meticulously finish his practice. The presses were waiting "at several thousand dollars a minute in lost time," recalled Murray. Hogan answered questions as meticulously as he played golf. Finally Murray completed the interview and called the story in, barely making deadline. Hogan went back to Texas, where he was accidentally hit by a bus, but fought his way back from it.

His comeback became the subject of a proposed movie to be directed by Sidney Lanfield. The next time Murray saw Hogan in L.A. he was a bigger hero than ever after returning from his injuries. Unfortunately, just as Murray approached him news came over the loudspeaker that Sam Snead birdied 17 and had an 11-foot putt on 18 to tie Hogan. Hogan erupted in fury, sensing that Murray and his magazine were bad luck. Murray "crept away."

Five years later they were re-united at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Hogan had just shot 287 on a course "so monstrous that only 12 players broke 300 and in high rough so impenetrable that Porky Oliver actually lost a free drop!" wrote Murray. With Hogan the apparent winner, his old nemesis Snead was out of the running. Arnold Palmer was not close, but a guy named Jack Fleck was still within range. Now at _Sports Illustrated_ , Murray approached Hogan at this time. Just as in 1950, Murray's appearance coincided with Fleck's miracle round to force a play-off. Hogan, ready to take a shower and celebrate a victory, instead was discombobulated and lost.

To Hogan, Murray was like " _Li'l Abner_ who always went around with a cloud over his head," he wrote. "Only I bring the cloud to Ben Hogan. I rain on his parade." The record was rather extraordinary. Put on a _Time_ cover, he was hit by a bus. The next two times the author of his story approached him, it coincided with miracle comebacks by opponents to beat him, the last one from a club pro out of Davenport, Iowa. No wonder dark forces seemed to prevent Murray from completing the screenplay about Hogan. All of this became an urban legend of sorts, and combined with other events leading to what some people still call the " _Sports Illustrated_ curse."

In 1967, a coffee table book titled _The Wonderful World of Sport_ was published. It is interesting to note that among 30 stories chosen for the book, none were written by Jim Murray during his tenure with the magazine from 1953 to 1961. The essays picked, however, demonstrate the impact of _Sports Illustrated_. Among them was "Duel of the Four-Minute Men" by Paul O'Neill, about Roger Bannister's breaking of the hallowed four-minute mark.

Ted Williams claimed that Joan Flynn Dreyspool's 1955 essay, "Subject: Ted Williams," was the best anybody ever did on him. Robert Creamer's "The Embattled World of Avery Brundage" (1956) addressed the issue of amateur hypocrisy well ahead of its time. Herbert Warren Wind's "The Masters" (1955) gave great vision to this most hallowed of golf events. Some of the legends who penned articles for _Sports Illustrated_ during the era included John Underwood, Dan Jenkins, Clare Boothe Luce, George Plimpton, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. The literary nature and sheer talent, combined with the eclectic subject matter – ranging from golf to horse racing to fishing to football and way beyond – had a great effect on Murray as a writer, as well as the choices he made for columns in later years.

_Sports Illustrated's_ managing editor of the mid-1960s, Sidney James, wrote that Henry Luce was the magazine's "inspiring genius" whose "goading and guiding" inspired its success.

Perhaps staff member Robert Boyle put it best in determining the effect of _Sports Illustrated_. "Sport permeates any number of levels of contemporary society, and it touches up and even deeply influences such disparate elements as status, race relations, business life, automotive design, clothing styles, the concept of the hero, language, and ethical values," he wrote. "For better or worse, it gives form and substance to much in American life."

In 1967 the editors at _Sports Illustrated_ said sport itself had been shaped in part by the "vast disarray of war," but was "beginning to set the pace it would maintain for some years to come, perhaps up to that magic milestone, the year 2000, and even beyond."

In 1993 Jim Murray wrote, "I'm proud of what we did, and they did, at _Sports Illustrated_. It played its role in the explosion of sports. So did I."

The West Coast editor, Murray became intimately involved with all the sports teams in California. It meant that when he moved on to the _Los Angeles Times_ , he was no outsider.

Sam Tsagalakis was a field goal kicker for Southern California who first met Murray in the 1950s, establishing a lifelong friendship.

"Jim Murray was a great guy," Tsagalakis, whose nickname was "the Toe," recalled. "I went to see him all the time. I worked for Blue Diamond. I was down in Pismo Beach, and he was there with his wife, and we spent some time together. He always remembered me. He was just a genuine guy and would go out of his way to do things for people. I probably met him later at USC. I'm the past president of the Trojan Club and the football alumni group. I hosted a luncheon called 'The Game is On,' " a fabulous event featuring Trojans and Fighting Irish alumni the week of the rivalry game played each even year in Los Angeles. It would become something considered synonymous with Jim Murray.

**The** _Times_ **they are a changin'**

Murray toiled at _Sports Illustrated_ from 1953-61. He was well paid but not rich. He was highly respected as a national sportswriter. His emphasis was on the West Coast, where much was happening.

In 1955-56, the University of San Francisco basketball team, led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, won their second consecutive NCAA championship. Along the way they won 60 straight games, a record not broken until John Wooden and UCLA in 1973. In 1959, the University of California under coach Pete Newell won the national title.

In 1954, UCLA under coach Red Sanders went unbeaten to capture the only national championship in the school's football history. Murray got to know the crusty Sanders, an irascible Southerner who liked to pull a cork. He was precisely the sort of figure Murray loved to be with and write about. He reminded him of the characters in his Hartford youth. Sanders died _in flagrante delicto_ in a Sunset Street whorehouse in 1958.

In the mid-1950s, a payola scandal rocked the Pacific Coast Conference, upending USC, UCLA, California and Washington. In the late 1950s, a USC lineman named Mike McKeever allegedly landed a late hit on a California halfback named Steve Bates, causing serious injury. _Time's_ November 16 issue ran an article called "Sport: Too Rough for Football." _Sports Illustrated_ also gave it enormous coverage, seriously questioning whether the game had become too violent, a frequent accusation leveled at boxing.

It was a tremendous sticking point with the Berkeley faithful, with lasting repercussions. Cal actually _sued_ USC. A film produced as evidence supposedly exonerated McKeever, but never quieted the howls in Berkeley. In the 1960s, Cal de-emphasized sports. Once a national powerhouse in football, baseball, basketball and track, they became an also-ran. USC went in the other direction. Led by John McKay, they exploded with the greatest 20-year run (1962-81) in college football history. This same era also saw USC (and their _real_ rival, UCLA) develop into the most powerhouse all-around athletic programs ever.

The "McKeever incident" was a major turning point in sports. The rivalry between USC and California (and later Stanford) became political. It mirrored the social differences between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Cal fans took to waving credits cards, mocking USC students when they gave the "V for victory" sign while their band played "Conquest." Stanford's band and students eventually took that one step further, making a Nazi salute. The "V for victory" sign, popularized by Dwight Eisenhower as he led the Allies to victory in Europe, was hi-jacked by the anti-war movement as a peace sign, even though it made no real sense.

As Cal de-emphasized sports, competitive athletics became seen by certain elements of the left as a _"bourgeois"_ activity of the capitalistic middle class. Murray watched all of it, writing about it with a socio-political edge. It began during his _Sports Illustrated_ years, when the magazine gave extensive coverage to the recruiting scandals and then the "McKeever incident."

Murray closely followed USC during his _Sports Illustrated_ years. It was then that he first began to cultivate relationships with McKay and Al Davis. Murray discovered what a scoundrel Davis was early. Davis managed to talk his way into coaching positions at The Citadel and USC. After single-handedly managing to get The Citadel in trouble over recruiting violations, he then landed a job on the USC staff by getting the key players involved in The Citadel's recruiting violations to transfer to USC with him. Murray observed with a jaundiced eye while Davis maneuvered to try and get the head coaching position that became available at USC when Don Clark was fired after the 1959 season . . . ostensibly because of recruiting violations _Davis was responsible for!_

In order to make sense of the hiring of Jim Murray with the _Los Angeles Times_ in 1961, and its great affect not only on the newspaper but the city of L.A., one must understand the politics and culture of Southern California in the 1950s.

It was in the 1950s when L.A. further distanced themselves from Northern California and San Francisco in particular. San Francisco took a leftward turn politically. It became a union town. The University of California, Berkeley began to foment dissent. Los Angeles, on the other hand, was a Republican city. It was business-friendly, not leaning to union sympathies, but rather to entrepreneurial capitalism. Even the Hollywood movie industry was still viewed as an entrepreneurial venture, a gamble. Its moguls were invested in making movies that touted American greatness in World War II or Biblical epics glorifying God Almighty.

While Joseph McCarthy was exposed as a charlatan of sorts, his career over and McCarthyism a pejorative, Richard Nixon benefited widely, at least in the short term, from the anti-Communism of the era. He represented a robust concept in which America was seen as the greatest nation ever, its can-do way the essence of a newfound spirit ending centuries of human sullenness. At least that was the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce view.

When the Dodgers moved to L.A., the city figured they were _the_ cutting edge town of the future. The L.A. Basin was an endless valley. With freeways, it could absorb expansion as far as the eye could see and beyond. They welcomed all comers. The Rose Bowl became a Pacific Coast-Big 10 affair in 1947. This resulted in tremendous migration from the Midwest, so much so that Murray dubbed Long Beach Iowa's "sea port." Prior to the Big 10 arrangement, the Rose Bowl was normally a game between a Pacific Coast and a Southern college. This further added to the original allure of Los Angeles as the destination of Southerners moving west after the Civil War because San Francisco was more of a Boston-New York type town.

Patriotic veterans of World War II chose to make L.A., with its Mediterranean climate and Shangri-La landscape, the place to raise young families. Real estate prices were cheap. Gas was cheap. This was the new Promised Land.

The car was king. The highway was a new invention of sorts. A citizen could live in Santa Monica, Pasadena, even out in San Fernando or Long Beach or West Covina or Orange County, and by freeway be at an office in downtown L.A., in Beverly Hills, in Hollywood, within 45 minutes or so.

Towards the end of World War II, when it was obvious the U.S. was going to emerge victorious over Germany and Japan, President Franklin Roosevelt took a meeting with King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. It was after his Big Three meeting with Joe Stalin and Winston Churchill at Tehran, when the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union decided how to "divide the world" upon Nazi Germany's surrender.

That fateful meeting probably shaped the 20th Century, and with it the future of Los Angeles, more than any single event including the meetings between Roosevelt, then Harry Truman, with Churchill and Stalin. In effect, Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz reached an agreement.

The Saudis, along with the rest of the Arab world, enthusiastically backed Adolf Hitler. The Zionist Movement, spurred by Jewish escape from Communist Russia after World War I, threatened to turn Jerusalem into the state of Israel. Many in the Arab power structure determined Hitler was doing "God's work" by eliminating the Jewish religion from the face of the Earth. Muslim units of the S.S. fought alongside the Germans. But the Arabs were pragmatists. Their desire to see Hitler succeed did not pan out. They also knew Hitler would likely invade and take over the Middle East, a great fear of the Arab world going back to the Romans, the Crusades and Napoleon. Hitler would ultimately consider the dusky-skinned Arabs no better than Jews or blacks, or any other ethnic minorities.

So King Abdulaliz threw in with the winners of history, America. President Roosevelt laid out the future to him. America was the new empire, replacing Great Britain. A former colony itself, they would oversee de-colonization in the Third World. As that occurred, upheaval, unrest and terrorism would occur. King Abdulaziz would need protection from the rabble, the masses, the "great unwashed." His family, the great wealth of Arab royalty, would need a protector. FDR made a deal which in essence said that for all times in the future, America would protect the vested interests of the Middle East. In return, the Middle East would allow Western oil companies to drill in its deserts, thus procuring cheap oil to fuel its car-mad continent.

This agreement played as great a role in the growth of Southern California as the Rose Bowl, the Trans-Continental Railroad, the Owens Valley Aqueduct, the Teapot Dome scandal, or even post-war migration. Driving cars was not expensive. Oil was not expensive. Thus was the cost-of-living low. Therefore, business was good. It could expand and deliver cheap goods benefiting millions, making life easier and more convenient. It was a miracle, a revolution never seen before. Dwight Eisenhower was as business-friendly as any President, saying "the business of America is business."

Middle East oil was not the only source of cheap fuel powering Southern California. The Southland itself was built smack dab right on top of the some of the richest oil fields in the world. The La Brea Tar Pits were located just west of downtown L.A. Oil wells constantly pumped in Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Signal Hill, above Ladera Heights, east of the city, in Fullerton, and throughout the region from Santa Barbara to Bakersfield to Orange County. High school nicknames reflected this: Oilers, Drillers.

Oil wealth dominated Southern California politics. USC was built on it. One of their greatest patrons, Edward Doheny was one of the wealthiest oilmen in the nation, caught up in the Teapot Dome scandal that brought down the Warren Harding Administration in the 1920s. The left, in California symbolized by the Socialist writer and Gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair, fixated on "big oil" as emblematic of all conservative, capitalist evils.

The reaction to oil, and its effect on the environment, was profoundly different in the Southland from the attitude of Northern Californians. The essence of the region's cultural differences could be found in these attitudes. By 1961, various districts within Greater Los Angeles took on distinctive traits. Greater L.A. by then ran roughly from Ventura on the northern Ventura County coast to San Clemente on the southern Orange Country coast; inland to San Bernardino and Riverside; encompassing all of LA. and Orange Counties, and part of Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

Downtown Los Angeles was in disrepair. It had not maintained itself as a city-center, with skyscrapers dotting the sky to identify itself in the manner of New York, glorified by the writing of libertarian novelist Ayn Rand. But lack of glamour did not prevent downtown from still being the center of much action. City Hall, the main courthouses, stock exchange, newspaper and its attendant business were still there. The big law firms, brokerage houses, banks, oil companies and corporations were centered there. USC, the Coliseum, the soon-to-be-completed Dodger Stadium, the Ambassador Hotel and other landmarks were close enough to be called part of the downtown corridor.

Just to the west was the Miracle Mile, a section of Wilshire Boulevard called the mid-Wilshire, which specialized in insurance, public relations and advertising. Advertising was the glamour profession of the era, its power emphasized by the growth of television. While the profession was centered on Madison Avenue in New York, Hollywood gave the Miracle Mile a certain kind of L.A. _panache_.

The Westside consisted of Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood, Westwood, Santa Monica and Malibu. This was a relatively new development. When UCLA was established in 1919, people complained that nobody would "go all the way out there." Western Avenue was the last outpost of the city. Between it and the ocean were little more than orange groves, avocado orchards, ranches, farmland, and the like. The elites had beach cottages in Santa Monica, which they accessed by horse and buggy, the model-T, or trolley, on weekends or summers. The growth of UCLA and the choice of Beverly Hills, Bel Air and eventually Malibu as the home of movie mansions created attendant development. By 1961, Malibu was still relatively rural but growing. Century City, the "city of the future," was in development. Marina Del Rey was still sand dunes but in the planning stages.

By 1961, the Westside was a business powerhouse. Its specialties were talent agencies, movie producers, studios, entertainment law, and Hollywood publicity. Between Santa Monica and Long Beach along the coast, Howard Hughes and the so-called Military Industrial Complex, which was a confluence of private companies making planes, aerospace equipment, war weapons, and technology for the U.S. government, dominated industry.

The power of the Military Industrial Complex was already mammoth, so much so that even a military man like Eisenhower warned of its inherent dangers for a free society in his departing 1961 speech. But the benefits of the technology industry running along what later became known as the "405 corridor" had enormous benefits. In 1961, America was embroiled in a full-scale "space race" and "nuclear arms race" with the Soviet Union. This had a direct benefit on U.S. schools, particularly in California. Tremendous emphasis was placed on public school education, and the desire to produce scientists and tech-savvy workers fueling this industry. Later the Silicon Valley and the Internet owed much of its creation to this emphasis.

Long Beach was mainly a Navy town. Oil wells dotted the landscape from Long Beach and Signal Hill to Huntington Beach. But Orange County was growing. In 1961 it was still in a relatively nascent stage. It was intensely conservative, dominated by the John Birch Society. Orange County was the place people lived so as to avoid the "evils" of Los Angeles, which might mean heavy racial integration of schools and neighborhoods; too many Jews; too much government and too much de-emphasis on Christianity and family values; and of course the immoralities of Hollywood.

Nothing fit this image better than Disneyland, opened in 1955. But Disneyland had the effect of springing Orange County from out of its cocoon. It became a suburb of L.A., then an integral part of it, and eventually an entity in and of itself. This was happening at its early stages in 1961.

In 1964, its political power in giving Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for President meant it could not be hidden any longer. Two years later, the arrival of the Angels made it a national destination. Its beaches and nightlife made it impossible to ignore. It became known as a place where the most outrageously beautiful women – mostly classic California blonds – were found in large supply. Nothing was so irresistible. This made it a place of SoCal glamour. Its business identity seemed to reflect this sensuousness; gleaming buildings shining in the setting sun like statuesque women in string bikinis. It would develop into the home of upscale law firms, real estate and wealth investment.

In 1961, the rest of the Southland was either rural or suburban in nature. The San Fernando Valley was an innocent land of canyons and playing fields where parents let their kids roam free night and day. Eventually, its business identity would be dominated by the porn industry, with all corruption of the family soul inherent therein, but that was almost two decades away. The Mexicans lived in east L.A. The blacks lived in south-central. Hollywood proper was still safe, its hills the place where the movie crowd cheated on each other's spouses. A new kind of music emanated from the clubs on the Sunset Strip. The Beach Boys created a mythological siren song beckoning all manner of humanity to come live the California Dream.

By 1961, things were on the move in Los Angeles. The Dodgers played at the Los Angeles Coliseum, but filled the cavernous football stadium with huge crowds. They were the World Champions in 1959, the darlings of Hollywood, and had a fantastic new stadium in the works.

Enter the _Los Angeles Times_. The Los Angeles Times was around since the 19th Century. The Chandler family owned them. Otis Chandler was a young Stanford graduate, just taking over his family's newspaper. Chandler, like his family and his newspaper, was a Republican, but like the "times," he was of a changing breed that would change the Times. The Times always reflected the politics of its city. The Chandlers tapped into that. Otis intuitively understood this dynamic as it evolved over the years.

Because the Southerners of the defeated Confederacy chose the warm climes of Los Angeles, L.A. took on a more Southern, Christian, evangelical, and Republican identity. The L.A. Times catered to a constituency of readers best exemplified by Benjamin Braddock's (Dustin Hoffman) landed gentry Pasadena parents in The Graduate. That was the Pasadena-San Marino social order from whence Otis Chandler emerged.

The newspaper began in 1881, one year after the University of Southern California opened for business, and was revived after running out of money by General Harrison Gray Otis in 1884. It reflected "strong individualist's with idealistic visions shaping a frontier outpost into an urban center," wrote Digby Diehl in Front Page: A Collection of Historical Headlines from the Los Angeles Times. General Otis guided the Times into the 20th Century while establishing a publishing dynasty. The paper supported early development with stories about sub-divisions of the Lankershim tract, which could only happen with the building of a controversial water aqueduct.

Perhaps the first really big front page story putting the Times "on the map," so to speak, occurred on February 3, 1922. Naturally, it involved Hollywood. Famed movie director William Desmond Taylor had been murdered. He was romantically linked to the beautiful silent film actress Mabel Normand. The headline read, "Sinister Drama Mystery." A manslaughter trial involved actor Fatty Arbuckle, said to be a jealous rival of the director's. The age of sensationalism was on. The L.A. Times detailed the first smog alerts, the opening of Disneyland, debate over transportation issues, and the building of Union Station.

"The growth of the Los Angeles Times reflects a pattern familiar to the development of all newspapers in the United States, " wrote Digby Diehl. "The papers were stirring spoons in the great melting pot: homogenizing, educating, acculturating forces." The American press, Diehl went on, "did not show significant growth until the Westward movement of the mid-19th Century, of which General Harrison Gray Otis was a beneficiary." Between 1850 and 1880, American newspapers doubled to 850.

Social responsibility was slower in growth or, as A.J. Liebling paraphrased, "freedom of the press belonged to those who owned one." The late 19th Century was a period of "shameless proselytizing, partisan politics, circulation-building theatrics, and the prejudices of the day," wrote Diehl. This applied to the Times, whose "colorful prose was striking," but lacked objectivity, and was embodied by similarities to the rival publishing empire owned by William Randolph Hearst.

In particular, racial sensivities were lacking. The Soviets were viewed as lackluster "allies" before and during World War II, followed by "absolute hysteria" in the years afterward. Always the Times reflected the partisan, Republican proclivities of its owners and publishers, the Chandler family. Harry Chandler took over as publisher in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution. Harry, who signed on as a clerk in the circulation department in the 1880s, was married to Otis's daughter, Marian.

The newspaper reflected tremendous Red Scare fears of the day. Anarchists rioted in the streets. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested on sedition charges. "Red Emma" Goldman was jailed on treason charges. J. Edgar Hoover rose as a young lawman riding a white steed to save the glorious union. These were the sentiments of the Chandler Times.

Harry Chandler was not merely a publisher. He was a businessman who used his paper to promote his business interests, which included water projects in the San Fernando Valley, automobile ventures, and aviation. All of these were integral in the growth and success of L.A. Chandler threw lavish fundraisers on behalf of his pet projects.

Harry's son, Norman was born in 1899. He spent 40 years waiting in the wings until taking over in the early 1940s. Like all who preceded him, he was a Republican. The paper undoubtedly remained a supporter of the GOP, but under Norman they softened their political editorials, taking a less personal stance.

In response to the "threat" of television, the parent Times Mirror Company diversified its investments in order to create steady revenue withstanding circulation ups and downs.

One of the most contentious issues the paper and the city dealt with occurred when Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley decided upon Chavez Ravine as the future home of his team. At least at the time, it seemed to be the most perfect, centralized, freeway-easy location for a stadium conceivable. It was set on a plateau, resembling a shining city on a hill. It afforded spectacular vistas of downtown L.A. and the basin stretching endlessly to the sea. It was open space in the middle of urbanity, allowing for the park, its access roads and parking to be built in landscaped, airy manner.

The only problem was that Mexican squatters lived in squalor. Many have argued that the Dodgers stole their land. There is little evidence that any of the land was owned by anybody. It was mostly fetid squalor, most of its residents illegals from Mexico, but liberal elements opposed their displacement.

The main powers all stood with O'Malley. These included L.A.'s political structure, Hollywood, and the L.A. Times. Ronald Reagan led a telethon raising money and support for building Dodger Stadium. The Times painted a glorious portrait of a great stadium that would make L.A. a "big league city" at last.

Most historical scholars agree the construction of Dodger Stadium proved to be a major milestone in the formation of modern Los Angeles which, as Kevin Starr, one of the premiere Californian historians noted, "finalized with a flourish the emergence of the region into big league status." Still, despite general agreement amongst historians that the transformation of Chavez Ravine delineated "the transition Los Angeles was making in this era from regional capital to super city," political disagreement remains over related issues.

A flawed historical narrative, portraying Walter O'Malley as corporate heavy, formed the basis for another popular version of Chavez Ravine history that continues to hold favor in Los Angeles' Chicano community. Here, "the public housing project initially planned for the area isn't mentioned and sometimes the Dodgers themselves are said to evict the residents, rather than the city," according to The Battle for Chavez Ravine: Chicano Resistance.

One theory forwarded by Chicano historians, including Rodolfo Acuna, George Sanchez, and David Diaz, gives little credence to the Democratic process lawfully engaged in to create the stadium deal. Instead, emphasis is placed on the "noble" struggle of the Arechiga family's "bold resistance to their brutal evictions," according to Los Angeles historian Matt McCluggage, and attendant "unjust racial and economic exploitation and the seizure of their land," as voiced by The Battle for Chavez Ravine: Chicano Resistance.

Located in the hills directly to the north of downtown, Chavez Ravine was a home to many Mexican-Americans. Whites considered the area an "eyesore" and "shantytown." It was officially deemed "blighted" and earmarked for re-development by the Los Angeles City Housing Authority in July of 1950, backed by funding from the new Federal Housing Act of 1949. The government imposed the right of eminent domain, informing residents they would have to sell their homes to make the land available for a planned public housing project called Elysian Park Heights to be designed by the renowned Austrian architect, Richard Neutra.

Backed by Mayor Fletcher Bowron, it was slated to be a "small village," according McCluggage, in Chavez Ravine. The project was stalled and never fulfilled, ostensibly because the Dodgers eventually took priority. There was a decade-long debate known as the "Battle of Chavez Ravine." Many Latinos were uprooted, with attendant loss of community.

The role of O'Malley is an easy one to demonize, as it comes on top of his controversial decision to uproot the Dodgers from Brooklyn and move them to Los Angeles. This made him "a Machiavelli who made no decision without a ruthlessly dispassionate analysis of how it would affect his profits," wrote Roger Kahn in The Boys of Summer.

O'Malley, however, was not the only political operative or player in this scenario. Los Angeles politicians Kenneth Hahn, Rosalind Wyman, and Mayor Norris Poulson were equally enthusiastic about the building of the stadium.

The expulsion of Mexican-Americans has been studied by Chicano historians David Diaz, Ronald William Lopez, and Rodolfo Acuna, evolving into a narrative of the "Mexican-American experience of injustice, segregation, and dislocation," according to The Battle for Chavez Ravine: Chicano Resistance.

"According to these historians, the public's support for the Dodger Deal must be analyzed within the context of . . . Cold War mentality as well, since practically nothing could possibly be seen as more American than baseball and O'Malley's campaign for support astutely cashed in on the patriotic notion of our National Pastime," wrote McCluggage. This mindset certainly tapped into the thinking of patrician Los Angeles as embodied by the Chandler Times. The argument against the stadium, favoring public housing, had little political heft behind it since "public housing" in that era was virtually a pejorative for "Reds."

During this time, a young reporter was learning the trade. Otis Chandler was at least a fourth generation Los Angeleno, the son of Norman Chandler, grandson of Harry Chandler, and great-grandson of Harrison Gray Otis, his namesake. At first, he was dismissed as a blond-haired playboy, too pretty, concerned with girls, parties and sports as befits the sons of privilege in a city that, by the 1950s offered every sensual delight. He did not need to work hard. He did not need to make tough decisions. His life was mapped out for him. He could live off the "fat of the land" as long as he chose, eschewing controversy. That was not his nature.

Chandler's background was modern. He was a man of the changing times. He respected the legacy of his family but was bound and determined to make his own unique mark. Growing up a rich kid in Southern California, he was an indifferent student, a great athlete, and an avid outdoorsman who learned how to hunt, fish, track and live off the land. Chandler's love of the outdoors would grow to legendary proportions. He was a great surfer.

Over the years, he would engage in wild safaris, big game hunts, and other incredible adventures in some of the most inhospitable, dangerous conditions of Earth's four corners. He thwarted death at the hands of polar bears, crashing speed racers and surviving other hazards on many, many occasions, sometimes resulting in weeks of hospital care. Years later a profiler would write that, "If Otis Chandler had not existed, Ernest Hemingway would have created him." He was a Hemingway-esque, larger than life figure, with a thirst for insatiable adventure. He was a health nut who never drank or smoke, the original Californian pursuing a life of action and clean living.

His parents wanted him to go to Stanford University, but his grades were not up to snuff. In order to improve him academically, they sent him to the prestigious Andover Academy in Massachusetts. The Chandler name carried no weight at Andover, where the offspring of Presidents, Supreme Court Justices and the Eastern corporate elite attended. Chandler was a tanned, very blond kid, the picture of the Southern California beach stereotype, which made him the butt of jokes. In order to make his life a little more miserable, he was made to room with the black son of a Chicago janitor, a scholarship student. Chandler and his black roommate got the last laugh, however.

Otis did not have a racist bone in his body. He enjoyed the company of people from different backgrounds, viewing it as a part of his growth and education. His black roommate was an excellent student who handled himself with aplomb, engendering grudging admiration from other students. They hit it off famously as friends.

Chandler proved to be a tremendous track star, which of course made him a "big man on campus." He graduated with good marks and headed off to Stanford. A surf aficionado, he regularly hit the waves at nearby Santa Cruz. He lifted weights for the shot put and developed the body of a veritable Greek god. He looked like a movie star, every bit as handsome as Troy Donahue or Robert Redford. A world-class shot-putter, he was considered a strong candidate for a spot on the U.S. team for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, but just missed out. He was a fraternity hero, a good enough student, and the apple of the eye of every beautiful young girl down on "the Farm," as Stanford's rural campus is called. His nocturnal activities with the ladies were legendary.

When he graduated, he was advised to settle down. He did, marrying Marilyn "Missy" Brant, an attractive fellow Stanford student. She was from the right social order, her family part of old Pasadena-San Marino money. They started up a large family.

During summer vacations while attending college, Chandler was detached to the Times's offices to learn the business. At first he seemed disinclined. After graduation he served in the U.S. Air Force. Upon his discharge, he returned to L.A. and was put through a rigorous program, working as a cub reporter. He learned his trade from the ground up. Otis had a mind of his own. He came from a WASP background, but studied evolution at Stanford. He questioned immutable Christian concepts, but never took anything too far. He still went to church and raised his children as Christians.

He was not the rock-ribbed, unquestioning Republican his father and particularly his grandfather had been. They had not simply boosted the land and water deals that built the region, but invested in and profited from them. The family wealth and power emanated from these and many other deals that crossed the lines of journalism, politics and business. Chandler turned from these precepts, but only so far. He still knew where his bread was buttered.

The paper unquestioningly backed Richard Nixon's political career, Howard Hughes's business expansion, Joseph McCarthy's Communist "witch hunts," corporate expansion, freeway building, and sports stadiums, while paying little heed to environmentalists concerned at the increasing smog settling over the L.A. Basin. The dirt was thought to be the "price of doing business."

Otis Chandler was troubled by all of this. His natural inclinations were by no means radical. He was a businessman and by no means rejected the profit motive, but he was of the new breed. He was shaped by his relationship with a black roommate at prep school, and black teammates and competitors in the sports world. He saw the increasing black population, many of whom had come during the war to work in the shipyards and other war industries. He was not oblivious to the plight of Mexican-Americans, in the 1950s and 1960s practically an ignored underclass of the city. As late as the early 1960s, the Los Angeles Times had yet to hire a black reporter. They covered Hollywood, the aerospace industry, sports; black south-central and Latino east L.A. were given short shrift. The ram-rodding of Dodger Stadium despite their objections was given little attention.

The L.A. Times was unquestionably the king of newspapers in Southern California. They were a major profit-maker. They boosted business ventures that unashamedly brought in more profits to the company and the Chandler family. But they had a bad reputation. The East Coast intelligentsia looked down their noses at them. In various polls conducted in the late 1950s, the Times was vilified, some going so far as to call them the "worst" or "second worst" newspaper in the nation. They were jingoistic, blatantly Republican, and provincial.

Chandler was hired by his father as a cub reporter after he got out of Stanford and the Air Force. Throughout the decade, he made very little money. Missy Chandler was aghast, thinking she married into great wealth yet was forced to raise her young family in near poverty. Otis worked in almost every section of the newspaper. He was being groomed to take over the company. Norman Chandler wanted him to learn about the ink presses, distribution, advertising sales, marketing, personnel issues, and of course the reporter's trade. Chandler had never grown up assuming he would take over the family business. He went to work at the downtown office, but was not originally convinced he would make it his life's work.

It grew on him. By the late 1950s Otis made it clear he wanted the job, but his father was still robust, while he was still very young. Norman and the powers that be nevertheless decided to make him the fourth publisher in the paper's history. This caused a rift in the family that remains to this day, namely from Norman's brother Philip, who felt he was next in line. On April 12, 1960, during the Republican and Democrat Presidential Primaries, which eventually led to the momentous Nixon-Kennedy debates, he was introduced.

"I was going to make something of myself as an individual, apart from make something of myself as a Chandler, where it was expected, where you live on your families' and your father's reputation," Chandler said. "They never forced me to be the best at whatever I do. That somehow came from within me, and I never remember a period when I would settle for mediocrity. Never. "

"I would describe him as a C or C+ student who became an A student through sheer focus and assiduous attention to what it was he was trying to focus on," said former Times editor Bill Thomas. "He was amazing that way. He was pretty secure in his own self."

The announcement, however, was not met with great enthusiasm. Even supporters were non-plussed by his youth, accentuated by his shock of blond hair, jock reputation and veritable surf lingo, exemplified by his first words upon taking over: "Wow!" The Eastern media all but laughed at him.

Otis Chandler's ascension to the publishing suites also separated him from the younger Chandlers. He was the "anointed one." Over the years, Otis would find fault with his cousins and relatives. They all had a stake in the paper. They achieved fabulous wealth through stock splits and associated business ventures. Some would make their mark in other fields, to one extent or another, but the impression was that they were wealthy inheritors living off the money of others. Chandler inherited as much or more as any others, but nobody would ever accuse him of "living off" of anybody. He was a worker, an innovator. He was driven and it showed immediately.

Chandler was not as partisan as his predecessors (although Kyle Palmer was still around, and he was). Nixon was the obvious choice of the paper in 1960. He rode to power in large measure due to the paper's strong backing of his policies in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was elected to Congress, the U.S. Senate, and the Vice-Presidency. Nixon's anti-Communism was the papers. It was the regions. But John Kennedy was a striking figure. Nixon was popular in the state. He would take California handily, but JFK had plenty of support.

In 1960 under Otis Chandler, the L.A. Times toned down its partisan act considerably. This was a first, albeit important step. Chandler made several calculations. Republican partisanship was popular, but Los Angeles was by no means a city or region of GOP hegemony. The growing Latino population deserved to have somebody speak for them. So did a black population simmering with discontent. The powers that be failed to notice overt racism within the Los Angeles Police Department. It was papered over under the myth that such things did not happen there. This sort of social discord occurred in the South, or in Eastern cities where ethnic enclaves had decades-old animosities against each other. No so L.A. Terrible riots five years later proved this theory false.

Jews, too, were a growing social and political force in L.A. Chandler knew from his own college experiences that they resented second-class status, shunned from the best fraternities and country clubs even though they often dominated the movie industry.

The G.I. Bill and the government's decision to up-grade education in an effort to meet demands of the "space race" meant that the paper's reading public was far more educated than in years past. TV brought the world into living rooms. World War II, Korea, the Cold War, and rumblings in Southeast Asia meant the U.S. was actively involved in every corner of the globe.

Chandler decided he would not simply take the partisan sting from the paper, but he would up-grade its coverage. This meant creating bureaus in all the major world capitols. They would not rely on the New York Times and the London Times, the so-called "papers of record," to provide distant stories. They would have a Times team on the spot. In fact, it would be the Times under Chandler's direction that would be the leader, the first and most accurate reporter. A world-class newspaper for a new, world-class city.

Chandler, editor Nick Williams, and the L.A. Times set forth to completely change the nature of the paper, and with it the city they covered. By 1962, the obvious difference they effectuated was demonstrated when Richard Nixon lost to incumbent Democrat Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown. Nixon was stunned that the once-fawning coverage of the Times had "turned" on him. In truth, Chandler's paper just covered it straight down the middle. It was still a "Republican paper." They endorsed Nixon in 1962 and continued to generally support Republicans right up to the Reagan era, but not nearly as vociferously as before.

Chandler and his paper supported America. They never "turned" on the troops during the Vietnam War as so many other media outlets did, but they were not cheerleaders of Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara or William Westmoreland, either. The old Times would have called the war protestors at Berkeley and other college campuses Reds, as they referred to roustabouts, strikers and anarchists of the 1930s. Under Chandler, the paper would take an active role in Latino politics, even printing editorials by a writer named Ruben Salazar that could be considered radical. They were caught off guard by the Watts riots, but endeavored to understand it with a series of in-depth analyses.

Chandler was as much a businessman as a newspaperman. From the journalistic standpoint, he advocated fair reporting and opinion, perhaps slightly leaning to the right but never so obviously as to engender outright claims of bias. Perhaps his greatest contribution was in giving his writers and editors incredible freedom with little concern for cost. His newspaper printed long, analytical, in-depth pieces such as were normally found in a weekly or even monthly magazine like the New Yorker or The Economist. Many argued that fast-paced Los Angelenos were too rushed to read long essays spread over many pages, a thick daily paper packed with enormous volumes of information, and a Sunday paper that was nothing less than a "book," eventually reaching as many as 400 pages.

The choice of articles was astounding. Chandler routinely okayed stories that required reporters to travel to the four corners of the world, always in first class style, taking the time to research and write these in-depth pieces about any and all subjects that seemingly anybody thought might interest somebody. Articles about the environment, exotic animals, tiny sub-cultures, and all form of human interest were prominently featured without the slightest watering down of content or length. For writers, it was journalistic heaven.

He created many new sections. He hired great writers from competitors. His paper was called the "velvet coffin" because working there was so great nobody could be compelled to ever leave. It was the best place to practice their craft, to develop their journalistic chops.

Chandler created a newspaper that people would spend hours perusing. He was not a reader of books himself. He felt the Times could provide all the literary joy anybody needed. A businessman, he reasoned, would be motivated to rise hours early in order to give his newspaper a thorough read. A housewife could linger over its contents over the course of an entire morning of coffee, satisfied each day that she was as firmly informed of world events as any professor or media personality.

But Chandler was equally a businessman. He opened numerous Times offices, expanding the reach of the paper beyond the city-center to all of Southern California. He was always on top of the latest innovations in technology, printing presses, distribution methods, and every other apparatus of a paper. Norman Chandler's decision to have his son apprentice in every department of the paper in the 1950s paid off. It took.

Otis Chandler oversaw his paper's purchase of other newspapers and media outlets. Most – not all - were profitable and helped spur his company profits. In the election year of 1960, Chandler expanded his paper's Washington, D.C. bureau from three to 36 staffers. He inaugurated the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, competing directly with the Associated Press, United Press International, and the New York Times as a key disseminator of worldwide information. Under editor Nick Williams, the paper quickly expanded to 18 foreign news bureaus from Hong Kong to Moscow, from Jerusalem to what was still called Peking. They opened new offices in 12 U.S. cities.

Slowly, year by year in the 1960s, the Los Angeles Times changed, molded into the image of Otis Chandler. They improved, much of the improvement an effort to stay competitive with the New York Times, who expanded into the West during the decade. A reporter named Dick Bergolz ruffled Richard Nixon's feathers during his 1962 campaign for Governor. Many of the reporters manning the paper's Washington bureau were Easterners, bought off for higher salaries from establishment papers. Many were Jewish in origin. A "battle" of sorts between L.A. main, still mostly conservative Chandler-type WASPs, existed. It symbolized the divide of the turbulent 1960s in a nutshell, some reporters and even editors growing their hair long in hippy style, others repulsed by it.

But the 1964 and 1968 Presidential elections exposed the new way of thinking and the family divide. In 1964 Otis Chandler and even some of the old line Chandlers openly opposed Barry Goldwater. He was thought to be too "extreme," his followers too "angry," much of this drama detailed in splendid style by David Halbertam's The Powers That Be, all remarkably similar to the modern Tea Party movement which prompts the idea that not only must man remember the past, and if failing to do so he is condemned to re-live it, but beyond that, history does not repeat, "it rhymes."

But Norman Chandler was the doyen of the California Club, the old-line business fraternity in downtown Los Angeles that was as right wing as it gets. Many of the family were hardcore right-wingers, members of the John Birch Society. But Norman preferred moderate New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to Goldwater. Otis liked neither Rockefeller nor Goldwater, although Lyndon Johnson, who replaced the slain JFK, did not enamor him.

Primary and convention coverage induced vociferous John Birch mail, demanding the paper return to its roots and back Goldwater. A compromise was made between Otis and Norman after long arguments. The paper supported Rockefeller in the lead-in to the Republican convention held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, of all places. They added a small, unenthusiastic caveat: if Goldwater won the nomination, they would support him. They were a "Republican paper," but the Times they were a changin'.

In 1968 the rift widened. This time Otis Chandler genuinely liked the Democrat nominee former, Minnesota Senator and LBJ's Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey. Otis was a tacit Republican, moderate to liberal with conservative tendencies. A mixed bag, just as his city had become over the previous decade.

But Richard Nixon prevailed that year. In a 1980s movie about political consultants (probably inspired by Halberstam's book), Gene Hackman references to Richard Gere the old ways, when the Los Angeles Times more or less made Richard Nixon. Indeed he was their "Frankenstein," a Kyle Palmer creation, their "boy" who, as Halberstam pointed out, by 1968 was not their "boy" anymore.

The main opposition to Nixon by this time came from Buff Chandler. She no longer cared much for politics, consumed by her sponsorship of the arts and the building of cathedrals to promote her passions, principally the magnificent downtown Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.  
Nixon turned her off. He was gauche, not quite fit for society. He told bad jokes, pretended to drink milk so his mother did not see him imbibing, then drank Bourbon on the sly. He was invited to the Chandlers' home, where he outlined his ambitious plan for the White House, only to have his own wife angrily interrupt him. If he wanted her opinion, she did not want to go through the aggravation again. Nixon all but ignored her. Buff despised him for that.

Still, there was hypocrisy in Buff's attitude. Nixon was never comfortable with high society. His biographers always highlighted his discomfort with Manhattan and Georgetown parties, because amidst these gatherings were too many Jews and liberals he disagreed with politically, but he was not comfortable even with San Marino-Pasadena conservatives of a "higher station." Buff was hypocritical in that she had hers, she married into the Chandler money, she was not as Theodore Roosevelt once said, "in the arena." Nixon was, naked and exposed.

In the 1960s Otis Chandler was not yet vested in the families' Chandis Securities, a financial apparatus that essentially kept them all rich for perpetuity through the newspaper and numerous business acquisitions. He still needed to tread lightly so as not to completely alienate himself from the other Chandlers, who were not happy with his winning a power struggle while still a mere "child," then taking the paper on a distinct turn towards the middle, which many of them viewed as the left. He and Norman argued. Otis did not quite win, but they compromised. In 1968 they backed Nixon in the end, but when he ascended to the White House Otis wondered what hath he wrought.

The former Stanford sports hero knew and understood that a newspaper's sports section often made or broke the paper. In the L.A. of 1960-61, this was more apparent than ever. Having a Los Angeleno run for President opened their eyes for sure, but L.A. was sports crazy. Pundits were beginning to actually call the place the Sports Capitol of the World, and why not?

USC and UCLA played to breathtaking crowds at the Coliseum. In recent years, USC-Notre Dame and USC-UCLA games drew well over 100,000 fans. So did Rams-49ers contests. The Dodgers were smoking with popularity, but there was more.

In 1960, the American Football League opened for business with the Los Angeles Chargers playing at the Coliseum. Bob Short moved the famed Minneapolis Lakers to L.A. The Lakers, Trojans and Bruins played at the brand new Sports Arena. At the time, the Sports Arena was the state of the art arena in basketball. It also was the sight of Kennedy's 1960 Democrat nomination speech. The Los Angeles Angels expansion team started in 1961.

Chandler realized the L.A. Times daily sports section was going to be the most extensive description of athletic excitement in America. No city came remotely close to equaling L.A.'s coming and goings. New York City, for instance, featured no major college football. Two of their three beloved baseball teams were now in the Golden State. The building of Dodger Stadium made Los Angeles a truly "big league city" in every sense of the word. Chandler endeavored to create a newspaper that was worthy of the moniker and beyond.

Chandler also knew the L.A. sports fan was different. The readers were not the wise guys like Jim Murray's uncles back east. They were less likely to be cigar-chomping fat asses, but more likely to be like Chandler, former athletes themselves in some form or another. They were more likely to be active, like he was, whether beach-goers, or hikers, or bicyclists. They took advantage of year-round good weather to live a healthier lifestyle. They loved the mountains, the ocean. They had an eye for beautiful women, or in the case of the women, for strapping, athletic men. There was even a siren song of sexuality, a beckoning within the city, its sports teams performing in front of sun-splashed crowds, fans in beach attire, and hot girls.

The finest baseball, basketball, football, track, tennis and Olympic athletes came from the Southland. Chandler wanted readers to be interested in them, but not provincially. He discouraged articles about some player on the Dodgers from L.A., or an out of town club visiting the city who happened to have a player from the region. That smacked of homerism in his eyes.

The best women athletes also came from L.A. High school and junior college sports were very competitive there. Chandler saw to it that his paper gave excellent coverage of these sports, knowing many readers checked for this reason only. Beyond these inducements, he needed a hook getting them to come back for more.

All those new staffers hired by Williams and Chandler would become acolytes of a sort of Jim Murray, each reading him, brushing elbows with him, and often emulating him.

Chandler recognized very early on that Murray was a "star." He hired him along with other talents, among them Chuck Champlin and Art Seidenbaum.

"We often stand or fall on timing," Chandler wrote in 1987. "They key elements of timing were just right when I commenced my publishership in 1960.

"I inherited a good, primarily local editorial product and a very sound business from my father, Norman Chandler. Los Angeles at that moment was ready for a great newspaper – a reflection of the West's rise in leadership and influence. A condition some writers chose to call the 'Continental Tilt' was in full swing. Not only did the East-to-West tilt encompass the greatest voluntary migration in history, but also, within the space of a few years, it included the most dynamic explosion of education and cultural and scientific exploration this country has ever seen."

Chandler recognized that the time was right to aim his paper at an audience of better-educated men and women with greater purchasing power. Perhaps no decision better reflected this than the hiring of Murray. Sports readers of the past may have been wowed by the turn of phrase of a Grantland Rice describing how the "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame" dominated the "green plains" of the Polo Grounds, but Murray challenged readers to go beyond that. Chandler unleashed upon the reading public a man who asked them to know who Stradivarius was, what Plato was talking about, where the Low Countries were, and what the Blitzkrieg was all about. All while tying these terms into cogent sports phraseology.

In 1961, Chandler hired Murray to write The Column. Murray was impressed with Chandler and his family. In 1953 a colleague, Frank McCulloch replaced Murray at Time when he went to New York to help launch Sports Illustrated. McCulloch impressed the Chandlers so much they hired him away from Time to run the L.A. Times. Henry Luce tried to lure McCulloch back, then and over the years. McCulloch stayed in Los Angeles. One of his goals was to improve the sports page. He recommended hiring Murray in 1961 when Otis Chandler proposed sweeping new changes.

McCulloch knew Murray personally from their days at Time, but his resume was hard to improve upon. Murray's by-lines at Sports Illustrated were not spectacular, but his overall body of work was. What Chandler and McCulloch sensed in the 41-year old Murray was a range of experience. A sports columnist obviously needs to know sports. Murray grew up with it and had written on the subject for a magazine that covered every kind of sports for eight years.

But they wanted more. They wanted the erudite Murray, the worldly Murray. He had covered sensational noir murders in the 1940s, Hollywood in its hey day, and national politics. They saw something in that. It would be far reaching to suggest they saw then a columnist who would compare coaches to Napoleon or Patton; a great performance on the field to a great piano concerto; or the wisdom of a wise coach with Plato and Lincoln; but they wanted a literate, educated writer with a gift for turning a phrase.

After meeting with Chandler, McCulloch and Nick Williams, Murray accepted their offer. A few years earlier, a rival paper hired a UPI European editor, thinking he could bring class to sports. He was a bust. Murray had class, but he also had an Uncle Ed, who made a living out of loaded dice and gambling on games.

Murray was by then living in Malibu. It was a perfect location during his Sports Illustrated years. He was not on a daily beat, huffing it to an office or downtown stadium every day. Now, he would be required to make an appearance at the paper's downtown offices, at the Coliseum, the Sports Arena, Santa Anita, and any of dozens of other locales growing and building in the Southland. He would have to make it to Los Angeles International Airport on time to meet many plane flights. His wife was supportive but scared. The L.A. Times was not then the powerhouse it became. Murray was about to help make it into Otis Chandler's vision.

Decade of change

Jim Murray's first column appeared on February 12, 1961. Titled "In This Corner, With the Pen, Is the New Guy," it started out, "I have been urged by my friends - all of whom mean well - to begin writing in this space without introducing myself, as if I have been standing here all the while only you haven't noticed. But I don't think I'll do that. I think I'll start off by telling you a little about myself and what I believe in. That way, we can start to fight right away.

"First off, I am against the bunt in baseball - unless they start batting against the ball John McGraw batted against. The last time the bunt won a game, Frank Chance was a rookie.

"I think the eight-point touchdown has had it. It's added nothing to the game unless, of course, you count the extra bookkeeping."

From there Murray found a potpourri of sports items and gave his opinion on them. He immediately told readers he was taking sides, he was not playing it down the middle, he was partisan. He spoke of historical sports figures (McGraw, Chance), drew from non-sports history (Bears quarterback Billy Wade gave up ground faster than "Mussolini at the end of a war"), and mentioned as many things outside of L.A. as within L.A. He was telling L.A. he was not provincial, because L.A. was not provincial.

He introduced himself by giving his biography, and mentioned "smaller" sports like horse racing, not concentrating strictly on baseball, basketball or football. He was funny and lyrical.

"I hope Steve Bilko has lost weight," he wrote. "The last time I saw him in the Coliseum, the front of him got to the batter's box full seconds before the rest of him."

He was a hit.

"I used to read Red Smith," said Franl Gifford. "He was terrific. They weren't cut throat back then. They were all established and there were not as many of them. They were not as competitive. I'd have to put Murray right there. I was living in both places, New York and Los Angeles in the off-seasons, until 1960. There'd be empty fields on the way to Santa Monica. I'm still amazed at the high rises that went up, because when I was growing up there was always worries about earthquakes. I lived through a few. Murray and the L.A. Times, led by Otis Chandler, spurred the growth of Southern California. I can remember getting from the Beverly Hills Hotel to USC was an easy trek, straight down Robertson to West Adams, but now you can't turn left in this lane or that lane, it's so different, you have to wind around downtown, there's six lanes on the freeway. But Murray and his paper symbolized the growth and impact of Los Angeles.

"The L.A. Times was the newspaper when I was growing up. The other paper was the Herald-Examiner, but they were totally in second place behind the Times. Murray was such a big part of that, and eventually L.A. was such a big place and he was part of that."

John Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon was the closest ever, and a monumental event in American history. It was captured in a book by Theodore White called The Making of the President, 1960. White followed that up with detailed exposes of each Presidential campaign into the 1970s.

Kennedy had been in the White House a couple of weeks in January of 1961. Richard Nixon was approached by Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and a few others about becoming Commissioner of Baseball. He reluctantly declined. The job went to Ford C. Frick, who that year put an asterisk on Roger Maris's 61st home run.

Nixon returned to California. He joined a fancy downtown law firm on Wilshire Boulevard, for the first time making real money. He moved into a mansion atop Beverly Hills, but that year a terrible fire threatened his home while burning down those of his prominent movie star neighbors. He was shocked when Chandler's Times had the temerity to question his house loan. Nixon spent two years practicing law in L.A. while writing his memoirs, Six Crises, before a failed run for Governor in 1962 which had the effect of his moving to New York to work on Wall Street, the "fast track" as he called it.

On January 3, with Eisenhower still in office, the U.S. broke off relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro took over after a coup d'état on January 1, 1959. For two years the great question was whether he was a Communist or not. The right hated him. The left adopted him, inviting him to New York where he made a rambling speech and was given a celebrity reception by the Broadway crowd.

In April, a U.S.-sponsored Cuban exile invasion of Fidel Castro's imprisoned island failed. Even though the operation was originated under Dwight Eisenhower, enthusiastically endorsed by Richard Nixon, and a creature of CIA director Allen Dulles, it was John Kennedy who took responsibility for its abject failure at the Bay of Pigs. JFK's unwillingness to use American air power to back up the invasion doomed it.

Shortly thereafter, a shaken Kennedy met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. Khrushchev sized up the young playboy as a mere "boy," deciding to test him. His first step was to authorize the building of the Berlin Wall.

On April 11, the Soviets launched the first man, Yuri Gagarin into orbit. This kicked off a huge "space race" with the United States. Less than a month later, Navy aviator Alan Shepard, Jr. became the first American in space. The front page of the L.A. Times trumpeted Shepard's flight. Under a photo of a smiling Shepard surrounded by admirers on the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain, a telling headline announced, "Kennedy Studies Sending Troops to South Viet-Nam."

The June 1 Times headlined a business-friendly "right-wing Democrat," Sam Yorty defeating Norris Poulson for Mayor of Los Angeles. Yorty was given support by the Times, which never would have happened under Norman Chandler. Also on the same page was a story about Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's assassination, a cause of great 1960s instability in Latin America. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara sought to fill the gap between the "age of strongmen" and the so-called "social justice" of Communism.

The paper also told of a meeting between John Kennedy and French President Charles de Gaulle, in which the two mutually agreed that Berlin needed to be defended. But the bulk of the coverage was non-political. "Paris Gives Rousing Welcome to Kennedys" by Don Shannon, and "Romance With a Nation: President Out to Woo Affection of France" by Robert Hartman focused on the star of the show. In Paris was Kennedy's glamorous wife, Jacqueline.

A study of Times headlines during this period, compared to headlines from just a few years prior to the ascension of Otis Chandler, reflected a much greater emphasis on national and international affairs. The paper now featured major coverage of the globe, whereby 1950s coverage focused on elections in the Southland, Disneyland, and other local issues.

Other major events of 1961 included the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in Israel, and a Communist coup in which the Belgian Congo was wrested from the hands of its Belgian masters in favor of local control. De-colonization was underway. Largely supported by President Roosevelt when he accepted the mantel of "empire" from Winston Churchill near the end of World War II, the Third World was slowly but surely given "independence." In the Middle East, this resulted in a dangerous nationalism led by Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser. He sought to blame the West for almost all previous ills. The Soviets made the Arabs their clients, a major move in the Cold War chess match. This would result in two major wars with Israel and, when the Arabs failed to destroy the Israelis, the birth of a post-modern evil called terrorism.

The sporting world of Jim Murray did not center in Los Angeles. It was not an L.A. year. It was the first season of the Los Angeles Lakers. Owner Bob Short moved the team from Minneapolis to L.A. They were a huge success in Minneapolis, but by then the Boston Celtics dominated the NBA. The league needed to move from its small town (Fort Wayne, Quad Cities, Rochester), "barnstorming" reputation to a coast-to-coast attraction. The Lakers' move began that process.

The NBA was beginning to be dominated by African-Americans. By 1961, such stalwarts as Bill Russell and K.C Jones of the Celtics, Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors, Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals, and a sensation by way of Washington, D.C. and Seattle University named Elgin Baylor of the Lakers. Baylor teamed with a white country boy from West Virginia named Jerry West. Pro basketball would never be the same again.

The Lakers played at the spanking new Sports Arena, erected in 1959 next to the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. They were unquestionably a team in ascendancy, and would get better and better and better over the next decade. The Sports Arena was also home to the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins. The Trojans had been a dominant collegiate basketball program in the 1940s and 1950s. Coach Sam Barry introduced the "triangle offense" at USC. His three great stars were Alex Hannum, Bill Sharman and Tex Winter. Winter in particular revolutionized Barry's schemes with results that changed basketball over the next 40 years. In 1952 under coach Forrest Twogood, Troy went to the Final Four. UCLA was making strides under respected coach John Wooden, but there was no indication they would become the dynasty they became.

Arnold Palmer and a young up-and-comer, Jack Nicklaus, headlined golf. The biggest name in boxing circles was Cassius Clay, the reigning Olympic champion at Rome in 1960. Rod Laver won the first of numerous tennis Grand Slams in 1961. A brash female from Long Beach Poly High School and Los Angeles State College, Billie Jean King arrived on the women's scene, which received scant attention.

The USC Trojans won the College World Series under coach Rod Dedeaux. The Dodgers played their last year at the Coliseum. The old place was beginning to wear on its baseball audience. When the team moved there in 1958, it was an oddity, filled to the rafters with excited fans who came as much to see what a baseball game would look like in a football stadium.

The Dodgers thrilled L.A. by winning the 1959 World Series. Crowds at the All-Star Game and the World Series set records. A rookie from Fairfax High in Los Angeles, Larry Sherry was their local hero.

But the Coliseum did not serve them well in 1960 and 1961, when they faded at the end while Pittsburgh and Cincinnati captured pennants. In 1961, young Sandy Koufax finally reached his potential, striking out a record 18 hitters in a single game en route to an 18-victory season. But ace right-hander Don Drysdale infuriated everybody with his outspoken views. He hated the Coliseum's short porch in left field, and complained about it to anybody who would listen. A handsome, articulate matinee idol type who went to Van Nuys High School with Robert Redford and Natalie Wood, Big D was already moonlighting in the movies. He was the perfect Dodger, but his hatred of the Coliseum as a baseball venue threatened to make him highly unpopular.

Just down the street from the Coliseum, at a local field on Avalon Boulevard in south L.A., the expansion Angels began their history in 1961. They played at Wrigley Field, the minor league complex eschewed by the Dodgers in favor of a large stadium. Owned by the "singing cowboy," Gene Autry, they were little more than an oddity, an advertising tool for Autry's real moneymaker, the Golden West Radio Network.

The Los Angeles Rams were struggling to regain past glory. NFL champions in 1952, they were one of the most successful teams in the pro game, but had dipped to mediocre levels.

The NCAA "payola" scandals of the mid-1950s still reared its ugly head in the Pacific Coast Conference. Southern California and UCLA were both still reeling, each far below their glorious pasts. John McKay was in his second year. He had yet to impress anybody, his new-fangled I-formation ridiculed as "incompetent' and "inept."

It got so bad that the Big 10 even threatened to end their contractual obligation to play in the Rose Bowl. Since the arrangement began in 1947, the Big 10 dominated the contest. West Cost football struggled to gain respect. Ohio State coach Woody Hayes actually chose not to play in the Rose Bowl because his team was ranked number one in some of the rankings. He figured if he did not play he could not lose, therefore protecting his team's ranking. Ultimately the Buckeyes had to settle for a lesser "title" awarded by one of the nefarious organizations, while Alabama was named consensus national champions by both the Associated Press and United Press International. After weighing their options, the Big 10 finally decided to obligate themselves by contract to the Rose Bowl.

Murray hit the ground running. After his first column, "In This Corner, With the Pen, is the New Guy," he wrote three memorable first-year columns about Hall of Fame baseball stars. His August 23 column, "Drysdale's Double Life," was one of the best things that could have happened to Drysdale. Considered a loudmouth and a complainer because he attributed his mediocre statistics to the Coliseum's dimensions, Murray's column depicted a fierce competitor who seemed to enjoy plunking the likes of Frank Robinson with bean balls, but was a true gentleman off the field. Murray called him "Dr. Drysdale" and "Mr. Hyde." The piece had the effect of personalizing Big D to the fans.

Eight days later, Murray penned a column about Drysdale's friend and pitcher partner, Sandy Koufax. Drysdale painted a glorious picture of Los Angeles to the young Brooklynite when the team moved west. Sandy seemed to relax away from the pressures of family and friends, trying to live up to Jewish expectations of him in his hometown. In 1961 he came into his own. Murray's column included an amazing statistic. The previous year, Koufax averaged 155 pitches per start.

Murray wrote that the intellectual Koufax preferred Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig von Beethoven. He correctly predicted that the new Dodger Stadium would have a tremendous positive effect on Koufax's career.

On October 8 he wrote "Yogi Berra, the Legend." Berra, the Hall of Fame Yankee catcher, was now toiling in left field while Elston Howard handled the catching duties. The 1961 Yanks were one of the greatest teams in history, and were taking on the over-matched Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. When the Series shifted to quaint Crosley Field, Murray predicted Berra would be challenged by Crosley's odd outfield configurations.

"The outfield in this place is so steep in places the players should have oxygen and a Sherpa guide to scale it," he wrote. "It has produced more pratfalls than Mack Sennett in his heyday," adding that Berra negotiating it would be funnier than "Jackie Gleason and Elsa Maxwell trying to cha-cha."

Once Yogi was presented with a blown-up balloon. Asked if he wished to take some home for his kids he said he "never be able to get them in the suitcase."

Murray's "prediction" that Yogi would have trouble negotiating Crosley Field's warning track never materialized. He was serviceable and his team dominant in a five-game Series triumph.

By year's end his fame was spreading. Groucho Marx wrote him a letter stating that he hated getting up in the morning until moving to Los Angeles. "Now I leap out of my wife's bed and rush for your column," wrote the comic. "This is quite a tribute to your literary prowess, for my wife happens to be a very beautiful women."

1962 was one of those years that stand out in American history, like 1776, 1787, 1865, 1927, 1945, 1968, 1989 and 2001. Like 1927, 1962 was a year of culture and sports every bit as much as war or politics. It was a distinctly Los Angeles and California year in many respects. It had the effect of standing out as a year of unique nostalgia in the American psyche. Why 1962 more so than other years? Several reasons. It is often thought of as the last year of "innocence" before Kennedy's assassination in 1963, followed by the Vietnam War. It was also the year depicted by George Lucas in American Graffiti. Two other classic films, The Manchurian Candidate and Lawrence of Arabia were released in 1962.

The year got off to a rousing start when John Glenn successfully circled the globe three times. Times space-aviation editor Marvin Miles described Glenn returning to the Earth in a fiery ride in which his broken heat sensors threatened to burn him alive upon re-entry into the atmosphere. Robert Thompson's side story described President Kennedy's great pride over Glenn's accomplishment.

On October 1, a fairly forgotten event occurred. Major General Edwin Walker was arrested for organizing opposition to the integration of the University of Mississippi. Lost to greater events of the Civil Right Movement – Alabama Governor George Wallace, the March on Washington, the Great Society, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – Walker's arrest was nevertheless part of a well-worn narrative of the era.

Based on an actual coup planned by right-wing businessmen to take over the government from President Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression, Fletcher Knebel's novel Seven Days in May was made into a movie in 1963. The Walker incident apparently spurred its production. Walker was mentioned as a proto-type of the kind of demagogue who can stir a crowd into anarchy.

In October Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba. Ultimately the "other fellow just blinked," as Secretary of State of State Dean Rusk put it. But the Cuban Missile Crisis forced the U.S. to agree not to invade Cuba or try and kill Castro, which were openly its goals in the first two years of the JFK Administration. President Kennedy's actions were highly influenced by a 1962 book detailing the blunders leading to World War I, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August.

It was JFK's finest hour, allowing the Democrats to buck historical trends, capturing the 1962 midterms. This included The California Gubernatorial campaign between incumbent Democrat Edmund "Pat" Brown and Richard Nixon. One of the most contentious campaigns in history, it marked the first fissure in Southland voting trends and the editorial stance of the Los Angeles Times.

Greater Los Angeles was Nixon country. Nixon all but took his hometown for granted, but did not sweep the old precincts as he expected to. Orange County held, but L.A. swung towards Brown, who was wildly popular in his native Northern California.

It was a key moment of decision for Otis Chandler. The moderately conservative Republican was a Nixon man, but did not allow that to color his newspaper's coverage. Nixon felt betrayed. Seeing the powerful Times critical of Nixon, other media felt free to open up and target the former Vice-President. The Cuban Missile Crisis swung the electorate towards JFK and by implication his party. In a close election Nixon lost. In his famed "last press conference" at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Nixon lashed out at the press, tacitly "retiring" from politics.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore," he taunted the press.

If 1961 was not an "L.A. year," 1962 may have been its greatest. It was not just a great Los Angeles year in sports, but in the entire state of California. It was also a key year in the great Los Angeles-San Francisco rivalry. The two cities had battled each other in sports, politics and culture since L.A., at least since the Owens Valley Aqueduct was completed in 1913, and certainly when USC emerged as a collegiate football power with Stanford and California, then overshadowing them when they began the Notre Dame series in 1926.

When UCLA took their place as USC's key rival beginning in the late 1930s, a sense of jealousy pervaded the northern schools. By the early 1960s, the L.A. schools were beginning to dominate Cal and Stanford.

Professionally, the San Francisco 49ers had great players, but the Los Angeles Rams had better teams. L.A. had pro basketball. San Francisco did not. The Dodgers came out west with greater reputation, and in four years on the West Coast still held that distinction.

By 1962, San Francisco was facing a major crisis of identity. They thought of themselves as being the more elegant, sophisticated city, but everything seemed to happen in L.A. San Francisco had Herb Caen and literature, but Los Angeles had Howard Hughes . . . and Jim Murray. San Francisco had beatniks. L.A. had beautiful women and the Sunset Strip. Who could compete with that?

But of all the comparisons in the "who is better?" argument between the two cities, perhaps the quality of the newspapers was the greatest disparity. Chandler effectively accomplished his task by 1962. The L.A. Times may not yet have won a poll asking what the best paper in the world was. The East Coast bias was still too prevalent, but in truth they were a vastly better paper than the Washington Post and able to compete on par with the New York Times. The New York Times was very dry. They lived by old journalistic standards, refusing to acquiesce to increasing reader demand for greater color and excitement. Chandler did not publish a scandal tabloid or a wild-headline Hearst-style paper, but he did understand the value of vivid photographs, human interest, and colorful prose, which by then was undoubtedly identified as the "West Coast style." Jim Murray epitomized it.

San Francisco was burdened by a real rag of a paper, the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle had several talented sportswriters, but the paper was riddled with errors, typos and unprofessional quality. They had three star writers, all of whom had talent but did not come without controversy.

Herb Caen was uniquely loved in the Bay Area, but his views were very questionable. He seemed to feel San Francisco was the only place worth living in. Naturally San Franciscans fell for this, but his hatred of L.A. bordered on the obsessive.

Charles McCabe and Art Hoppe were both wildly left wing. McCabe openly stated France was a greater nation than America. Hoppe was not yet at full stride, but by the end of the 1960s he wrote in his column he had finally come around to openly rooting for the North Vietnamese Communists over the U.S. This is a view that really needs no commentary in order to know what it is. The other paper, the San Francisco Examiner, was superior, but an afternoon daily with less power and influence. It was certainly not in the same league with the Times.

San Franciscans and Los Angelenos had endless barroom arguments. For L.A. fans, arguing the Dodgers over the Giants, USC and UCLA over Cal and Stanford, the beaches over the bay, the babes over the beatniks; none of these permeated the hardcore San Franciscan. But L.A. had a few aces up their sleeve when it came to bragging rights. They had Vin Scully. Even Giants fans were resigned to admitting Scully's greatness as a broadcaster. They had the Los Angeles Times. Nobody was so deluded as to argue the superiority of the Chronicle. They had Jim Murray, too. San Franciscans might counter with Herb Caen. Herb Caen was a notorious gossip. He did not care if what he wrote ruined somebody's life. Murray never had that mean edge to him. In the entire history of journalism, Caen was the single most provincial writer who ever lived. Murray was the least provincial. Caen could not carry Jim Murray's proverbial "dirty jock strap."

Murray took exception to the clap-trap from "Baghdad by the Bay," which was Caen's moniker for the City (they gave it caps) in those pre-Saddam Hussein days. In 1962 he wrote San Francisco was a "no host bar," criticizing the Giants for allowing their groundskeeper to turn the base paths at Candlestick Park into a "peat moss" pit so as to slow down L.A. speedster Maury Wills.

He mentioned Caen when he pointed out that Sports Illustrated put the knock on "Frisco," the most hated of all names out-of-towners give to the City, in an article called "Akron of the West." Joe David Brown wrote the place was "Not a big league town . . . Full of drunks . . . A citadel of intolerance . . . Vulgar and cheap . . ." Finally, in perhaps the most unkindest cut of all, he wrote the place was "not the lovely lady I had imagined but a vulgar old broad." San Francisco "leads the nation in suicides, mental disease, alcoholism."

Murray did not write that he necessarily agreed with Brown's assessment, but he did not entirely disagree. But of all Murray's keen observations in his long career, one of his keenest came when he wrote subconsciously San Francisco does not "want to win."

L.A. went for victory, with all its ugly, jarring connotations, as fervently as Howard Hughes trying to land a contract to build rocket boosters. San Francisco embellished the British tenet that, "No gentleman ever plays a game too well." When the City got the best player in baseball, Willie Mays, they rejected him at first. His great talent was almost too vulgar a display of excellence.

Charles McCabe openly wrote of the strange neurosis, stating that San Franciscans rejected ultimate victory as too jarring. Murray wrote that San Francisco has an "insurance against victory better than any Lloyd's can give him." In 1962, it certainly appeared that he was right. The Giants won one of the all-time difficult pennant races ever fought, defeating the Dodgers to capture the National League crown. But they and the City seemed happy to settle for that, when in fact the World Series still had to be played. Everybody appeared perfectly okay with merely making a good showing in an epic seven-game loss to the New York Yankees, a team and a city with no problem handling ultimate victory, in the World Series. Given a chance at redemption in 1963, the Dodgers dispatched the mighty Yankees in four straight in the Fall Classic. The Giants settled for "bridesmaid" status throughout the decade, never since ascending to the mountaintop.

Murray, the East Coast native, seemed to put his pulse on the north-south vibe as well as anybody. He loved San Francisco; its ambience, its views, its architecture. He did not quite say it, but he could easily have said it was a great place if only for the people who lived there. Murray had his chances to move up the ladder in the writing game, and in so doing live in Boston, New York, D.C., Europe; the salons of international power and politics. He consciously chose to stay in L.A. because he loved L.A., dirty air, congested traffic, cultural plasticity and all. He was L.A. and L.A. was Murray. He instinctively defended it and refused to concede its rival city was superior. He also realized that Los Angeles was now one of the salons of international power and politics, whether they set out to be or not. It was inevitable and already a given by 1962.

Murray keenly observed the L.A.-San Francisco dynamic over the years. The protest, hippy and gay rights movements of the 1960s did nothing to advance San Francisco's place in the pantheon of great cities. L.A., however, passed Chicago and by 1975 probably even New York as the American and, by extension, global metropolis. It produced two Republican Presidents who were re-elected in landslides. It was the home of political movements that shook the world. Eventually their place faded and San Francisco, only after 49ers symbolically delivered multiple Super Bowl titles in the 1980s, became a power base politically themselves. Murray, the Nixon man, a moderate Republican, was not pre-disposed to identify with the Summer of Love, the "sexual revolution," and certainly not to the turning of the Berkeley campus into the de facto staging grounds of American Communism.

He was a man of social pathos, but not radicalism. Steve Bisheff, a longtime Los Angels sportswriter, said Murray "was liberal, and I'm liberal," but he was really talking about Murray's stance on integration in the 1960s. The fact is the Jim Crowe South was run by the Democrats, a fact Jim Murray was keenly aware of and had no admiration for. Watergate changed him, as it did many, but the evidence says mainly he just felt betrayed by Richard Nixon, especially after having flown from Hawaii to vote for him over John Kennedy in 1960. In the 1960s and beyond, L.A. was still identified by San Francisco as conservative. This dynamic played itself out in sports fandom, especially the attitude towards USC and Candlestick Park fans' boorish treatment of the Dodgers. Murray's instincts were to identify with his city.

But Murray never lost his admiration for greatness no matter where it could be found. He found it in Willie Mays. As the classic 1962 campaign was heating up, he wrote a laudatory column about Mays on May 23. In reading it, as in so many of Murray's columns, one is almost ashamed to be writing about Jim Murray. Nobody can capture him, or even come close. The temptation is to put quotations on 200 or 300 pages of Jim Murray's quotes, columns and observations, rather than critique or re-hash them. So it is with the Mays piece, an astonishing bit of writing in which Murray wrote in a kind of existential manner, describing Mays almost as pathology, like a doctor or police report breaking him down to his essence: "iron, calcium, antimony and whatever baser metal a human being is composed of." It is the sort of approach no other writer – not a Rice, a Cannon, a Lardner, a Smith, a Breslin, even Hunter S. Thompson or William Shakespeare – would remotely think of taking. His brilliance is beyond ability, but in sheer originality of thought.

In reading this and many of Murray's columns, the greatest challenge is determining what to put commas on and repeat, because every word from beginning to end is too good to, as William Goldman said of editing, "kill my beautiful little angels." In the end Murray's columns are in other books in their entirety. This is a biography, but the lack of worthiness of anybody to really "capture" Murray must be admitted.

When considering that 1962 column about Willie Mays, it is possible that herein was a confluence of talents reaching rare, Herculean heights. The greatest player of his day, maybe ever, at his prime, being written about by the greatest columnist at the height of his game. Murray could make tiddlywinks sound amazing, but this was Michelangelo commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The best meeting the best.

The Dodgers-Giants "death struggle" captured his imagination throughout the summer. In a piece on Los Angeles catcher John Roseboro, Murray wrote, "On road trips, if John Roseboro isn't at a movie, he's at a laundry. He has more wardrobe changes than Loretta Young."

The Giants were notorious for slumping in June, what the press coined their annual "June swoon." Murray wrote of their 1962 slump, "a business executive is standing in his office looking down over the city and is chatting to his secretary. Suddenly, a falling figure shoots past the window. 'Oh oh,' says the man, glancing at his chronometer. 'It must be June. There go the Giants.' "

The Candlestick Park groundskeepers notoriously watered their base paths in an effort to slow down Maury Wills. Of this Murray observed "one more squirt and the Red Cross would have declared a disaster area and begun to evacuate the Dodgers by rowboat . . . an aircraft carrier would've run aground."

After Los Angeles blew a 4-2 ninth inning lead in game three of the play-offs at Dodger Stadium; a combination of wild pitching, errors, bad scouting, and terrible managing, Murray focused on beleaguered Dodgers manager Walter Alston, who lived in small town Ohio each off-season.

"Down in the dugout, manager Walt Alston was poring over the stagecoach schedules to Darrtown," he wrote.

Los Angeles blew a four-game lead with a week to go, capped by defeat in the three-game play-off a la 1951. Murray came up with this: "Wanted, one nearly new 1962 National League pennant, slightly soiled with tear stain in center. Last seen blowing toward San Francisco . . . Warning: if you return pennant to Dodgers direct, be sure to tape it to their hands."

Murray wrote a column about Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics that was a paean to his East Coast roots. He admired the old school methods of Cousy, a truly skilled fundamental player now aging in a game becoming more high-flying and acrobatic every year.

He wrote three hard-hitting pieces about boxers, old and new. Sonny Liston was the new champion. His emergence seemed to signal the end of boxing as Murray knew it. The "sweet science" was always an East Coast specialty, Madison Square Garden on a Friday night. Mob-controlled. Liston may or may not have been the last of the really Mob-controlled fighters, but the sport was moving with television and other demographics into a larger-scale circus in exotic international locations, and then Las Vegas.

He wrote about the anti-Liston, Joe Louis, "the most honest athlete in the history of any sport." Louis's honesty was naïveté, really, which led to his owing more money than he could ever hope to repay in income taxes. But the sympathetic view of Louis as victim of a racist America does not really hold up. After all, in the late 1930s he made over $300,000 in a single year. The white Joe DiMaggio, probably his rival for next–most famous American athlete, toiled for around eight or 10 grand, give or take. If the tax rate was roughly 20 percent, a fact widely known to all who possessed knowledge of . . . things, then Joe Louis owed $60,000. He should have written a check in that amount made payable to the IRS, placed it in an envelope, with the address of the IRS available in any phone book, affixing a stamp costing what, five cents? He then could have dropped it in a mail slot around the corner from his house. Or had his assistant or manager do it. Done deal. Then his accountant could have fought with the government to get some of it refunded based on their arguments over tax shelters and the like, but for God sake, Accounting 101: pay your taxes!

Light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore was the "the Rembrandt of boxing," the sort of Murray specialty phrase millions associated him with.

The sense of nostalgia for all things 1962 was greatly enhanced by the magical "Sunset Strip summer" of the Los Angeles Angels. A second-year expansion team, they rented Dodger Stadium from the Dodgers. The Dodgers were the pride of the city. They set the all-time Major League attendance record and hosted every big name in the entertainment industry. The Angels played before friends and family.

But Gene Autry's club featured a playboy southpaw named Bo Belinsky. In one of the few scoops of the era evading Murray, Bud "the Steamer" Furillo of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner got the story in March. Bo was a career minor leaguer of little reputation, but he did the unthinkable, which was hold out for all of $1,500 that spring. Asked what he was doing to pass the time, Bo told Bud he was "laying a lot of broads and playing high-stakes pool matches up and down the East Coast."

Between Bo's exaggerations and Furillo's storytelling, the story came out that he was a big-time pool shark who did not need baseball money, and was a devil with the ladies above all previous conception. The rest was history. Bo finally signed, came to L.A., and made a well-publicized swath through the starlet population of Hollywood that put Errol Flynn to shame. An arrest at five A.M. courtesy of the L.A.P.D. and daily gossip columns courtesy of Walter Winchell stoked the fires.

It was rumored that Walter O'Malley kept the L.A. Times and its sportswriters "happy." Undoubtedly, they got the bulk of the publicity and feature stories. The Belinsky act, at least in the beginning, may have been viewed as being too tabloid in nature for the high class Times, but it surely sold the Herald-Express and the scandal rags. When Bo pitched a no-hitter nobody could ignore him. His team was in first place on July 4 and finished a creditable third behind New York and Minnesota.

Furillo was Murray's rival and a comparable talent, albeit a much different personality type. His style more suited the underdog Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Bud was more provincial, an "L.A. homer" whose love for the USC Trojans and the Dodgers, especially, could have crossed journalistic boundaries. His enthusiasm and genuine likeability was so great he could get away with it.

Furillo became the sports editor of his paper, a job Murray never held. Many leading L.A. sportswriters credit him with their development, including Doug Krikorian and Steve Bisheff among many others. He was a beloved figure. He also had a personality suited for the electronic media. He announced USC's football games re-played on Sunday local television in the 1970s, and was a regular on KABC radio's "Dodger Talk" with another legend, Stu Nahan, in the 1980s.

"I don't think they were rivals," recalled Furillo's son Andy, working in 2010 for the Sacramento Bee. "Only heard my dad say good things about Murray. One thing about Murray that always stood out with me, he worked hard. I remember going to games early and watching him and Mel Durslag working the dugouts and the area behind the batting cages. They'd talk to everybody, take notes. Then they'd go write their columns after the game, in their own voices, stacked with authority and information based on great reporting. Something you don't see much in columnists these days."

While Andy Furillo disputed the notion that his father and Murray were "rivals," Bud's ex-wife, Cherie Kerr insisted they were.

"Bud would call Melvin Durslag every day, he was jealous of Murray," she recalled. "Not jealous as in he did not like him. Jealous that Murray worked for the bigger paper and was considered so above it all, such a figure of high esteem. So Bud called Durslag among other daily phone calls around town, often trying to gather intelligence on Jim Murray. Whatever Murray was writing about determined what Bud's approach was. He wanted to upstage Murray, not be scooped by him. Murray represented a high level of professionalism. To Bud, attaining that level of respect was something you did in the pursuit of excellence."

"I think he liked Mel Durslag," said Linda McCoy-Murray. "They got along fine. There were professional rivalries in L.A. Bud Furillo and Durslag certainly tailored their message based on what Jim was writing, and Jim paid attention, but it was all friendly."

Murray and Furillo knew each other well. They saw each other for years in press boxes and behind batting cages; at banquets, around town and in hotels during road trips. Furillo was respected enough in his own right to earn a certain amount of "rivalry" in the eyes of Jim Murray, but it was always friendly competition. Murray was at the top of the game. Nobody could really touch him, no matter how good they were or how hard they tried.

But the Bo Belinsky story was Bud's. Belinsky's legend was spread over the years by his marriage to Playboy Playmate of the Year Jo Collins, a Sports Illustrated feature called "Once He Was An Angel" by Pat Jordan, Bo: Pitching and Wooing by Maury Allen, and in the 1990s by Hollywood's flirtation with a movie on his life. Bud Furillo was always the featured Los Angeles sports media personality associated with him.

Aside from the Belinsky doings and Dodgers-Giants free-for-all, California teams thrived in other sports in 1962. In the spring the Los Angeles Lakers made it to their first NBA Finals on the West Coast, before losing in seven excruciating games to Boston. It was the beginning of the modern NBA; certainly the first of decades of intense Celtics-Lakers title bouts. It was Elgin Baylor at his best, and Jerry West getting the first pangs of an ulcer he constantly battled because the game was never fun, it was always an all-consuming desire to win. When he did win, he had no ability to enjoy it. It was Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, and Red Auerbach in their primes.

That summer, the "greatest track meet of all time," according to some, was held at Stanford University. During the height of the Cold War, the United States took on the U.S.S.R. at Stanford Stadium.

In the fall, the first of Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers champions rolled to the title after a 13-1 regular season record. The California theme was returned to in college, where John McKay led the USC Trojans to their first national championship since 1939. Without great stars, they mainly played excellent defense in fashioning an unbeaten record, but switched form in a wild Rose Bowl, almost blowing a 42-14 fourth quarter lead to hold on, 42-37 over Wisconsin.

By 1963, Murray was an institution. It was the golden age of Los Angeles sports. He was its royal chronicler and court jester. The battle between Northern and Southern California intensified when Governor Brown, a San Franciscan, created aqueducts carrying precious drinking water from the freshwater north to the parched, desert south. Over the years, occasional droughts caused Northern Californians to conserve. On trips to L.A. they were infuriated to see endless fountains of their water irrigating the wild, jungle-like gardens people enjoyed cultivating on large estates.

But Brown also created a fantastic state college system at the junior college, state university and University of California levels, expanding beyond Berkeley and UCLA to create UC campuses at Riverside, Irvine, Santa Barbara and other cities.

Kennedy was wildly popular, a shoe-in for re-election in 1964. He dealt with a steelworkers' strike and lowered tax rates, expanding the economy. He visited Berlin, the middle of Cold War tensions. Cheered by over a million freedom-loving Germans in a divided city, he gave one of his most famous speeches, declaring "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"), a statement of solidarity in the West that became a touch phrase of the "long twi-light struggle" he said epitomized the decades-long battle for supremacy with the Soviets.

But in the fall things unraveled. Some have argued that fate, a sense of Karma, even a "Kennedy curse" was at play. After all, the young President was said to have stolen the White House from Nixon in 1960. Most of what the Kennedys attained since the 1920s were allegedly ill-gotten gains courtesy of their immoral father, the Nazi sympathizer Joseph P. Kennedy (he urged President Roosevelt to "do business" with Hitler because "we can't beat him"). He made millions on insider stock transactions, buying on the loss-end of the 1929 market crash that made his family wealthy beyond imagination. Enough dead people "voted" for Kennedy, courtesy of Lyndon B. Johnson in Texas and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in Cook County, Illinois, to push JFK past a stunned Nixon in 1960. Nixon chose not to challenge the vote "for the good of the country."

Whatever curiosity Benjamin Bradlee, Katharine Graham and the Washington Post had to investigate Watergate 12 years later did not exist when the chance to uncover JFK's ill-gotten victory was placed before them in 1960. If allegedly stealing the White House from Nixon was not cause for cosmic justice, perhaps events of October and November 1963 were. Vietnam was increasingly difficult. According to some historians, JFK was prepared to pull American forces out of Southeast Asia in 1964. Key to that contingency was getting the South Vietnamese population on board with their government.

The largely Buddhist South Vietnamese were led by French-educated Catholics. In a plan described in detail by David Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest, the CIA either orchestrated, sponsored, or at the very least stood by and allowed a coup d'état in which President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated. JFK's man, General Nguyen Van Thieu, was installed as leader of South Vietnam. Kennedy possibly contemplated the possibility that he was in over his head at the least, having allowed a fellow Christian to be murdered in favored of a Buddhist, with all attendant spiritual disfavor thus entailed. He was said to have blanched when he heard it described almost in play-by-play style by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.

21 days later he, too, was murdered in Dallas. The war was allowed to continue under Lyndon Johnson, with disastrous consequences. The Shakespearean "what if?" nature of these events is mind-boggling. What if Nixon had won the White House fair and square in 1960? Events over the next two decades would have been profoundly different. Among them include Castro, Cuba and the Bay of Pigs; Khrushchev's "sizing up" of Nixon instead of Kennedy at Vienna; whether the Cuban Missile Crisis would have happened or not; the murders of JFK and his brother Robert; Vietnam; Chappaquiddick and the career of Ted Kennedy; Watergate; possible future Presidential campaigns and elections in the 1960s, 1970s and even 1980s of John, Robert and (?) Ted Kennedy; Jimmy Carter; Ronald Reagan and the conservative revolution.

Whether Jim Murray switched his registration to Democrat at some point during JFK's administration is not known, but he did say he "loved" his fellow Irishman. They were both men of wit, humor and charisma.

In 1963, USC's baseball team won the College World Series. Sandy Koufax, injured the second half of 1962 after a spectacular first half, finally put it all together in a manner heretofore never seen, certainly not in the "lively ball" and particular post-World War II era. Arguments can ensue long into the evening over Koufax and his 1963 numbers: 25-5, 1.88 earned run average, 306 strikeouts, two wins in the World Series. Some early hurlers – Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Grover Alexander, Lefty Grove – had similar statistics, but common sense dictates that the game was much different and that none of them could have been quite as stunning as "Dandy Sandy."

More modern pitchers (some Sandy's contemporaries) like Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Denny McLain, Tom Seaver, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux, featured certain years with similar numbers, but all thing considered Koufax in the 1960s, and probably 1963 above and beyond other seasons, appears the most unhittable force of nature ever, period, end of story.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of this came from the mouths of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and the Yankees after losing to him twice, the first game being a Series-record 15-strikeout performance by Koufax at Yankee Stadium in the opener. Berra expressed amazement that five National League teams managed to beat him during the season, and could not figure out how enough batters hit enough baseballs to score enough earned runs to lift his ERA all the way to 1.88. Mantle had similar commentary. These were Hall of Famers on the greatest dynasty ever, not scared little leaguers.

Vin Scully said Los Angeles reached the all-time greatest peak in Dodger baseball history in 1963 when they captured first the National League pennant, then a four-game sweep of the Yankees

Among Murray's 1963 columns was "Elgin Has Elegance," in which Murray stated straight out that Baylor was probably the best basketball player in the world. Quite a statement, as it could be argued as many all-time greats were at the height of their powers in 1963 as any season ever: Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Wilt Chamberlain, and teammate Jerry West. Baylor was portrayed as a "motor mouth," constantly kidding and joking. He was also "the only born Republican I know who campaigned for Kennedy," said teammate "Hot Rod" Hundley.

Murray's October 2 column on Henry Aaron was a classic of his genre in which his opening paragraph stated the Braves superstar was to be compared to Spencer Tracy acting, Jan Peerce singing, Rudolph Nureyev dancing, or the sun setting on "an open body of water." It was the kind of prose nobody ever heard before, many tried to copy, and none could quite pull off.

It was an important column for Aaron. He was the 1957 National League Most Valuable Player on a World Championship team playing before record-breaking crowds, but somehow Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, even Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson and Ernie Banks among position players, were given a greater place in the pantheon. Murray pointed out that, all things considered, Aaron need not take a back seat to any of them. His career bore him out. Coming from a prominent columnist developing a national following writing for a major L.A. paper with enormous readership, it helped open many eyes to Aaron's glory. Just as the period was one of glory for the Dodgers and L.A. sports in general, it was a time of great growth and prominence for the Los Angeles Times. Murray's column and the voice of Vin Scully on hand-held transistor radios at Dodger Stadium were the most prominent in the city.

Murray's penchant for historical reference reflected itself in his December 2 piece on Packers coach Vince Lombardi, titled "Veni, Vidi, Vincie," a take-off on Caesar Augustus's Latin phrase, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

1964 was a dividing line in American history. Between civil rights and Vietnam, it represented the beginning of what the decade became: the greatest period of change, within the shortest period of time, in history. David Halberstam chose the year for his book October 1964. In that tome, he used the World Series between the Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals as metaphors for that change. The Cardinals were viewed as the "Democrats," a winning coalition of whites, blacks and Latinos. The Yankees were the old school "GOP," country club Republicans, white, corporate, at the end of their string.

President Johnson made a core decision. Long the leader of the Democrats, the former Senate Majority Leader chafed under Kennedy for three years. Now he was determined to make it his Presidency. He needed to win on his own, and to win big. He put one of the all-time political coalitions together. On the one hand, the Jim Crow South was still all Democrat, but the Texan Johnson triangulated by proposing major civil rights legislation. He rode the legacy of Kennedy for all it was worth. Finally, he decided to put an end once and for all on the Democrats' "soft on Communism" label, a holdover from McCarthyism.

If there was any historical accuracy to the notion that JFK planned to pull U.S. forces out of Vietnam, those plans had zero chance of being enacted under Kennedy or any other President after the 1963 CIA-sponsored coup d'état that killed Diem. LBJ went full steam ahead, orchestrating a reason to begin bombing the North Vietnamese Communists at the Gulf of Tonkin in August. Even Republican opponent Barry Goldwater supported LBJ. The war was on in full force.

Despite his provocative military moves, it was LBJ who managed to paint Goldwater as the "extremist" and warmonger. A controversial TV ad showed a little girl picking daisies in a field when a nuclear bomb explodes in the skies above her, apparently the future if Goldwater were to be elected. Goldwater even accepted the "extremist" label, stating that to be extreme in the pursuit of liberty was a noble cause. His supporters said, "In your hearts you know he's right," but LBJ's people responded, "In your guts you know he's nuts."

Johnson destroyed Goldwater in one of the biggest landslides in history. The Democrats swept the Republicans at every end of the political spectrum. The day after the 1964 elections, the Republican were as beaten down as any political party in American history. The Democrats could be forgiven for hubris, a sense that they were the "winners of the 20th Century," for lack of a better term. They seemingly had no fault lines, no weakness. They consolidated every region and aspect of electoral politics. If the Great Society would succeed and America's Hitler-conquering forces triumphant as expected in Vietnam, they would be so powerful the Republicans might not even be a viable party by 1968 or 1972.

But in the bowels of defeat emerged small stirrings of a movement. Goldwater was the first openly conservative Republican Presidential candidate. He began a conservative revolution that would grow over the next decades. Its leader would not be Goldwater or even Richard Nixon, but an out-of-work actor who made "the Speech" in favor of Goldwater. Ronald Reagan was given air time in a Los Angeles studio a week or so before Election Day. It was an act of Quixote-esque dimensions, a tilting at windmills. Goldwater had no chance and Reagan was given freedom to say what he wanted. "The Speech" was hardly about Goldwater, but about a point of view Reagan rode to victory in Sacramento two years later, in Washington 16 years later.

The Times gave both Goldwater and Johnson a fair hearing. Each wrote a series of articles. Goldwater's, "Where I Stand" came in the late summer, followed by Johnson's "My Hope For America" beginning on September 28.

1964 was also the year Orange County stepped forward and made its presence known. Goldwater was an under-funded underdog against the billionaire New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, but the right went for the Arizona Senator. Ultimately, it was Orange County that gave Goldwater California, and therefore the delegates needed to garner the Republican nomination at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Angels owner Gene Autry decided Orange County was the future. He built a stadium there and planned to move his team to Anaheim.

Otis Chandler's paper played it straight, but gave Goldwater relatively favorable coverage. The Orange County market was a big, growing one. The Santa Ana Register was openly conservative, and the Times were determined to maintain dominance there. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan would all be identified with "Orange County Republican politics," with local and national implications over the next decades. Liberals chided Orange County as a John Birch land, the "Orange Curtain," a place of intolerant, racist extremists of the Christian right. Chandler personally either leaned toward the Democrats, or at least gave them the benefit of the doubt, but the editorial board and his family made it clear the L.A. Times was still a "Republican paper," therefore officially endorsing Goldwater. It was not a strong endorsement.

The Warren Commission released its report in 1964, stating that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in murdering Kennedy. In the U.S.S.R, Nikita Khrushchev was stripped of all his power. He lost face in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but history records his acquiescing to Kennedy's blockade may have saved the word from a nuclear war. The Times covered the Khrushchev deposing with excellent, in-depth coverage only because they had expanded into an international global news organization. They hired respected political reporter Richard Reston, who understood the inner workings of U.S.-Soviet politics. Chandler's paper made no concessions to the New York Times or any other news outlet in their coverage of the story. China, now split from the Soviets, exploded their first nuclear weapon. British Labor leader Harold Wilson was elected Prime Minister in the wake of a sex scandal involving a prostitute and a Soviet spy.

1964 also saw the "British rock invasion," when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, followed by The Who, ushered a seminal change in rock music, as profound an event coloring '60s sensibilities as any other. Owsley acid was produced in Berkeley. The drug generation was underway. The Free Speech Movement took root on the Cal campus, which would birth anti-war protests.

Southern California had a sound of its own. The Beach Boys exploded on the scene, and with them came the "California sound" credited with drawing millions of people to the state as in a dreamy siren song.

On the fields of play, John Wooden's UCLA Bruins, featuring a full court press, two scrappy guards (Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich) and no player taller than 6-5, completed an undefeated season to capture the NCAA basketball championship. Koufax sustained an injury in August, destroying the Dodgers' chances. The Cardinals won a classic pennant race over the collapsing Phillies, Reds and Giants. USC quarterback Craig Fertig hit receiver Rod Sherman with a last-minute touchdown to upend Notre Dame, 20-17 at the Coliseum. Ara Parseghian's Fighting Irish were unbeaten and could taste the national title, but their defeat threw the race into turmoil. Alabama looked to have it, but their loss to Texas in the Orange Bowl forced both the AP and the UPI trophies, awarded before the game, to be illegitimized. Murray's commentary regarding Alabama and its racial practices was picking up steam and making him enemies in Dixie.

In 1965, the U.S. escalated involvement in Vietnam. The public solidly supported Johnson. His Great Society was enacted as Federal legislation, with sweeping reforms of minority voting rights, integration, and health care. LBJ was prescient in his observation of it all when he turned to aide Bill Moyers, telling him signing the legislation meant handing the South to the Republicans for 40 years.

The Gemini space program continued to be successful. In April, Mayor Yorty was re-elected. In August, the Watts riots destroyed the idyllic calm of a city trying to promote its race-neutral Beach Boys image. The Times, in a front page August 13 headline story written by Jack McCurdy and Art Berman, held nothing back in describing the rioters as "mobs." In an eerie headline portending a dark future, that same front page also featured the story, "Second U.S. Jet Downed by Missile Near Hanoi." Below that was the story of a tiny hamlet called Duc Co, which was besieged by the Viet Cong.

UCLA repeated with their second straight NCAA basketball championship, then followed that up with the announcement they signed the greatest high school basketball player in history, Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. of Power Memorial Academy in New York City.

Koufax won 26 games, threw his fourth no-hitter in four years (a perfect game vs. Chicago), and set the record with 382 strikeouts. Don Drysdale found his stride when the Dodgers moved to Dodger Stadium. He won the Cy Young Award in 1962 but was even better in 1965, contributing 23 wins. The "hitless wonder" Dodgers captured a close pennant, and then a seven-game World Series win over the Minnesota Twins. Koufax dominated the Twins to win the seventh game, 2-0.

"In 1961 I was a big-time sports fan growing up in Culver City," recalled Los Angeles native Fred Wallin. "I was a Dodger fan and as a young guy I thought Murray knew his stuff. As I read more and more I realized he was up there and everybody else was a notch below, like Vin Scully, one in a million. Lots of people stole from him, he was the reason the Times improved. The Herald-Examiner had good writers, but they were more on the beats, but nobody had his eloquence of words.

"My brother died of leukemia in 1965. A few weeks later came Sandy Koufax's perfect game, and listening to Scully for a few hours gave me a respite from grieving for my brother. This was the influence of some of these people, like Scully and Jim Murray, on our lives. It was like when they honored Roy Campanella after he was paralyzed. I was there, it was one of those nights you never forget.

"When you read Murray, as he was traveling with the Dodgers, it didn't matter if the team was in first place or last, he was so funny and he said things that nobody else came up with. He had such ingenuity."

USC's Mike Garrett captured the school's first Heisman Trophy, but UCLA sophomore quarterback Gary Beban engineered a stunning upset of the Trojans, leading his team to the Rose Bowl where they knocked Bubba Smith and Michigan State out of the national title, 14-12.

In a column about Celtics superstar Bill Russell, Murray came up with this nugget: Russell rules basketball "the way Russia rules Bulgaria – without seeming to." Against Russell Oscar Robertson, the "Big O," was "just a zero." Wilt Chamberlain "is just a pituitary freak."

One of the great lessons of politics was learned in 1966. Two years after being left for dead, the Republicans swept to huge gains in the U.S. Congress and state houses. Richard Nixon, now a Wall Street attorney on a corporate salary with an expense account, traveled the nation campaigning on behalf of his party, building huge chits for 1968. The GOP's victory was in large measure a response to the left. The war took a turn for the worse. Privately, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara knew it. Publicly, General William Westmoreland told the nation we were winning.

Running largely on a promise to clean up the anti-war riots at Berkeley, the reactionary Republican Ronald Reagan "moved into national prominence," according to a November 9 Times story by Richard Bergholz. Washington bureau chief Robert Donovan predicted the 1966 victory portended Presidential success in 1968, listing Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and Richard Nixon as leading candidates. The Times headlines screamed, in an article by Lawrence Burd, the Democrats lost up to an incredible 45 House seats. The paper's reach was exhibited by virtue of an article by a staff writer in Boston, Tom Foley, writing of Massachusetts's election of "Negro Republican" Edward Brooke.

Time magazine and the national media shifted focus from civil rights to war opposition. Time enraged Christian America with a glaring cover story asking, "Is God Dead!" The magazine envisioned by Harry Luce! John Lennon of The Beatles further enraged the religious when he declared he and his band "more popular" than Jesus Christ. All the "Is God Dead?" talk played a role in a movie a couple years later, Rosemary's Baby about Satan's spawn featuring one character screaming, "God is dead!" On Broadway, Sir Lawrence Olivier is said to have given the "greatest performance of all time," portraying Shakespeare's Othello.

John Wooden's basketball team was again the best in the nation. The problem was it was his freshman team (led by Alcindor), all ineligible for varsity play. The varsity lost to Oregon State in conference play. The Angels moved into the gleaming new Anaheim Stadium. Koufax and Drysdale threatened to hold out and become "movie stars" via a film called Warning Shot with David Janssen. General manager Buzzie Bavasi told them, "Good luck." Once signed, the Dodgers again pulled it out with pitching, speed and defense. Koufax won 27 games with an insane 1.73 ERA and 317 strikeouts, but Drysdale was only 13-16. Against the underdog Baltimore Orioles, L.A.'s defense broke down. Whatever offense they had failed to materialize in a four-game sweep. It was the end of an era. Koufax retired at season's end, saying he did not want to be "high" from painkillers and did not want to be paralyzed by further injury to his ailing arm.

The Trojans lost to Notre Dame, 51-0 at the Coliseum. With Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution a year into its decade-long reign of horror, Trojans coach John McKay declared, "A billion Chinamen could care less" that the Irish manhandled his team. A month later, they trailed Bob Griese and Purdue, 14-7 in the Rose Bowl when they scored in the waning moments to make it 14-13. Coach McKay, called a "gunslinger" by Jim Murray, went for two and victory but they failed, losing 14-13. In the dressing room, a junior college recruit named O.J. Simpson told his future teammates to cheer up because he was coming and they would win when he got there. Mike Garrett led the Kansas City Chiefs into his old stomping grounds, the Coliseum, for Super Bowl I. The Green Bay Packers lambasted them.

Covering the Indianapolis 500, Murray came up with one of his most famed lines: "Gentlemen, start your coffins." In October, Murray wrote an article about "Old Man River," the ancient golfer Sam Snead. "To find a comparable accomplishment" to Snead's continued success, he wrote "you would have to imagine General Pershing being in charge in Vietnam, Spencer Tracy playing a college kid . . ."

If "the '60s" started not in 1960 but on November 22, 1963, then its "high" point of a sort was May-August, 1967 at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. That was when school let out and seemingly every wayward child from Maine to Marin County descended on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in the City. It was the Summer of Love. Writers like Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe found it was the story of a generation. The rock music revolution of England and the beach vibes of California were joined by a new wave of bands, an explosion of artistic expression not seen since the Renaissance. The Doors, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and dozens of others changed the world, speaking for a generation.

Campuses exploded in protest against the Vietnam War, now a nightly TV event featuring boys returning in body bags. The music, the free sex, the drugs, and the protest had the greatest, fastest, most jarring influence of change on the world perhaps ever seen, at least in such a short period of time. To Jim Murray's generation, it indeed was very jarring. All their longest-held traditions and ideas about God and patriotism were threatened, questioned. It reached into the world of sports. At Cal, athletes were disdained as bourgeois tools of "the Man," the "war machine." USC maintained its traditionalism. Attendance went down in baseball, often the result of fans staying away from stadiums in bad neighborhoods, some of which were consumed by violent racial riots as in Chicago and Detroit.

America's view of itself took a further blow when the first great tragedy hit the space program. Gus Grissom and Edward White were killed in a capsule fire. In the Middle East, fueled by Soviet support, Egypt planned to invade Israel. The Israelis attacked before they could. In a lightning-fast three day battle they destroyed General Nasser's Army. The Times provided top-notch reporting and analysis by Ted Snell, Robert Donovan and Louis Fleming. America was now turning to the West Coast paper for breaking news and editorials.

1967 was also a major turning point in Hollywood. It may well be the year in which the industry broke from the old studio system. The old epics of Cecil B. DeMille and Darryl Zanuck were no more. A new generation, some groomed in the film schools (including the likes of George Lucas and John Milius of USC, and Francis Ford Coppola, who attended UCLA with Jim Morrison), were emerging. Actors like Warren Beatty and hot-shot young producers were now gaining control. A veritable "child," the pretty boy Robert Evans, was in charge at Paramount. Films like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde and The Heat of the Night challenged old notions of race and society.

If the sex and the protests caused young people to disdain such mundane activities as sports, it did not stop 1967 from being one of the best ever. The sophomore Alcindor lived up to his promise in leading UCLA to an unbeaten NCAA title season. The Dodgers, sans Koufax, were a mere shadow of their old selves, but the Angels surprisingly hung in the American League pennant race until September. Carl Yastrzemski put on a demonstration for the ages to lead the "impossible dream" (drawing from the Broadway showing of Man of La Mancha) Boston Red Sox to the championship over Minnesota, Detroit and Chicago.

It was the biggest college football year in the history of Los Angeles. In November at the Coliseum, USC and UCLA met for the national championship. O.J. Simpson, as ballyhooed a football recruit as Lew Alcindor was in basketball, ran 64 yards for the winning touchdown in Troy's scintillating 21-20 triumph. "Whew!" Murray wrote.

"I'm glad I didn't go to the opera Saturday afternoon, after all. This was the first time in a long time where the advance ballyhoo didn't live up to the game.

"The last time these many cosmic events were settled by one day of battle, they struck off a commemorative stamp and elected the winner President.

"On that commemorative stamp, they can put the double image – one of UCLA's Gary Beban and one of USC's Orenthal James Simpson. They can send that Heisman Trophy out with two straws, please."

UCLA quarterback Beban still won the Heisman Trophy. The Trojans finished number one when they beat Indiana in the Rose Bowl. It was Coach McKay's second national title.

Murray's line about the opera was not gratuitous. "Ever since Jim was young he loved the opera," said his widow, Linda McCoy-Murray. "Yes, he loved listening to Caruso and certainly enjoyed Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and the great operatic classics. He played Carmen on cassette at a volume that would shatter crystal. While in Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Olympics we went to Barcelona's renowned opera house to hear the three tenors, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, who would perform at the Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies. I took a picture of Jim talking with Placido Domingo, a photo he cherished. So no, he was not just pulling this stuff out of a hat when he wrote about it.

In the spring of 1998, I purchased two tickets each for the 1999 Opera Series at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for Jim's favorite operas, La Traviatta and La Boheme. The tickets were to be his Christmas and December 29th birthday gifts. He never knew.

After we rekindled our friendship in 1986, Jim came to New York. He asked if I would like to go to the Metropolitan Opera and I asked, 'Are the Knicks at home?' and he'd say, 'You gotta be kidding.' "

Coach George Allen's Los Angels Rams finished 11-1-2 to tie Baltimore for the NFL's Coastal Division title (Baltimore in the Pacific Coastal Division?), but lost to Green Bay in the play-offs. The Pack defeated Dallas in the "ice bowl" before trouncing Oakland in Super Bowl II.

Murray wrote a column about former Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who he said had no sense of humor. Auerbach wrote a book called Basketball For the Player, the Fan, and the Coach, which the columnist joked was "the most practical advice this side of How to Rob a Bank." It featured tidbits on how to grab or pull down pants, cheating on the scorer's and timer's table, and how to manipulate everything in your favor.

Never home for Christmas during his career, Murray wrote Auerbach had a strict fraternization policy against socializing with the Celtics' wives, including his own. His daughters not only did not believe in Santa Claus, "they were a little suspicious of that fable about Dad." He played the "game of life as if it were sure sudden-death overtime."

On April 27, Murray's column, "Louisville Loudmouth Secedes From the Union," addressed the great issue of the day: Cassius Clay. The headline and language within the piece began a well-worn path he would return to, the theme of secession from the Union and the role of the Founding Fathers as a lesson in understanding modern behavior.

Whether Murray or his editor chose the headline is important but not known. It would be telling, because the column itself walks a high-wire tightrope. The headline is not favorable to Clay, a very unpopular figure at the time since he chose to evade the draft and was stripped of his heavyweight boxing crown.

Murray would seem to have been one of those who found little in Clay to admire, but the fact is he was happily settling in as a cub reporter in the comfortable climes of L.A. when, in 1944 Americans were dying at Normandy and Bastogne. But Murray unquestionably favored the guys who fought with George Patton over the man who would not fight because, "Ain't no Viet Cong never called me n----r."

Murray's racial compassion was already publicly known, but his column made it clear no sympathy was due Clay based on race alone. He wrote with telling insight of the Gettysburg Address, Civil War battles, and the sacrifices of those men so, in 1967 Cassius Clay and others like him indeed could speak freely.

"Is it our fault?" he wrote. "Or his? Has he dishonored the dead? Or have we?" He disdained Clay's admonition that blacks "don't own no railroads," perhaps naively pointing out that such a thing was a mere creature of capitalism. Somehow Murray placed facts and wisdom on the page without a final conclusion, allowing the reader to draw one in Socratic fashion. The column was assuredly part of a new age of sports journalism in which talents like Jim Murray went well beyond hits, runs and errors. It was also different in that he "named names."

"Everybody knew who he wrote about when he made subliminal messages," said Linda McCoy-Murray. "He never went after somebody in a heavy manner, to criticize like writers do today. He would write something, about certain behavior, without naming names, but everybody including that person read it and knew who he was talking about."

Then came 1968. Forget 1962, 1964 or 1967. 1968 made 1962 seem like ancient history. Never had the passage of a mere six years been marked by such a chasm. The promise, the horror and the sensual excitement of the entire decade could be wrapped up in the terrible, wonderful year that was 1968.

Most of the love found at Golden Gate Park in 1967 was now screaming bloody murder across the bay at Berkeley in 1968. It was a year of riots, tear gas and hatred. Events started early, in January when the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive. American forces repelled the attacks, achieving victory. The problem was the American media reported it as a defeat. When Walter Cronkite determined the war was a lost cause, Johnson knew he had lost Middle America. In March he shocked the nation, announcing he was not running for re-election. That set off a scramble for the Democrat nomination.

Robert F. Kennedy took the anti-war mantel and was well on his way to capturing the nomination. In a further twist to the great "what if?" question of Nixon having the 1960 election stolen from him, Kennedy very likely would have won the 1968 Presidential election, but in June he was killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. It was an act the motivation of which is still as mysterious today as it was then. The hack answer is that Sirhan Sirhan did it because Kennedy backed Israel over Palestine, but this was virtually the unanimous view of all American political figures of the era.

Reports of Sirhan Sirhan's "trance-like" state and lack of memory for specifics elicit the most ironic of notions, which was that he was The Manchurian Candidate. This irony is heightened by events of June 4. Kennedy and his family spent the day at the Malibu beach home of the movie's director, John Frankenheimer, a supporter. Conspiracy theorists are befuddled in that Kennedy did not plan to be at the Ambassador in the first place, which would have made it hard for Sirhan Sirhan to plan to kill him there.

When Kennedy's victory in that day's California Primary was secure, the crowd boiled at the Ambassador, leading to a call to him in Malibu urging that he come out and make a speech. Sirhan Sirhan probably heard on the news that the candidate was on his way to the Ambassador, when he began his Frankenstein-like march with destiny.

As if divined by forces of judgment, it was in Chicago, where Mayor Daley allegedly stole enough votes to give the Democrats the vote over Nixon in 1960, that his policies led to riots probably giving Richard Nixon the vote over his party in 1968.

Nixon easily dispatched all other Republican contenders, then tapping into the Silent Majority to beat Hubert Humphrey for the White House. Joe McGinnis wrote his classic The Selling of the President 1968, explaining how politics were now glorified advertising campaigns; not suprising since so many of Nixon's people worked at J. Walter Thompson. Many of Nixon's TV spots were highly orchestrated by Roger Aisles, who later ran Fox News. The Kennedy-Nixon drama was not over yet, its remnants to again come to the fore four years later.

Shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Murray received a letter dated June 14 from the actress Marlo Thomas, the daughter of comic Danny Thomas. She wrote that she never wrote to columnists, but thanked him for "two of the most sincere and beautifully written articles on events of our time. The words poured from your heart right into mine. "

Again, social unrest did not prevent the wonderful world of sports from being quite wonderful. USC captured the 1968 College World Series. Alcindor again powered his Bruins to the basketball championship after a brief upset at the hands of Elvin Hayes and Houston at the Astrodome, a game credited with creating the popularity of collegiate hoops.

The Los Angeles Lakers, now an empire-in-the-making playing in the "Fabulous Forum" under maniacal owner Jack Kent Cooke, were supposed to be the greatest pro basketball team ever assembled. Added to Jerry West and Elgin Baylor was the most dominant big man of all time, Wilt Chamberlain. Their regular season record was not as great as hoped for, but in game seven of the Finals at the Forum victory over aging Boston was finally theirs. Or so it seemed. With balloons arranged to fall from the Forum rafters at the buzzer when the team won, Chamberlain literally seemed bored, so much so that coach Butch van Breda Kolff benched him down the stretch! Boston won and the balloons fell in the most ironic of manner.

For the first time, the Olympics became political at Mexico City. After Mexican students rioted in the streets, American speedsters John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised black-gloved fists to express "black power" during the playing of the National Anthem. Black stars like Lew Alcindor were urged by sociologist Harry Edwards to boycott the Games. USC and UCLA stars appeared on the medal stage, led by Trojan pole-vaulter Bob Seagren and Bruin swimmer Debbie Meyer.

It was the "Year of the Pitcher" in baseball. Bob Gibson of St. Louis fashioned a 1.12 ERA. Denny McLain of Detroit won 31 games. But the lack of offense, combined with old ballparks in bad neighborhoods marred by violence, combined to hold baseball attendance down. The TV generation and punditocracy considered football – fast, violent and sexy – the new National Pastime.

The Dodgers gave their fans little to cheer about after Don Drysdale's "last hurrah," 56 straight scoreless innings. The team of Jackie Robinson made a rare public relations disaster when, after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s April assassination, they waited until criticism got too harsh before canceling a game scheduled that evening.

O.J. Simpson won the Heisman Trophy and had his team poised to win their second straight national championship. Ohio State coach Woody Hayes told his team they were hated. He equated LA. and their opponents, despite being a conservative private school coached by a Republican, to be emblematic of the anti-war Hollywood liberalism he convinced his team was the real enemy on the green plains of the Rose Bowl. It worked. The Buckeyes, not the Trojans, were number one in 1968 after Ohio State won, 27-16. The Rams finished 10-3-1, second in the Coastal Division. Baltimore won the NFL championship, but in a stunning upset Joe Namath and the AFL's "Super Jets" defeated them, 16-7 in Miami.

Murray wrote a column about Los Angeles defensive lineman David "Deacon" Jones, describing how one game Jones had a bone sticking out of his thumb until "Jack Pardee had to push it back into place." He also wrote a piece about Detroit Red Wings superstar Gordie Howe, who he described as "the greatest hockey player who ever lived" and, to Canadians at least, equal to "the 12 Apostles." By this point in Murray's career, it was apparent that his columns included a lot of research. His subjects were struck by the fact he might interview them for 30 minutes or an hour, then either not quote them or barely quote them. Nevertheless, the flavor of the subject was always enhanced whether a "meaningless" quote was used or not. Murray went against a time-honored journalistic principle – get quotes – but his own words were better than anybody elses. It was, as Dizzy Dean would say, "not braggin'." It was just a fact.

The last year of the decade did not disappoint, politically, athletically or culturally. It was another barnburner, with just a touch of hope that things might get better. In Los Angeles, however, summer was the "mean season." Nationally, one of the great, incongruous acts in world history occurred. America landed on the moon. The first man to set foot upon the lunar surface was a man with a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California named Neil Armstrong. The moon landing most likely ranks as the single greatest achievement in world history. Considering that the first flight occurred a mere 66 years earlier, and the first jet flight a mere 25 years before, it was for all practical purposes accomplishing the impossible. The "space race," declared by President Kennedy eight years prior, was fostered by President Johnson. Now the U.S officially won it.
However, enthusiasm for the achievement was tempered by the fact the Vietnam War still raged with no end in sight. Nixon took over declaring a "secret plan," but if he felt he and then-NSC advisor Henry Kissinger could buffalo the Communists with fancy diplomacy, he was mistaken. They were hard bargainers. Their people, for reasons that remain a mystery really, were willing to endure any hardship on behalf of . . . Communism!? It was as if they were mesmerized by a desire to die so they would have the right to be murdered.

Nixon brought a spotlight on Southern California when he bought a seaside mansion in San Clemente in Orange County, dubbed the "Western White House." The L.A. Times, with their long history with Richard Nixon, was the paper of record so to speak, the insiders when it came to the new President.

If the 1960s ushered a new era of glory in the City of Angels – movie excellence, big league sports, packed sports palaces, glamour – just like the 1965 Watts riots an event occurred in the dog days of summer, 1969, that was a rude awakening telling people all was not so wonderful.

In the early evening of Friday, August 8, actor Steve McQueen stopped at a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard called El Coyote. A happening Mexican spot, it was jumping. McQueen was planning to attend a party in the hills, but never made it. He met a girl at the El Coyote bar, hit it off with her, and took her home. For that reason, he was not at the rented Benedict Canyon home of actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski. The Charles Manson family was. Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Hollywood hair stylist Jay Sebring, and Polish director Voityck Frokowski were there, too. They were slaughtered. Shortly thereafter, the Mansons went to the Los Feliz home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, killing them in similar manner. For months, the city was frozen with fear. Finally, the case was cracked, Manson and his family arrested, brought to trial, and convicted.

Jim Morrison of The Doors was arrested for supposedly exposing himself at a rock concert in Miami. Whether or not he actually did the deed could not be determined. Another rock giant emerged in Great Britain. Led Zeppelin made it the "big four" – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, now Zeppelin – among the most epic of musical groups. While the Manson case cast a dark shadow over L.A., that same month Woodstock cast . . . something else on a farm town in rural upstate New York.

In the spring of 1969, Lew Alcindor fulfilled every possible expectation of him when he signed a letter of intent four years earlier. In his senior year, he was a third-year All-American, a third-year Player of the Year, and his UCLA team a third-time NCAA champion. The Lakers, loaded and favored against an ancient Celtics team that actually featured a below-.500 regular season record, floundered in losing to Bill Russell in his last year.

On April 27, Murray wrote a column called, "It's a Bird! A Man! A Car! A Bullet! . . ." Like his 1962 column on Willie Mays, his descriptions of Jerry West were over-the-top hyperbole, the kind of verbiage that almost no other writer, no matter how talented, could get away with.

Almost 40 years later, on November 4, 2008, Times sports editor Bill Dwyre used that column as an example of Murray's humbling talent in "Jim Murray: of Pulitzers and pretenders":

"This is how it goes now in the life of a sports columnist at the Los Angeles Times, an existence also known as: living in the eternal shadow of Jim Murray.

You get some access to former basketball superstar Jerry West. You know there is a column there. You know he is one of those sports names that people always remain interested in. You go, you interview.

"West is great, accessible, his normal tortured self, which makes him among the most interesting of subjects to write about. Other sports stars - any normal person - learn to rationalize defeats, setbacks. It is the way of survival. Not West. They still burn in him, even some of his high school games back in the 1950s.

"His nickname shouldn't be 'Mr. Clutch.' It should be 'Mr. Glass Half Empty.'

You are excited. A writer who can't get excited about a chance to attempt, once again, to capture the essence of such a fascinating character is not a writer at all.

"So you sit down and write after an afternoon news conference, send in the column and then go to the evening dinner where West is being honored. You are feeling good about yourself, feeling good about your literary attempt.

"Then you sit down at the table and there it is. A dinner program, with a reprint of a column on West by your old colleague, the late Jim Murray, one of only five sportswriters to win a Pulitzer Prize.

"You don't want to read it because you know it will be humbling, but reading Murray has always been like eating potato chips. Once you've read one of his columns, you have to read another. And another.

"There it was, from April 27, 1969. And here is a sample from the greatest sportswriter to ever live:

" 'The first time you see Jerry West, you're tempted to ask him how things are in Gloccamorra. The Lakers didn't draft him, they found him - under a rainbow . . . There are those who swear Jerry arrives for work everyday by reindeer. He wears the perpetually startled expression of a guy who just heard a dog talk . . . He has the quickest hands and feet of a guy without a police record. If they put a cap on him sideways and turned him loose on the streets of London, there wouldn't be a wallet in town by nightfall.'

"There was more, another 20 inches or so. It just got better.

"You ponder getting into another business, maybe dry cleaning or lawn mower repair.

"You end up taking a deep breath, eating dessert and pondering the definition of immortality."

The California Angels struggled, but did feature a hard-throwing right-hander from Western High School in Anaheim and the University of California. Andy Messersmith was a 20-game winner. The Dodgers were dubbed The Mod Squad after a popular TV show of that name. Featuring young players, with Drysdale now retired, they embarked on a new era and competed for the West Division championship well into September. Eventually, Hank Aaron and Atlanta edged out Willie McCovey and San Francisco for the division crown.

Baseball, concerned with low batting averages and lower attendance in 1968, lowered the mound to decrease pitching dominance in 1969. This resulted in greater offensive production, but overall baseball in 1969 saw one of the great confluences of old and new stars. Superstars like Carl Yastrzemski of Boston, Frank and Brooks Robinson of Baltimore, Harmon Killebrew of Minnesota, Al Kaline of Detroit, Frank Howard of Washington, Jim Fregosi of California, Hank Aaron and Orlando Cepeda of Atlanta, Pete Rose of Cincinnati, Bob Gibson and Joe Torre of St. Louis, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ron Santo of the Chicago Cubs, Roberto Clemente and Matty Alou of Pittsburgh, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal of San Francisco, and Maury Wills of Los Angeles were still at or near the top of their respective games.

Young future stars were emerging on the scene at the same time. Among them were Jim Palmer of the Orioles, Tony Oliva of the Twins, Mickey Lolich and Denny McLain (whose star did not rise due to off-field troubles) of the Tigers, Lou Piniella of the Royals, Sam McDowell of the Indians, Andy Messersmith of the Angels, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers of the A's, Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan and Jerry Koosman of the Mets, Phil Niekro of the Braves, Rich Allen of the Phillies, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez of the Reds, Steve Carlton of the Cardinals, Joe Morgan and Larry Dierker of the Astros, Ferguson Jenkins and Ken Holtzman of the Cubs, Manny Sanguillen and Willie Stargell of the Pirates, Gaylord Perry and Bobby Bonds of the Giants, Don Sutton and Bill Buckner of the Dodgers.

It was an era that historians, given the lens of time and reflection, believe to be the greatest in history, but nobody conceived of that at the beginning of the season. Baseball was said to be dead, thoroughly replaced by football. While all the great players on the scene in 1969 unquestionably generated excitement and increased attendance, it was one team above all others that "saved" Our National Pastime.

Not only was baseball in trouble, but also New York City was in dire straits. More and more Americans thought of Los Angeles as the most important U.S. city. New York was mired in a fiscal crisis, its politicians floundering in a series of strikes and confrontations with unions, much driven by racial strife. The city was dirty and crime-laden. Movies like Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man and The French Connection depicted a gritty underground culture of crime and corruption.

But between January 1969 and spring, 1970 three New York teams won championships. The Jets captured the Super Bowl and the Knickerbockers beat the Lakers in the 1970 NBA Finals. It was a prime example of how sports can symbolize the plight or greatness of a city. But it was the 1969 "Amazin' Mets" that remains perhaps the greatest sports story ever told. The worst team in athletics - not just bad, but comically bad – they won the World Series behind Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman. Their victory was credited with giving Mayor John V. Lindsey an upset re-election.

USC and UCLA were both unbeaten when they met at the Coliseum in the last game of the regular season. A tie against Notre Dame ultimately was the only thing keeping the Trojans from their seventh national championship. Sam Dickerson caught Jimmy Jones's desperation heave into the corner of the end zone after a controversial pass interference call against the Bruins gave Troy new life. USC prevailed 14-12, then defeated Michigan in the Rose Bowl, 10-3. Because of a series of last-minute dramatic finishes, they were known either as the Cardiac Kids or the Wild Bunch, a moniker given their defense after the name of a Sam Peckinpah movie starring Ernest Borgnine and William Holden.

George Allen's Los Angeles Ram team may have been the greatest in their L.A. history, with the possible exception of the 1952 champions. Led by National Football League Most Valuable Player Roman Gabriel, the Rams started 11-0, but Allen's hard-charging methods wore them out near the end. In the frozen tundra of Minnesota, they blew a second half lead. The Vikings were over-matched against Mike Garrett and Kansas City in Super Bowl IV, 23-7.

In his September 2 column on Rocky Marciano, recently killed in a plane crash, Murray made a backhanded swipe at Muhammad Ali (the Muslim name Cassius Clay adopted). "There is a new breed of snarling winners today, but Rocky was apologetic," he wrote.

 Texas defeated  Arkansas in  Fayetteville in a classic battle for number one, a football game attended by  President Nixon. After the game  Murray was slammed into a chain link fence by a  Secret Service man who apparently thought  Murray looked suspicious.  Murray found himself a foot off the ground, suspended only by his collar. Just then,  Nixon walked by.

"How ya' doin', Jim?"  Nixon, who well recalled Time's correspondent from the 1952 "Checkers" campaign, asked him.

"I'd be better,"  Murray said, "if you could get this monkey to put me down."

The 1960s finally came to an end. On New Year's Day, 1970, Southern California defeated Michigan to usher in a new decade. Athletically, the changes were enormous. The Dodgers were still newcomers playing in a football stadium in 1960. By the end of 1969, they were firmly established, as was their L.A. identity. Pro basketball did not exist 10 years earlier in the city. Now it was a showcase sport. The Angels were non-existent in 1960. The AFL was a laughing stock. By 1969 they were better than the NFL, forcing a merger. USC and UCLA were reeling from the after shocks of recruiting scandals 10 years earlier. Now they both stood at the top of the college football mountaintop. Bruins hoops were barely a blip on the radar screen a decade prior. Now people spelled "basketball" U-C-LA.

Sports in Los Angeles was profoundly different, but it was nothing compared to the seismic cultural shifts in the city and the world, ushered in between 1960 and 1969. The city of Los Angeles and the state of California, despite taking a few punches here and there, were viewed as the cutting edge of the American future. It was not just Nixon's election. Ronald Reagan was a successful, albeit controversial Governor. Goldwater conservatism was on the ascendancy, largely a reaction to changes the Silent Majority found horrifying. Long hair, hippies, dirty kids, free love, abortion, drug excess, immorality, homosexuality, anti-Americanism, unpatriotic war protesters, draft dodgers, rejection of Christianity, and a host of other New Age phenomena. Outside of a few Beatnik poetry readings by Allen Ginsberg in San Francisco's North Beach a mere decade before, these were now phenomenons, a zeitgeist of world culture. Out of this grew violent, radical elements in the form of the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Zebra killers, and in Europe the Meider-Bahnhof Complex. All of these were associated, either vaguely or specifically, with the left, liberalism and the Democrat Party. The Republicans played it for all it was worth. The question was whether they could handle the reigns of power being handed them as the world entered the 1970s.

Los Angeles and California were definitely diverse. These elements were alive and well there. They were more associated with Berkeley and San Francisco, however. In Southern California this was still a somewhat underground culture. In the Bay Area, California, Stanford and San Francisco State were taken over by radical elements. In Los Angeles, UCLA was increasingly subject to them, but not so at Southern Cal. An agitator named "Brother Lennie" tried to organize an anti-war protest, but assistant football coach Marv Goux told him to "get yer ass outta here." Debate followed in the Los Angeles Times for a week, but coach John McKay and President Norman Topping backed Goux. There was no will to punish the football coach.

The 1960s was the greatest in the history of Hollywood. The "California dream" enticed millions worldwide. Playboy editor Hugh Hefner moved from cold Chicago to warm L.A. His magazine featured intoxicating views of beautiful girls frolicking in the sun. Thousands of testosterone-filled boys entered USC and UCLA each year figuring their girlfriend would be Barbi Benton.

Two new "cities" spring up almost over night in the 1960s. Century City was modeled after a futuristic concept, so much so that the film Planet of the Apes, set centuries beyond, filmed scenes there. Marina Del Rey rose up from the sand dunes. Now it was swinger's colony of singles - models, porn stars, producers, Beautiful People – all gathered together in hedonistic luxury.

Despite the Watts riots, images like the smiling Trojan O.J. Simpson and the Olympic-decathlon-champ-turned-sportscaster Rafer Johnson gave people the idea, right or wrong, that in matters of race L.A. got it right. Real estate prices were going through the roof. The Military Industrial Complex hummed along the 405 corridor. Orange County was a growing behemoth of wealth and success. Great athletes grew seemingly like oranges all over the Southland. Its restaurants were known worldwide. Its nightlife was legendary. L.A. was "the place."

The Column

"The trouble with writing a column is, it's like running a railroad," Murray recalled. "You can never step back and take stock of what you've done." A book, a play, a movie, an opera, a ballet, a poem; all allow for reflected glory. The Column is like the athletes written about, who also cannot rest on their laurels but must stay on top of their game because the fans are fickle and always ask, "What have you done for me lately?" The Column, Murray once wrote, is "around the fish."

Bill Caplan was a boxing promoter and one of Jim's best friends.

"It seems I knew him forever," recalled Caplan. "I did promotions since late in 1962. I was freelance, then I was on the payroll for Aileen Eaton at the Olympic Auditorium. George Parnassus was promoting a fight at the new Forum. They had seven sellouts in two years. I worked for Don King and Bob Arum. The point is that every job I got was because of my friendship with Jim Murray. I was able to get a lot of jobs because of Jim's influence.

"Let me take it one step further. For whatever reason, he was number one in the West and one of the best in the country. I think he was easily the best columnist around. I could get him to write a column about a fight I was promoting. This really helped me. I was hired because people knew I could get a Jim Murray column.

"The only column he ever turned me down was when I asked him to get together with a fighter and he said he couldn't because he was going to be in Augusta for The Masters. I was very lucky to have him as a friend. He always knew I would never bring him a stiff. Boxing is full of color characters and he would do a wonderful job crafting stories about those kinds of people.

"Politically I think Jim was a mixed bag, a middle of the road Republican with liberal tendencies, but let me tell you a story. Allan Malamud and I were best friends since his senior year at USC when he was the editor of the Daily Trojan. Merv Harris ran a program for college writers to work in the business and Allan started doing that. Allan was a confirmed bachelor but I had a big family of five kids. We'd have lunch every day, but we never talked politics. So in 1992 Bill Clinton ran for President. My first impression was that he was kind of greasy, but three guys convinced me that he was okay, and one of them was Allan. The other guys were my brother-in-law, kind of my mentor, and George Foreman. It was our first political conversation after some 30 years. The point is that you can be friends for decades and not get into a subject like that. I have no answer on the question of Jim's Christianity, we didn't talk about that, either. Jim was an intellectual."

The Column always became a consuming, obsessive passion that he later recalled took a toll on his marriage, which was kept steady because his wife was something close to a saint, in Murray's view of the matter. It would force him to close his door to his kids, warned by Gerry not to make too much noise playing and having fun like normal kids, so as not to disturb their father as he worked on The Column. Ancillary opportunities such as his attempt at writing a Ben Hogan screenplay did not happen because The Column took all his creative juices, leaving none for such side work.

"I never really talked with him much about his family," recalled Caplan. "Aileen Eaton ran the Olympic Auditorium, and her attorney was Paul Caruso, who was a good friend. Jim would say, 'I'd like to come to the fight, can you get two seats for my son Teddy and I?' Jim alluded that Teddy was using him as his 'beard,' that he wanted to see the fight more than he did, and if not for Teddy he wouldn't want to see the fight. Jim had four children. Some worked many years at the Times."

"I got a secret," Jim said to Caplan. "Teddy's using me as a 'beard' because he wants to see the fight more than I do."

By the end of the 1960s, Jim Murray was the king of sports columnists. He was considered not just the best currently doing what he did, but increasingly the best who ever did it, anywhere. His writing was the keynote of a newspaper that within that same time frame rose to a position of prominence and respect over and above all others. While Watergate would create a major chasm between Republicans and the mainstream media, which until talk radio, cable and the Internet was the only media, in 1969 the Nixon Administration still felt the Times to be the fairest, most balanced of all news outlets. Nixon and his cabinet regularly called on Times correspondents, by name and affiliation, giving them excellent access. The New York Times and Washington Post were already "enemies" of Nixon, in their view.

Unquestionably, Murray benefited from the decade being the greatest in L.A.'s history. It had gone from a "minor league" town to the biggest of big league cities. Its stadiums were palaces. Dodger Stadium was compared to the Taj Mahal and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Anaheim Stadium was second only to Dodger Stadium. The Forum was light years ahead of any other basketball or hockey arena. Pauley Pavilion was the best college arena ever built, and the Sports Arena was still thought of as first rate. Even the aging Coliseum, packed to the rafters for Trojans, Bruins and Rams games, was the most famous sports palace in the world, having seen even more and greater events even than Yankee Stadium.

Great teams, even dynasties, and legendary athletes graced the green plains and courts of Los Angeles, all written about in great splendor by Jim Murray. Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Dean Chance, Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Tim Rossovich, Gary Beban, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Lew Alcindor, Gail Goodrich, Bob Seagren, and Parry O'Brien were just a few of L.A.'s superstars. Aside from superior talent, many of these men were unique individuals, characters and story subjects. So were the likes of "Hot Rod" Hundley, Bo Belinsky, and others.

The non-provincial Murray happily featured welcome rival stars like Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves, Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals, Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs, Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox, Frank Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles, Reggie Jackson of the Oakland A's, Tom Seaver of the New York Mets, Ferguson Jenkins of the Chicago Cubs, Oscar Robertson of the Cincinnati Royals, John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics, Rick Barry of the San Francisco Warriors, Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts, Dick Butkus of the Chicago Bears, and individual sports stars like tennis player Rod Laver, boxers Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Joe Frazier, and golfers Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

The coaches, too, were a colorful cast of characters. There were exceptions. Dodgers manager Walt Alston and UCLA coach John Wooden were strictly malted milk. But USC coach John McKay was a writer's dream. His rivalry with UCLA coach Tommy Prothro made for excellent copy. Angels manager Bill Rigney was a beauty. The soap opera between Jack Kent Cooke and a cast of Lakers personalities raging from coach Butch van Breda Kolff to Wilt Chamberlain to Jerry West was a never-ending story. USC's Rod Dedeaux may have been the most gregarious personality in baseball. Then there were the rival coaches: Ohio State's Woody Hayes, Michigan's Bo Schembechler, Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian, Red Auerbach and Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers, Gil Hodges of the New York Mets, Leo Durocher of the Chicago Cubs.

Murray was the best of the Los Angeles press corps, but L.A. featured some of the greatest, most colorful scribes ever assembled. These included Bud Furillo and Mel Durslag of the Los Angeles Herald-Express, Loel Schrader of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, and his colleagues at the L.A. Times: Mal Florence, John Hall and Allan Malamud. The combination of these wits often mixed with alcohol and the likes of McKay, who enjoyed pulling a cork, in relaxed settings like Julies, a USC watering hole, or Ernie's House of Surface, a Crenshaw district sports hangout. These environments produced some real doozies, much of which never made print.

Within four years of starting at the Times, Murray's columns were turned into a 1965 book, The Best of Jim Murray (Doubleday) and again in 1968 (The Sporting World of Jim Murray, also from Doubleday). In The Best of Jim Murray, he wrote, "It's not possible to measure what baseball owes to Ring Lardner, what football is in debt to Grantland Rice, or what boxing owes to Dan Parker." Murray was by 1970 greater than any of them.

Of Casey Stengel he wrote he was "a white American male with a speech pattern that ranges somewhere between the sound a porpoise makes underwater and an Abyssinian rug merchant." When Stengel came to Los Angeles as manager of the New York Mets, Murray showed his smarts. He rarely quoted his subjects. In his column on Stengel he knew that in this man he had the ultimate wordmeister. It was by and large Stengelese from beginning to end.

Murray also wrote about cities. His words were meant to be funny and light-hearted, but sometimes these engendered enmity. Cincinnati was a particular target. "Now, if you any have sense, you don't want to be in Cincinnati at all," he wrote. ". . . You'd have to think that when Dan'l Boone was fighting the Indians for this territory he didn't have Cincinnati in mind for it."

The Dodgers built a state of the art Spring Training facility in Vero Beach, Florida, but Murray was unimpressed; not with the facility but with Vero Beach. "A Letter from Jail" described his opinion of the place. Dodgertown was "a fancy name for Andersonville." This was an example of his unwillingness to "write down" to his audience. Murray did not explain that Andersonville was the infamous South Carolina Confederate prison camp where Union soldiers languished and died during the Civil War. He figured the point was made without explaining everything as if speaking to second graders.

Vero Beach, Murray wrote, was not in the United States, but in the Confederate States of America. He did not want to say the water tasted funny, "But you do wonder whose swimming pool they pumped it out of."

San Francisco was a particular target. He took exception not just to the hatred San Franciscans had for L.A., but for the snooty attitude of the locals. He called it "Akron of the West," borrowing from a Time article. It was a "citadel of intolerance" where Willie McCovey heard taunts "that couldn't be used in Tropic of Cancer." In Los Angeles, blacks were integrated into society. There were still problems. Some blacks were not allowed to rent in Pasadena, ironically the hometown of Jackie Robinson, but its schools, sports teams and neighborhoods were way ahead of the rest of America in the 1960s. There is very little if any anecdotal evidence of black or Latino athletes on the home team or the visitors enduring racial fan abuse at the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, the Forum, or any other L.A. locale.

USC and UCLA were powerhouses in large measure because of integration. John McKay and John Wooden gave more opportunities to black athletes than any coaches in the United States, pro or amateur. Cal and Stanford, the so-called free speech campuses telling everybody else how to live, were still mostly white. Their sports teams reflected this. For this reason they were also quite mediocre. McKay was horrified when he took his team to Stanford, only to endure the "worst racial epithets I ever heard in 30 years of coaching," he recalled. A gauntlet of Stanford "liberals" ringed the walkway into Stanford Stadium calling him a "(N----r) lover."

Murray saw in San Francisco liberal hypocrisy. Supposedly a bastion of progressive thinking, instead it was a city that tried to bar Willie Mays, of all people, from buying a house there. Eventually Mays did buy. After all, he was considered the best ball player in America, but he was apparently a token. St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, an All-Star but no Willie May, was a Bay Area native who also tried to buy in the City. He was flat turned away because he was black. No similar stories about John Roseboro, Elgin Baylor, Deacon Jones - or anybody else on L.A. teams - existed, at least not publicly, in the 1960s.

"When he went around the country talking about different cities you laughed because it was something you never forget," said Fred Wallin, one of the hosts of Dodger Talk on KABC in the 1980s. "He could get away with it. You'd look forward to his trips around this big world with Jim Murray."

Candlestick Park was an immediate joke as soon as it was built in 1960. Murray pointed to it as an example of San Francisco's goofiness and mediocrity. He would not have minded San Francisco being San Francisco so much had they not reserved so much dislike for Los Angeles, a city Murray was perfectly willing to admit had its faults but also much he loved about it.

Of Spokane, Washington he wrote the only trouble with the place was there was nothing to do "after 10 o'clock. In the morning." Of his own "town," Malibu, where he lived until making the move to Brentwood, he said that from his house he could look down the beach and see an "outdoor Eden" in which "all the girls look like Brigitte Bardot." Of surf culture he wrote "the Pacific Coast Highway is suddenly awash with jalopies, doodle-bugs, station wagons and convertibles speeding to the sea with stacks of boards sticking out of them like quills from a porcupine." Murray's Malibu experience made him quite fluent with surfing, a sport he wrote about often and with excellent knowledge. It is not inaccurate to say the sport's growth was greatly influenced by his writing about it, especially in the 1960s and '70s when it reached its golden age. It was so much a part of L.A. culture. Murray, who loved L.A., adopted it as his own.

Of his good fortune to be a sportswriter, Murray wrote of "hardships" such as the fact he had to get up at noon and go to a ballpark at night, thus missing TV shows like The Price Is Right.

One of Murray's greatest traits was his use of comparison to highbrow culture, which he did in a column about Elgin Baylor of the Lakers. After speaking of his reaction to seeing "Barrymore when he was still Barrymore," he made references to the opera Carmen and the great tenor Enrico Caruso before comparing Baylor to this artistry.

His column on Bob Cousy engendered mentions of the Mona Lisa, Sarah Bernhardt, Caruso and the Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski in the first paragraph. Cousy was "more Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler that Arturo Toscanini, more comic strip than a candidate for the Louvre, a rhyme, not a poem."

Murray also liked to invent "conversations" between caricatured sporting figures often given Eastern European names like Bratkowski, some sort of old school reference to the kind of people who came to Americanize themselves, often playing football at places like Notre Dame and Michigan. Of golf Murray wrote, "Perfection is monotonous," preferring the weather-aided vagaries of the "Crosby clambake." Of the University of Houston, in the 1960s better known as the "University of Golf," the "entrance requirements are a 64 on an accredited course and a sound short game." When famed jockey Eddie Arcaro decided to retire, Murray wrote that among his competitors the news was similar to "the feelings of the crew of the Bounty when they put Captain Bligh to sea on that lifeboat, or the Russians when they got word Stalin was running a temperature." The use of Joseph Stalin as a sports metaphor resonated with many writers, who would copy Murray, writing things like "the rest of USC's schedule fell like Eastern Europe under Stalin," or some other variation of the theme.

Rudolph Walter Wanderone, the actual subject for Minnesota Fats in The Hustler (his real nickname was the "Fat Man), "has seen the sun come up redly through drawn blinds at the end of 50 hours of steady pool, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, his lips cracked and dry but his wrist as sure and steady as a piston." Fats also came up with a line worthy of Yogi Berra. "I don't miss no place. I like wherever I'm at. But when I'm gone, I don't miss it."

Of the Indianapolis 500 he once wrote, "It's not so much a sport as a death watch" held, "fittingly, on Memorial Day. It has long since tied the one-day extermination record set by the German Luftwaffe in Poland in 1939, and since tied by the Red Army in Budapest a couple of years ago. They should start the race with 'Taps.' " Perhaps it was Jim Murray's treatment of the Indy that inspired screenwriter John Milius to write in Apocalypse Now, "Charging a man with murder around this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500." Unquestionably, Murray, as with the emerging comics of his era, was one of the great satirists of all time.

Of baseball statistics Murray wrote, "I think it was Mark Twain who first said, 'What do you want – the truth or statistics?' " As with Bear Bryant's supposed 1970 statement that Sam "Bam" Cunningham was "what a football player looks like," Twain may not have said it but "he should have." Regarding the game's 1960s penchant for change and injuries, Murray satirically wrote that in his day, "We never got sore arms." He loved poker references, as when he wrote "a guy who bets into a pat full house with a pair of eights and a kicker is a piker" in a column about the high bonuses paid baseball players. "Is baseball a business?" he asked. "If it isn't, General Motors is a sport."

He made up names and created scenarios, using characters he called "Harry Hardthrow," "Jackie Shorthop" and "Barney Bullwhip." Of baseball promotions like "egg-throwing, wheelbarrow-racing and the like," Murray joked that a special contest should be held to determine who "can make himself the most invisible" when called on to pinch-hit against the headhunting Don Drysdale, or for the relief pitcher "who can fake a back injury most convincingly when asked to go in and get Henry Aaron or Willie Mays out."

When Roger Maris threatened Babe Ruth's home run record, Murray wrote he was "baseball's answer to John Wilkes Booth." Mickey Mantle, previously disdained for not being Joe DiMaggio, suddenly discovered he was loved. When Commissioner Ford Frick asterisked Maris's record, Murray criticized him roundly . . . with satire.

In a column on Mantle, at the time considered a player not living up to his talent, Murray quoted former Dodger Jackie Robinson with this pearl: "Look, we got plenty of guys worse than he is. Trouble is, we ain't got anybody as good." This was the sort of wisdom on par with Winston Churchill, who once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government known to man . . . with the exception of all other forms of government known to man."

"Sarcasm, it is said, is the lowest form of wit," Murray wrote in "Pun My Word." "But, even so, puns have to look up to it. My puns are half-backed but not hot or cross. And served up for the groaning." Junk ball relief pitcher Stu Miller in the big leagues was "like a boy walking through Indian country with a Boy Scout knife and his lunch in a bag." His "fast ball" could be caught "in your teeth." Some day, he wrote, a rookie would swing and miss twice at a single Miller slow ball, and be the first batter ever to strike out on two pitches. Watching him pitch was "as exciting as chess."

Monster Dodgers slugger Frank Howard, on the other hand, was so imposing that when he arrived in New York, "The Army is called out, the United Nations meets in emergency session and they begin to fire bombs at it, which it catches and throws back." Howard's home runs "don't need a tape measure, they need an aerial survey." His shaky defense, however, was as suspenseful as an Alfred Hitchcock chase scene. He "is so big, he wasn't born, he was founded."

Murray's puns, sarcasm and hyperbole in describing Frank Howard's size were so over the top that in this particular case he actually got redundant. One of Murray's great gifts was knowing when to cut it out, but in Howard's case he committed a rare error in overdoing it.

In "Nice Guy Also Wins," Murray refuted the notion placed forth by Leo Durocher that, "Nice guys finish last." The "Castilian from Tampa," Chicago White Sox manager Al Lopez, was highly successful without blowing his stack. Of Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Brosnan, who wrote a diary of the 1961 season, Murray wrote, "Broz is the only pitcher I know who thinks of Homer as a Greek poet and not a lucky swing by a banjo hitter." Brosnan had this humdinger on Don Drysdale: "The way Drysdale throws, he might as well throw a grenade with the pin out." Murray either imitated that or Brosnan was duplicating him, because this reference to Big D made it into a Murray column. When he had his control he was not around the plate but "around the head."

In "Life on the Road," Murray dissected the baseball routine. Players were "in a town but not if it." No matter how great the cultural attractions of any given city, they lacked the slightest curiosity. They read . . . The Sporting News. The main attractions were women in bars, a parlor game in which the players had to make sure they did their drinking where and when the manager was not, often a tricky proposition. The road was, he wrote, a difficult place to win baseball games.

"A road game is like a knife fight in a room in the dark – only it's the other fellow's room," he wrote. Road trips were a form of existentialism, or as "Schopenhauer once said" (how many players knew who German philosopher Alfred Schopenhauer was?), the road was a form of "peaceful non-existence." How many writers wrote like this? None.

Then there were the Trojans of Southern California. In The Best of Jim Murray, they were so prominent a subject the Trojans rated their own special chapter, "Fight On For Old $C." If Grantland Rice turned Notre Dame into the nation's most popular football team, Jim Murray was every bit as responsible for the epic glamour of USC. The University of Southern California was already a huge college powerhouse, not just in football but all sports, prior to Murray's arrival at the Los Angeles Times. An old-timer still writing for the paper, Braven Dyer, had written of Trojan lore for decades, singularly responsible for making the likes of Doyle Knave the most popular name in America in 1939.

But Murray's arrival came a mere year after John McKay's, a symbiotic relationship launching a thousand of words. Murray, the Irish Catholic who grew up rooting for Notre Dame, therefore understood and respected USC as an opponent not merely worthy of the Fighting Irish, but a team as responsible for Notre Dame's place in history as vice versa. Perhaps because Murray wrote about Hollywood and John "Duke" Wayne, he intrinsically understood that USC was not merely a university, but a movie production, a player. In some strange ways, outsiders understood this kind of thing better than jaded Los Angelenos who were raised with Tinseltown at their fingertips. Everybody in the town had a neighbor, or grew up with, or saw at the grocery store, somebody in the movies. It was not a big deal. To Jim Murray and other out-of-towners, the sight of stars never lost its luster.

Murray loved USC, but did not bow down at their altar. Many worshipped them. Some hated them. Association with UCLA often determined such a thing. But his placing a $ (dollar sign) in place of the "S" in SC indicated his balanced opinion. In 1965 he used the school as prime example number one that collegiate football was now at least as much big business as a football game in "Gold Line Stand." It certainly was a change of pace from the "raccoon coat crowd" of his Ivy League youth. In "The 'Heart' of Football," he continued the theme, that college football coaches were not coaches but caretakers of a school's bank account. In "De-emphasis – '82 Style" he wrote a satirized, futuristic story in which college football is no longer the big deal it had been when they "broke it up in 1965."

His 1961 column is worth reading in light of what followed. "Color Me Purple" described Jim Owens and the highly-favored Washington Huskies entering the L.A. Coliseum like Romans conquering Gaul. Poor "Johnny McKay" and his Trojans were badly over-matched, better called "Faith, Hope and Charity" or, as he suggested, "they might throw in 'Surrender.' " Neither Murray nor anybody else at the time was predicting that McKay, well on his way to being fired in his second straight losing year, would over the next two decades lead Troy to unparalleled dominance.

Some of Murray's favorite subjects were personalities on rival teams. One of the best of those was Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, whose Buckeyes overwhelmed USC 20-7 in the 1955 Rose Bowl. After the game Woody let it be known that at least six Big 10 teams were better than Troy. Thus was a clarion call made, for some knight on a white horse to come forward and slay Woody and the Big 10 bullies. It took years, but that knight was McKay.

Before establishing the Pacific-8 Conference as the dominant player in the Rose Bowl rivalry, McKay had to slay an even bigger dragon, Notre Dame. In a column that had many Trojan fans declaring, "Finally," he wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about Irish football history. In it, he said the university was a top-notch educational institute, but nobody cared about improvements to the library or 99 percent graduation rates. "A formula for beating Army was all they wanted," he wrote.

In "What's in a Name?" he recalled as a kid being fascinated with the high-brow names of USC football stars: Morley Drury, Homer Griffith, Grenville Lansdell, Gaius Shaver, Irvin Warburton, Orville Mohler, Ambrose Schindler, Aramis Dandoy, Marshall Duffield, Garrett Arbelbride, Courtney Decius, Orlando Ferrante, Volney Peters. "You had to sneer when you thought of other teams with a lot of guys named 'Mike' or 'Butch' or 'Pug' on them," he wrote. USC's coach should have been Sir Walter Scott, he theorized.

Growing up in the cold of Connecticut, Murray's uncles told him the USC players were "two inches taller and 20 pounds heavier in California. They were all Olympic sprinters. They all had blond hair and swam to Catalina before breakfast every morning."

In his youth, actual scientists and sociologists honestly posited the notion that something in the water, the sunshine and the food out West were responsible for athletic success. But by the 1960s, Rose Bowl failure and losses to Notre Dame had people reversing their thinking. Now, amid theories that tougher conditions back East – coal mines and snow – created better grid stars, Murray was happy to report on "Coach Johnny McKay" leading his team back to the Promised Land in 1962.

In a piece about the Floyd Patterson-Sonny Liston boxing match, he wrote, "A 'journalist' was identified by a member of the British press on hand here as 'a gentleman who borrows money from a newspaperman.' "

In 1963 he saw a boxing match in which Cuban Sugar Ramos beat Davey Moore so badly he died. Murray wrote, "A ringsider pointed out it was not a fight, it was Russian roulette with six-ounce gloves." Sonny Liston "would be an 8-5 favorite over the Marines," he wrote. "He already has beaten more cops than Perry Mason." He was "the best argument I know for schooling."

"Jim kind of soured on boxing almost to the point of wanting it to be outlawed after a guy named Davey Moore killed a guy at Dodger Stadium," recalled promoter Bill Caplan. "He got very negative on it, but he said many of his best columns were on boxing. He had an Uncle Harry who would take him to the fights, and he always had a feel for the game."

Murray's second collection of columns, The Sporting World of Jim Murray (1968) was dedicated "To the Swarthmore backfield, to Unknown Winston, to Dancer's Image, the Harvard Eight with Cox, the son of Frank Merriwell, the Walter who was not camp, Vincent and Al Lopez and every guy who tried to fill an inside straight while behind in his alimony."

This was a most extraordinary dedication, and quite telling of Murray. In some cases it was more enigmatic than the Japanese war codes. Somehow, it said everything there was to say about the man. To understand it required a little bit of everything. One needed to be classically educated, obtuse, a private eye, well read, a "wise guy," an Everyman in debt, with an ironic sense of humor.

Murray was ironic and self-deprecating to the extreme. By 1968, he was getting more political. That made sense. The world was political to the extreme. Murray wrote that the "benefits" of his profession were overrated. He got to watch Sandy Koufax take a shower but, "Believe me, Elke Sommer is an improvement." Murray told readers he was advised to be cynical but it was not his nature. He was too lucky, loved sports too much to not find amazement even in the routine, which he somehow was able to find as much wonder in as Babe Ruth's called shot or "Dempsey and Firpo fighting like animals," all with "a squirt of humor and a twist of irreverence."

Apparently Jim Murray never did any columns on Bo Belinsky. Whether this was because Bo "belonged" to Bud Furillo is not known. It is possible the high-brow Times chose not to overdo Bo's tabloid stories, but between 1962 and 1964, his biographer (Maury Allen) estimated that more words were written about the Angels southpaw than any player in the world. Mays, Aaron, Mantle, Clemente, Koufax, Drysdale, Russell, West, Baylor, Chamberlain, Robertson, Palmer, Nicklaus, Clay, Unitas, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung . . . these were just some of the all-time greats at the top of their game in this time.

One of the reasons for this was a platinum blond B movie starlet who never made it but somehow stood out as a camp actress and sex siren representing the post-Monroe age. Her name was Mamie Van Doren. She was engaged to Bo in 1964. After having dated, and presumably gone to bed with a whose who of Hollywood sex beauties for the previous two years, Bo getting hitched was big, big news. That year Bo's Boston hotel was burned down, presumably with him in it, until he showed up "reeking of booze and broads" after a night on the town. He punched Braven Dyer in the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Finally, he broke up with Mamie. It was given bigger play than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Bo was interviewed incessantly. Bud Furillo practically built his career on him. Murray always preferred to make his own way, not following a well-worn path. He did a column on Mamie, but Bo's name was never mentioned. It was satire, but so skillfully played that Mamie probably thought it straight journalism. He made fun of the busty actress, who took herself quite seriously on matters ranging from the Olympics to the Cold War. It was probably just a chance for Murray to be around a curvy broad, reminding him of his "date" with Marilyn Monroe in the early 1950s.

In "One Day in April," Murray fashioned April Fool's Day fake "interviews" with Cassius Clay, Sandy Koufax, Frank Howard, Yogi Berra, Leo Durocher and Sonny Liston, each saying the opposite of what he actually was in real life. Example, Sonny Liston: "I have always tried to model my life after Albert Schweitzer and St. Thomas Aquinas," while respecting the law and women.

Murray's long tirade against Cincinnati continued in "A Taste of Rubble." "You may remember the Reds from the 1961 World Series," he wrote. "On the other hand, maybe not." His treatment of Florida was little better. The state was "a body of land surrounded on three sides by sharks and on the fourth by Alabama and Georgia if you like to think of that as better." Many black Dodgers players were complaining about Spring Training in Vero Beach. Dodgertown was a self-contained Spring Training wonder, but to venture beyond its walls was perilous. Black players could not find suitable hotels for their families. They took to cutting their own hair because local barbers posed a danger. They were taking their complaints to Jim Murray. Owner Walter O'Malley had little sympathy for their complaints. Murray wrote columns that ranged from obvious to subliminal criticism of racism. Many Southerners did not know whether Murray was laughing with them or at them. They began to realize over time he was not pleased with their customs circa 1963-65. The old rule was sportswriters stayed clear of these sorts of issues. Murray was breaking that rule, little by little.

When Murray's sons played in the Malibu Little League, he found much fodder for his columns. Most of it was sour. He was no fan of little league. Murray found the proverbial "little league parents," one of whom was Dean Martin.

"When I was a kid we had little league for the Mafia," Dino recalled. "You don't get any uniforms, you just learned to steal in your regular clothes. To tell the truth I'm just surprised they don't have little league polo."

Occasionally Murray wrote columns in the Ring Lardner tradition, creating unique characters that might have appeared in Mark Twain books 70 years earlier. His columns were increasingly cutting, very funny, highly satirical. Take this from "Goof Balls Find Niche" about the Mets' Marv Throneberry (kind of): "Boss, he's been pronounced dead so many times there are doctors in this town who believe in ghosts when they see him up and around."

But while Murray could be humorous and cutting, often making fun of mediocrity, he was always at his best when describing excellence. When Sandy Koufax reached the height of greatness, he wrote a column called "Worker of Art." He opened it, "If you want someone to play piano for you, get Horowitz." A doctor? He suggested Jonas Salk. It went from there. A golf partner? Sam Snead. A conductor? Leonard Bernstein, of course. Into dancing? Get Fred Astaire to pair with you. This all led to his admonition that if winning the World Series was your bag, "you hand the ball to Sandy Koufax."

Walt Alston's World Series decision on whether to pitch Koufax or Don Drysdale was tantamount to deciding "whether to date Elizabeth Taylor or Jane Fonda . . ." It was no disgrace to Big D that he was not as good on three days' rest as Koufax was on two, he wrote. "All baseball, like Caesar's Gaul, is divided into three parts, the American League, the National League – and Sandy Koufax," he wrote after the Dodgers captured the 1965 World Series. After Koufax defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, Murray wrote the Cardinals' "attack" consisted of aiming "the bat where they thought they heard the ball go by."

While Koufax was an intellectual, Murray enjoyed writing about athletes who were strictly "dese, dem and dose" guys who "never believed in prying into the affairs of Julius Caesar." Deron Johnson, raised in a bad San Diego neighborhood, was "the only white kid whose mother should have bussed him to colored schools for a better shake in education." Johnson was "so painfully honest he could spot George Washington two answers in a lie detector test," he wrote.

When Dodger Stadium was built in 1962, Murray gave it the name "Taj Mahal of Sport," which the New Yorker's Roger Angell picked up, calling it the "Taj O'Malley" after owner Walter O'Malley. The stadium, however, seemed too beautiful to waste on baseball games. He figured it was better suited to "the ballet Russe or the road company of The Marriage of Figaro . . ."

On the issue of college football recruiting, Murray wrote, "Anyone who thinks you can get a football team out of students must think you can get a debating team out of a backfield." Of USC's 1965 Heisman Trophy winner, Murray wrote, "The only time Mike Garrett looks like an All-American is when he's got the football. After a game, he always looks like a train wreck." His uniform and his body were identical, both covered in blood. He was "willing to suffer for his art."

In "Sad Song for Sonny," Murray described miscreants of the fight game like Sonny Liston, Jake La Motta and Rocky Graziano, who did time at Leavenworth. "Anyway, the moral of the story is Jack the Ripper would be forgiven if he had a good left hook," he wrote.

Of the Los Angeles golf crowd he wrote they "range from the truant-playing bank president to the arrogant movie hero, blindingly decked out in checked coat, smoked glasses and trailing billowing fumes of cologne as he sashays down the fairway followed by a chattering band of sycophants in collars that look like sails in a good wind."

Of the Los Angeles Country Club he wrote it was "so lush, it seems a shame to waste it on golf." The place was "as hard to get into as Windsor Castle, so exclusive you can get the bends just driving by it." Palm Springs, California was "an inland sandbar man has wrested from the rodents and the Indians to provide a day camp for over-privileged adults." Mickey Mantle "did speak to me once," Murray wrote. What did he say? "You're in my way," he said on the 14th green at Palm Springs.

In an "only in L.A." piece about auto racing, Murray wrote "The greatest stock car races in the world take place every afternoon about five on the Hollywood Freeway." The winner gets "an early dinner. Second prize is an early grave." Murray once accompanied the Lakers on a flight to Ft. Wayne, where they arrived at four o'clock in the morning "and the temperature is a balmy zero."

"Tell me, can he find Ft. Wayne in the dark?" Jerry West asked nervously as the plane rambled in. Murray knew that stories read by Southern Californians waking up in 75-degree sunshine about freezing weather were both nostalgic and worked up a sense of self-superiority. He reported in a by-line from St. Louis, "It's 8:30 and nine degrees." At the airport somebody groaned, "Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in equipment better than this." But the plane was not all bad. It had "won the Civil War." If the Kentucky Derby was "just a horse race," then "Elizabeth Taylor is a woman. There's a little more to it than that."

Murray contemplated writing a book called The Power of Positive Drinking, an idea, like People magazine, that was appropriated from him at no recompense. He wrote that sports was so important in the American psyche that he half-expected to hear a news report announcing, "We will bring you the latest reports on the Arab-Israeli War right after Major League baseball." He was not kidding, and it did happen. He railed against delayed sports broadcasts, which did not stop that from happening, too. All things considered, as the 1960s came to a merciful close. Murray and his paper were the best in the world at what they did. Both portended the future. Both were on the cutting edge. Both were a perfect match of old and new, of traditional and modern.

Art Spander was a young writer out of UCLA who wrote for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook in the early 1960s before moving to the San Francisco Examiner in the mid-1960s. He knew Murray very well. He was first assigned to drive Murray when he was still a student.

"Mel Durslag of the Hearst Examiner was also an excellent writer," Spander recalled of the sports writing scene when Murray arrived at the Times in 1961. "Before Murray came to the L.A. Times and became syndicated, they had a very boring sports section. Jim came over from Time and Sports Illustrated and became syndicated, and at some point the Times announced that he was the first syndicated columnist in Los Angeles, but Durslag was syndicated as far back as the 1950s. Durslag could write, but before these guys came along L.A. had a bunch of hacks. There was a guy named Morton Moss who wrote for the Examiner who was always looking for puns. He was okay, but the quality was not great until the 1960s.

"I remember stuff from 50 years ago. I can't recall where I put my car keys but the memories of that era are clear. I remember around 1958 or after UCLA under coach Red Sanders died, they lost to Pitt, and this guy tried to say, 'UCLA was looking for their first victory but instead choked . . . on Pitt!' One writer wrote, 'A new era in Dodger baseball dawned last night.'

"I was with the Daily Bruin. They had a box full of cards with leads to match any occasion. Paul Zimmerman was probably the leading sports writer until Murray hit town. I moved to San Francisco in 1965 so I kind of dropped from that crowd. Joe Jares was not in the program they had for young writers to work in the business, like an internship. He didn't go to the Times. He and I were at UPI."

Spander was just breaking into the business on 1961.

"Murray was writing at the time for Sports Illustrated," he recalled. "They could not hire Durslag. He was already established but under contract to the Herald-Examiner. I had to go in the Army for six months when Murray started, and people are sending me his stuff. He wrote like non-sports writers. There were these old guys like Braven Dyer, Paul Zimmerman, Charlie Park, a baseball writer, Frank Finch. There were writers who tried to write sports but couldn't pull it off. Ned Cronin wrote for the old Daily News, which was one of the afternoon papers in L.A. with the Herald-Express until the Times created the Mirror . . . eventually the News was forced to merge, and we had the Mirror-News. Then the Times dropped the afternooner, and Hearst merged the morning Examiner and evening Herald-Express to become the Herald-Examiner, for which Durslag and Allan Malamud wrote, until it was swallowed by the Times."

After that, the Times under Otis Chandler consolidated.

"Murray was pretty liberal but not in a Democrat-Republican way," said Spander. "By standards of the day he was liberal. He was liberal if you believe the term applies to fairness. He believed in equality and fairness. If the rules were unfair he wanted to change the rules.

"I never really discussed religion or Catholicism with him. I don't really know what his views on John Kennedy were, I did not really get into a lot of social issues with him.

"It bothered Murray if people didn't adhere to standards. He'd buy a nice pair of shoes and see people come into the press box in sneakers or with their hair all over the place. He was old fashioned and didn't like change.

"He had a Hollywood flair. He wrote comedy, he wrote some for The Andy Griffith Show. He tried his hand at screenwriting with Ben Hogan.

"In 1967 at the PGA in Denver, we were waiting for a bus or a cab to the airport. His suitcase came open and he could not put it back together, and he kept swearing, 'Those damn engineers; why don't they just leave things the way they are?' He hated change.

"He must have written a dozen times, 'DiMaggio would have had it.' He loved golf. He played Riviera for a long time. Once he was on the bunker in the green on the sixth hole, and he aced it, and he was just really happy about that.

"Jim loved Ben Hogan, who was a very detailed golfer. Jim used to call Riviera 'Hogan's alley.' Then there was that famed line about Hogan, when Arnold Palmer asked what Hogan would have done, and Jim said, 'Hogan wouldn't be in this situation.' "

"He was a nice guy and good writer," recalled Chicago Cubs superstar Ernie Banks.

But as great as Murray was in the 1960s, perhaps his and his newspaper's finest hour came in September of 1970. He would cross over above and beyond previous efforts into the world of socio-politics, landing on the right side of history. For a guy who loved history as much as he did, he would have it no other way. It did not come without criticism.

Civil war

Early in 1970, University of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant was in Palm Springs to play in Bob Hope's golf tournament. Before driving to Los Angeles, where he had a scheduled flight out of town at L.A. International Airport, Bryant called his good friend, Southern California coach John McKay. He asked to meet McKay at the airport before his flight took off. McKay asked what it was about, but Bryant just told him he would discuss it at the airport. McKay, who suspected he did know what it was for, had assistant coach Craig Fertig drive him to LAX. They were relaxing with Vodkas in the Western Airlines Horizon Room when Fertig spotted Bryant's hound's tooth cap. He looked like "Mt. Rushmore with legs," said Fertig.

After imbibing a drink or two, Bryant got to the point. The NCAA just came out with a decision allowing college teams to play an 11th game in 1970 instead of the previous regular season limit of 10. For $150,000, would McKay agree to bring USC to Birmingham's Legion Field for the 1970 opener in September?

McKay indeed did know what the meeting was for. He had a ready reply, that he would if Bryant would come to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum the following season (1971) for a guarantee of $250,000. Bryant agreed. They shook on it. History was being made. There was a fourth person sitting at their table in the Horizon Room that day. He was not physically there, but he was there nevertheless. There were many reasons why this game was to be played. Reason number one was the man who was not there but was: Jim Murray.

****

Jim Murray was in his first year as a Times columnist in 1961. The Big 10 had not signed a contract to continue sending their champions to the Rose Bowl. They were weighing their options. At the time, the Pacific Coast Conference was struggling. Big 10 teams were not so sure they made themselves look much better beating PCC teams at Pasadena. Maybe another bowl, against an SEC or Big 8 squad, would have more impact. Maybe they could talk Notre Dame into rescinding their bowl ban and play their champions. Woody Hayes and Duffy Daugherty against the Fighting Irish? That beat defeating Washington or Oregon or Cal.

For several years, the Big 10 accepted the Rose Bowl invite, but on a freelance basis. In 1961 Woody Hayes and Ohio State felt they were positioned to win a vote for the national title from somebody. If the AP or the UPI would not give it to them, maybe the Touchdown Club or the Columbus Quarterback Club could give them a plaque and they could call themselves "national champions." Woody figured if he went to the Rose Bowl and lost to Washington, he would not get the Touchdown Club's nod.

Word went out for an alternative. Alabama was unbeaten and untied. An invite came from the Southern California Football Writers Association, the Los Angeles Rotary Club and others. They voted to extend a Rose Bowl bid to the Crimson Tide. It seemed a natural. Alabama's hallowed football history was built first and foremost on winning trips to Pasadena, where they won Rose Bowls en route to national titles in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1946 they walloped Southern California, the first bowl loss ever absorbed by the Trojans.

Woody Hayes figured if 'Bama came to Pasadena and lost he would get the vote. He hoped the Crimson Tide would take up the challenge. In the end neither Ohio State nor Alabama stepped up. Big 10 runner-up Minnesota ended up playing UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Ohio State sat at home. Alabama beat Arkansas, 10-3 in the Sugar Bowl. Alabama tried to put a spin on it. The Sugar Bowl was "their" bowl. It was easier to travel for their fans. It was a regional thing. Hogwash, said Jim Murray.

Alabama was segregated. Images of Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor's troops using fire hoses and other strong-arm tactics on civil rights protestors were being broadcast across the nation. After a group of black students at UCLA announced plans to boycott and protest if Alabama played in the Rose Bowl, Murray weighed in on the situation.

"The University of Alabama just about wrapped up the all-white championship of the whole cotton-picking world," he wrote after the Tide defeated Georgia Tech. Murray wrote positively about Alabama's on-the-field play, but continued his campaign of columns condemning the idea of inviting Alabama to play in the West Coast's prize bowl game.

The situation was a conundrum. Alabama, in the eyes of Jim Murray and much of the non-South sporting world, could not win for losing. There was vociferous criticism of any invitation of them. On the other hand, they were criticized for not accepting the invitations. Murray certainly saw nothing morally upright in Alabama's position either way and wrote it, holding nothing back. It was literally a white-and-black issue with no grey area. The only way Alabama could get on the right side of the moral equation was to integrate.

After beating USC in the 1946 Rose Bowl, Alabama did not return. After World War II, the integrated Big 10 committed to playing the integrated PCC every year. Alabama and other Southern schools had their own bowls, mainly the Sugar (New Orleans), Orange (Miami) and Cotton (Dallas) Bowls. With collegiate sports integrating after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's "color barrier" in 1947, a de facto apartheid of sports settled over the scene. Northern and Western teams did not play Southern schools in the regular season or in bowls. In 1951, the University of San Francisco was unbeaten and untied. Their invitation to the Sugar Bowl came with a caveat: do not bring your two black players, Ollie Mattson and Burl Toler. They refused and were disinvited.

In the 1950s, there were very few games between Southern and non-Southern schools. Pittsburgh and Navy played in Southern bowls with black players. USC, with star black running back C.R. Roberts, went to Austin and beat Texas. The game was almost a riot. A loggerjams of sorts was at hand.

In the 1960s, USC and UCLA were the only schools that regularly played Southern opponents, sometimes on the road. John McKay's Trojans took on Texas Christian, Georgia Tech, Southern Methodist, Duke, Texas A&M, Texas and Miami. UCLA took on North Carolina State, Vanderbilt, Rice, and Tennessee. Most Southeastern Conference teams never traveled north of the Mason-Dixie Line, nor invited any non-regional opponents into Dixie. That was only half of it. The bowls, once wild national contests pitting best vs. best champions, were now regional. For the most part, the Sugar or Orange Bowl was the Southeastern Conference vs. the Southwestern Conference. When Alabama played Nebraska with a handful of blacks in the Orange Bowl it created a howl and cry in 'Bama. Lower level bowls like the Liberty Bowl and Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl gave teams a good excuse not to break the "college color barrier."

Of all the sports teams, professional or college, the greatest heat was heaped upon the University of Alabama. They were in the Deep South. Unlike George, which had a big city, Atlanta, which in the decade welcomed the Braves and Falcons, or Florida, which brought in the Dolphins, states like Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina were the face of segregation, of Confederate intransigency. 'Bama was the biggest name of the bunch, for a number of reasons. They had the most storied football history, and the most controversial political situation at the time.

In 1958, George Wallace ran for Governor of Alabama. By 'Bama standards, he was a liberal, campaigning for the black vote while attempting to build a coalition as did Huey and Earl Long of Louisiana in the 1930s. A strict segregationist, John Patterson beat him. He vowed he would "never be out-n------d again."

In 1962 he ran, this time vowing to keep Alabama white. He won, and in his inauguration speech announced his policy was, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." This was a clarion call to action for the Civil Rights Movement. Further anger was stirred in 1963 when the Federal government ordered the University of Alabama to allow two blacks students into school. Governor Wallace stood at the schoolhouse door literally blocking them before troops orchestrated the students' into the building to register. National TV captured all of this.

In 1962 Federal troops had to enforce integration in Mississippi, pitting Governor Ross Barnett against President Kennedy. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington in 1963, declaring, "I have a dream." Riots ensued in Birmingham that year. In 1964, civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. In 1965, more riots occurred in Alabama, not to mention in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The Great Society was signed into law in 1965, essentially making segregation illegal all over America.

Between 1965 and 1970, the anger spilled into Northern cities, with riots in Newark, Chicago, Detroit and elsewhere. Black Muslim Leader Malcolm X was assassinated. After Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, the Civil Rights Movement became militant, led by the Black Panthers.

The Los Angeles Times covered all of this as thoroughly as any newspaper in the nation. Many, even in the South, felt they were the most fair-minded. The New York Times, the Washington Post and network television were viewed as "New York liberals," old Civil War enemies. But in Los Angeles there was a sense of palatability, within its media, its politics and it sports, that was more acceptable to the South. Jim Murray, however, was not palatable. He held nothing back. He admired Bear Bryant and the great skill of his athletes, but found nothing favorable in their racial politics. He said so often.

Alabama football was certainly not his only foray into racial politics, or social culture, or whatever term is applied to the subject. He was a man of pathos. On January 30, 1962, when Robinson was elected to the Hall of Fame, he wrote "Jack Be Nimble." First he pointed out something profound about Robinson's impact on his team. For 46 years before he became a Dodger, Brooklyn won two pennants and no World Series. In his 10 years with them they captured six pennants, lost one in a play-off, another in the last game of the year, won one World Championship, and never finished lower than second. In all five of those Series losses, the Dodgers scraped until the end. In the five years that passed since he retired and Murray wrote the column, they won one pennant. But it was Robinson's social role that defined him, of course.

"But the trouble Jackie made was good for the country like the trouble Lincoln made," he wrote. Robinson chided the Yankees for discrimination. "The Yankees denied it," wrote Murray. "But went out the next year and got Elston Howard."

In 1964, Murray wrote a piece about Negro League baseball. He was one of those advocating former Negro Leaguers like Satchel Paige and Buck O'Neil be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which Paige eventually was. In a column called "Lot of Character," he wrote a column praising the black umpire Emmett Ashford. He wrote a positive column praising black golfer Charlie Sifford. No black Dodger, Laker, Trojan or other L.A. athlete ever found any fault in Murray. Many became close friends with him. He was from Connecticut, lived in a diverse city and was surrounded by great athletes of all colors. He was willing to do what was right, but he also willing to go beyond that.

On January 21, 1969, Murray wrote a "Tribute to Abe," as in Harlem Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein. His team, he wrote, was as "powerful a lever at toppling prejudice as the Constitutional Amendment."

In 1966 everything boiled to a head. It was a pivotal year in the civil rights era. 1963-65 had been a time of violence in the South. The violence after that, ironically, was more in the North and the West. Watts exploded in Los Angeles. After King was shot, blacks in so-called "safe" cities like Newark and Oakland began to unleash their fury. But after a confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the South entered a period of relative, uneasy calm. It was sports that re-stirred the hornet's nest. National television coverage of college football was huge by 1966. Color TV was just coming into popularity. Fans in all regions of the country regularly saw games featuring teams from other regions. Whether they were integrated or not was glaringly obvious.

In basketball, 1966 was a big year for integration. Texas Western University (now UTEP) somehow managed to make it to the NCAA basketball championship game. Featuring five black starters, they faced all-white Kentucky, led by a coach people say was racist, Adolph Rupp. When Texas Western triumphed it shocked the nation.

Slowly but surely, black faces began to dot the rosters of Southern college football teams; at Wake Forest, at Southern Methodist, eventually at Kentucky, Florida and Auburn. But Alabama was completely white and resistant to any change. This was the cause of much angst in the state. Wallace and his wife, Lurleen dominated 'Bama's all-Democrat Jim Crow politics of the decade. But even in Alabama there were voices of change. A black lawyer was threatening a lawsuit against Bear Bryant for not providing athletic scholarships to black players.

A white attorney, Richmond Flowers, Sr. battled the KKK. In an ironic twist, his son, Richmond Flowers, Jr., was dubbed the "fastest white boy alive," an Alabama prep football-track star. The possibility of his playing for Bear Bryant was cause for much discussion. When he chose Tennessee he became "the most hated white boy alive," at least in 'Bama.

In 1964 and 1965, some of America was aghast at the sight of the all-white Crimson Tide not only winning consecutive national championships, but in the luckiest, and in the first case most illegitimate, of manners. In 1964 the team was unbeaten with quarterback Joe Namath. Both the AP and UPI voted them national champions. The problem was they still had to play Texas in the Orange Bowl. When they were upset, it threw the entire bowl and poll scenario into a tizzy, far from the first time it had happened. Alabama fans were fit to be tied when the media consensus arrived at the conclusion Arkansas, unbeaten and winners of the Cotton Bowl, should be the legit national champions of 1964. They rolled out some seldom referred to computer polls that actually had been around since the Rockne era, proclaiming the Razorbacks number one. Crimson Tide supporters calling themselves "national champions" sounded like a President touting his economy with unemployment around 10 percent. They were laughed at. Most felt it served them right for being segregated.

But in 1965 Bear Bryant's crew got, if not the "last laugh," a big laugh. With a loss and a tie they seemed also rans. Victory over Nebraska in the Orange Bowl appeared little more than a nice ending to a successful season, but number one Michigan State lost to UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Normally the Spartans would have been able to call themselves "national champions" with the same lackluster vainglory as 'Bama the previous year, taking their plaque home to hide in a broom closet. But for one year and one year only the AP delayed the final vote until after the bowls. 'Bama was named national champions. The next year they returned to the before-the-bowls poll, for some odd reason.

Enter Jim Murray. Calling his column " 'Bama in the Balkans," he opened, "So Alabama is the 'National Champion,' is it? Hah?

" 'National' champion of what? The Confederacy?

"This team hasn't poked its head above the Mason-Dixon line since Appomattox. They've almost NEVER played a Big 10 team. One measly game with Wisconsin back in 1928 is all I can find. They lost.

"This teams wins the Front-of-the-Bus championship every year – largely with Pennsylvania quarterbacks. How can you win a 'national' championship playing in a closet? How can you get to be 'Number One' if you don't play anybody but your kinfolks? How do you know whether these guys are kicking over baby-carriages or slaying dragons?"

He went on to say he might respect Alabama's "national championship" if they played Ohio State in Columbus, Michigan in Ann Arbor, or Notre Dame "anywhere." Bryant claimed his schedule was the best in the country, but Murray said there was no way to prove than since none of the other SEC teams played anybody "you couldn't invite to the Cotillion."

He excoriated the conference and Alabama for letting great black athletes – who were "Americans" too, in case anybody forgot that – go to the Big 10, the Pacific Coast, or Syracuse every year. Their flag, he said, should be "all white," absent the red, the blue and the stars. Murray freely stated they played "ferocious" football in Dixie, but added that the word also applied to a Balkan war. Bulgaria, he said, could not slaughter England, "just because it obliterates Mesopotamia."

Then Murray did the unforgiveable. He made fun of Bryant, who actually "walked on water" in a Coca-Cola billboard along the Alabama highway. He tied him in with Wallace, already touting himself as a Presidential candidate. Murray was mistaken in this area. Bryant and Wallace did not get along. Bryant mistrusted him, but Wallace knew he needed to look close to the coach to get votes.

For Alabama to be given real national title consideration, Murray wrote, they needed to "venture up in the snow country where the field is white but the players not necessarily . . .

"Until then," he concluded, "don't make me laugh." Murray once called the Sugar Bowl the "White Supremacy Bowl." Bryant, he wrote, was "tired of winning the Magnolia championship." Murray's chidings did not go unnoticed by Alabama fans or Coach Bryant. While most in the region simply took umbrage, Bryant was smart enough to know that Jim Murray was a nationally read sports columnist, highly respected and influential. He needed the likes of Jim Murray in order to create respect for his football team. He needed the Jim Murrays of the American sporting scene to give his team the number one vote in the polls when they were in contention for it. He and John McKay were close personal friends. Bryant knew that John McKay had great respect for Jim Murray! Murray could not simply be brushed aside as a "Connecticut Yankee" or a "liberal." He was a man of substance and needed to be dealt with.

In 1965 Bryant granted an interview to Look magazine. Bryant may very well have been aiming his words at Jim Murray when he indicated change was in the air, and that black players were coming to the Southeastern Conference. Bryant was looking for the right time, the right opportunity. The George Wallace situation, his alumni base, the politics of the times made this perilous, but he had a plan, perhaps best exemplified by his statement that he would not be the first to integrate, "but I won't be third, either."

Murray responded with this riposte: "The South asks for terms."

It was on. Murray's column spread in viral fashion in the 1960s. "Thems was fightin' words" in Alabama. By proxy, it made USC a rival, since USC was the school in Murray's Los Angeles that did play anybody, anywhere.

Not everybody in Alabama was following Murray's every word with baited breath, although in the case of Forrest Gump author Winston Groom, he was not even in Alabama at the time.

"I was in Vietnam in the 1960s when Murray was writing about Alabama's national championships so I was not paying any attention to that stuff," he said. Obviously he had greater concerns but, "My reaction was that people in Alabama could not care less what the hell Jim Murray was writing about them in Los Angeles." Nevertheless, they did care.

So, the stage was set for more fireworks, and in the fall and winter of 1966 they exploded. All season long, three teams maintained an unbeaten record, headed for a showdown for the national championship. Alabama moved up to third in the rankings, but had no overriding claim to the top spot. That was reserved first for Notre Dame and, if not the Fighting Irish, then Michigan State. These were two of the greatest teams ever assembled.

It was Ara Parseghian's best team ever at South Bend. All-American defensive end Alan Page, a future star with the Minnesota Vikings and state supreme court judge, was black. Notre Dame always had an open door racial policy. Michigan State was flat blatant about it. Coach Duffy Daugherty's Spartans were called the "underground railroad," loading their roster with black stars from the South. In 1966 they featured two all-time greats, linebacker George Webster and defensive end Bubba Smith.

The 'Bama faithful chafed all year as their team compiled an unbeaten record, but both the Irish and Spartans were also unbeaten, ranked ahead of them. Bryant's team was great, but absent all other considerations, the two teams rated above them were a little better. The hope that both those teams would lose was compounded by the fact they were scheduled to play each other at season's end.

They called it the "Game of the Century." Played at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan, the result was precisely what Alabama hoped for, or at least thought they hoped for. Tied 10-10, the Fighting Irish got the ball deep in their own territory with little time left. Instead of trying to drive the field to set up a game-winning field goal, Parseghian played a set of racial, political, regional and religious percentages that would have made Niccolo Machiavelli proud. He ran the ball until time expired. Ara "tied one for the Gipper."

Alabama fans watching on TV were at first overjoyed, then struck by a nauseating reality. Playing for a tie, at first and in their mind, meant they would ascend to the number one slot. Then they realized Parseghian knew something they were only beginning to understand. He would get the number one vote anyway. Notre Dame had just the right "constituency," which consisted of the East Coast press and the "Catholic vote." But most important, Ara knew years before anybody heard of the term "politically incorrect," it was just that to vote for the all-white Crimson Tide.

Indeed, Notre Dame retained the number one slot. Alabama did not even pass Michigan State. Both the AP (after one year of "sanity") and the UPI still maintained the incredibly stupid practice of voting for the national championship before the bowls. If there was any doubt, Notre Dame eliminated it with an unreal 51-0 pasting of Southern Cal at the Coliseum to close their season.

Further frustration ensued for Alabama when they destroyed Nebraska, 34-7 in the Sugar Bowl to finish 11-0. Notre Dame still had a self-imposed bowl ban (between 1926-69). Michigan State was constrained by another bad rule, the Big 10's refusal to let champions repeat trips to Pasadena. Michigan State went the previous year. The rule was not rescinded until the 1973 Rose Bowl. Despite both teams spending New Year's at home, the polls were closed, as if the Sugar Bowl were an all-star game or an exhibition, with victorious 'Bama stuck at third behind the Irish and the Spartans. Alabama fans unfurled banners blaming Notre Dame of playing politics. A 'Bama newspaper showed a disgruntled Confederate soldier holding the AP poll and saying, "NUMBER 3 – HELL!"

In three years they had gotten lucky twice and been relatively screwed once. It was all quite even, really, but Alabama was furious.

The fall-out was tremendous. Not since the Civil War had the South felt so cornered as they did during this infamous period. Every pundit in the nation weighed in. None were so opinionated and open in their disdain of the University of Alabama as Mr. James Murray, Irish Catholic gentleman, Malibu, California. The Internet was unknown, but his columns were read far and wide. There was no BCS, no computers. Sportswriters like Jim Murray determined their fate. They had incredible influence. None had more than he. There was no question in the minds of the Alabama football faithful that Murray was everything incorrigible in this world: Irish, Catholic, an East Coast native, now a West Coast liberal in the land of war protestors, hippies and dilettantes. He could not have engendered greater hatred had he flown to Hanoi and taken photos on a North Vietnamese tank, but of course nobody would have been that crazy . . .

"Jim Murray wrote a lot about this issue," Art Spander recalled in One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation (2007). "He had a real social conscience. I met him in 1959 when he was at Sports Illustrated . . . Jim and I were very good friends. He was a great guy and a fantastic writer. He once wrote that Alabama was 'the King of the Caucasians.' There was debate about Alabama winning the national championship one year, and Jim influenced the votes by emphasizing that Alabama didn't have any blacks and didn't play any teams with blacks. There was a lot of stuff in the papers about that."

In the aftermath of the 1966 season, there was much soul-searching and blame-gaming in Alabama. The fans and the press tended to hunker down, taking an "us vs. them" attitude. They were in the right, their traditions were intruded on, the Feds had no right to come to their state, these were states' rights issues, et al. But Bear Bryant did not go in that direction. He took responsibility. He said he needed to schedule a tougher, more diverse schedule. He said he wanted to field a team leaving no doubt they were the best, not leaving it up to the opinion of pollsters. The fact of the matter is he was already meticulously planning to make drastic change. He just needed the opportunity.

Bryant was born dirt poor in Arkansas. He identified with the plight of blacks because he, too, came from nothing. As a child he befriended black kids. He served in the Navy and managed a blues band. He coached at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M before coming to Alabama in 1958. He attempted to integrate each program. He was re-buffed by the alumni and administration at each turn.

"That's the last thing we're gonna do," he was told at Texas A&M when he suggested integrating.

"Well, last's where we'll finish then," he drawled.

The politics of Alabama made it impossible to integrate when he arrived. A 1959 Liberty Bowl game with integrated Penn State was treated like the plague. Then Bryant did something that set integration back years: he won three national titles. True, the 1964 title was not legitimate, as the Tide lost to Texas in the Orange Bowl, but the team's incredible success in the 1960s led everybody in the state to conclude they simply did not need to integrate.

Enter John McKay. Cigar-chomping, iconoclastic, whiskey-drinking, conservative, Republican, Irish, Catholic, and Southern – from West Virginia – he was a good ol' boy tempered by military service and years on the West Coast, at Oregon and USC. As Catholics in West Virginia, his family once had a cross burned on their lawn by the KKK. He turned USC from a power into a dynasty, largely on the strength of increased integration in the 1960s. John Wooden did the same thing with UCLA's basketball team during those years. The country took notice. Alumni at colleges everywhere realized they could have champions if they, too, could get the next Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Mike Garrett, Bobby Bell or Lew Alcindor.

In 1963 McKay met Bryant at a California high school coaching clinic. They discovered a shared love of whiskey and duck hunting. Something clicked. Bryant found in McKay a kindred spirit. He could talk to him, reveal secrets, and say things he could not say to anybody, much less for public consumption, in Alabama. Every year in the 1960s, they met at coaching clinics. McKay and his wife would fly to Bryant's Alabama gulf coast retreat. Their wives became good friends.

Bryant loved California. He could let his hair down there. After winning the national title, he even started recruiting there. McKay's own son, hotshot wide receiver John "J.K." McKay, seriously considered playing for him. At some point, McKay and Bryant began discussing playing each other. There was a taboo side to it. It was unspoken, really, because they were not "allowed" to play because of the race issue. Neither came right out and said anything so blatant as "if we played it would open up the South to integration" or "if I played against USC it would allow me to recruit blacks to Alabama." It was subtle. McKay respected Bear and never hit him over the head with the subject, but the fact he had a superb, classy, championship program with a healthy mix of whites and blacks was impossible not to notice. It was without doubt a template on how to effectively succeed.

While Jim Murray knew McKay well, the conversations and "plans" he made with Bryant were private. Murray was not privy to the side of Bear McKay saw. All he saw was a segregationist. When Bryant told Look magazine that integration was coming to the Southeastern Conference within four years, and he wanted to be the "Branch Rickey of college football," Murray and others wanted action, not just words. In 1966, Bryant had a chance meeting with black baseball star Reggie Jackson (an ex-Arizona State football player), playing for the Birmingham minor league team run by Bryant's son, Paul, Jr. Bryant revealed to Jackson he was the kind of player he could use to "get things done at school," i.e., integrate.

But time continued to pass. Bryant did not integrate. Murray and others grew impatient. Murray's columns struck raw nerves in Dixie. Denial of a national title was a direct hit, ostensibly due to the race issue. Bryant wanted to integrate, but how? Governor Wallace and his wife dominated Alabama politics. As powerful as he was, he was unable to effectively make the move. He bided his time. Meanwhile, Jim Murray led a chorus of boos.

Between 1967 and 1970, things changed. The Vietnam War heated up. This had a huge effect on attitudes, especially among the young. According to Alabama football players ranging from Joe Namath to Ken Stabler to Scott Hunter, the players were ready for integration. Staunch, reactionary alumni and administration were not. Alabama had sub-par years in 1968 and 1969. Questions were asked. Had the game passed Bear Bryant by? Was he still up to the task? But in the South there was still no cry for integration.

The lawsuit filed by a black civil rights attorney caused a stir. Legally, the University of Alabama was integrated. They had a handful of black students brought in by court order. Bryant had three or four "walk-ons" who practiced, but they were strictly tokens. They did not suit up for games. Bryant knew the best black high school football players in the state. He kept their names and information in his desk drawer. It was ammunition for the lawsuit, so he could say he knew the prospects, he even offered them scholarships, but none wanted to play for him. He also said the poor academic standards at all-black high schools made it difficult to find black kids who could handle the "vigorous" standards at Alabama, which was not a proposition taken with much seriousness.

Then Lurleen Wallace died. Neither she nor her husband was Governor any longer. Wallace declared his candidacy for the Democrat nomination for President in 1968. He ran strong and determined to try again in 1972. His stance on integration modified as he became a national figure. Thus, Bryant saw an opening.

The tiniest of stirrings within the Alabama sports media began when Clarence Davis, born in Birmingham, made All-American as O.J. Simpson's replacement at USC in 1969. Bryant decided to recruit a black player. The school's basketball team already had one, Wendell Hudson. He went after Wilbur Jackson, a talented, quiet, Christian kid with good grades from a good family in Ozark, Alabama. Undoubtedly, he wanted to do something to make Jackson's initiation as painless as possible. But his recruitment of Jackson taught him a lesson.

As he spoke to young black prep stars in the South about taking on the challenge of breaking 'Bama's "color barrier," he heard the same thing over and over. If they were to come there, not only did they want fellow black teammates, they wanted to play games against integrated teams in integrated settings. Blacks were not keen on playing all their games at hostile, all-white settings like Oxford, Mississippi, or Columbia, South Carolina. Could a game in Los Angeles, or Syracuse, or Ann Arbor be arranged? A relatively friendly location instead of constant, unending racial tension?

This ultimately led to Bear Bryant's most powerful motivation: the national championship. The voices of a nation, led by Jim Murray, told him if the vote were at all close, he would be denied such a thing so long as he continued to play all-white opponents in all-white settings. He was also persuaded by the fact that all-white Texas was awarded the 1969 national championship only after beating integrated Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl.

In January of 1970, the stage was set. Jackson was signed and would be a freshman in the fall. But a college football schedule is usually set three, four, even five years in advance. If Bryant were to schedule truly integrated games, he would not see the fruits of his decision for years, possibly with more national titles denied him, not to mention a bumper crop of black "blue chippers" going someplace else. The "horse was out of the barn," really. If he did not take the lead, Auburn or Florida, especially thought of as a "sleeping giant" in the SEC, undoubtedly would steal his thunder.

Then, like Manna from Heaven, came the break he was looking for, in the form of the NCAA's decision to allow an 11th game to be scheduled in the fall. Bryant called McKay, met him at the LAX Western Airlines Horizon Room, and over cocktails arranged a home-and-home game. If USC won, he could tell his alumni he needed to get the kind of "horses" they had in order to compete. If he beat the Trojans, his task would be trickier. He would face the old "why do we need to integrate?" question. But he knew the Jim Murrays of the world would react to a failure to do so with more righteous might than ever before. He was counting on the manifest sight of a classy, well-coached, highly disciplined Trojans squad impressing upon the 'Bama faithful a visual feast they could get used to seeing. Over 30 years before, the sight of integrated USC-UCLA games were self-evident social statements.

Finally, there was the choice of USC. Why the Trojans as opposed to Stanford, Syracuse, Michigan, even Oklahoma, a quasi-Southern college that successfully integrated a decade earlier? Certainly there was the friendship between Bryant and McKay.

"I can see that Bryant chose McKay out of friendship, more so than choosing somebody else, based upon being less bitterly divisive than a school from the Yankee North," said L.A. Times sportswriter Jeff Prugh.

"I know my dad and Jim were very close and my dad had the greatest respect for him," recalled McKay's son, John K. "J.K." McKay, a Trojan star of the 1970s who played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, became an L.A. attorney, and is now USC's associate athletic director.

"I can only imagine there was pressure in those times to speed up integration as it relates to sports. I was not frankly aware that Murray was writing those columns but he carried a lot of weight. He was a friend of my dad's, so that gave him credibility in Bear's eyes."

Aside from the Bryant-McKay relationship, USC and California represented a politically viable choice. USC was a conservative, private school. Alabama fans would not have taken kindly to losing to a team like California, whose campus was viewed as fomenting anti-Americanism while the South filled the ranks of Vietnam-era soldiers at a much higher rate than any region of America.

Then there was Richard Nixon and, to a lesser extent, Ronald Reagan. These right wing Republicans represented an anti-Communist image, affixed in the national consciousness with Orange County – a place actually known as "Trojan country" for its strong alumni identity with USC – that Alabama could find common purpose in.

Finally, as big a reason as any. USC and Los Angeles were Jim Murray's "team" and city. He would write about it. His column would carry a lot of weight. In the long run, if Murray got on board, the by-product of all this might just be the deciding AP and UPI votes giving his team a national championship in the next few years.

Then came the game.

"Jim Murray and I went to Birmingham [to cover this game] - me first, Jim second, on Wednesday," recalled Prugh. "The next day, we drove to Tuscaloosa, and Jim good-humoredly described as 'elephant disease' our appointment with Bryant. We went in at 10 A.M. and his office looked like the president of General Motors; mahogany paneling, Oriental trappings, with Bryant sitting at his desk in a dress shirt and tie, and the shirt looked like he had slept in it. As he talked, he spat into a large ashtray. Whether it was snuff or not, I don't know.

"It was very clear in talking to Bryant that he understood the social implications of this game. He volunteered that he was bemoaning the fact that USC had Clarence Davis at tailback, that he was born in Birmingham, and he was one who got away. Davis was the symbolism that Bryant was trying to convey. If Davis had stayed in Alabama all those years, he'd've been at [the University of] Alabama."

Bryant made a big play of impressing Murray. There was no question he understood he needed this man to be with him. Many in the media did not quite grasp the social importance of the game. Bryant knew Murray did.

"My dad's relationship with Jim, a man of such stature, widely respected, I can see where Bryant would have wanted to have the opportunity to sit down and explain his position," said John K. "J.K." McKay.

Some have argued Bryant wanted his team to lose, figuring if they did it would force his fans to realize they needed to change their ways if they were to keep up with the USC's of college football. Bryant did not want to lose. He was too competitive for that. He had a contingency plan in case his boys made good, but when USC trampled Alabama, 42-21 it turned out to be the best result he could have asked for.

Not only was USC integrated, with a black assistant coach (Willie Brown), they featured a rare black starting quarterback, Jimmy Jones. They had the only all-black backfield in history up until then (Jones, tailback Clarence Davis, fullback Sam "Bam" Cunningham). Their defensive core, particularly at linebacker, was big, black and imposing. They were a visual sight, to be sure.

Jones was a fine field general. Davis played a great game, but the star was the sophomore from Santa Barbara, Cunningham. He rushed for 135 yards and two touchdowns, but his numbers belie his awesome effect. He literally bounced off 'Bama defenders. It was not just speed or elusiveness. He could not be tackled. By the fourth quarter, the crowd was so quiet, they could hear the shouts of USC players on the sidelines. Or the cheers of a few black fans given high end zone seats, rooting not for the Tide but the Trojans. Finally, towards the end, the sound of Biblical hymnals could be heard. A crowd of local blacks gathered outside Legion Field with Bibles and candles to "witness" a kind of deliverance. They sang songs of Christian joy.

When the game was over, a throng of reporters, administration and alumni crowded into the USC dressing room, spilling out in the hallway. The sense of excitement and exhilaration was marked by a little bit of confusion. What just happened? Obviously the Trojans had won a big victory, but they sensed something larger was at play. Then Bryant entered their dressing room, asking to "borrow" Cunningham.

Two people accompanied them. One was Loel Schrader of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. The other was assistant coach Craig Fertig. Friendly alums and press diverted Fertig's attention. Always sociable, he was chatting it up with these people. Schrader swore that Bryant took Cunningham into the 'Bama dressing room. Glistening with sweat, shirtless and wearing only hip pads, he was propped up on a stool, looking down on the beaten white boys of Alabama.

Bryant was said to have stated, "Gentleman, this ol' boy, I mean this man, Sam Cunningham, number 39. This man and his Trojan brothers just ran us right out of Legion Field. Raise you heads and open your eyes. This here's what a football player looks like."

Then, the coach is said to have instructed each Tide player to shake Sam's hand. Various phrases like, "You're a better man than me," a (phrase attributed to 'Bama quarterback Scott Hunter and others) were stated to Cunningham.

This story became Holy Grail, repeated by McKay, Fertig, assistant coach Marv Goux, announcer Tom Kelly, and others in the media and at alumni banquets for years. There is no evidence Murray ever repeated it. Perhaps because the Irishman sensed, through his experience, wisdom and years of professional acumen, that it was malarkey.

It was not until 2004-07, when a book on the subject was being researched and published, with a movie on it entering development, that the truth, as much as can be divined, came out. Murray was gone by then, but not one single Alabama player or assistant coach in that dressing room said it happened. Cunningham said, "I hate to be the one to admit it didn't happen, but it didn't." Fertig admitted he was busy yakking it up with others and missed whatever happened. Schrader clung to his version, but it would not be accurate to suggest he lied. Time, a deadline, excitement, passion, heat; all these factors played into a fuzziness of memory, especially as the story was repeated and re-told over the years without anybody offered the chance to refute it.

The research that went into the book, One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game that Changed the Nation reveals what most probably happened. Bryant likely took Cunningham into the crowded hallway. There, in front of press, alumni and administrators, he most likely told him he was "what a football player looks like," shaking his hand in political manner as an object lesson to reactionary elements in his state. He probably repeated the phrase Cunningham was "what a football player looks like" in that hallway several times and later, within earshot of writers. Cunningham himself said the door to the 'Bama dressing room was open. He could see players inside, obviously quiet and beaten. A few of them could see and hear what Bryant was doing with him in the hallway. A few, according to Sam, came into the hallway to shake his hand. Cunningham himself never heard the story until his pro career ended more than a decade later. By then the legend was complete and he just played along, his memory fuzzy.

How it went down was rather immaterial. "No, it didn't happen," said Scott Hunter, "but it should have happened. The story was too good not to be true." He was right, because the spirit of Bryant's words somehow changed hearts and minds in the South.

It was a night game, starting at seven P.M. The West Coast writers had three hours of leeway, but were still under a deadline to get the interviews, post-game anecdotes, and compile game stories and columns for the Sunday, September 13 editions. While the Trojans were showering and celebrating, Jim Murray and beat writer Jeff Prugh were working. They were under pressure to deliver stories worthy of the occasion.

The September 13, 1970 L.A. Times sports page featured a photo of quarterback Jimmy Jones throwing a pass, next to the headline "Trojans Fall on Alabama; Bruins' Rally Defeats OSU." Prugh's friend and colleague Dwight Chapin missed history covering UCLA quarterback Dennis Dummit's performance in leading his team to a 14–9 win at Oregon State.

Prugh wrote, "It was a night when stars of Cardinal and Gold fell on Alabama. And the brightest star of them all - as USC's Trojans blasted once mighty Alabama, 42–21, Saturday night - was Sam Cunningham, a towering rookie fullback who runs like a locomotive."

The game was not televised, so what happened on Legion Field almost had a Gettysburg quality to it requiring Lincoln-esque words painting a visual picture. Nobody was better equipped for the task.

Jim Murray was the finest sportswriter of all time. Of all the columns he ever wrote, however, the one printed on the entire top of the September 13, 1970 L.A. Times sports page remains the best of his career. Whether Murray came up with the headline is not known. Whoever did deserves the Congressional Medal of Freedom. It stated, "Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union." The article read, in part:

"BIRMINGHAM - OK, you can put another star in the Flag.

"On a warm and sultry night when you could hear train whistles hooting through the piney woods half county away, the state of Alabama joined the Union. They ratified the Constitution, signed the Bill of Rights. They have struck the Stars and Bars. They now hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal in the eyes of the Creator.

"Our newest state took the field against a mixed bag of hostile black and white American citizens without police dogs, tear gas, rubber hoses or fire hoses. They struggled fairly without the aid of their formidable ally, Jim Crow.

"Bigotry wasn't suited up for a change. Prejudice got cut from the squad. Will you all please stand and welcome the sovereign state of Alabama to the United States of America? It was a long time coming, but we always knew we'd be 50 states strong some day, didn't we? Now, we can get on with it. So chew a carpet, George Wallace . . . Get out of our way. We're trying to build a country to form a Democracy.

"The game? Shucks, it was just a game. You've seen one, you've seen 'em all . . . Hatred got shut out, that's the point. Ignorance got shut out, that's the point. Ignorance fumbled on the goal line. Stupidity never got to the line of scrimmage. The big lie got tackled in the end zone . . ."

Murray would go on to write the previous time he had been in Alabama, the only black man in the stadium was carrying towels. But "a man named Martin Luther King" thought that if you paid for a seat on the bus, one ought to be able to sit in it. The only thing white folk in the state cared about was "beating Georgia Tech."

Murray pointed out that the citizens of Alabama took their football so seriously that they realized if they wanted to play in the big time, it would require integration. Otherwise, instead of invites to all the best bowl games, they would continue to be relegated to the Bluebonnet Bowl.

"And," wrote Murray, "if I know football coaches, you won't be able to tell Alabama by the color of their skin much longer. You'll need a program just like the Big 10."

He was prescient, but remarkably few others were. In his September 13, 1970 column, however, Murray recognized what Coach Bryant was now trying to do, something even the likes of McKay, Marv Goux, Sam Cunningham, and the fans in the stands did not fully understand. After this game, hatred was benched, and a nation lived up to its creed.

"That's what Jim Murray wrote in the Times," recalled USC assistant coach Goux in 2000, prior to his 2002 passing. Murray's turning of phrases, "Hatred got shut out . . . Ignorance fumbled on the goal line . . . Stupidity never got to the line of scrimmage," were classics. Few if any writer of any genre ever really came up with this these kinds of terms before. In 2006, CBS and College Sports Television produced a documentary about the game. Its title was pure Jim Murray: Tackling Segregation.

"I can't say for certain, but I think Murray got involved in this whole debate, but when I heard that Sam Cunningham 'integrated' Alabama football, then all the South, well Jim influenced those events," recalled Art Spander.

"A little anecdote is, I reported this on the Monday follow-up, I was at the Holiday Inn in Birmingham, and men were sitting around the table, obviously football fans," recalled Prugh. "I overhead both men say, 'I bet Bear wishes he had some of them nigra boys on their team.' That was the new sentiment, the post-mortem, and it was revolutionary. It was obvious that things were going to change from that day forward, but I could not anticipate the pace and speed of change."

Keith Dunnavant is the author of The Missing Ring, the story of Alabama's missed 1966 national championship, and Coach: Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant.

"Jim Murray was one of the writers who got me excited about being a sports journalist out of college," he said. "I started at the Times in 1988. I was on the Orange County staff, a mere punk of 22, for less than a year. He was the master of simile with an incredible turn of phrase.

"In 1961 he had a big impact on Alabama not being invited to the Rose Bowl. There was no doubt that this was a turning point in the program, causing new thinking to enter into the process. It certainly inspired them to change with the times."

Dunnavant was asked whether Bryant scheduled the game to appease the likes of Jim Murray, and whether Bear Bryant made a purposeful decision to host an extended in-office interview the week of the game with Murray and Jeff Prugh.

"Coaches did more interviews with the media in those days," he replied. "Let's clear up a myth. Alabama was already integrated, but Jim's 1970 column was a huge part of the process. But let me be on the record on saying that Wilbur Jackson already was on that team, but Bear was trying to change Alabamian minds, plus Wendell Hudson was a basketball player there. I agree with the premise that he had to change hearts and minds in his fan base in order to help smooth the path for Wilbur. Teams were already being integrated. 'Bama was not on the leading edge of this, but not that far out.

"There were several reasons they did not win in 1966. One that tipped the balance in a contentious struggle was the Alabama football team was in a struggle for the meaning of the name of Alabama in the nation's consciousness. Is it Wallace or is it Bryant? It was both. Lots of people assumed certain things, but even though 'Bama was segregated, it was more complicated than, pardon, black and white.

"Another issue that comes to mind, and I guess I am liberal on the racial question - I never went to segregated schools, never saw violence - but they looked at a guy like Jim Murray and said he was acting hypocritically. He was right on the larger point that Alabama had no blacks, but there were no blacks on the news staff of the L.A. Times at the time of the 1965 Watts riots. Racism was a stain on America, but it looked different in the South than in the North and West at the time that Murray was writing about the issue.

"I was in grade school, four years at an integrated school when rioting broke out in south Boston over busing. The horror of all that stuff never; I'd experienced anything like that not in my little town. People like Wilbur Jackson and Sylvester Croom were transforming the culture of Alabama.

"Let me stress what an admirer I am of Murray, an incredible wordsmith, one of the 20th centuries' iconic names in sports journalism, right near the top of the list. I grew up with Murray and Dave Kindred of the Atlanta Journal-Constitutional, Frank Deford; if you lived in a big city with at least one newspaper and were a sports fan, you connected with that guy three, four times a week. You saw his picture, felt you knew him. He was the identity of that paper, and Murray was the Times shining light, a beacon."

"With Jim, civil rights was a moral issue," said his widow, Linda McCoy-Murray. "It was not a religious issue really, but just the right thing to do. He hated injustice and used his position when he saw a wrong being perpetrated."

In 1971, Alabama indeed came to L.A. In addition to Jackson, they recruited more blacks. They defeated USC in the re-match, 17-10. By 1973 Jackson was voted team captain and their roster was dotted with black players now regarded as all-time greats in the Crimson Tide pantheon. Asked in 2005 about his time there, Jackson said, "If it was not as great as it was I never would have sent both my daughters there," which is, as Murray might have pointed, voting with your feet . . . or your pocketbook. Fully integrated, they enjoyed their greatest decade in the 1970s, winning national championships in 1978-79. Bryant retired in 1983 the winningest coach of all time.

Jim Murray became a fan of Bear Bryant, even a friend. He wrote of him often, always glowingly. The South came to realize Murray was merely prodding them to listen to the better angels of their nature. Incredibly, his voice remains the only one that really "got it" then and there. No Alabama media outlet made mention of race in the immediate aftermath of the game. There were no editorials suggesting that integration might just help the Tide roll faster. But if they were hoping to "sweep it under the rug," they would not be able to since, to use another cliché, the "horse was out of the barn."

But Murray had vision. "Birmingham will never be the same," he wrote. "And brother, it's a good thing. The point of the game will not be the score, the Bear, the Trojans; the point of the game will be Reason, Democracy, Hope. The real winner will be the South. It'll be their first since the second day at Gettysburg, or maybe, The Wilderness."

The following Thursday, in a column titled "Language of Alabama," Murray wrote, "Time to time, when I visit a neighboring country to the South, I try to pass on to you some of the key phrases which will help you to get along in a strange tongue . . . Alabama is a body of land separated from the main body of the United States by a century." Murray continued with a "non-Berlitz course," engendering a flood of letters to the Times over the next couple of weeks. In the years after he wrote about the game, Murray was happy to discover the South indeed had grown up, and he was more than pleased to eat any non-complimentary words he wrote about 'Bama and the American South.

Birmingham-born Florida State coach Bobby Bowden felt the game was able to "change the minds of Alabama fans." Indeed, he got it right. Not Murray's admonitions, Federal troops, legislation, speeches or protest marches could change "hearts and minds." The Catholic Murray did not like to trumpet Christian faith in his columns, but in private he probably would agree, at least to some extent, that God used the players, coaches, even himself, as vessels to effect change. The second civil war was over.

It could be argued that the American South between 1970 and 1973, and then over a more prolonged period, changed faster and for the better more so than any region in history. In analyzing this, the prospect of God's will becomes more profound. In so doing they "rose again." The region became an economic juggernaut. Pro franchises flooded into their big cities – Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte – and their college sports programs became the envy of a nation. Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics.

Husbanded into the union, the mainstream of American politics so to speak, by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, they became a "Republican lock," to the consternation of Democrats and the left. This development has an unsettling effect upon analysis. When they were ignorant and racist they were Democrats. Upon enlightenment they became Republicans. This manifest truth has proven to be the GOP's strongest selling point during a 40-year stretch that has seen their greatest electoral winning streaks.

On a less political, secular note, consider the 1978 football season. USC returned to Birmingham. Of course the Trojans were loaded with black stars as always, but so was Alabama. Writers and players making that trip do not recall the racial issue ever raised. In this respect, its success is most obvious. It was subliminal, quiet and peaceful, just as Bryant planned it. It just happened. It was self-evident, manifest. It needed no champion, no loud voices. It just was, but that was not the half of it.

USC again defeated Alabama, the Tide's only loss. USC lost one game. Both teams won their bowls and finished the season with one defeat. Logically, everything being equal, the national championship should have been awarded to the Trojans. They beat Alabama on their field. Instead, USC had to share the championship, capturing the UPI (coaches) poll while Alabama took the AP (writer's) poll.

Contrast that with 12 years earlier, when the vote so famously went against the Tide. Now, having successfully integrated, Bear Bryant was a beloved figure, his team a source of pride and joy to people of all colors. Nobody said it at the time, but Bryant and his team should have called a press conference to thank Jim Murray. Murray's exhortation of the coach and school to do the right thing, then praise of them when they did, did as much to change the "hearts and minds" of voters as Sam Cunningham's touchdown runs.

Jim Murray continued to write about race, politics and social issues, although never with the religious urgency he felt compelled to exhibit in the 1960s. He wrote a chapter in his autobiography called "Some of My Best Friends Are . . ."

"In the decades since Robinson, baseball's integration is taken for granted," he wrote. "It is sometimes a non-issue. But it surfaces from time to time where you least expect it. An Al Campanis takes to the air to spout a lot of nonsense about black capabilities – managing or general-managing a baseball team is probably the easiest thing to do in our society next to be being a guard at a railroad crossing where two trains a week come through.

"But the integration, astonishingly, has never become total. You have thought by now these would be fast, permanent interracial friendships. That players of different colors would become cronies after years of dressing and playing and showering alongside each other.

"If so, I have never observed it. Back in the days when players slept two to a room, some clubs endeavored to hasten the mix by rooming blacks with whites. The facts of the matter are that neither the blacks nor whites were happy with this arrangement.

"There are still some clubhouses where there seems to be two teams, one white, one black. Sometimes, there's a third: Spanish-speaking. On occasion, when teammates get in a barroom fracas or otherwise on a police blotter, you can read the resultant story and find the miscreants are either all white – or all black."

It was what it was. Jim Murray did the best he could and let the chips fall where they may. A Utopian society was not in the cards. It was not unlike the 1971 Alabama victory over USC. John McKay graciously granted his friend's team a game he needed to effectuate change. In 1971 at the Coliseum, the first 'Bama player to run past him on the opening kick was John Mitchell, an African-American star from Alabama ticketed for USC until Bryant integrated and "stole" him away.

"Well," McKay said wryly as he turned to Craig Fertig, "that's what you get."

So too with the 1978 split national title decision. Murray the Trojan fan undoubtedly voted USC number one, but his work had contributed toward the conditions making it possible for the Tide to now get the vote they previously did not get.

Well, that's what you get!

Halcyon days

Steve Bisheff was a young USC graduate making "no money" writing for Bud Furillo's _Los Angeles Herald-Examiner_ in the 1960s and 1970s. He and another USC man, Allan Malamud, were part of a new wave of young talents who arrived on the scene. Malamud, the former editor of the _Daily Trojan_ , started at the _Herald-Examiner_ but later became a respected colleague of Murray's at the _Times_ , where he wrote a popular item called "Notes on a Scorecard."

"I met Murray at a young age in L.A.," Bisheff recalled. "I was with the old _L.A. Herald-Examiner_ and got to know him as a 'rookie' on the Rams' beat. He traveled to road games and the play-offs. Everyone was a little in awe of the guy. To those of us in the sportswritng business, he was our hero. I remember being nervous sitting down to dinner with him on the road, or at Dodger Stadium or the Coliseum, but he'd put you at ease. He was completely unpretentious and could not have been nicer. He and Mal Florence had been around forever, and we really looked up to these men.

"Murray was a master at hype. He overwhelmed you with knowledge of history. The man was so literate, nobody wrote that way before. Everyone coming up through the USC journalism school, we all tried to copy him. I started out at the _Herald_. Durslag was completely different. A great writer, but different. Murray was somebody to try and emulate, but nobody could do it.

"Murray's writing was like punching, with quick shots. Durslag had a common thing, he reached a more traditional sports audience, but with a lot of guys, Murray was up here, you know" (indicating at a higher plane).

"You could not help but notice Murray was very liberal related to the stuff that needed to be written, but not many were willing to write that way. He would write about cities, and he'd get angry at them, and engender unhappy letters. It was hype. They didn't all realize it was tongue in cheek when he'd crush Cincinnati or Louisville, but his stuff on civil rights was not tongue in cheek. He was a sportswriter, but he had a soapbox. He realized the times he lived in and made use of the power he was given, in the right way.

"He was unpretentious, but I remember once he was sitting in the press box after a game, and we're both writing our stories. It occurred to me, 'I'm trying to compete with Jim Murray.' He would look over and smile and say, 'Well, we fooled 'em again,' and you'd say to yourself, 'Yeah, right.'

"From our point of view, writing for Bud Furillo you know, we were very aware of a _Times-Herald_ rivalry. The biggest fact was the _Times_ was big and the _Herald_ struggled, except for Durslag. We were always the underdog so we tried to be more irreverent, more fun. The _Times_ was the 'paper of record,' and that made the fact Murray was different, more loose and funny, stand out in their paper.

"Furillo and Durslag talked every day and sure, the subject often was Jim Murray. What was he writing? How do we respond? A rivalry, filled with respect. Really good writers at both papers, a great era for newspapers and sports in L.A. was incredible at the time; SC, Wooden's basketball, Dodgers, Rams.

"Murray played a huge role at the _Times_. We had nobody quite like that. We all said, 'Did you read Murray today?' You constantly referred to Murray. He quickly reached people outside of L.A. People picked up on his quotes. He had the background of a national magazine and the Hollywood connection.

"I would firmly agree that he created what could be called the 'L.A. style,' which was jaunty, lively and looser, not as staid as the _New York Times_. The _L.A. Times_ was staid before he got there, not exciting or interesting, maybe a little sophomoric. Murray was not afraid to write anything, poke fun at them, and make it very clear. He wrote hilarious stories.

"There was almost a tragedy with him which would have been, you know, tragic. The Rams were playing in one of those cold play-off games in Minnesota they seemed to get into almost every year. Jim was locked in the men's room. The heat was off and it gets cold there, and he's shouting for somebody to let him out, and it doesn't take long to get really cold. Somebody heard him and let him out.

"Murray could write about other stuff. The most poignant was when he lost his sight and his first wife passed away. It brought you to tears. It was overwhelming how talented he was. He was not just one way. He was considered light or funny, but if something serious happened, he could deal with it.

"Later Scott Ostler came along. He was light and funny, kind of 'Murray lite.' At times it was all a joke. Ostler, Mike Downey; they all tried to write like Jim and could not quite pull it off. But there were so many top writers in L.A. during Murray's era, either inspired by him or talents in their own right; a Mel Durslag, Doug Krikorian."

The 1970s may well have been the worst domestic decade in America in the 20th Century. The upheaval and divide of the 1960s was too much to bear. It all came crashing down. Historians can argue that the 1910s or the 1940s, with all the casualties of war, were worse, but those eras did provide victories making this nation stronger.

Many would argue the 1960s were worse, not just because of Vietnam, but because of the protestors, the drugs, the sex, and the immorality. As awful as Vietnam was, it did not belong entirely to the '60s. A good three years of it were fought in the 1970s. The global strategists might also point out that Vietnam, while not a triumph, was a Pyrrhic victory for Communism in which the cost in blood, treasure, heartache and sheer expenditure of effort was so great it led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union some 16 years later.

But regardless of the strategic value or waste of the Vietnam War, in comparing the 1960s to the 1970s, the '70s was worse because the nation had no energy, no purpose. Many would still violently disagree with the students who marched, who changed culture in the '60s, but one thing those kids had was passion. In the 1970s, young people had all the bad traits of the '60s, which included the long hair, the bad clothes, the drugs, and the non-marital sex, but none of the "positive" aspects such as political awareness, passion, and great music (at least after the first couple years). A meaningful slogan like "don't trust anybody over 30" in the '60s now translated to a lack of respect for just about anybody in the '70s. Without a war to fight in or protest, distrustful and lacking respect for all tradition and institutions, America fell apart. A great sound track became a laugh track, a comedy. Sit-coms and old photos of people with their long, frizzy hair and disco shirts engender automatic laughter. That is all anybody really thinks of that generation. They were laughing stocks. The military was so bad judges were giving criminals a choice between feckless military "service" or jail time.

Year after year from the mid-1950s to 1971, incredible music was produced in the U.S. and in Great Britain. After "Who's Next" by The Who (1971), the music business dried up. There were exceptions – Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, AC/DC, Aerosmith – but when Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all died within a year of each other in 1970-71, it was seemingly "the day the music died."

New York City was a pale shadow of their once-proud selves. In 1975 they were on the verge of bankruptcy. They appealed to a Republican President, Gerald Ford. He surveyed the landscape, concluding it was a Democrat city of unions, crime and immorality that never voted for his party, wrought what they sowed, and for all practical purposes told them to, "Drop dead," at least according to the headline writers.

But the 1970s were not all bad. It was an incredible sports decade. Why, out of all the drugs and lack of respect so many great athletes emerged, so many dynasties rose, is almost an incongruity, but they did. Some, like the Oakland Athletics, portrayed the decade's rag-a-muffin visage perfectly. Despite looking like clowns they were one of the greatest baseball teams of all time.

As many great baseball stars as ever played in a decade achieved their prime years in the 1970s. The A's "moustache gang," the Orioles dynasty, the Big Red Machine, the return of the Bronx Bombers, and great Dodgers teams all graced the scene. Has pro football ever been more exciting? The Dallas Cowboys, the Miami Dolphins, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders were monuments, creating rivalries unheard-of in intensity. In college basketball UCLA achieved its greatest glory, and college football saw its greatest traditions (USC, Notre Dame, Alabama, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska) have their best decades, also creating rivalries thrilling a nation.
For California sports fans, it was a golden age unrivaled by any before or since. New York in the 1950s was a pale comparison. The period can be condensed or widened, but it is hard to argue that any appreciable gaps in greatness mark the period starting in 1962, when the Dodgers and Giants battled for a pennant and USC captured the national title on the gridiron, with 1994, when the San Francisco 49ers won their fifth Super Bowl.

In between were three decades of unmatched football glory for Southern Cal; 12 years of basketball greatness at UCLA that is scarcely to be believed; five straight College Series wins for the Trojans; Olympic Games in which USC and UCLA, had they been countries, would have been among the medals leaders; Dodger greatness and near-greatness; Lakers "Showtime" and even a Golden State Warriors title; "the greatness that is the Raiders," perhaps pro football's best dynasty (49ers); and numerous moments of great excitement for the Rams, Angels, Kings, colleges and preps.

What a cornucopia for Jim Murray! There was a strong sense that Los Angeles was the place where enthusiasm and success reigned supreme. Attendance was down at many sports stadiums. Many stadiums were old, decrepit or poorly constructed, ill-advisedly designed to serve more than one sport, none of which were served well. Dodger Stadium and the Dodgers were often referred to as "the big leagues." Players wanted to be traded there. Their beautiful stadium, Spring Training facilities, private plane, huge crowds; no other team in baseball came close to matching their class.

It is hard to find a part of the country that thrived in the 1970s. The economy tanked. An Arab oil embargo wreaked havoc. San Francisco lost all its luster, its decadent, second-rate unimpresiveness captured in the Dirty Harry films depicting a lone vigilante standing against the forces of evil nobody else had the courage to confront.

But amid all of this Jim Murray's city, Los Angeles, California, reached its peak. It was the glory decade for L.A. It was the pre-eminent American city. With London in dire straights, Europe going Socialist, protestors of every stripe demanding this and that and this, it had risen from a "minor league town" in 1957 to the leading metropolis. Who could have predicted such a thing? Who, other than Jim Murray at least?

Real estate in Southern California shot through the roof. The armament business, still humming away next to the 405 Freeway from the airport to the Long Beach Naval shipyards, was in full swing thanks to an out-of-control nuclear arms race. Business was now centered on the Pacific Rim. Computer technology was peaking, and California was where it was peaking at.

Then there was the movie business. Never before or since has Hollywood rivaled its production. Patton, M*A*S*H, The French Connection, Dirty Harry, The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Exorcist, Magnum Force, The Wind and the Lion, Chinatown, Jaws, Marathon Man, Rocky, Taxi Driver, All the President's Men, Network, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter, Animal House and Apocalypse Now were all absolute classics, exploding on screens, astonishing audiences, wowing reviewers, bringing in record profits. Raging Bull came out in 1980, but was symbolically the last of the 1970s movies. United Artists went down for the count after the Heaven's Gate debacle. The movie business has never come remotely close to capturing past glory.

Just as the 1970s were halcyon days for the city, so too was it a great time for Otis Chandler, the Los Angeles Times, and star columnist Jim Murray.

The first year of the decade was an extension of the previous one. The Vietnam War raged on. Very quickly, the press dubbed it "Nixon's War." If he had a "secret plan," his campaign pledge, it was not revealed. Instead, he turned up the heat. Nixon was said to have watched the film Patton multiple times at the White House. It "inspired" him to begin an aggressive bombing campaign and to invade Cambodia, where the Communists took over the border areas to create guerilla sanctuaries.

The American public met the move with sound and fury. College campuses exploded. The protests by 1970 were spread far beyond Berkeley and Columbia. At Kent State University, of all, places, a small Midwestern college, the National Guard was called in. Jittery trigger fingers tragically fired into the crowd, killing four students. To the right, the protests looked like a second civil war. Attention was now diverted away from the South, which was quickly becoming part of the mainstream. In California, a state featuring at least four colleges where major confrontations took place – California, Stanford, San Francisco State, UCLA – there was a strong call from the not-so-silent Silent Majority to deal with them. Ronald Reagan was easily elected to his second term. Reagan, whose name had been thrown into contention as a Native Son Presidential candidate in 1968, was as identified with the conservative movement as Nixon.

In fact, Nixon was more willing to throw a sop to the left. He was far more moderate than his image might suggest, certainly on social issues. Nixon's brother died of cancer. Nixon was motivated by this tragedy to declare a "war on cancer," using the power of the Federal government to find a cure. But he was also forced by circumstance to oversee many liberal policies. The Great Society legislation of 1964-65, signed into law by President Johnson, did not really begin major implementation until the Nixon Administration. He was the man who oversaw much of it, and with it tremendous growth in the government.

But Nixon was embroiled in a global chess match of monumental proportions. In a century dominated by two world wars, there was great hope, bordering on obsession, to avoid a third conflagration. Nuclear weapons made such a war "unwinnable," in the minds of many. But after World War II, the balance of power was shifted to "spheres of influence" involving America, the free world and Democracies; the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Communism; Red China, huge but isolated; and the Third World. This strategic game was played out through diplomacy and espionage, using much of the Third World as proxies. Nixon endeavored to make China a proxy of sorts, too.

One of the major proxies were the Arabs. They had long been controlled by Great Britain and the U.S., the result of the agreement with President Roosevelt to protect its vested interests in return for cheap oil. This created animosity among the populace, exacerbated by heavy CIA activity and support of Israel. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser died in 1970. The Soviets were long kept at bay by his nationalist policies, but his successor, Anwar Sadat, decided to ally himself, a major bargaining chip in the battle for power with America.

In Los Angeles sports, 1970 was a transition year for some, a re-building year for others, and a continuation of dominance for others. The Lakers hired a new coach, Joe Mullaney, ostensibly to give "free reign" to center Wilt Chamberlain. Chamberlain was not the dominant force of past years. Now featured alongside the high scoring Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, he did not try to put up the big offensive numbers. Many questioned the strategy. The Lakers managed to make it to the NBA Finals, one of the most memorable ever against Red Holzman's New York Knickerbockers. The series featured classic moments, such as a court-length bucket by West forcing overtime, and Willis Reed's entrance onto the floor despite a painful injury everybody was sure would keep him out. In the decisive seventh game, Chamberlain again was little factor. For West, it was another agonizing defeat.

Over at UCLA. John Wooden enjoyed his finest hour. With Lew Alcindor graduated and starring at Milwaukee, he re-grouped. With a team led by Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe, he steered the Bruins to the championship game against Artis Gilmore and Jacksonville. Trailing early, with things looking doubtful, he and Wicks changed strategy on Gilmore, forcing the 7-2 center to position himself to his disadvantage. Wicks dominated and UCLA had their sixth championship in seven years. At USC, Rod Dedeaux's baseball team captured the College World Series.

Both the Dodgers and Angels were young, talented and on the rise in 1970, but neither team made the play-offs. However, the biggest baseball news of the year came off the field with the release of Jim Bouton's blockbuster, Ball Four. Probably the biggest-selling sports book ever written, it was the first of the "tell-alls," although it did not tell all. Nevertheless, it wiped away the veneer of "wholesomeness" many fans assumed about sports heroes. Much of what happened afterward: tabloids, scandal, "gotcha" journalism, stems in large measure to Ball Four.

USC entered the 1970 football season expected to challenge for a national championship. When they opened the year with their stunning destruction of Alabama in Birmingham, they appeared well on their way. But it was a façade of sorts. McKay, long the progressive when it came to providing opportunity for black players, may have "out-punted his coverage," to use one expression. He had so many talented black players it became a "problem," because he also had numerous talented white players. Nobody – not announcer Tom Kelly or even Jim Murray, who usually had his pulse on these issues – realized it at the time. Behind the scenes, a major division grew over the quarterback issue. McKay stayed with junior Jimmy Jones, a black kid. Whites increasingly wanted white hotshot Mike Rae to start. After tying Nebraska, the eventual national champion, USC seemed unable to get enthused over Pac-8 foes like Washington and Stanford. A 38-28 upset of unbeaten Notre Dame – proof of how good they could have been - was their only remaining highlight in a down year. Jim Plunkett and Stanford beat Woody Hayes and Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

George Allen left the Los Angeles Rams, who got old fast under Tommy Prothro. San Francisco captured the West in the newly configured National Football Conference. It was the first year of a true merger between the NFL and the old AFL.

In the boxing world, Muhammad Ali was now back in play. Rusty after a long lay-off, everybody waited for his match-up with heavyweight champion Joe Frazier. In March, Murray opted to write about another fighter, "Sugar Ray" Robinson, who he dubbed "Sugar Ray Religion." Robinson, a great champion of yesteryear, fought the Muslim Clay/Ali, declaring he was out to win a victory for the real Lord. Far past his prime, Robinson was humiliated by Clay, who taunted him for being a Christian as he punched him relentlessly.

He wrote a column about Southern California tennis promoter Perry Jones, an old school aristocrat.

"It took awhile to know Perry – like, a decade if he liked you, a quarter of a century if he could tolerate you, and never if he considered you common," he wrote.

1971 was a big year in Los Angeles. In January the L.A. Times blared the headlines, "MANSON VERDICT: ALL GUIULTY." Staff writer John Kendall described the conviction of Charles Manson and his followers of the heinous 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.

Shortly thereafter, on February 10, an enormous earthquake hit the Southland. The front page featured a photo of patients evacuated from a San Fernando hospital, near the epicenter.

In June, Gene Blake and Jack Nelson covered one of the most controversial stories in U.S. history, with profound implications, much of which was completely unforeseen at the time. Daniel Ellsberg, once a Defense Department strategist tasked with defeating Communism in Vietnam, had turned and provided the "Pentagon papers," a long history of government secrets, to the New York Times. The decision to leak to the New York Times – after they were ordered not to print it the Washington Post did - is worth noting. Ellsberg lived in the Los Angeles area. He was a consultant at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica and saw a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding.

Ellsberg likely figured the L.A. Times, owned by the conservative Chandler, would choose not to break such a story, figuring it to be treasonous. It was a period of huge government revelation, with more on the way. The My Lai massacre had rocked the public's perception of the war. The United States was by 1971 firmly opposed to it. Chandler, however, was still a patriot. This may well have been the reason Ellsberg did not approach him with his secrets.

News of the Pentagon Papers hit Nixon in June just as he was trying to enjoy his daughter's White House wedding. Once the "cat was out of the bag" the L.A. Times splashed headlines showing the grinning visages of Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, with in-depth coverage by Washington staff writers Ronald Ostrow and Linda Mathews.

On September 28, the paper showed images of a terrible prison riot in Attica, New York. This came on the heels of a shooting at the Marin County Civic Center in Northern California, resulting in the murder of a judge. These kinds of incidents, often featuring black criminals, fueled conservative anger against the left. Dirty Harry, released in 1971, delved into this mindset, based on the right wing notion that criminals were given more rights than law-abiding citizens.

That September 28 front page also featured a story by Dial Torgerson, "Whew! Now It's Smog, Blackouts With Fierce Heat." It was the apex, or approaching the apex, of LA.'s worst air quality in history. To those who experienced it, it was almost mind-blowing, and yet, incredibly, some of the greatest athletes, teams and games ever played were performed under these horrid conditions.

In the fall, the United Nations seated Red China, to the consternation of Taiwan. Richard Nixon announced he was going to China in 1972. This news overshadowed all previous criticism of his price control policies, Vietnam aggressiveness, and courtship of the evangelical right.

Hunter S. Thompson's seminal "novel," Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, hit bookshelves in 1971

In sports, 1971 was much like 1970. For Jerry West and the Lakers, it was another year of disappointment, this time without the theatrics of the 1970 Finals with the Knicks. Lew Alcindor and Milwaukee ran roughshod over the NBA as Alcindor's Bruins had during his time in Westwood. As for the current UCLA basketball team, their 47-game winning streak was stopped 13 shy of San Francisco's 1955-56 record of 60. The loss at Notre Dame was their only obstacle as Wicks and Rowe led then to a fifth consecutive NCAA title.

It was also the greatest year in the history of USC basketball, which probably says as much as about UCLA during the Wooden years as any other factor. The great Paul Westphal led coach Bob Boyd's Trojans. They were beaten twice, both times by the Bruins. In those days only conference champions were extended post-season invites, so they stayed at home. The Trojans won the College World Series for the second year in a row.

The California Angels entered the campaign favored in the West, but unraveled when controversial batting champion Alex Johnson split the clubhouse in half with acrimonious behavior. It was one of the ugliest seasons any team ever experienced. Oakland powered through the West and began their great dynasty. The Dodgers got off to a slow start, then roared back to challenge San Francisco. It was a major revival of the rivalry, which had been dormant for a few seasons. In the end they fell one game short.

USC's racial divide continued in 1971. McKay continued to stay with Jones while Mike Rae languished on the bench. Despite as much talent as any team in the nation (except Nebraska and Oklahoma, both historical juggernauts), the Trojans were an abysmal 2-4 the week of the Notre Dame game at South Bend. That week, a little-known offensive lineman named Dave Brown approached McKay. Brown was a member of the Christian organization Athletes in Action. He asked the coach if an AIA demonstration could be arranged. The Catholic McKay, figuring it could not hurt, agreed "as long as it's voluntary." According to witnesses, it was an emotional scene. A few days later in the shadow of "Touchdown Jesus," USC beat 6-0 Notre Dame. They never lost another game until 1973!

Stanford won the Pacific-8 football championship for the second year in a row, defeating Michigan, 13-12 in the Rose Bowl. "He didn't like the Stanford oddballs, the 'Thunder Chickens' of 1971 or '72," recalled Art Spander of Murray. Murray was a traditionalist who did not like the changes all around him. He did not like the Stanford band or the anti-war protests on college campuses.

Ali beat Frazier in what is generally considered the greatest boxing match of all time, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Stan Smith led the United States to Davis Cup victory amid the most fevered of Cold War tensions in Bucharest, Hungary.

In a column about legendary Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, Murray wrote, "They say Fay Wray lockers herself in a room when Butkus comes to town. And when he hits New York, the Army surrounds the Empire State Building while the Air Force buzzes it." When the great Babe Didrikson passed away in April, Murray penned a piece eulogizing the greatest female athlete of all time.

1972 was probably the high point in the history of Los Angeles, in almost all ways people might measure such a thing. It certainly was for Republicans, although in 1972 it seemed as if everybody everywhere voted for the GOP.

The year started with a tremendous highlight, Nixon's opening of Red China. It was a disarming move, a form of political triangulation that has come to be known as the "Nixon goes to China" strategy. The essence of the concept was that only a political figure well known for opposing something is capable of doing a meaningful deal with that entity. Only the fierce anti-Communist Nixon could cut a deal with Mao Tse-tung. It was pointed out that any liberal who tried would be excoriated as a "traitor." Others occasionally used this syndrome: Anwar Sadat reaching out to Israel, Bill Clinton "ending welfare as we know it."

Nixon's move gave him enough political cover to take an aggressive course of action in Vietnam. First he mined Haiphong Harbor, which was thoroughly covered by the Times, most notably Washington correspondent Robert Toth. Reaction to the mining was split along partisan lines. Governor Reagan called it the "only course" while House Republican Leader Gerald Ford called it "the only way to end the Vietnam War." Democrats George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey called it a "flirtation with war" and an "unpredictable danger." Julian Hartt of the Times wrote a May 9 analysis comparing Nixon's move to previous major confrontations with Communism, namely the 1948 Berlin airlift, the 1960 U-2 spy plane incident, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

On May 15 George Wallace, campaigning as an independent for President, was shot and paralyzed for life in Maryland. On Sunday, June 18, a headline relegated to the lower right of the page, next to the weather forecast, trumpeted "Five held in Plot to Bug Democratic Office" by Alfred Lewis.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, sparing the lives of the Manson family. The U.S. and Hanoi announced they were resuming the Paris peace talks. Nixon's hard line was paying off. On November 7, the Southern California native Nixon re-captured the White House, winning 49 of 50 states. The right convinced themselves it was complete repudiation of everything the 1960s stood for. It was the biggest landslide in Presidential history, coming with a popular vote of more than 60 percent in a sweeping win over South Dakota Senator George McGovern. He had consolidated the South into a "lock." The seeds of his popularity were partly found in the sentiments of Alabama football fans identifying with his form of "Orange County politics" after the 1970 loss to USC. While Middle America got it, the liberal elites did not. New York Times film critic Pauline Kael announced, "I don't know how he won. I don't know anybody who voted for him." Other than America, New York state, and even New York City, that is.

Given the political capitol of a huge win, Nixon turned up the heat on North Vietnam. His "Christmas bombing" campaign brought the intransigent Communists back to the bargaining table. Henry Kissinger announced "peace is at hand."

California was at the epicenter of the political world. It was the trendsetter in terms of fashion, culture, music and technology. With Nixon, a longtime friend of Howard Hughes, in the White House, it was a golden age for the L.A.-based Military Industrial Complex.

It was also the year of The Godfather, and even that movie had a Nixonian connection. Legendary producer Robert Evans was a close friend of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiating with North Vietnam among other accomplishments, cultivated "star" status, which caused no little unease in the Nixon Administration. When invited to The Godfather premier, Kissinger argued that the U.S. was in the middle of mining Haiphong Harbor, but agreed to show up when Evans insisted.

Its director, Francis Ford Coppola, the UCLA film school product, was a political liberal. In 1970 Coppola wrote the screenplay for Patton. His intent was to show Patton to be a warmonger, obsessed with victory, as a Vietnam diatribe. When audiences got a look at George C. Scott, they loved the idea of victory and American Exceptionalism. It was a great hit. It saved Coppola's career. About to be fired by Evans as The Godfather's director, his winning the Academy Award for the Patton script allowed him to keep the job.

Roger Angell's The Summer Game and Dan Jenkins's riotous novel, Semi-Tough, were published, as was David Halberstam's scathing unmasking of Vietnam mistakes made by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson in The Best and the Brightest.

Title IX passed in 1972, but its effect was not felt for years. It mandated that relative payouts be provide for girl's sports, with implications that over the years manifested themselves with the growth of women's athletics.

If 1962 was a "California year" in sports, 1972 was the California year. USC was in the middle of the most dominant run in the history collegiate athletes, winning national championships in a variety of sports. To a large extent, what they did not win was won by UCLA. Both schools also produced an impressive contingent of Gold medal winners in the Munich Olympics. Led by sophomore center fielder Fried Lynn, the Trojans captured their third straight College World Series.

The 1972 basketball season was almost above comprehension. Sophomore center Bill Walton was sensational beyond words, unquestionably on the same level as Alcindor had been. He led the Bruins to an unbeaten year in which they were never challenged en route to another NCAA championship, achieved at the L.A. Sports Arena. The '72 Bruins certainly were on the short list when discussing the best in collegiate history.

After the season, Murray wrote a column about Wooden called "Hoosier hotshot." It was a classic Murray sarcasm, leading off with the image of a typical college basketball coach as a guy with lots of diamonds, an entourage and ego the size of New York, nicknames like "The Baron" or "The Bear." Then there was Wooden, who was described as "American Gothic."

Wooden, he wrote, put championship teams together with "elements as diverse as a Democratic ticket." They had to play in "Venice High gyms, on City College parking lots and at auditoriums built for auto shows, not zone presses" before the building of "his monument," Pauley Pavilion, which came a good 10 years after he was promised it would be when hired in 1948. Someday, Murray conjectured, a photo of Raquel Welch in a bikini would replace the Pyramid of Success, but "the Wizard" would be frowning, someplace.

"Then you meet John Wooden and he is answering his own phone, he clips his nails with a drugstore clipper, his haircut has a faint bunkhouse bowl look to it, his clothes are less Savile Row than bought-with-a-coupon, and the whole thing cries out for a Grant Wood brush, not a shrill sports column," he wrote. ". . . You meet him and you're tempted to say, 'All right, what did you do with the pitchfork, John?' You can smell the hay if you close your eyes."

When the NBA season began, fans checking out the box scores to see how many points Lew Alcindor scored were surprised to see Alcindor was not in the line-up. Injured? If so, some guy named Abdul-Jabbar was making up the difference in epic fashion, scoring 30 points a game with 15 rebounds most nights. Alcindor, a Muslim already, made it public and changed his name to reflect his religion.

Murray was unimpressed with the black Muslims. "He didn't like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar," said Art Spander. "He came into the league with his stuff shot and different way of thinking, and Jim didn't like things that were away from the norm. He didn't like Muhammad Ali."

The Lakers, after years of near misses, began the season with a new coach. Owner Jack Kent Cooke wanted John Wooden, but the UCLA coach turned him down. He hired an old Trojan, Bill Sharman. They rocketed out of the gate and ran up an all-time professional record 33-game winning streak until Abdul-Jabbar and the Bucks stopped them in Milwaukee in January. The Lakers finished with the best record in NBA history, 69-13, then beat Abdul-Jabbar in the play-offs. They knocked off New York in five games. West finally had his title. At least until the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, the '72 Lakers were thought by many to be the best team of all time.

The year was still young. In baseball, it was another good, but not great, year for the developing Dodgers of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell and Ron Cey. But still within the state, it was a huge season for the Oakland A's, who captured the World Series in seven thrilling games over Cincinnati's vaunted Big Red Machine. Both Bay Area NFL squads – the 49ers and Raiders - captured division crowns before succumbing in a year in which Miami ran the table at 17-0, taking the Super Bowl over George Allen's Redskins in the L.A. Coliseum.

Maybe the best was saved for the last. The 1972 USC football team is still believed to be the finest collegiate grid squad ever assembled. Such luminaries as Dan Jenkins, Keith Jackson and Lee Corso are just a few of the majority of experts who agree on this assessment. The Trojans rolled through the season without challenge at 12-0, annihilating Ohio State, 42-17 in the Rose Bowl. Against Notre Dame, Anthony Davis rushed for no less than six touchdowns, a game that could go down as the best single-day performance ever.

UCLA fielded a great team in 1972, but was no match for their cross-town rivals. The Bruins opened the season knocking off number one Nebraska, 20-17. They were one of the strongest running teams ever. Led by quarterback Mark Harmon, son of Heisman winner Tom Harmon and a future star of movies and TV, the Bruins seemed downright scared against Richard "Batman" Wood and USC's intimidating defense. Southern Cal toyed with them in a 24-7 pasting.

Murray wrote a pedestrian August 1 column, " 'Marring' the Races," about Formula 1 racing. Sports news in 1972 was not all good and definitely not all pedestrian. First, the baseball players had the audacity to strike from April 1-13, the first time regular season games were canceled. But that was nothing compared to the Munich Olympics, when Black September, a Palestinian terrorist organization formed by Yasser Arafat, first kidnapped then murdered most of the Israeli Olympic team. It was a harsh reality, the most blatant intrusion of war, politics, and terror, into the world of sports. In retrospect, it was probably the first shot fired in the War on Terror, even though the United States never really acknowledged this conflict until September 11, 2001.

Dwight Chapin covered USC and UCLA sports for the Los Angeles Times in the 1970s. He and his friend and partner, Jeff Prugh, were both assigned to the Bruins' basketball beat, which was at its all-time high mark during this period. Chapin shared the same name as Dwight L. Chapin, Richard Nixon's appointments secretary. Because the political Chapin was a USC graduate, many confused the two names. Up until 1972, Dwight L. Chapin received glowing press. President Nixon was popular and all was going well . . . so far.

The Times's Chapin, along with Prugh, approached John Wooden about doing a book, an autobiography or authorized biography. They reached an agreement on all the particulars. Chapin and Prugh arrived at Wooden's office to sign the contract. At the last second the great coach informed them that he was sorry, he had been approached and agreed to do a different book, on his own. He would not be sharing the profits with the two scribes after all! Prugh described the reaction of he and Chapin as being "blindsided" and an indication that "St. John" was still just a man, after all.

Wooden's book, They Call Me Coach, was a Best Seller and is still sold today, but in truth it was rather boring, filled with pedestrian descriptions on how to put on athletic socks in order to avoid blisters. Prugh and Chapin wrote an unauthorized biography of Wooden and the history of the UCLA dynasty called The Wizard of Westwood. Without Wooden's cooperation and presence on a book and media tour, it was not a Best Seller, but in truth it was one of the greatest sports books ever written.

The Wizard of Westwood was one of if not the first sports books that ever truly incorporated social issues, politics and the greater world in general as integral to its description of sports. It detailed how the UCLA players juggled their basketball responsibilities with campus protests over the Vietnam War, Lew Alcindor's arguments with Wooden over turning from Christianity in favor of Islam, the coach's reaction to Bill Walton's arrest at a sit-in, and many other contentious issues of the times. The book may well be credited with bringing sports journalism into the fold of socio-political writing. Over time, books like Willie's Time by Charles Einstein portrayed a sports figure against the landscape of his times. David Halberstam combined the genre of sports and society, as did George Will and others.

Originally, Prugh and Chapin got little real recognition for their great effort. In the 2000s HBO produced a documentary on the UCLA dynasty that focused on the team cast next to the shadow of the times, finally giving some overdue respect to the two young writers who were ahead of their time.

Both Prugh (who passed away in 2009) and Chapin were heavily influenced by Jim Murray. Their shared desire to write not just about sports, but also about the world, or to incorporate sports into their larger observations, came directly from the cutting edge Murray. Chapin and Murray were together when the ultimate crossover between politics and sports took place at Munich in 1972.

"I have a strong memory of him when we were the only L.A. Times sportswriters assigned to the 1972 Munich Olympics, and we flew to Munich together," recalled Chapin. "He rented a car at the airport and asked me to ride with him to our quarters in the Olympic Village. The only problem was, his eyesight already was not the best, and I assume he missed a turn or two. Anyway, he was soon wandering around in what looked like marshes and it was getting dark quickly. We both started laughing because we could see the headline, 'Times Writers Lost on Their Way to the Olympics.' We eventually found our way back to the right highway, but Jim would bring up that wandering day/night every time I saw him."

Chapin also recalled working another event with him. "I was working desk shift one night when he was covering the Indy 500. He had planned to go back to his hotel to write his column after the race but the track was hit by a strong rainstorm before he left and the parking lot was so snarled he couldn't get out. So he had to dictate his column, cold. I took the column from him over the phone, and it was letter perfect. I've never forgotten that. Can't recall the year, though.

"A thoroughly nice man, by the way, as well as a helluva journalist, and an incredibly unassuming guy considering his talents."

Jim Murray finally moved from Malibu to Brentwood in December of 1972.

"Murray lived in Brentwood, just east of the 405 Freeway," recalled Art Spander. Located in the Los Angeles 90049 zip code, it was one of the most prestigious addresses in the city, a part of Brentwood some referred to as "lower Bel Air." Near Sunset Boulevard, it was a few blocks from the UCLA campus. Brentwood is generally thought of as the neighborhood west of the freeway, adjacent to Pacific Palisades at the bottom of the Santa Monica Mountains, where O.J. Simpson lived with his wife before the murder. Technically it snakes across the freeway to an area many think of as Bel Air, which is actually a gated community across the street from the UCLA campus extending into the hills and canyons rising up towards Mulholland Drive.

Murray's eyesight, as Dwight Chapin mentioned, was already going. Driving was becoming a problem, and the trek from Malibu was becoming more and more crowded on the Pacific Coast Highway. Brentwood was in the middle of the action, relatively near Dodger Stadium, the Coliseum, next door to UCLA. It was obviously a comfortable, wealthy part of town, but for the writer the move came with certain reservations. He had fallen in love with the beach life; not just girls in bathing suits and "woodys" traversing the surf route, but the winter conditions, the fog rolling in, meeting the Santa Monica Mountains. The mournful fog horns out at sea. It all encouraged the seafaring side of Murray as he imagined literary figures such as Jack London.

He wrote his ode to Malibu, which for the first time in 18 years he did not wake up to on Christmas morning. He preferred the ocean, but by 1973 getting to places like Anaheim Stadium and the Forum was even more problematic than normal. He wrote he would miss the rain sweeping in from an ocean storm, "leaving the temples of the mountains with the hoar of mist, what the poet calls 'compassionate sweet laughter of the rain, gray-eyed daughters of the mist above the flawed and driven tide.' "

The year started out with the U.S. Supreme Court handing down their decision on Roe v. Wade. They determined that a woman's right to abortion on demand was a national law, not to be determined by individual states.

Jim Murray, the student of history and product of parochial schools, could have predicted based upon his studies that hubris and arrogance are the great equalizers of a fallen, corrupt Mankind, that "pride goeth before the fall." For a brief period, the United States of America stood astride the world like a colossus. Richard Nixon was not a President, he was a potentate, a puppet master pulling the world's strings. In 1972 he and Kissinger, who he named Secretary of State in 1973, manipulated the Soviets, Red China, and to a lesser extent the Middle East, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America, bending them to their will. They were personally re-making the world in a red, white and blue image. In January, they reached the pinnacle of glory, ending the Vietnam War. The prisoners of war were returned, among them a Navy fighter pilot named John McCain. In Los Angeles, a former UCLA athlete and police officer, Tom Bradley, became the first African-American elected Mayor.

Then came Watergate. The May 1 Los Angeles Times blared the headline, "KNEW OF BURGLARY, EHRLICHMAN SAYS" under "Ziegler Offers an Apology." The June 18, 1972 Times headline "Five held in Plot to Bug Democratic Office" and article by Alfred Lewis was given scant attention at the time. It was denied by all, a "third rate burglary" according to Nixon. Zealous supporters, rabid Cuban anti-Communists, well meaning some thought in their desire to fight evil, were responsible. Nixon skated. Until now.

Beginning in March, a drip-drip-drip of accusations and revelations began. Quickly, the story unraveled, individuals out to save their skins. A single "good soldier," G. Gordon Liddy, remained tight-lipped, and paid for it with a long prison sentence. But chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and top aide John Ehrlichman were in on it. Former Attorney General John Mitchell was in on it. Legal counsel John Dean spilled the beans. A host of other powerful men went down for the count. They were All the President's Men, the title of a book by intrepid Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, later a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The Post scooped the L.A Times throughout Watergate, but not always. Jack Nelson was able to outfox Woodward and Bernstein on at least one or two key stories. The Times found itself in a difficult position in 1973 because Otis Chandler faced government accusations in an oil investment scheme gone bad, orchestrated by his old Stanford pal, Jack Burke.

"I knew him the last two years at Stanford," recalled Chandler. "I will never forget that: Jack Burke sitting there destroying all my hopes and dreams."

Nixon was not happy with Otis Chandler as it was; he was not the supporter his father had been. But Watergate swallowed Nixon up. He was not able to exact any major price against Chandler, the Times or the rest of the media, almost all of whom were on his infamous "enemies list." Chandler's reputation was damaged by Burke, but not irreparably.

In October, everything imploded further. Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned amid tax corruption allegations from his days as Maryland Governor. That same month, Nixon fired Attorney General Elliott Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nixon was now paranoid beyond despair, all he worked for crumbling in a strange downfall he blamed on the "Harvard crowd" and the "East Coast elites." Incredibly, while all this went on, Kissinger skillfully masterminded a diplomatic solution to the Yom Kippur War, a uni-lateral two-front invasion of Israel by Syria and Egypt in coordination with Iraqi reserve forces. Despite Nixon's apparent downfall, the United States now replaced the Soviet Union as the dominant influence in the Arab world, with Israel suddenly a viable military partner capable of repelling major attack.

However, an Arab oil embargo, a desperate effort on the part of the Middle East energy-producing states to influence global politics, raised oil prices for the rest of the decade. Its effect on the U.S was negligible, but it knocked European economies out of competition. It was in many ways the "last hurrah" for any sense of empire or real power by Western European Democracies.

Naturally, the Los Angeles Times covered Watergate with a fine toothcomb. History records that it was Woodward and Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post who broke and expanded the story. That is true, but many of the players were Southern Californians. That proximity, and the personalities arrayed, made the Times a "paper of record" when it came to Watergate.

First and foremost there was the USC connection, which the Times gleefully exploited. This no doubt delighted many over at UCLA, as Watergate proved to be a major bone of contention in football rivalries and halftime demonstrations. Fans took to calling USC the "University of Spoiled Children," a privileged Republican school. Stanford's band, eschewing traditional uniforms in favor of cock-eyed red jackets, untucked shirts and fishing hats, employed Nazi salutes when USC's band played. They mocked Troy as anywhere between the Third Reich and the Roman Empire, meanwhile performing a "Tribute to Chairman Mao" that left announcer Chris Schenkel speechless. Mao's Cultural Revolution was at that time at the height of a killing spree ultimately leaving about 55 million Chinese murdered. University of California students dumbly waved their credit cards when USC's band played "Conquest." Sports was now socio-political.

In White House Years by Henry Kissinger, he described his first initiation into the Nixon team. They did not appear to be political professionals so much as well-scrubbed college football coaches, he wrote. Among them, many were Trojans. First Lady Patricia Nixon was a USC graduate. Haldeman attended USC before transferring to UCLA. Appointments secretary Dwight L. Chapin, press secretary Ron Ziegler, aide Bart Porter and legal counsel Gordon Strachan were all USC men. Kissinger's aide Mike Guhin and Michael Woodson, who coordinated his 1969 Inaugural, attended USC with Donald Segretti, a young lawyer recruited by Chapin to disrupt the 1972 Democrat Primaries. Longtime aide Herb Klein was a USC man, as well.

Segretti was an early focus of the media. He was found "hiding out" in a singles complex in Marina Del Rey. Amid the idyllic atmosphere of bikini-clad girls and swinging bachelors Segretti contemplated his legal troubles. Recalling USC politics of the early 1960s, he supposedly coined the phrase "USC Mafia" (in 2009 he disputed the term), made famous in All the President's Men.

In addition to the USC connections, Nixon's staff was composed mainly of Californians. Ehrlichman was a UCLA and Stanford law school graduate. By and large, Nixon disdained "Harvard types." This was one of the reasons Nixon and Kissinger sometimes clashed, as he was unquestionably a member of the East Coast establishment.

The Los Angeles Times originally did complimentary stories of all the "local guys made good," recalling in colorful detail the Students For a Democratic Society at USC; Ziegler and Chapin being recruited off the campus to work for Nixon in his 1962 Gubernatorial campaign; the Haldeman-USC connection at the Los Angeles office of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency; and the improbable rise of a bunch of well-scrubbed Young Republicans in their late 20s and 30s suddenly in charge of the world. It was too much too soon. A further connection later emerged; Nixon counsel John Dean's wife, Maureen, was a stunning California blond, the camera focused on her incessantly during the Watergate hearings.

Dwight Chapin, who covered USC football and UCLA basketball, traveled to Maryland for the NCAA basketball tournament. He called his namesake, Dwight L. Chapin in the White House, and was given a special invite. When Watergate hit, Chapin of the Times was now besieged with angry letters, many asking how a White House aide had time to cover college basketball, or how an accused political criminal could supposedly land such a great job with the newspaper? Chapin, a Democrat, was compelled to write a letter of explanation to his readers explaining he was not that Dwight Chapin. The two exchanged correspondence, eventually emails for years after.

"I didn't really know Jim Murray," recalled Dwight L. Chapin (the White House press secretary). "I just remember him as being an L.A. institution. One paid attention to what Murray wrote. It was not an era when you questioned journalists, even sports journalists, like one would today, but of course then there was no reason to question his motives! It was such a different period and the relationship between writer and reader was more of a friendship than provocateur."

But it all went south with Watergate. Nixon was caught on tape infamously ordering his men to go after Chandler and the L.A. Times, stating that he knew how they operated, he was from there, and "those sons of bitches" would pay via tax audits and other forms of government abuse of power.

As Watergate expanded, California Republicans turned their attention to Governor Reagan. He was installed as a conservative favorite for 1976. For those who failed to land the big prize, in Washington with Richard Nixon, "settling" for the supposed backwaters of Sacramento with Reagan, it was time to heave a big sigh of relief.

Hunter S. Thompson followed up on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with his psychedelic reportage of the 1972 Presidential Primaries and general election, originally written for Rolling Stone. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 remains a masterpiece of spoof and dead-on political commentary. Pat Jordan wrote The Suitors of Spring that year. Never a big seller, it nevertheless is one of the best baseball books ever written.

If the 1972 UCLA Bruins were the greatest college basketball team ever assembled, the 1972-73 squad was even better. Many came out and flat stated that Bill Walton was more dominant than Alcindor (Abdul-Jabbar). The UCLA and USC athletic programs were dominant above and beyond all other universities during this time. The 1973 Trojan baseball team rallied from a 7-0 deficit in the ninth inning against Minnesota ace pitcher Dave Winfield to win, 8-7 on the way to a fourth straight College World Series championship. Track, tennis, swimming, volleyball, water polo - most any sport not to mention baseball, basketball and football – the champion in these years was usually either the Trojans or the Bruins. The population boom after World War II was now come to fruition. All their kids were now in high school, in college, and in the professional ranks.

During the play-offs, Murray wrote a fanciful column in which Bill Russell of the Celtics was featured as a sort of Medieval drama, tasked with stopping the "giant," Wilt Chamberlain. Using metaphors from Jack and the Beanstalk, Gulliver's Travels and the Old Testament, Murray spun a poetic cautionary tale about Chamberlain's constant challenge; after Russell came Abdul-Jabbar and Willis Reed. In the end he concluded "Wilt, You Can't Win." The Lakers were again favored in the NBA Finals, but were unable to pull a repeat against New York.

The Los Angeles Dodgers sprinted out to first place and challenged for the National League West until Cincinnati overtook them towards the end, but their future was well established. Nolan Ryan of the California Angels threw two no-hit games and broke Sandy Koufax's single-season strikeout record with 383. Oakland won their second straight World Series, defeating former USC pitcher Tom Seaver and the New York Mets.

UCLA was a powerhouse in football, especially on the ground, but was stopped by the Trojans in a head-to-head match-up. USC lost for the first time since 1971 when Notre Dame stopped them at South Bend. Then Ohio State trampled them, 42-21 in the Rose Bowl.

Under coach Chuck Knox, the Los Angeles Rams made a tremendous comeback. It was a veteran team, led by former San Diego Chargers quarterback John Hadl and a ball control offense dubbed "Ground Chuck." In a year in which no other great champions appeared on the horizon, it seemed to be the year Los Angeles would finally win the big prize, a Super Bowl. They were stopped in the NFC play-offs. Minnesota was beaten by Miami in the Super Bowl.

Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes" at the Astrodome.

The sports year started on a sad note when Pittsburgh Pirates superstar Roberto Clemente was killed in a plane crash, trying to fly relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. On January 3, Murray paid homage to the Puerto Rican hero, the man who created a breakthrough of Latino stars, called "Clemente: You Had to See Him to Believe Him." Clemente would claim his back was broken, "Then he would go three-for-four with a stolen base and three outfield assists," he wrote. The worse he supposedly got, "the worse the pitchers felt."

Clemente often argued with Murray because he did not "believe" he was as sick as he claimed to be. It was good-natured. Clemente sensed Murray was a kindred spirit, a supporter of his cause, which at the time was a sense of equality in every way for Spanish-speaking ball players.

"He didn't answer questions so much as he delivered orations," he wrote. "He could lecture brilliantly on osteopathy, orthopedics or the anatomy. But he was Calamity Jane of the dugout. He was always playing the last act of Camille. It was funny to be sitting there talking to this figure that looked as if it had just walked off a Michelangelo pedestal and hear it talking like something in a TB ward."

Murray said Clemente was the best World Series player (star of the Pirates' 1960, 1971 titles) he saw since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, quite a statement since the writer saw Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson. In the end, Murray's respect for the man was tremendous. He was honorable and truthful.

One of the greatest boxing matches ever fought barely happened. The great Joe Frazier squared off against a formidable challenger, George Foreman. The 1968 Olympic champion, Foreman entered the pantheon of boxing superstardom by knocking Frazier out almost as soon as the fight began on February 5. Murray thought it a disaster, theorizing that in giving Foreman his shot, Frazier blew the economic benefits of a re-match with Ali. In this rare case, he was wrong. The Foreman-Frazier fight, which produced Howard Cosell's famed "Down goes Frazier" quote, did as much for boxing as any other match.

It expanded interest. Instead of just two champion-contenders, now there were three. Over the next few years, the fight game would see some of the greatest matches ever, involving Ali, Foreman and Frazier. They became international events. But Murray wrote Frazier "reminds me of a guy who lit a match to see if his gas tank is empty." His miscalculation was comparable to the guy who "bought into the market on October 29, 1929." Promoter Jack Kent Cooke agreed with his initial assessment, that Frazier had screwed up the anticipated Ali-Frazier re-match, but history played out differently.

The greatest racehorse who ever lived was Secretariat. Prior to capturing the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes Murray wrote that after the race was won, "His stud book will be busier that a sultan's."

Around Thanksgiving, Murray wrote "Thankful, But . . ." It was typical of his iconoclasm, and included a return to an old issue, the Old South and civil rights. "I'm thankful the Old South finally got blacks in university backfields and lines – but I'd be more thankful if the rooting sections would put away those Confederate flags."

Amidst worldwide gas shortages, the Arab world's effort to make themselves relevant in the aftermath of two wars lost to Israel within six years, 1974 dawned with more bad news. The May 18 Times front page informed readers that India was now a member of the "nuclear club." At the time, they were weighing their options between alliance with the U.S. or the U.S.S.R., so this news was particularly disturbing. France already tried to straddle a "neutral" line.

On that same front page, blaring headlines and shocking photos described a shoot-out between the Los Angeles Police Department and a leftist terror organization, the Symbionese Liberation Army, along the 1400 block of East 54th Street in south-central L.A. "SLA HIDEOUT STORMED, 5 DIE" screamed the headline above a story written by Al Martinez and Robert Kistler. The SLA was infamous for having abducted newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst in Berkeley. Supposedly indoctrinated to hate her role as a rich white girl, therefore "responsible" for the plight of minorities and the great unwashed for time immemorial, Hearst was said to have "turned" and become a participant in the SLA's bank robberies. In a weird twist, UCLA basketball star Bill Walton, a well-known liberal arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, was friends with Jack Scott, one of the SLA's supporters.

Jack Nelson covered in excruciating, day-by-day detail the Watergate mess that never seemed to end. Seemingly every day throughout the spring and summer more revelations about the cover-up were exposed, to the consternation of conservatives who saw everything they so painstakingly put in place crumble as in a house of cards. Finally, on August 8, a Times extra blared simply "NIXON QUITS." Nixon flew to San Clemente and the paper wrote a series of aftermath stories with a local flavor to them. Staff writer Kenneth Reich found him sheltered at his 200-acre state. After being pardoned by President Gerald Ford in September, Nixon said he had a new perspective on his Presidency now that he lived in seaside surroundings. Nixon said it was all "a burden I shall bear for every day" until he passed away.

In November, the Democrats swept into office. Ronald Reagan did not run, preferring to plan his 1976 Presidential campaign. That, however, was thrown into turmoil by Watergate. When Vice-President Agnew resigned, it made Reagan the leading Republican to succeed Nixon. Gerald Ford's ascendancy suddenly meant he would have to face a sitting President. Pat Brown's son, Jerry Brown, was elected Governor of California. A hip, handsome young man, he was said to be the model for Robert Redford's film The Candidate. Brown dated the sexy rock singer Linda Ronstadt.

Alan Cranston defeated Republican challenger H.L. Richardson in his re-election bid for California's U.S. Senate seat. Nationally, the Democrats had a field day, sweeping 40 House seats and a pick-up of four Senate seats. Among Democrat Senators elected in 1974 were John Glenn (Ohio), Gary Hart (Colorado), and Birch Bayh (Indiana). Michael Dukakis was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and George Wallace, now an independent running from a wheel chair, was elected Governor of Alabama . . . again. He was said to have repented his old racial views, eventually leading him to a tearful confession in a black church.

Whereby 1972 was a huge California year both politically and in the sports world, 1974 was a disaster in politics but possibly an even greater, more exciting year in athletics. It did not start out well, however. UCLA entered with all their seniors returning. The possibility they would be beaten was completely remote. It was impossible.

North Carolina State, led by David "Skywalker" Thompson, had a fantastic team, but in a pre-season game the Bruins annihilated them. Seemingly no challenge posed an obstacle. They took their all-time record 88-game winning streak into South Bend and, uncomprehendingly, managed to blow an 11-point lead with just a few minutes remaining and lose. They went into a funk, losing a few more games, but still made it to the championship game, a re-match with North Carolina State. Forced into overtime, they again had it won, leading by seven. Again they seemingly chose not to pursue victory. North Carolina State rallied to win. It was over after seven straight NCAA championships (1967-73). Cross-town the beat went on as Rod Dedeaux's Trojans won their fifth straight College World Series.

It was certainly an all-California big league baseball season. Los Angeles got off to an absolutely torrid start, seemingly running away with their division. The proud Cincinnati Reds fought back into contention. The Dodgers, managed by Walt Alston, featuring Most Valuable Player Steve Garvey, the rest of the infield including Lopes, Russell and Cey, Jim Wynn in the outfield, pitching aces Andy Messersmith and Don Sutton, with Cy Young winner Mike Marshall in the bullpen, held them off in a 102-victory season. Then came Oakland.

The A's were two-time defending World Champions. Their regular season production dropped off a bit in a weak division, but they blew past Baltimore in four play-off games. Incredibly, despite featuring three Hall of Famers (Reggie Jackson, Jim Hunter, Rollie Fingers) and a host of All-Stars (Vida Blue, Ken Holtzman, Campy Campaneris, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi), Oakland did not engender respect from the mighty Dodgers. Thinking they already beat the best team in the game, Cincinnati, Los Angeles was impressed by their own record, their beautiful stadium, their capacity crowds filled with movie glitz fans, their private plane and the other accoutrements of Hollywood glamour. Oakland played in a grey stadium before sparse crowds in softball uniforms with rock band hairstyles. It was not even close. A's four games, Los Angeles one.

The Rams again threatened to break to the next level, winning the NFC West at 10-4 before falling to Minnesota in the play-offs . . . again. Losing to the Vikings was getting redundant. Up north, the Oakland Raiders seemed to have the best team in pro football. After knocking off two-time defending Super Bowl champion Miami in the first round of the play-offs, they were upset at home by the Pittsburgh Steelers, who pounded the Vikings in the Super Bowl.

The 1974 Southern California Trojans were far from the best team in the school's history. They were, however, the most exciting, not only in USC annals but perhaps among all collegiate teams ever. Trailing Notre Dame, 24-0, they scored 55 points in 17 minutes to destroy the Fighting Irish, 55-24. Quarterback Pat Haden, receiver John K. "J.K." McKay and linebacker Richard "Batman" Wood starred for coach John McKay's team, but it was tailback Anthony Davis who earned the moniker "the Notre Dame killer." After scoring six touchdowns against Notre Dame in 1972, A.D. added four more in 1974, including a return of the opening second half kick for a score. His performance made him the easy choice for the Heisman Trophy, but the game was played just as the ballot deadline was approaching. In those pre-Internet days, most of the writers already sent theirs in by mail. Ohio State's Archie Griffin won it instead.

"I saw the wildest football game I have ever seen in 1974," wrote Murray.

The game was televised nationally but Bud Furillo and ex-Packers announcer Ray Scott did a local broadcast that aired for Sunday replays. Scott, who saw Bart Starr in his prome, the Lombardi dynasty up close, flat called it the greatest football game his eyes ever witnessed. Furillo was even more colorfully effusive, stating that if the nation wanted to "end the drug problem in America, all they need to do is watch this gfame. They'll get such a natural high they'll never do drugs again."

Murray was in his rarest form when writing about Woody Hayes and the Buckeyes prior to their Rose bowl three-match with Southern Cal. "Ohio State is not a squad, it's a horde," he wrote. "It is going through the Big 10 like Attila the Hun through the gates of Rome." When somebody wanted to know how the team returned from a Rose Bowl practice session, Murray wrote, "The usual way – by goose step." This kind of commentary inflamed Hayes. In 1974 it reached its climax, at least by Rose Bowl standards (a few years later Hayes's career ended when he punched a Clemson player at the Gator Bowl).

If Hayes felt in 1968-69 a trip to Los Angeles was a descent into moral depravity, that sense was heightened three-fold by 1974-75. He was a tremendous Nixon supporter. Watergate, in his view, was a liberal conspiracy to destroy all that was decent and true, opening the door for debauchery and Communism. News of the convictions of Haldeman and Ehrlichman actually were announced on TV at halftime of the Rose Bowl. Hayes felt the world was against him. He punched a Los Angeles Times photographer who got too close to him.

When the game was actually played, Haden hit McKay with a desperate heave into the corner of the end zone, followed by a two-point conversion, and Troy scored a remarkable 18-17 victory over the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl. Coupled with several high-ranking teams losing in bowls that day, the win gave once-beaten, once-tied USC Coach McKay's fourth national championship.

Victory by McKay over Hayes certainly produced a fair amount of joy in Jim Murray's heart. "Jim and I were friends," McKay recalled in a 2000 interview prior to his passing a year later. "He was a great writer and a friend. We spent many hours at Julies." Julies, a college pub located near campus and across the street from the Coliseum, was McKay's hangout.

"I know my dad and Jim were very close and my dad had the greatest respect for him," said John K. "J.K." McKay, who with his friend and teammate from Bishop Amat High School, Pat Haden, starred in the great comebacks over Notre Dame and Ohio State.

"Jim wrote about me in December of 1974, in between the comeback over Notre Dame and then the Rose Bowl win over Ohio State. I don't really recall that he interviewed me for the article, but he wrote a sort of tongue in cheek column that might have been called 'A Case For Nepotism.' It was about the advantages and disadvantages of being the coaches' kid. I was really honored. He wrote about Pat and I.

"They could make a movie out of the things that went on at Julies, that whole scene. I was occasionally there, but I know my dad held court there. My impression of Murray was that there was a great deal of admiration between he and my dad. It was a matter of mutual respect. Murray was as good as it gets. It meant a lot if my dad had a column written about him by Jim Murray.

"I always read Murray's column growing up. He wrote a lot about football and golf. If he wrote about something I had no interest in I skipped it, but I just remember the first thing you did was open the paper to Jim Murray's column.

"He played a huge role in the mystique of USC football. He had great respect for USC football. I think he wrote about it in a clever and interesting way, with a certain amount of reverence.

"After the 1975 Rose Bowl, when my dad went for two against Ohio State, he wrote a great article extolling his willingness to go for two at a time in which there was no overtime and coaches did not always do that. He had high compliments of my dad and referred to other games, like the loss to Purdue <in the 1967 Rose Bowl>.

"Pat Haden was an English major who had the utmost respect for his unique ability, but Murray was a writer, he could have been a novelist, he could have written anything and do it well. Pat's focus on him was as a pure writer.

"I sure have fond memories of him. He was always nice to me. My dad was known as Johnny McKay in the 1960s. I remember when he was hired the paper called him Johnny M'Kay, no C, just an apostrophe.

"I don't really know about the Al Davis situation, other than it was said that Davis wanted the head coach job my dad got. My dad and Al got along and I had dinner with them on several occasions. Paul Zimmerman was the Times' writer when my dad got the job, and he never said anything about Davis and the recruiting situation and Davis's role in that, so I can't speak to that. My dad never said he did not retain Davis because he lacked trust in him. Al wanted that job. My dad had only been there a year. My dad and Al shared a view of football in that they understood the value of speed."

"In an odd kind of way, Jim was a USC guy," said Linda McCoy-Murray. "He liked the athletic program. He had a lot of respect for John McKay and enjoyed his company, but he'd say, 'I don't have a favorite team. I root for the guy who ran the wrong way, "Wrong Way Riegels." ' Notre Dame was never his beloved team. He grew up Irish Catholic on the East Coast, so naturally Notre Dame was the team, but I would agree that since USC was the team that rivaled Notre Dame, and had an equal tradition with them, that helped him as a point of reference when he arrived on the West Coast. Ara Parshegian was one of his favorites. He liked him a lot, as a person.

"Jim said that when you get too close to a player or coach it causes trouble. 'I can't crawl in bed with a coach or owner because one day I'll have to write something about that guy and it will rear its ugly head,' he'd say."

On January 20, Murray wrote a column about Mickey Mantle's induction into the Hall of Fame. There was something missing in it. It lacked the joy d'vivre of his 1962 ode to Willie Mays. Murray could not come around to the Yankees. They were not a poem, but a bank statement.

Murray wrote a column about race driver A.J. Foyt. "Death is always on the pole in this game," he wrote. "No 500-mile guarantee comes with these cars. Neither car nor driver has a warranty." Hockey star Bobby Orr "could score on the German Army ("A Legend in Disguise," March 12).

In July Murray went to Anaheim to catch up on Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson. He quoted ex-Angels manager Bill Rigney, who said he swore Robinson sold his soul to the devil, finding no other explanation for how he was always positioned in the right place to make catches that were just not human. All balls that go over third base are called foul, Rig explained, "because they figure if it was fair Brooksie would have caught it." It was a take-off on the old Ted Williams line that if a pitcher threw him a strike, "Mr. Williams would let you know it."

When Dizzy Dean passed away, Murray put it in perspective, describing the pitcher's era (the Great Depression) as "the Grapes-of-Wrath America." He was as "vain as a movie star, as amiable as a dolphin."

"Son," Dean once said to a hitter, "what kind of pitch would you like to miss?"

In "Catchin' Up With Satch" (August 11), Murray left little doubt that in his mind former Negro League ace Satchel Paige was baseball's greatest all-time pitcher. Coming four years after the famed USC-Alabama football game, it was another distinctly sociological piece advocating fairness for all. As whenever he came across a subject who really had something to say, he broke from his usual standard of not quoting his subjects much, this time capturing many of Paige's many homilies.

He addressed his own personal ambition on August 25 ("Blasting a Golf Trail") when he wrote, "Some guys want to climb the Matterhorn. Others dream of singing opera. Still others wish they could quarterback the Rams. But my life's ambition has always been to hold the course record somewhere." As in, "That's Jim Murray. You know, he holds the course record at L.A. North. Shot a 56. In the rain."

He wrote of tennis star Jimmy Connors, "At Wimbledon, the British treated him as if he had asked the Queen to hold his coat." In "Weird Site For a Fight," Murray managed to write an entire colorful column about the incongruity of a heavyweight title match fought in the old Belgian Congo, in the city of Kinshasa in what was then called Zaire, in "darkest Africa." He never once mentioned the two fighters, Ali and Foreman, instead lacing the column with literary references to Robinson Crusoe and "Dr. Livingston, I presume." Eventually Ali upset Foreman, completely changing the dynamics of boxing. The victory put Frazier back in play and made Ali's legend once and for all.

In "Woman of the Century" (November 17), he wrote a delightful piece about Mary Sutton Bundy, whose husband had Bundy Drive (later the infamous street where O.J. Simpson probably killed his wife) named after him.

"I interviewed the Rose Queen the other day," he wrote. "Only this one was from 1908." She also won Wimbledon in 1905. The piece was a throwback to "more graceful days in the life of this state."

"You certainly have compiled a monumental library of humorous and serious writings," crooner Bing Crosby wrote in a 1974 letter to the writer.

1975 may have been the worst year of the decade. New York declared itself on the verge of bankruptcy and President Ford refused to come to their aid. It was certainly a rotten year for the Big Apple. The greatest of American cities was a mere shadow of its once-proud self. Sports victories by the Jets, Mets and Knickerbockers provided temporary hiatus from its troubles, but crime, corruption, racial strife and union strikes brought them to their knees. By 1975 their sports teams were generally in the doldrums, too.

As bad as it was in New York, Saigon had a far worse year, one of the worst ever. Given a Seoul, South Korea-style peace, as in the aftermath of the Korean War, after Watergate the Communists realized America was weak. Without Nixon to stand up to them, they began threatening Saigon. U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and the Democrats, now in the majority, refused to provide any foreign assistance, military or even monetary, to stem the tide. In April the North Vietnamese overwhelmed South Vietnam, creating a massive boatlift in a desperate attempt to escape their clutches. In the end, the decision not to assist South Vietnam resulted in 1 million murdered in Vietnam, 1.5 million Cambodia, and many thousands killed in Laos and surrounding regions.

An April 3 L.A. Times headline, however, read "Ford Blames Thieu," as in South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, the man behind the 1963 President Kennedy-sponsored coup d'état upending the old order, sparking the entire conflict. President Ford called it a "disaster of incredible proportions," but at the time he had no idea. It was only after 1979, when it was over and press reports seeped back to the West, that the true horrors were exposed.

The Democrats held the Church Committee hearings in 1975. Outraged by Central Intelligence Agency covert activities going back to installation of the Shah of Iran and ouster of a Socialist in Guatemala in the 1950s, as well as secret military operations in conjunction with the Vietnam War, they de-fanged the CIA. Combined with the death a few years earlier of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the Watergate revelations and new information shedding doubt on the Kennedy assassination, it created a major shake-up in the intelligence community. The Soviets took full advantage.

Peeved at having been dis-placed as the dominant influence in the Middle East after the Yom Kippur War, they began a five-year period of "adventurism." They stepped up military, political, covert, espionage and propaganda operations in Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific theatre. They expanded their military and took the lead in the arms race. Much of the West acquiesced. Europe for all practical purposes went Socialist. Many chose appeasement, not even using the term Cold War in their lexicon. Protestors in the U.S., Berlin, Paris and other cities marched, demanding uni-lateral U.S. withdrawal of nuclear arms.

Pat Jordan followed up The Suitors of Spring with an even better book, A False Spring, his dead-on account of playing minor league baseball.

After a seemingly unending string of marvelous sports years for Southern California teams, 1975 was relatively down. Most regions of the country, like Chicago and even New York, would have gladly traded for what L.A. had, but fans were spoiled. Ultimately only UCLA reached the mountaintop when John Wooden's last team rebounded from the disappointment of 1974 to win his 10th NCAA championship in 12 years. After victory was achieved in San Diego, Wooden announced his retirement.

Murray wrote eloquently of the Wizard of Westwood at the end ("He Dared Stand Alone," April 4). "This is not old Blood and Guts or Old Hickory, this is Mr. Chips saying goodbye," he wrote. All Wooden wanted was a schoolroom with pictures of "George Washington, Christ and a pair of crossed flags." He was "St. John," straight out of the New Testament. Murray half expected to see him walk to work "across Santa Monica Bay." Living by Wooden's rules was "real easy to follow – if you lived in a convent."

He once won an NCAA title with "nothing more than 6-5 centers and the Book of Leviticus." UCLA was a campus surrounded by "Gomorrah by the Sea," but at a place where half-naked coeds looked like Barbi Benton (who was one of those coeds when Wooden coached there), frat parties were sometimes junior varsity tune-ups for the real thing a mile or so away at Hugh Hefner's mansion, and rumors of a cheerleader sex-fest ran rampant, "Wooden quietly went his winning way with the Bible in one hand and a basketball in the other."

Rick Barry and the Golden State Warriors won an unlikely four-game sweep of Elvin Hayes and the Washington Bullets to capture the title. The NBA was into the first or second year of a distinct down period. The Lakers and then the Boston Celtics (after 1976) gave way to a succession of other champions. Drugs and sexual misconduct became the dominant story in the league, with attendance down as a result.

The Cincinnati Reds entered the 1975 campaigned determined to show the Dodgers they were still the best in the West. Los Angeles had a perfectly fine season by most standards, but never sniffed Cincinnati. The Big Red Machine had a team for the ages, capturing an amazing 108 victories and a thrilling seven-game World Series over the Boston Red Sox (featuring two Trojans, Fred Lynn and Bill "Spaceman" Lee).

The California Angels were desultory, but nevertheless featured a one-two pitching combination any team in history would have envied. Nolan Ryan continued to throw no-hitters and strike hitters out at a pace even beyond that of the great Koufax. A young left-hander, Frank Tanana, threw almost as hard and appeared to be just as good. The Oakland A's ended their string of World Championships at three. After winning their division, they met their match in the form of a three-game sweep by Boston. It was the end of an era.

In 1970, former St. Louis outfielder Curt Flood challenged baseball's reserve clause rule. As an eventual result Dave McNally, a former Oriole but on the verge of retirement, and hotshot Dodger right-hander Andy Messersmith, were both declared the first free agents by 1975. George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees swooped up Jim "Catfish" Hunter of Oakland. The entire nature of professional sports was about to be turned on its head. The kind of dynasties built by owner Charlie O. Finley and the A's were about to become a thing of the past.

In "Death of an Heirloom," Murray addressed the passing of Casey Stengel. Stengel spent the last decade of his life living near his friend, former Brooklyn Dodger Rod Dedeaux, in Glendale, California. He was given a cushy job at a local bank. Murray created a humorous scenario in which Stengel's entrance to Heaven is announced by "The Owner," who directs him to a press conference of sorts with "my writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, so he can tell them how he won the 1953 World Series by holding Robinson on."

Some have called the 1975 Los Angeles Rams the greatest pro football team not to win a Super Bowl. They were certainly as good defensively as any club, setting a record for fewest points allowed in the regular season. Led by Fred Dryer and Jack "Hacksaw" Reynolds, everything was in place when they hosted the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC championship game at the Coliseum, but Roger Staubach dissected their famous D in a 37-7 stomping. Dallas then fell to the Steelers, Pittsburgh's second straight Super Bowl win.

John McKay retired at USC after a disappointing season. It was a UCLA year. Led by All-American quarterback John Sciarra, the Bruins beat USC and then stopped unbeaten Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. Woody was denied the national championship again, a source of greater and greater frustration to the crusty old Buckeye coach.

In boxing, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought the "Thrilla in Manila," an epic struggle fought in the most humid, miserable conditions imaginable in the Philippines. Murray's prediction after the shortened 1973 Foreman-Frazier bout, that it had not just cost Frazier money but also hurt the sport, proved unfounded. It widened the arena and spectacle of it. When Ali beat Foreman in 1974, it re-energized the Ali-Frazier rivalry, which by 1975 was downright mean. Ali turned it into racial and religious bigotry, claiming Frazier betrayed his African-American heritage and, in maintaining his Christianity, was not true to the so-called black man's religion. It created friction that Frazier, who once lent Ali money so he could keep training when he was stripped of his title, never forgot. Ali beat Frazier in a re-match, and somehow managed to win the third title bout between the two great champions, retaining his crown and place in history.

Murray re-visited a favorite old subject in 1975, Willie Mays. It was a whimsical slap, probably in part his own vision of personal morality as it was a sad reflection on a player he admired greatly, but who played past his prime and was now an embittered "victim" laboring under the lie that somehow the world did not treat him as he deserved. He also wrote of race in a column about the black golfer Lee Elder. Elder just plain "earned his way in." He was not there because of legislation or protests, or even flowery columns written by a talented writer with a social conscience.

"Lee Elder's soap box is the first tee," he wrote. "His sermon is a first at Monsanto, an appearance at The Masters, a play-off with Nicklaus. I don't know of any rhetoric that could be more penetrating or meaningful. A 69 is plenty of militancy for whitey in this game."

When Julius Erving made his Los Angeles debut, Murray wrote, "He can hang in the air so long on a jump shot, they say, he could jump out of a one-story building and take an hour to hit the ground. If he jumped off the Empire State Building, he'd hover indefinitely."

Bill Veeck ("Baseball's Showboat") bought a Cleveland Indians team that had not won the pennant in years and "couldn't have cared less. They were as passionless as cost accountants, a locker room full of nine-to-five guys who correctly understood their function in life was to lose gracefully to the Yankees and go home." But Veeck made them exciting, fun and good, winning the 1948 pennant while setting the big league attendance record of 2,620,627 (subsequently broken by the 1962 Los Angeles Dodgers).

In 1976, Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung died at 82. His death created opportunities Richard Nixon saw four years earlier. Many criticized Nixon for dealing with a man responsible for the death of millions. His greatest crimes occurred in the last decade of his life, the "Cultural Revolution" of 1966-76. But Nixon knew someday Mao would be out of power and wanted to open a dialogue with his successors. When Mao passed from the scene the wholesale killing ended. The Chinese have certainly committed many crimes and human rights abuses since then, but not close to Mao's excesses. They have been forced, in a way, to become part of a capitalist system in which they are partners, like it or not, with America within the framework of a global economy. Monetary forces have made it impossible to truly contemplate a world war with the U.S. There is too much money at stake.

1976 was a political year. Like 1964, it was seemingly a year of decision in which the American Democrat Party could easily have surveyed the results and reached the conclusion they were the "winners of history." After sweeping the 1974 mid-terms, the Democrats continued to consolidate gains in the aftermath of Watergate. Ronald Reagan refused to back off despite the Republican establishment's demands he not challenge President Ford.

Reagan fought for the nomination right up until the convention in Kansas City. Given the stage, he gave a speech espousing his political philosophies, as he did in 1964 when he made a televised address "on behalf" of Barry Goldwater that was really to launch his own career. Ford was nominated, but badly weakened in light of his pardoning of Richard Nixon and subsequent disaster in Vietnam.

The great surprise of 1976 was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. The Democrats had many "stars" in their arsenal. Many felt it was finally time for Senator Kennedy, forced to the sidelines in 1972 by Chappaquiddick, but his role in de-funding our South Vietnamese allies, which was resulting in wholesale slaughter, set him back. In the long run, Carter's ascension was a testament to the political power of the South. In many ways, this could be traced back to the famed 1970 football game between USC and Alabama, which Murray wrote about so brilliantly.

The Democrats seemed to accede to the notion that the conservatism of the South needed to be paid attention to. Carter's election apparently consolidated a coalition of different regions as LBJ's 1964 victory had. The Republicans were given a tremendous setback.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a Laker in 1975-76, the Most Valuable Player in the league, but his team was in a major transition period. Gene Bartow took over as UCLA's basketball coach. When the Bruins fell in the NCAA Tournament, he was raked over the coals. Coach Bobby Knight won his first national championship at Indiana, and collegiate basketball was into a whole new era. The Dodgers were again competitive, but nobody was going to defeat Cincinnati. The Reds captured their second straight World Championship.

The Rams gave aging hero Joe Namath a last chance at the beginning of the season. The L.A. Times hoped he could provide some colorful stories, dubbing him "Hollywood & Vine Joe," but he had reached the end of the line. Los Angeles finished 10-3-1, beat Dallas in the play-offs, and squared off against Minnesota – again – in the NFC title game. The result was a familiar won: Minnesota 24, Los Angeles 13.

A couple weeks later the sun was shining brightly at the Rose Bowl, but not on the Rams. The Oakland Raiders, led by quarterback Ken Stabler, blasted through the AFC with a 13-1 record, finally knocked back Pittsburgh in the play-offs, and then destroyed Minnesota in the Super Bowl. Owner Al Davis finally won "the big one."

"I sat next to Jim at the 1977 Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl," said Art Spander. "He said, 'Minnesota's gonna kill 'em.' But he was sure wrong. I'd followed Oakland all year and I knew they would win."

It was a year of change. Just as Bartow replaced John Wooden at UCLA, Dodgers manager Walt Alston retired at the end of the season, to be replaced by Tom Lasorda. Terry Donahue took over the UCLA football program, and John Robinson was in his first year at USC. Robinson described in flowery detail how his team was going to run the table unbeaten. In his first game Missouri crushed the Trojans at home. After that they did run the table. When they beat Notre Dame, it marked a decade since the infamous 51-0 loss to the Fighting Irish. In that decade, USC had only lost to the Irish once. They defeated Michigan in the Rose Bowl and finished number two in the nation behind Tony Dorsett and Pittsburgh.

It was another good Olympic year for Los Angeles athletes, particularly USC and UCLA track stars and swimmers at the Montreal Games. Murray wrote a column about Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci. He said it was her Olympics, as 1932 belonged to Babe Didrikson and 1936 belonged to Adolf Hitler, until Jesse Owens "struck a blow for black self-esteem that never did subside thereafter."

Nadia was "the most famous collection of syllables to come out of Romania since Magda Lupescu . . ." Austrian downhill racer Franz Klammer thrilled fans in the Winter Games. Bjorn Borg captured his first Wimbledon tennis title.

Murray's February 22 column on golf's newest star, Ben Crenshaw, was titled "Baby-Face Bomber." Of the fresh Crenshaw he wrote, "He looks as if he came direct from a Christmas pageant." Ben Hogan, he wrote, "played golf as if it came wrapped in tinsel" and "walked up on a green as if he intended to arrest it."

" . . . But the greatest farm club in the history of the Major Leagues . . . and the most consistent supplier of Major League talent the past 10 years is a franchise maintained at no cost to baseball," Murray wrote in a column about USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux. "It finds and signs its own prospects, suits them up, develops them, refines them, weeds them out - and then turns them over to the big leagues fully polished and ready for the World Series.

"The University of Southern California baseball team is to the Majors what the Mesabi range is to steel or the forest is to Weyerhaeuser - a seemingly limitless supply of basic ore or timber.

" . . . Rod Dedeaux went to bat only four times in the big leagues. Nevertheless he probably should go to the Hall of Fame as a man who has done as much for the great game in his own way as Babe Ruth."

Murray's May 4 column on Muhammad Ali was a bit over the top, one-liners and hyperbole following each other, paragraph after paragraph, with little purpose beyond it. In his column about jockey Bill Shoemaker, he wrote that most riders rode their horses home "in filets, 1,500 pounds of frightened, bullied flesh," whereby Shoemaker brought the steeds through the finish line "as if it were a date." Handsome racecar driver Johnny Rutherford "looks as if he had just stepped out of the pages of The Great Gatsby." Huge Detroit Pistons basketball center Bob Lanier's size-22 feet were so big they looked "like supertankers."

When leukemia took the life of Minnesota Twins infielder Danny Thompson, Murray wrote about how the word "courage" was loosely thrown around, describing guys who played "with a limp" or pitched "with a sore finger." Thompson was "up against the 1927 Yankees of diseases." Murray admired Thompson's Christian faith, which he maintained until the end.

While the United States continued to debate the Equal Rights Amendment in 1977, the rest of the world tried to gauge what American weakness meant. It was a mixed bag. With Mao's death, China entered a new era, one less militaristic and more capitalistic. The Soviets were weakened by the Nixon-Kissinger triangulated agreements of 1972-73, and in particular by loss of influence among Arabs after the Yom Kippur War. But Watergate and the Church hearings made it much easier for them to wreak havoc in the Asia-Pacific theatre, Latin America and Africa. The Communists may well have felt in 1977 things were going their way, but one chink in their armor occurred when Egypt's Anwar Sadat recognized the right of Israel to exist.

The Lakers under Jerry West burst back onto the pro basketball scene in 1977. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was at the height of his great career. Murray's May 1 column, "A Rejected Landmark," depicted the superstar as "a national monument. The real Civic Center." He "belongs to the ages like Yosemite," a part of California lore as much as Jack London.

"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was put together by the same forces that made Mt. Whitney. Or Farrah Fawcett." He then went on to analyze how a guy who was arguably the best athlete Los Angeles ever had, essentially a homegrown product since he had played at UCLA, was not popular. It was, of course, his association with the Black Muslims. Kareem tried to "explain" the religion to Murray, who in turn tried to write it down. It was still a mystery. Abdul-Jabbar never reached the popularity of Jerry West or Magic Johnson.

UCLA was knocked out of the NCAA basketball tourney early, an unheard-of state of affairs. The Angels were ticketed to compete, but did not. The Dodgers got off to another torrid start. Cincinnati was never able to recover, even after picking up the great Tom Seaver in a June trade with the Mets. After beating Philadelphia in the Championship Series, Los Angeles took on the New York Yankees in the Fall Classic. It was a return to the glory days, of a rivalry starting in 1941, transferred to the West Coast in 1963, now entering a new era dominated by George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Sparky Lyle, Tom Lasorda, Steve Garvey and Don Sutton. It did not fail to thrill. In game six at Yankee Stadium, Jackson unloaded with three home runs, finishing with five in the Series to carry his team back into the glory halls after a 12-year absence.

Murray was at Yankee Stadium and up to the task. "Excuse me while I wipe up the bloodstains and carry off the wounded," he wrote. "The Dodgers forgot to circle the wagons.

"Listen! You don't go into the woods with a bear. You don't go into a fog with Jack the Ripper. You don't get in a car with Al Capone. You don't get on a ship with Morgan the Pirate. You don't go into shark waters with a nosebleed. You don't wander into the Little Big Horn with General Custer." His "nose bleed" in "shark waters" became a cultural touch phrase, picked up on by Hollywood, who came to view the cut-throat movie business as Swimming with Sharks.

Jackson, who once said if he played in New York he would have a candy bar named after him, now was a superstar in the Big Apple who might have "an entire chocolate factory named after him." The Yanks again were a "bunch of guys who go for the railroad yards in bombing runs or shell Paris with railroad guns."

One of Jackson's home runs "would have crossed state lines and gone through the side of a battleship on its way to the seats." The home run "is to the Yankees what the Raphaels are to the Vatican and the Pyramids to the pharaohs – symbols of glory and tradition." Murray reverted to his memory, of Dizzy Dean struggling in the twi-light of his career at Yankee Stadium in the 1938 World Series. It was an opera, with Reggie the star of the last act. "The 1977 World Series is Reggie Jackson's fee simple."

The Rams again won the NFC West, but in the play-offs it was as if forces of nature were against them. In sun splashed Los Angeles, the game was played on that day in a brutal, driving rainstorm. Former USC quarterback Pat Haden was unable to move his team in the mud, which favored the Vikings ground-oriented offense in a 14-7 win.

Murray wrote a column about emerging superstar Julius "Dr. J" Erving" of the 76ers, who at the time had 107 dunk shots while the rest of the NBA had 100. When Erving missed a slam-dunker it was tantamount to Koufax serving up a home run ball to Marv Breeding, O.J. getting tackled in the end zone, Ali getting clocked by Henry Cooper, Chris Evert missing an easy shot, Notre Dame getting shut out, or "Dr. Schweitzer bungling an operation."

Seattle Slew thrilled horse race fans and was the feature of Murray's June 12 column, "It's a Fairy Tale Finish." Murray also hailed the debut of John McEnroe, a teenager from Long Island entering Stanford. He somehow extended Jimmy Connors to four sets after defeating a host of opponents at Wimbledon. "The gateman thought he had come to get autographs," Murray wrote. "The linemen thought he was the ball boy." Murray correctly determined that McEnroe's decision to stay an amateur at Stanford was a good one, and predicted greatness for him. He was right.

By 1977, California Angels owner Gene Autry was a popular figure, but try as he might he could not turn his team into a big success. The free agent era was on, and Autry was beginning to make his moves. In "A Cowboy's Lament" (November 26), Murray speculated on why, despite spending big dough and being a great guy, he could not pass the threshold and make himself a Walter O'Malley or Jack Kent Cooke. When stuntman Evel Kneivel beat up a press agent for writing a paperback tell-all, it was Jim Murray he turned to write a column helping his public image.

"He had to be put back together more often than a museum dinosaur," he wrote. "He had more broken bones than a slaughterhouse. He was either in a spotlight or in traction."

In December Murray wrote about ex-football star Alex Karras, who was now an actor and pro wrestler. "The guys in the white hats always win," he wrote of the wrestling game, "but the black hats make all the money."

After the bowl games, which were becoming more numerous, Murray wrote about a series of high-scoring games. The teams in contests like the Gator Bowl and Bluebonnet Bowl did not scout each other as Rose Bowl or Orange Bowl teams did. "Are USC alums going to turn in their pompoms if they lose the, for crying out loud, Bluebonnet Bowl?" he wrote. "But if they lose to UCLA – now, that's serious!"

Prior to the Super Bowl between Denver and Dallas, Murray introduced much of the world to Lyle Alzado, a street-tough New Yorker then starring with the Broncos. Later Alzado became the face of the Raiders.

After moving to Los Angeles, writer Alex Haley read Murray "now or then" until he "perceived – this is guy damn good! And for a long time I've just had it in mind to tell you that. You are a fine writer, my friend!" he wrote to him.

Star Trek star William Shatner also wrote a letter to Jim, stating on July 3 that day's column was "the funniest piece of writing I've read anywhere . . . You're genius is undeniable . . ."

Then came 1978. Whereby 1977 was not a big year for world-shaking headlines, 1978 was a year of both tragedy and triumph. The conservatives won two victories, one small, the other a portend of bigger things to come. Allan Bakke was allowed to enter UC Davis Medical School. He had been denied admission because he was white. The quota for minorities had not been satisfied. The U.S. Supreme Court parsed the issue, voting that while Bakke was an individual winner who should be admitted to the school, the Affirmative Action policies used to keep him out were still Constitutional. A larger victory for the right came with the passage of California's Proposition 13, which mandated that tax rates be held to the years of home purchase, not constantly increased as a form of indentured payment by tax payers.

President Carter returned the Panama Canal to Panama. Pope Paul VI died. His successor would help end the Cold war and usher in a new era of Christianity. Times readers were shocked to pick up the paper on November 21. In a story covered by Charles Krausse, Robert Barkdoll and Leonard Greenwood, the headlines were "Jones Ordered Cultists to Drink Cyanide Poison" under "STARTED WITH BABIES." Aerial photos showed hundreds of dead bodies, the result of a mass suicide ordered by the Reverend Jim Jones of his followers in Guyana. In December, the United States recognized full diplomatic relations with China, a process begun in 1972 when President Nixon visited the Communist country.

Theodore White's In Search of History and Richard Nixon's Memoirs were both published in 1978. Nixon's Best Seller came in confluence with his famed series of interviews with David Frost.

It was another one of those "California years" in the world of sports. USC's baseball team was believed to be the best in college history. They finished 54-9, capturing the school's 11th national championship. The Dodgers rallied after early struggles – the opposite of their 1974 and 1977 approaches – to capture the division and then the National League pennant via a play-off win over Philadelphia. However, the World Series again proved elusive. In game two at Dodger Stadium, a young, hard-throwing reliever, Bob Welch, struck out the vaunted Jackson with the game on the line to give his team a 2-0 Series lead, but the Yankees swept all three games at Yankees Stadium. Back in Los Angeles, Jackson homered and Catfish Hunter shut down L.A.'s bats to give New York the title with a 7-2 victory.

The Trojans were a football juggernaut. In September they traveled to Birmingham's Legion Field, an epic return to the scene of their famed 1970 triumph, which Jim Murray wrote so eloquently about. This time, there was no "quiet advantage" available to the Trojans. Alabama recruited and was loaded with many black stars. USC dominated behind the running of All-American tailback Charles White, winning 24-14. The success of Bear Bryant's integration was evident in what did not happen. The racial issue simply did not exist this time around, a mere eight years after it was so much a part of the national conversation.

USC was upset by Arizona State. The Trojans beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl, and Alabama upended unbeaten Penn State in the Sugar Bowl. The normal convention did not hold up. The argument was that USC, having beaten the Tide on their field, with all else equal, deserved the national championship. That did not wash with the Associated Press. They gave Bear Bryant the vote they denied him in 1966. United Press International gave the Trojans a split title.

"Jim was the kind of figure people did not see very much," recalled USC's Hall of Fame coach, John Robinson. "In 12 years I was interviewed by him three times. He came and sat down with me, and occasionally we talked by phone call. I would briefly tell him something he needed for his story. For the most part I just picked up his column and read it. He was like reading Hemingway, that kind of guy. He never reported on an event, but rather on a kind of condition.

"His commentary was always on point. There was some distance between he and the average athlete. He liked the mystique of USC football. My first contact with him was when I was a senior at the University of Oregon. We played in the Rose Bowl against Woody Hayes and Ohio State.

"I'm not sure how he felt about Woody, who was kind of an 'anti' in a lot ways. He had this grumpy Midwestern exterior. Murray's columns were not part of an animus, and there were all these great scribes; Murray, John Hall, Loel Schrader, Allan Malamud.

"I'm not sure of any particular games where he wrote about us with that flair. I know he did, but I can't pinpoint one in particular."

New Rams coach Ray Malavasi was at the helm of a fine team in 1978. They finally slayed Minnesota, 34-10, but were no match for Roger Staubach and Dallas in a 28-0 drubbing in the NFC title game. Prior to the Super Bowl at Miami's Orange Bowl, Murray wrote "The Same Old Song." In it he complained that previous Super Bowls were boring. He made veiled reference to "one of those guys from an acid-rock paper who drinks up all your drinks" and then writes what a "phony hype it all is." That was a reference to Hunter S. Thompson, who in 1973 wrote a freaked-out, half-true, half-psychedelic piece for Rolling Stone including an interview in a limo with President Nixon that many claimed was made up, but Pat Buchanan said actually occurred.

Dallas lost to Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. Instead of "one of those 12-9 games," as Murray complained too many Super Bowls were, it was a 34-28 barnburner. The game lived up to the hype.

He wrote a column featuring Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann. Naturally, it was called "Graceful as a Swann." He said the first thing to consider was whether it was his "name or a description. You wonder whether the Pittsburgh Steelers found him on a pond in Holland or in the third act of Lohengrin or Siegfried. He could be a ride at Disneyland. Tchaikovsky would build a ballet around him."

He was what Vaslav Nijinsky would look like if he could catch passes. Of his 61 catches in 1978, "only about five" were caught with his feet on the ground. On a team of bullies representing the steel town they played in, the USC-educated Swann, who went to a fancy Catholic high school in the Bay Area, was mis-cast. Swann was "ethereal," a man who wrote poetry, danced tap and composed music. He was to pass-catching what Lord George Byron was to reading, a favorite kind of Murray analogy he never tired of coming up with. If Michelangelo were around he would sculpt him. At USC, instead of majoring in eligibility, he wrote a term paper on plantation slavery. Swann was comparable to Claude Monet or the Louvre.

"If everybody played football this way they'd soon move the Super Bowl to the Met," he concluded. "Nureyev would be second string, and they would have to play Super Bowls with Swann in them to the strains of The Nutcracker Suite."

Leon Spinks's upset defeat of Muhammad Ali warranted front-page headlines. It represented one of the great surprises ever. Bjorn Borg defeated Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon men's final. Martina Navratilova defeated Chris Evert in the women's final.

When Maury Wills, obviously one of Murray's favorites, was not voted into the Hall of Fame, the columnist wrote a piece advocating that he was deserving.

On May 16 in "A Matter of Blind Faith," Murray wrote about ice hockey. As an East Coast transplant, he had more acquaintance with the sport than most Californians, but by the late 1970s a large constituency of Canadians lived in the Southland. It was still a relatively cult sport, and the Los Angeles Kings were not threatening to win the Stanley Cup. Murray's column mainly complained that he never really "saw" a goal scored. They were always ricochets off a knee, a pipe, never a clean shot off the case.

The 1970s may have been the best decade in the history of horse racing. Murray wrote about the tremendous steed Affirmed on May 7. Against a sterling field - "These were the kind that won the wars, settled the West, delivered the mail" – Affirmed made the Dempsey-Firpo battle look like a "debate." Murray compared Affirmed's "bored efficiency" with Joe DiMaggio drifting after a fly ball. If the Kentucky Derby winner were human, "he'd be Robert Redford."

Murray wrote a self-deprecating column on April 6 ("The Hall of What?") about being elected into the Hall of Fame . . . the NSSA Hall of Fame in Salisbury, North Carolina. He tried to pretend he was undeserving, admitting he never heard of the NSSA. He wrote they never heard of him, either.

When longtime Dodger Jim Gilliam passed away, Murray wrote a tribute to the journeyman. He called him "my favorite all-time athlete." He also wrote a great retrospective of the little-known 1930s boxer, Jim Braddock. This may well have been the genesis of Ron Howard's movie Cinderella Man.

On November 23 he wrote "Laws of Murray," a sports take-off on the old Murphy's Law: "If it can go wrong, it will." Among them: "Whatever can go to New York, will. Whatever can't will go to Philadelphia." The Rams' quarterback "is the one that's not in there." If it does not move, "it must be the Rams and Atlanta." Rhetoric, he wrote, "is the art of being loud." Nixon "not only admitted he was wrong, he set out to prove it."

On March 31, 1979, the L.A. Times startled readers with two front page articles by Bryce Nelson, Penny Girard and Ellen Hume, about a nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island that "unreleased" radioactive gas for an estimated two hours before it was detected and shut down. This combined with the film The China Syndrome all but doomed the nuclear power industry.

On May 26, the front page was dominated by headlines about 270 people killed in a Los Angeles-bound jet airline crash. In an article by Robert Shogan, President Carter admitted his "shortcomings." His problems were only just beginning. After the ouster of the Shah of Iran by Muslim fundamentalists, the cancer-stricken deposed ruler was given shelter in the United States, where he eventually died. Enraged Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, seizing hostages. It was the end for President Carter. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe was published that year.

In sports, USC's basketball program hoped to take advantage of John Wooden's departure, seizing the window of opportunity. They recruited several major prospects in the late 1970s, but most did not measure up to expectations, While the gap narrowed, UCLA maintained the dominant position. But the spring of 1979 turned out to be a breakthrough year in college baseball. Since 1967, two teams, USC and Arizona State, dominated the game. Texas and Arizona each won one upset College World Series in that time. The gap between these teams and the rest of nation was enormous.

In 1975, Cal State, Fullerton, a little commuter school in Orange County, scored a huge upset of USC in the NCAA Regionals. Coach Augie Garrido's Titans lost two games at Omaha and were back home so fast they "could smell the fumes of the plane they flew in on." In 1979 they returned with a powerful team. In a competitive field the Titans beat fellow conference foe Pepperdine, then Arkansas for the NCAA championship.

USC had their first down year since 1965, and went into a prolonged slump. Arizona State did win it again in 1981, but that was the last time for the Sun Devils. A host of schools and conferences all became major contenders, challenging Fullerton, Texas and Arizona. These ranged from Miami to Stanford to Wichita State to Georgia to LSU to Pepperdine to Rice to South Carolina and others.

The Angels featured a veritable hitting machine, swatting line drives and home runs at a torrid pace in capturing the West Division under manager Jim Fregosi. Nolan Ryan anchored a shaky pitching staff. For the most part, they did it with offense, but were beaten by Baltimore in the play-offs.

Only a 21-21 tie with Stanford after the Trojans led, 21-0 at the half, upset their efforts at finishing number one again in football. They rallied behind Heisman Trophy winner Charles White to beat unbeaten Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, 17-16, but it was unbeaten, untied Alabama who finished first.

In "Trouble Hits Tape" (March 16), Murray wrote of the great Olympic sprint champion and Dallas Cowboys star Bob Hayes, who was in jail for drugs. Of the drugs, he wrote they were "one baton Bob Hayes should have dropped." Later in the year he wrote about the complete opposite of Hayes, his teammate Roger Staubach. After spending four years "mapping the Gulf of Tonkin" and on a "gunboat in the Mekong," while his team "got good at losing to Green Bay and the Cleveland Browns," Staubach defied all odds by becoming a superstar. The Dallas quarterback, as outlined in numerous recent novels and movies, was supposed to be nicknamed "Broadway" or "Dandy" or "Whiskey." Instead, the former Navy officer and current NFL legend claimed he was never invited to the wild parties in those books, or they were "figments of the authors' imaginations," said Staubach.

Former Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson retired to run for office. "And, when the voters rejected him for the Senate in 1964, no one was sure whether it was because they didn't want him as a Senator or because they wanted him back as coach." It was probably a little of both. Jesus would have been in trouble running as a Republican in 1964.

Murray's December 30 column, "Recruiting Sales Talk" made fun of college football coaches and their efforts to bring in blue chippers. In it he para-phrased a famous Bear Bryant speech, after the success he had with Joe Namath and Ken Stabler.

"No, old man, if you've got some whiskey-drinking, women-chasing graduates of a Birmingham jail or Altoona pool hall, you send them to yours truly," he wrote, picking up on an actual speech Bryant once made to a group of California high school football coaches. Kids who want to be doctors or lawyers? Send them to "Muhlenberg or Susquehanna or Amherst." Bear would welcome the D students.

The Rams picked up a journeyman quarterback from Banning High in Carson, Vince Ferragamo. Surprisingly, he led them all the way to a "home" Super Bowl at the Rose Bowl vs. Pittsburgh.

Prior to the game, Murray captured the essence of Steelers linebacker Jack Lambert. "The first time you see Jack Lambert, you're tempted to ask what he did with the fangs," he started in "First Test-Tube Linebacker" (January 17, 1980). He was "the NFL's resident Jack the Ripper." He played football "the way Attila the Hun sacked villages." He wrote that if Genghis Kahn were a football player, he would have resembled Lambert, or other linebackers like Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke. The position required the same compassion as "a Chinese war lord or a Mafia hit man." Lambert, he wrote, needed hours after games to come down so he could mix with "polite company, where you can get one to 10 for doing what he does to Roger Staubach."

Los Angeles, in their last year at the L.A. Coliseum, led Pittsburgh and had victory within their sites. Behind Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann, Pittsburgh took control of the game, beating them for their fourth Super Bowl title of the decade.

Visionaries

By mid-summer of 1979, Jim Murray was an institution. He had been installed as the star sports columnist of the Los Angeles Times for 18 years. His rise, popularity and success mirrored that of the paper Otis Chandler took over, and the city they both loved. The 1960s and 1970s were a period of astounding growth in Southern California. This growth came with many setbacks. Air quality was abysmal. Traffic, over-crowding, crime and a relatively new phenomenon, illegal immigration from Mexico, were major problems. However, over two decades in which much of America suffered, the major cities of this country in terrible decline, Los Angeles stood atop the nation. It was America's most important city. It's so-called "rival," San Francisco, could only see their best days in the rear view mirror.

San Francisco had little of the panache and Old World charm that marked its heyday right after World War II. Its sports teams were a joke, all dominated by champions in L.A. Politically, they had no power, no influence.

But the world was changing. A new decade, the 1980s, beckoned. Tremendous changes in sports, politics and culture would be ushered in. Los Angeles would experience major changes, some for the good, some not so much for good. Its influence would not wane. Politically, an ethos with Southern California roots, its major protagonists men shaped by its uniqueness, would shape the world.

But for Jim Murray and his boss, Otis Chandler, the '80s would be much different than what they previously experienced. By the mid-1970s, Murray's eyesight was poor enough that he occasionally missed a turn while driving, and often was the passenger by mutual agreement with the driver. The move to Brentwood in 1972-73 was meant in part as an accommodation to his condition, but it began to become a major challenge in 1978.

In his 1993 autobiography, Murray wrote a chapter called, "On My Blindness, with Apologies to Milton." "1978 pretty much started out like any other year," he wrote. "The Open was in Denver, the World Series was in Yankee Stadium. Bad luck, as usual, was keeping its hand hidden, its cards at its vest.

"You learn in this game of life that you can't go along on a winning streak only so long. Slumps are inevitable.

"But I don't remember any foreboding when I took off for the World Cup golf tournament in Hawaii that December. A week in the sun, ukeles, drinks with umbrellas on them, Pacific sunsets, Bali'hai.

"Paradise is a terrible place to get your life ruined. But that is what happened to me."

He was in his hotel room when the phone rang very early in the morning. Scrambling to get to it, he broke his foot against a piece of future. The pain distracted from blurriness in his left eye. He ascribed it to tiredness. His right eye was already filled up with cataracts.

Six weeks later at the Super Bowl, he kept rubbing the eye. A good friend, Dr. John Perry gave him eye drops, "John, I don't think this is anything eye drops can cure," Murray said to him.

"Washington Boulevard" looked like "W-A-X-Q-H-V-S-P." He thought Miami was in engulfed in a dust storm. He mentioned it to Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson of the Cowboys.

"There's no dust in the air here," said Henderson. "It's as clear as a bell out." Murray realized it was his eye. "By now, I was going through the hotel lobby by Braille. Trying to put a quarter in the Coke machine was brain surgery." He looked at an egg salad sandwich. "It looked as if it were growing red worms." His eye was bleeding. The TV looked to be covered in blood.

He was taken to the emergency room. The doctor told him his eye was okay. "I think he was the guy who told the captain of the Titanic not to mind the ice," Murray recalled. "I not only hope they take his license away, I hope they take it away from the school that graduated him."

His friend John Perry found a doctor for him. Dr. Dave Sime was an ex-Olympic sprinter. Ironically, Murray once did a story about him for Sports Illustrated. Dr. Sime determined that he probably had a detached retina, and had been suffering from the debilitation for the better part of four years. The situation had recently gotten worse, most likely caused by his fall in Hawaii.

Part of the eye called a "scleral buckle" did not hold. Further tests were conducted. Half the doctors said it was a retinal detachment. Half said it was caused by trauma. Murray noticed that the age of the doctors seemed to determine which side they were on, causing him to speculate some sort of medical school theory had entered into their thinking; those who studied before it, and those who studied after it. Watching Operation Cicero on TV one day, he noticed that James Mason started to melt, literally flowing off the screen onto the floor. Murray went to bed blind.

The cataract in his "good" eye had gotten dense. It was not centered in the eye. He could not read. The cataract in the right eye had existed since 1978, leaving him only with peripheral vision. A four-hour operation ensued, followed by four other operations on the left retina over a year, but they did not put the retina back. He lost his left eye and was blind for a year, causing great claustrophia. The cataract worsened, but an operation risked pulling his retina down in the "good" eye, too. Murray dictated into a cassette or called his stories in by phone, giving it to a copy man word for word.

"At that point, I did not care," Murray says. "I would like to have died, actually. When you're blind, there's no quality to life."

As Dwight Chapin recalled, he like many Times writers most vivid memories of him were taking his dictation. They were in awe of him and considered it an honor, redundant or not. Most were amazed how precise his language was, even though it was in his head, not written down. It had the affect of adding to his legend.

Murray did not recall it as being nearly so precise. He said it was like learning his craft all over again. The Times supported him, assigning a young man named John Scheibe as his chauffeur and assistant.

"I had to be careful I didn't interview Dave Parker thinking it was Willie Stargell even though I knew Willie well," Murray wrote in his autobiography.

"I didn't hear him complain very much," recalled Scheibe. "I remember once we went to an Angels game. They were going to play the Yankees, and we had just pulled into the parking lot. It was one of his first trips to a ballgame after he came back to work. He said something like, 'The way things are, it's not easy being funny.'

"I think going to the ballpark cheered him up, seeing all his colleagues and all the players. The atmosphere was a good thing for him. And, he always had hope that the cataract would be taken care of. He had the best doctors at Jules Stein at UCLA."

Murray obviously had to make major concessions to his condition. "It went several ways," said Scheibe. "If he was at home and, say, had talked to Maury Wills, he'd pre-write it in his head and dictate the column into his tape recorder. Then, he'd play the tape to the transcription department at the Times.

"Another way was, he'd write it in longhand on scratch paper, in giant letters. It would take him, like, 10 pages for a column. I'd re-type it on regular paper and send it to the paper. Anytime he was covering something live, he'd write it in longhand.

"He and some of the editors noticed that the columns he tape recorded tended to go longer in length. He couldn't see what he was writing, and it kind of got away from him sometimes.

"Not being able to see who he was talking to obviously didn't help. So, I think he tended to write about people he knew. He knew Tommy Lasorda and Reggie Jackson. He knew what they looked like.

"He'd ask me, like, if the Cardinals were coming into town, he'd say, 'Who's playing well on the Cardinals?' I'd say, 'Keith Hernandez.' If he knew that player - if it was somebody that he'd interviewed before - he'd lean toward writing about them than writing about somebody he didn't know or hadn't seen before.

"It was a good situation for me because I got a chance to see what it was like to cover ordinary ballgames and then what it was like to cover the play-offs and the World Series. It gave me the chance to go into locker rooms and get quotes for him. He told me what he wanted, what he was going to write about, and then I'd go and listen for something or ask questions that would help him with his column."

Readers never noticed any difference in the quality of his columns.

"Writing a column with only the sound of your voice is something like assembling a 1932 Ford roadster wearing boxing gloves," wrote Rick Reilly.

"It wasn't very good," Murray says. "But to me, it was a hell of an achievement."

With no chance to repair the left eye, doctors in December, 1979 decided to remove the cataract from his right. That worked until the retina detached from it, too. "Retinas 2, Murray 0," wrote Reilly. The right retina was finally repaired on January 18, 1982. Murray's vision, albeit tunneled, one-dimensional and precarious, came back.

"I couldn't really tell any difference," said Scheibe of the quality of the writing. "They were the same Jim Murray columns, whether he was writing about Lasorda or about Nolan Ryan coming close to a no-hitter. I thought that the column he wrote the night the Pirates won the seventh game of the World Series, with Scott McGregor giving up the home run to Willie Stargell, was one of his best columns. I mean, he was writing it on deadline."

Scheibe recalled his apprenticeship of sorts with the great Murray in a 2007 interview with LA Observed and in a book, On the Road With Jim Murray.

"I didn't feel comfortable writing this while he was alive," he said. This attitude was not uncommon. Writing about Jim Murray is a daunting task. The overriding sentiment, or question is, 'Am I worthy of this effort?' "

Scheibe's assistance was a lifesaver, or at least a career-saver for the scribe, but he still had his share of problems. At the Los Angeles Rams' training camp he crashed into a rusty pipe. Dr. Bob Woods said it almost cost him a leg. "Friends told me the leg looked like the aurora borealis," he said, managing to make a joke of it. At Massachusetts General Hospital he could not tell if the doors were open or closed.

He then came under the care of a group of doctors. Dr. Charles Schoeppens had once fought the Nazis in the "Belgian underground" during World War II. Otto Jungschaffer and Dr. Richard Kratz were among the top cataract surgeons in the world. He underwent Kelman phacoemulsification, a cutting edge extraction of the cataract and lens with a small incision and supersonic drill. The doctors liquefied and pulverized the cataract, removing it with minimal trauma. Dr. Charles Kelman got the idea from a common dental drill. The procedure was a success.

Years later Murray saw a Charles Kelman at the Bob Hope Desert Classic. He approached him, asking if he was the renowned doctor. Kelman said no, he owned "frock shops," but later Murray found him in golf pairings under the name Dr. Charles Kelman. He wrote a column about him.

The day after the surgery Murray had patches over his eyes. He saw what he thought was a spotlight. It was a TV set. He looked up after the patches were removed and saw Craig Morton, number seven of the Denver Broncos, on Monday Night Football. He recalled it to be the "most beautiful sight" ever, Craig Morton on channel seven.

"I never look at Craig Morton without recalling that thrilling moment," he wrote.

At first he was given binocular-type eyeglass because the doctors thought he needed to really see the details of sporting events. Murray explained that he only needed to be able to see enough to get the general idea. He could look up the rest. What he needed to be able to do was "to read." The adjustment was made with greatest emphasis on this vital ability.

"It's not 'courage' that makes a cornered animal fight," he recalled of the experience. "It's necessity. Depression." At first he admitted to asking, "Why me, God?" but then endeavored, probably because of the great support of his employers, family and colleagues, that he would not "go gently into that good night," to quote another Irish poet, Dylan Thomas.

"I could not have made it without Gerry, my lovely wife, one of the greatest people ever put on this Earth," he wrote. "I shudder when I think what this must have put her through."

A few years later the retina in his other eye began to tear. He looked at the L.A. skyline and saw a "dust cloud," but knew that was not what it was. He looked in the mirror and saw "floaters," what he called "dogs in the neighborhood." Murray missed the 1982 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl in Detroit. Jungschaffer tried a "cryo" technique to freeze the retina back in one eye. With bandages still on, he got a call in his hospital room from Reggie Jackson. He was not supposed to take any visitors or calls, but Reggie talked the switchboard operator into putting his call through.

"He'll want to talk to me," the slugger pleaded. "I'll buck him up." The call was placed and Reggie was right.

The operation was a success. His retina held and stayed intact. Later when the capsule behind the eye became opaque, Jungschaffer gave him a laser surgery. His "all-stars" were now doctors, a "line-up to hang on my wall forever."

Those close to Jim Murray knew of his predicament. The public did not. Despite being plunged into darkness, he found a way to write his column, which was printed five days a week, syndicated in more than 200 newspapers and read by over 1 million subscribers in Southern California. He had to do this without being able to see the game he was covering, the person he was interviewing or most importantly the words he was writing.

Jim Murray was blind! A sportswriter whose job required sitting in a press box, observing the great doings on a field or court below, who could not see that with which was placed before thine eyes! Doctors had worked miracles and improved his vision to the point where he could function, but he was handicapped nevertheless.

In 1999 The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam and Glenn Stout, selected the finest sports articles, columns and essays from a century of newspapers, magazines and "assignment" writing. They selected one of Murray's columns, from July 1, 1979. On that day, in "If You're Expecting One-Liners, Wait, a Column," the great writer told the world of his predicament. It was this column which Halberstam and Stout chose for selection among the best of the 20th Century.

Many would argue Murray wrote better columns. His fabulous piece "Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union," after the 1970 USC-Alabama game, certainly must rank. But his "blind" column remains among the most personal and poignant in a career in which he sometimes, most effectively, became personal and poignant.

His impaired vision became a defining characteristic of the man. He painted a picture with words. Readers for decades visualized what happened on a field even though they did not actually see it. Now, neither did the artist, the wordsmith bringing it to them.

Murray's handicap would not prove to be a handicap. In later years, it would be viewed as the first of a series of tragedies that marked the life of this man who had so much social pathos for others. Here is his July 1, 1979 column in its entirety:

OK, bang the drum slowly, professor. Muffle the cymbals and 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, 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.
One night a long time ago he saw this pretty girl who laughed a lot, played the piano and he couldn't look away from her. Later he looked on as I married this pretty lady.

He saw her through 34 years. He loved to see her laugh, he loved to see her happy.

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 missing and the other misses a lot.

So my best friend left me, at least temporarily, in a twi-light world where it's always eight 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 miracle of children, the beauty of a Pacific sunset, snowcapped mountains, faces on Christmas morning. He allowed me to hit fly balls to young sons in uniforms two sizes too large, to see a pretty daughter march in halftime parades. 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 Reggie Jackson with the count three-and-two 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 to not laugh as a young hitter came up there 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 a 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.

"Jim didn't see well for much of his life," said sportscaster Roy Firestone. "His eyes often failed him, but his heart never did. And so he 'saw' with his brain, his heart, and his soul. And he wrote what he saw. He wrote with passion. He wrote with insight. He wrote about the soaring human spirit, and he wrote about the parade of life's most accomplished and flawed individuals. And he wrote funny!"

"Courage and strength and hope and humor have to bought and paid for with pain and work and prayer and tears," said Vin Scully. "Jim Murray had all those virtues during his lifetime. And he also has those crosses to bear. There was a decency about him that was glorious to behold. There was an indomitable spirit. And he gazed upon life and the world with sort of a bemused sense of humor."

****

Once Otis Chandler firmly affixed his imprimatur upon the Los Angeles, "it was like a comet in constant ascent, nothing but growth, bureaus opened, reporters hired, the world conquered, old friends alienated, new friends made," wrote David Halberstam in The Powers That Be. The Times opened a San Diego bureau. Chandler ascended to heights previously reserved only for Henry Luce, William S. Paley, William Randolph Hearst, Phil Graham, Arthur Sulzberger, later Rupert Murdoch; titans of communications, movers and shakers of the American Century.

Richard Nixon thanked Norman Chandler for his support in 1968. He did not thank Otis Chandler. But Chandler did not turn left. He supported the Vietnam War with reservations. He hated it, but was not blinded by liberalism. Thus, he was able to recognize the global strategy of Vietnam, which some 40 years later can be viewed as only a Pyrrhic victory by the Communists, a battle in the "long, twi-light struggle," as JFK put it, ultimately won by the United States.

Chandler and his paper recognized the brilliance of the Nixon-Kissinger strategy of triangulation, ultimately earning for Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. Nixon was wildly popular, at least from a purely electoral point of view. He seemed to have prevailed. Otis and Missy Chandler accepted White House invites, California royalty in a world dominated by Californians.

Invited to the Western White House in San Clemente, sitting on a promontory overlooking some of the wildest surf on the coast, Otis was even allowed to surf the breaks. He was embarrassed because other surfers were barred from riding the popular point. Otis did not like the privilege, even though he spent his life in privilege.

Editorially, his newspaper in the 1970s more resembled a daily magazine. It was a tour de force, a massive accomplishment manifesting itself day after glorious day. Otis's rise met a bump in the road in the form not only of Watergate, but of an oil deal he entered into with an old college pal. It went bad and his friend did jail time, although Otis escaped anything beyond embarrassment. Nixon and H.R. Haldeman were infuriated over Watergate coverage. Despite having a news service partnership with the Washington Post, their editor, Ben Bradlee, put distance between his paper and the Times, grabbing the entire spotlight engendered by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. If Nixon thought the Chandler connection, so much a part of his legacy, would protect him, he was wrong. Still, Halberstam wrote that the Times's L.A. editors were not plugged into Watergate, heading to their tennis courts, not fully aware of the massive implications in D.C.

The Times made hay of the USC connection, pointing out all the ex-Trojans (including the First Lady) in their administration. This caused Nixon, in one of his infamous tapes, to suggest that as long as they were to accept blame for the so-called "USC Mafia," they might as well take credit for the record-breaking performances of Heisman Trophy winner and NFL superstar O.J. Simpson (which ultimately would not have worked out well).

Chandler and his paper were even investigated to some extent during the Watergate hearings, but after some nervousness emerged stronger than ever. History ultimately judged that when the pressure was on, they investigated and covered Watergate with dogged aplomb. They were not the old lap dogs. The stakes were too high. After Watergate they consolidated holdings, expanded, bought new publications, becoming one of the richest papers in the world, and in the minds of many the best, pure and simple.

To the extent that Richard Nixon gained a measure of "revenge," it came when Norman Chandler came down with throat cancer. While staying at the family compound in Dana Point, not far from San Clemente, he was told during the last days of Watergate that the President would visit him before he passed away. Both times Nixon was a no show without immediate explanation. It was rumored Haldeman canceled the visits as retribution for the Times' coverage of Watergate.

50 years after William Mulholland's St. Francis Dam collapsed, the Los Angeles Times won its 10th Pulitzer Prize for their coverage on shoddy and unsafe dams in the United States. Gaylord Shaw did most of the investigative reporting.

Watergate changed journalism forever. Young men and women were entering college to study it. They wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein. This was a new generation, a post-Vietnam generation, cynical because much what they were taught about the United States was not true. Journalism, Hollywood and media in general always had a distinctly conservative, patriotic flavor to it. Not entirely, but without a doubt the right had their voices. The Hearst chains were distinctly Republican-oriented. During and immediately after World War II, business moguls who used their art form to tell stories of American Exceptionalism ran the movie industry. The cowboys beat the Indians. The U.S. Army and the Navy beat the Germans and the Japanese. The family unit was run by a male patriarch, the wife a happy, secondary partner.

But all of this was a thing of the past by 1980. Hollywood was now a distinctly left-wing vehicle, part and parcel of the Democrat Party. Not only was it a source of liberal propaganda, but it was a source of campaign fundraising and enthusiasm. After Watergate, the Democrats had a field day. They won complete control of American electoral offices at every level. There seemed little reason to think there would be a major shift away from this.

Otis Chandler was not a left-wing liberal, but he was not the rock-ribbed conservative his ancestors had been. He was shaped by his experiences at Andover, the exclusive East Coast prep school. Tall and athletic, with beach-blond hair, he was laughed at by the rich boys who did not know anything about the Chandler publishing dynasty on the West Coast. He was "punished" with a roommate assignment, a black kid whose father was a Chicago janitor. The black kid was on scholarship, seemingly out of place at Andover. But he was smart. Chandler had no racial prejudice in him. He and his black roommate became fast friends. They both succeeded in the classroom. Chandler earned honors in athletics, and graduated one of the most celebrated men on campus. He and his roomie got the last laugh.

Chandler competed against many athletes of color while at Stanford. Sports did not merely teach him about egalitarian fairness, but instilled in him a sense of competition and work ethic. These experiences shaped him. The Chandler family had never been prejudiced, but Chandler adapted to drastically changing times more than might have been expected of somebody from his station. The black underclass, Chicano radicalism; these were all issues that rose to the fore during his career as publisher of the L.A. Times. When a Latino writer, Ruben Salazar was tragically shot during an altercation, Chandler cried. Instead of recoiling at Salazar's incendiary writings, he allowed them to be published in the editorial pages, and opened his mind to Salazar's point of view.

Chandler drastically changed the culture of his newspaper. This change at the Times reflected the times. By 1980, the right generated much of its mojo in criticism of the "left-wing media." After the New York Times exposed the Pentagon Papers, the Washington Post exposed Watergate, and Hollywood dramatized it (All the President's Men), conservatives considered the "dominant media culture" to be the enemy. Conservative talk radio, not to mention the Internet, were far from coming into being. The right was alone. They had few allies. The odds certainly seemed stacked against them.

No Republicans were running around touting the "friendly" nature of the L.A. Times. Richard Nixon paid extra attention to them during Watergate, as it was his hometown newspaper. Chandler hired cartoonist Paul Conrad. Conrad was a vitriolic liberal. His depictions of Nixon, Republicans, and later Reagan, were vicious. The right felt he crossed the line, that there was no middle way, not fairness; just left-wing hatred. But Chandler hired him, kept him and defended him. None of his ancestors would have let him in the building.

Now, a new candidate, similarly a Los Angeleno, Ronald Reagan was making his mark on the political scene. He, too, paid attention to the Times. His wife, Nancy was known to personally call Chandler, often complaining about Conrad. But Chandler's paper was considered fair and balanced overall. It was by no means considered the kind of partisan liberal paper the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Nation and increasingly even Time magazine was becoming since Henry Luce's 1967 passing.

Chandler's paper was profitable, expansive, and influential. They made a $56.8 million upgrade of its letterpress process. It had begun the process of regional versions of the paper, specializing in issues in San Diego, Orange County, Ventura County, the San Fernando Valley, and other outlying areas. The articles were long, with an emphasis on lifestyle, feature pieces not subject to word count limitations. It provided extensive coverage of Hollywood, rivaling such trades as the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety.

The expansion of the Times into outlying regions had the effect of making local papers improve themselves. The Orange County Register extended their reach after changing their name from the Santa Ana Register. They beefed up their staff and became a top paper. Their obvious conservatism played to a constituency that wanted a counter-weight to the all-out voices of the left seemingly inundating them from every angle.

In the late 1970s, the health nut Chandler began to experience physical maladies. The former Stanford track and field athlete, a lifelong weight lifter and bodybuilder, he maintained an incredible physique all the years he was at the newspaper and into retirement. The man was also an adventurer. He surfed, did sport fishing, big game hunting, and engaged in extreme activities. He tempted fate on many occasions, absorbing injuries here and there. This, more than natural causes, likely was the source of any ill health.

Chandler saw that Punch Sulzberger of the New York Times and Katharine Graham of the Washington Post were still holding onto their positions. He felt they had been their too long, and figured if they were, so too was he. He though it time to "Give someone else a chance."

His son, Norm started at the Times in 1976. "What he really wanted was to be a surf bum," his wife, Jane Yeager Chandler, said. "His passion was surfing and if he could have figured out a way to make a living at it I think that's what he would have done."

Norm's brother, Harry wanted to be a filmmaker. Both graduated from Stanford. Neither ever had any military training, as their father had growing up in the shadow of World War II and Korea. They were the new breed. Norm went to work for the paper, but there was no assurance he or any of his siblings would inherit the paper as their ancestors did.

In 1980, more than 8,000 people worked at the Times. Its average weekday circulation was 1,043,028, second only to the New York Times. The Times-Mirror Company had an empire of assets at their disposal.

"I didn't want to continue as publisher until death or retirement," Otis said. He wanted to work on his health in retirement.

There was increasing complaint that the Times was becoming liberal. The Chandlers were still conservatives, but over time the editorial control slipped away from him somewhat. He could not argue against the excesses of Nixon and Watergate. His choice to replace him was rooted in these sensibilities. He picked Tom Johnson, a Georgia native, and all that meant. His directive was to "move it forward." In his retirement speech, Chandler said he left the paper "a better company than when I came in 20 years ago." Chandler was a self-described "fighter, a gambler." His marching orders to the newspaper were to "push the New York Times off its perch."

Many felt he already did that. The New York Times still had greater influence among the political class and the East Coast establishment. There was no way to get around that. Geography was impossible to overcome. But to those who read and compared both papers, Chandler's Times was better, more informative, balanced, lively, and highly readable. It had better photography and a much, much better sports section. It covered Hollywood better, a major source of fascination. It covered the doings of the Pacific Rim business community, which was replacing the old ways in the wake of Chinese recognition and the rise of Japan as a world economic power.

Chandler made himself chairman. He would remain as involved as ever before throughout the first half of the 1980s. A writer named Carey McWilliams wrote that many visitors and pundits came to L.A. to find out how it all happened, what drove the city of L.A., what made it tick. "But it was, of course, the Times that put the city on the map; that made it known – at the dawn of what I suppose can fairly be called the age of the media," McWilliams wrote.

Chandler's stepping down as publisher freed him to express his political views more openly. "To Otis, Ronald Reagan seemed the perfect guide to sleepwalk America through the 1980s; a former actor with a good, conservative heart who was never faced with a Vietnam or an assassination," wrote Dennis McDougal in Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty.

"He did some good things," said Otis of Reagan. "He was very articulate when he spoke. He knew California well. I think he made some booboos too, like when he said, 'If you've seen one Redwood tree you have seen them all.' Things like that."

But Reagan "came across the radar at the right time." Chandler concluded Reagan was both lucky and good, a combination Napoleon Bonaparte always said made for greatness.

Tom Johnson's tenure as publisher was not met by in-fighting or family control struggles. Norm Chandler preferred to try and work in Hollywood. He did not have the acumen for the newspaper business as did his predecessors. Otis himself said so in cutting interviews that roiled the family, but he did not care.

But in the mid-1980s, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote a book about the drug overdose of comedian John Belushi. He was shocked to discover rampant cocaine and drug addiction in Hollywood, and was "embarrassed" that the Times paid such scant attention to a terrible epidemic in their own back yard. By 1986, however, Chandler's influence had waned considerably. Some called it a "palace coup." Chandler himself refused to characterize it that way, but changes had definitely been made in the corporate structure of the paper. Any remote hopes that Norm Chandler would take over were dashed when he suffered a brain seizure, forcing him to the sidelines.

Otis Chandler slowly drifted off to do other things, engaging in a range of oft-dangerous Hemingway-esque physical activities as he always had, while lending the family name and money to a variety of philanthropic organizations. It could be argued whether the Los Angeles Times was still nominally a "Republican paper." To the extent they might have been, this lasted through Reagan's landslide 1984 re-election and possibly the election of his successor, George H.W. Bush in 1988. Reagan was a wildly popular local hero, and California voted for Bush in 1988. It was the last time the state went Republican. By 1990 the Times was decidedly not conservative, and would shift further to the left in succeeding years.

The affect of the Times on Reagan was far less important than it had been with Nixon. The paper (Kyle Palmer), along with the Chamber of Commerce and business interests, seemingly built Nixon, brick by brick, beginning with his recruitment and first Congressional campaign in 1946. Reagan was a movement, an idea. He tapped into something, and no newspaper could control it.

Chandler wrote in 1987 that he created several new sections of the paper, with two ultimate goals in mind. One was to make it the best paper in the United States. While this may be an arrogant view, one can take this goal to be that if the Times attained "best paper in the U.S." status, it invariably meant it was the best paper in the world. Non-English-speaking publications such as Der Spiegel (a weekly magazine) may argue the point, but realistically the only effective "competition" for this mythical top slot came from the London Times and the New York Times. If one were to compare the L.A. Times and the London Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or any other daily newspaper, side by side, section by section, over a period of decades beginning in 1960, if indeed by the 1980s and 1990s the L.A. Times fulfilled Chandler's goal of superiority, it could well be argued the edge came in the sports section. In so doing, it was the hiring of Jim Murray that made the difference. If his newspaper were a baseball team, he was the free agent slugger whose triple-crown season pushed a great team to dynasty level, or a pitcher whose 27 wins and 1.73 ERA, as in Koufax's 1966 statistics, made the difference between average and ultimate greatness.

But it was Chandler's admonition of a second goal that seemed to answer the question, how did he achieve the first? Chandler's background as a businessman from a conservative family is telling, for his second goal was to make his paper "the most profitable in the world."

There are many in the newspaper game, then and especially now, who would argue such a goal is mutually exclusive from the paper's "greatness." Many would go further, to say if a paper is highly profitable, it goes to show it automatically cannot be great. When USA Today arrived it was derived as a "McPaper," as in the McDonald's fast food franchise, which is certainly profitable but does not produce the "best food in the world."

In light of what we now know, in the Internet era of bailouts in which some Democrats, viewing the mainstream media as their ally, have called for the subsidization of papers by the government, Chandler's profit motive is worth studying. Since he sold the newspaper, their editorial content did indeed swing to the left, and their profits have indeed swung low. The days of Chandler overseeing a respected journalistic organization that made wild profits is over. While many conservatives would point to this as a sort of "proof" that conservatism is superior, it is impossible to ignore the profound differences in the media landscape of Chandler's day, particularly at the beginning.

But Chandler was an aggressive, hard-charging, optimistic publisher. He had vision, and his vision came true. At first, he faced gigantic costs in up-grading his staff, hiring and training personnel to meet better requirements, to add more space and build additional production facilities. New technology was coming in. He had to spend money to meet these research and development needs. His paper was a pioneer. He was their leader.

He saw the future. He saw expansion of the paper into regions, engendering what eventually became the Orange County, San Fernando Valley, and other editions, with actual plants and editorial staff located on site to meet these needs. Chandler's decision to create regional editions of the Times not only allowed his paper to stay ahead of competition such as the Los Angeles Herald-Express (later the L.A. Daily News), the Orange County Register, and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (by providing better local coverage than the local papers), but helped unify disparate parts of Greater Los Angeles into a cohesive, single entity. The average resident of Newport Beach, West Covina, or Calabasas, just to name three places south, east and north of downtown L.A., when traveling to Europe or even within the United States, when asked where he or she is from, is likely to just say "L.A.," or "near L.A." unless the opportunity for specificity presents itself. One of the central unifying experiences of these three very different communities has always been the Los Angeles Times, never more so than when Jim Murray was presented to them at the beginning of each day along with toast and a cup of coffee.

Murray became a benefactor of Chandler's profit motive, a rich man in a business not known for producing rich men. But Chandler's business model would make many wealthy. By 1987, when Front Page: A Collection of Historical Headlines from the Los Angeles Times was published, their net revenue increases were $400 million, or 650 percent. Daily circulation would grow by 520,000, or 104 percent. The Sunday circulation would increase by 400,000 (45 percent). Advertising, the lifeblood of all newspapers, went up by 87 million lines (110 percent). The staff increased by 1,900 employees (40 percent), 417 (140 percent) in editorial. Operating costs went up by $27.5 million, an increase of a staggering 820 percent. This was a sign of growing unionism and high-tech costs, ultimately not boding well for the post-Chandler years. In 1970, Chandler's vision of regional site expansion began in Orange County and San Fernando, along with modernization of the downtown plant, at a cost of $220 million over five years.

Would any of this have happened without Jim Murray? Under Otis Chandler, the L.A. Times would have rode the whirlwind during a time of L.A.'s greatest growth, but anybody who recalls competing papers like the L.A. Herald-Examiner must admit, while that and other papers had talented scribes, none were as talented as Murray. And no paper remotely approached the size, depth, weight and substance of Chandler's Times. He achieved his goals: the best paper in the U.S. (and the world) with the highest profits.

In so doing, Otis Chandler and Jim Murray helped usher in a new era in Los Angeles, the glory days. The high point was probably 1984, when the Olympics showcased the Southland. The L.A. Games embodied the Los Angeles of Chandler, Murray and the Times. The old saw was that great journalism, literary heft, intellectual gravitas, political power; these were the provinces of Eastern salons. But history could not be denied.

Once upon a time, the center of the world was Europe. Effete Parisians and highbrow Londoners laughed at American notions of individual liberty and, more preposterous, the concept that such liberty was bestowed not by a King or a court, but by God! In the 20th Century, America replaced Europe as the center of world power, ideas, culture. After World War II, that power was in New York and Washington. Los Angeles was an outpost. But just as Otis Chandler showed up at Amherst, forging respect from his Eastern classmates through sheer excellence, so too did his city and his newspaper symbolically and actually do the same. They made their presence known, and then some.

1984 symbolized this Renaissance. With Reagan in the White House and the Games played against the backdrop of the new art form, Hollywood, sports, politics, and culture all came together with a California theme. That theme could be summed up in Chandler, the athlete who loved the mountains and the ocean, who had an eye for pretty women, who did not see any logic in the concept that intellectual stimulation can only be promoted amidst dirty urban settings, in cold weather, by frail academicians eschewing physical attractiveness in favor of deep thought.

Who better than Jim Murray to demonstrate that sports was not mutually exclusive from deep thought? Despite his physical impairment, he like his boss was a visionary! Murray remained one whether he could see or not.

The poet of Brentwood

Scott Ostler was the "new breed" of young sportswriter influenced by reading Jim Murray. A graduate of the old Pepperdine University when it was located near downtown Los Angeles, prior to its re-location to Malibu, in the early 1980s Ostler was considered a "Murray clone," his columns appearing in the Los Angeles Times sports pages alongside the great man's. Whereby Steve Bisheff said "many tried" to imitate Murray but failed, Ostler appeared to have succeeded.

"I really admired Murray's writing," Ostler said, "and tried to copy it in high school. But by the time I got to the L.A. Times, I knew I couldn't write like Jim, and I had evolved my own style, which certainly owed a lot to his influence. Mostly what I 'stole' from Jim was the concept of writing to have fun and entertain the reader, be as non-boring as possible."

Readers picked up on his jaunty witticisms and turns of phrase. It was a challenge, a dare to try and write like Jim Murray. It could open up a writer to criticism, but readers generally liked Ostler. He pulled it off.

"I worked with Murray and was a huge fan of his, but I can't say we were tight pals or anything," Ostler recalled. "I got to sit next to him on occasion at games, and rub shoulders at an occasional company party. Delightful guy; smart, funny, absolutely non-pretentious. If he realized he was a journalistic pioneer, and that he made sports fun for millions of readers daily, he didn't act like he knew."

By the time Ostler worked with Murray, he was a legend. He rebounded from his blindness, adding to his luster. He was syndicated nationwide, the best sportswriter in the world, and a towering figure no matter now unpretentious he tried to be. For the new generation like Ostler, he was on a pedestal. Getting to know him was difficult, although not because Jim made himself inaccessible. It was a matter of respect.

"I'm not exactly a fountain of info and anecdotes," Ostler said. "I did get an early break because of Jim. He was getting on a plane to fly to Miami to cover the Super Bowl, I think it was about '81 or so, and suffered a detached retina. So I was asked to go in his place, my first big assignment.

"One thing that always struck me, he would interview an athlete for a half hour, take notes, then when writing the column, would use maybe one little quote. He was like an artist, word-sketching his subject, then using his own art to create a word picture. He didn't fall back on the crutch of filling his column with bland quotes from his subject, as many writers did, and still do. Jim made each column a Murray creation. His output was prodigious. I think at one time he was writing six per week. Amazing.

"He was a huge influence on me. I liked to try and be funny. Murray came along. He made the sports pages his triumph every day. It was a challenge, to try and imitate him. Writing is hard enough, and being funny, trying to copy that, I did that but it was not easy, so I evolved my style. Into my own.

"Writing 'like Murray' is something you can carry only so far. I mean, coming up with these one-liners. 'The guys' so skinny he has to jump in the shower to be wet.' Later I developed my own style, my own voice. There's nobody else like him."

Ostler did over the years change his style. He maintained wit, humor and sarcasm, but the shape, style and meaning of his work significantly changed and could not be considered the so-called "Murray style," much less a "Murray clone." While Ostler remains a real talent, there is something wistful in viewing his career. The sense of "what might have been." He had the talent to carry on "like Murray," but chose not to. Now with the San Francisco Chronicle, his style also reflects his Bay Area surroundings, which in the City particularly requires a certain distance from anything that smacks of being "too L.A."

"Traveling the country, I came to realize there was nobody else in the country who did what he was doing," Ostler recalled. "It was a gift but not easy. I'm no genius. I knew some of what he wrote. I would read Jim write about Caruso, or the Germans going to the Low Countries, but I was not inspired to look stuff up. He used references outside of sports, but he was not showing off. He was smart. We were not good buddies. I worked in the office. He never came in the office. I'd see him at a company party or at the airport waiting for a plane. I'd ask about his background, Hartford, Connecticut.

"He was flattered I even cared about that. He was very engaged. He did not talk like he wrote. Murray could be sardonic, funny, but he did not say, 'It's so hot in this airport I saw a cop chasing a pick-pocket and they were both walking.' He didn't just throw off one-liners."

Ostler also realized that as great as Murray was, the sheer material at his disposal was beyond belief. He worked during the greatest years in Los Angeles sports history, but also covered some of the most incredible personalities: Deacon Jones, "Hot Rod" Hundley, Bo Belinsky, Magic Johnson, Pat Riley, Al Davis, among so many others.

"I've never seen anything like Murray with John McKay or Tom Lasorda. Once at the Forum Murray was doing a basketball game. Muhammad Ali was there. Ali said, 'Murray is the greatest of all times.'

"The atmosphere was great, all those great personalities and a lot of terrific writers covering them. Mal Florence was in the trenches. Mel Durslag was at the Herald-Examiner. Bill Shirley was the sports editor at the Times when I was there. Jack Quigg hated how he messed with his copies. Murray didn't like it when someone on the desk messed with his copy. Jack Quigg was the assistant sports editor. They clashed on occasion.

"John Sheibe was a fairly young copy guy. He became Murray's 'seeing eye dog' and wrote a book about it a couple years ago. Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald was one of Jim's buddies, part of a group of guys who covered international stuff. He looked up to him.

"The Times was the most unprovincial paper in the world. If for instance the Pittsburgh Pirates came to town and had a player who was from Los Angeles High School, we didn't write up features on stuff like that. There was no hump on that at all.

"We all knew Murray was a big star. They let him write what he wanted to write, they were one of the top sports pages in the country. His writing had an influence on the rest of us. He came up with stuff nobody else did. Nobody said anything to him like, 'Jim, would you re-think this?' There were no meetings okaying anything he wrote.

"I wanted to be unconventional. I came up with weird ideas, nothing outside the boundaries, but with me I had to run it past Bill Shirley. We hired good people, colorful. Nobody was from the boring mold. Murray was syndicated by then, and what he wrote had a national impact.

"Murray had a conscience. When baseball first considered letting blacks in a 'separate' Hall of Fame, Murray thought that was a crock. It ticked him off no end. He made that a big cause. He did not cover The Masters for a couple years because of prejudice, the belief he could use his influence to effect change."

Ostler was asked about not merely the "Murray style," but the impact of the column on the city and writing in general.

"Sure, L.A. became a 'big league' town when the Dodgers arrived," he said. "Murray's column reflected part of that up-grade, and his style, his colorful, literary turn of phrase, undoubtedly had a Hollywood flavor that separated it from old East Coast stylings. It became the way writing and culture was reflected on the West Coast. It influenced me and everybody else who came along during this period."

Ostler was in Los Angeles, and at the Times, during the glory days. It was an age and a stage built by Otis Chandler. "Yeah, I wish I'd gotten to know Otis," Ostler, who was very young at the time, recalled. "I met him once, at a fight, said hi briefly. He never hung around the sports department, I never saw him in the office. His son Norman worked in sports for a while, nice guy.

"I was at Stanford recently, went into a neighborhood burger place, among Stanford athletic heroes' photos on the wall was the shot putter Otis Chandler."

****

The rest of America began to catch up with Los Angeles in the 1980s. It was not a matter of L.A. slipping, but other cities and regions finally getting back on their feet after the economic disasters of the 1970s. The stigma of Vietnam and Watergate were quite thoroughly erased. It was a Camelot period for much of the nation.

They enjoyed all the advantages of having a Los Angeles politician in the White House, with none of the headache of Watergate and subsequent disgrace. The power of Los Angeles and the state of California, politically, financially, culturally and on all other ways, grew beyond previous eras, but other areas grew with them.

Ronald Reagan was not really a Los Angeleno, but by L.A. standards he was one of them. He actually came to the city as an announcer for the Chicago Cubs when they trained at Catalina Island. During some down time, Reagan ventured over to Hollywood for a screen test, was accepted, and it began there. He starred as George Gipp in Knute Rockne: All-American and became the president of the Screen Actor's Guild. His time at SAG coincided with the Blacklist. Reagan cooperated thoroughly with the FBI, handing over numerous Hollywood writers and producers with Communist sympathies. For this he was hailed a hero by the right, hated by the left. A union Democrat, he supported Nixon and came around to the Republicans, switching registration during Goldwater's 1964 campaign. He took to conservatism with the zealousness of the convert.

His eight years as Governor were successful. Against longs odds and much criticism he overpowered Jimmy Carter in the 1980 elections by a wide margin. He inherited a terrible economy, Soviet military adventure all over the world (including the conquest of Afghanistan), and an America weakened by almost every possible factor over the previous seven years. Reagan had some advantages, however. Like his country, he had the advantage of history and its lessons. Just as America learned from 1,000 of European mistakes while forming "a more perfect union," so too did Reagan have the advantage of seeing the mistakes of Nixon, and how to avoid them. Besides, he was much different. Nixon was paranoid. Reagan was open and friendly.

Reagan immediately shut down unions, instituted conservative capitalistic principles, and by late in his second year had the economy moving. He called the Soviets the "Evil Empire," and built up the Armed Forces. By 1984 he was among the most popular of all U.S. President's, annihilating Walter Mondale in a 49-state sweep.

In his second term, the economy exploded. His policies pushed the Soviets first out of Afghanistan, then led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the freeing of billions in Eastern Europe, and victory in the Cold War.

Reagan was from the Midwest, but his easy-going style and Hollywood flair made him much more a California type than the buttoned-up Nixon. His cabinet was filled with breezy California politicos, mostly from his Sacramento days. Many were USC and UCLA men.

His home state owned him, loved him. In a huge place he had his detractors, but he won by tremendous margins. His Vice-President, George H.W. Bush had little in common with the state, but Reagan's glow was powerful enough to give him its Electoral votes in 1988, pushing him over the top.

Economically, the 1980s was a big California decade. Reagan further opened up trade with China and unquestionably turned the Pacific Rim into the most important port of call. L.A. replaced San Francisco and the East Coast, if indeed they had not done that years earlier. It was the age of Silicon Valley, a computer revolution, but as Reagan himself would say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Wall Street had a huge run. With that, New York began their comeback. Many depressed cities began to re-build.

The South made enormous strides. Now over their sordid racial past, loving Reagan, and hitting their stride financially amid huge population shifts into the Sun Belt and Bible Belt, they were now the juggernauts of the American engine.

Hollywood, however, took a big hit. They were not really part of the glory. This was ironic, as Reagan was so much a part of the movie business, but his people were the old timers, the Bob Hopes and Merv Griffins whose influence no longer dictated the game. John Wayne died in 1979. In the wake of Jaws and Star Wars, it was the age of the blockbuster. That meant some movies were wildly successful. Many were not. But the quality was way down. The sheer greatness of movies, as evidenced by the incredible fare of the 1960s and 1970s, was gone. It has never returned.

The biggest hits of the 1980s were action shoot 'em ups, often with a Reaganistic revenge-for-Vietnam theme in which macho American ex-Delta types returned to the 'Nam, rescuing POWs and wreaking havoc on the Communists. Gone With the Wind it was not. Music was a half-joke. Today, " '80s hits" are often fodder for ringtone comedy.

Athletically, it was not quite as exciting as the 1970s. Free agency, unions and player strikes changed sports drastically. This meant great stars were gypsies, and old rivalries not as intense. Television meant professional sports were still successful, but the golden age was over.

In Los Angeles, it was a mixed bag. The Lakers had their great "Showtime" run. The Dodgers ranged from champions to also-rans. The Angels found inventive new ways to lose. UCLA basketball was a shell of its old self, but the school enjoyed its best football decade. USC's dominance came to a screeching end. After losing twice to Notre Dame since 1966, they began a winless streak against the Fighting Irish lasting from 1983 until 1995. The Raiders moved to L.A. and had a brief run of glory.

But the fall of the Rams came to symbolize the changing paradigm. It was not so much the Rams' "fall," it was the 49ers' rise. When San Francisco won their first Super Bowl in January, 1982 it marked a huge shift in the north-south rivalry. The 49ers ushered in a new era in Northern California that eventually manifested itself in political and sociological shifts.

If President Jimmy Carter had any hope of re-election in 1980, it went up in smoke when a helicopter attempt to rescue the Americans held captive in the Iranian Embassy failed. Right or wrong, the failed attempt played out against a political dynamic. When conservatives were gung-ho it worked. When liberals tried it, their apparent lack of enthusiasm for valorous acts seemed to doom them from the start.

Israeli commandos seemed able to make dramatic rescues of their people when held by bloodthirsty thugs. A hard-charging Texas businessman, Ross Perot had more success orchestrating a daring private extraction of his companies' employees than Carter with the whole military at his disposal.

Rudy Abramson's April 26 front-page story, "Tense Day, Tragic Night" told the story of the disaster in the desert, reducing the President of the United States to ringing his hands. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, the Hamlet of American politics, had his best chance ever in 1980. He challenged the sitting President all the way to the convention, but like Reagan in 1976 could not overcome the power of the White House.

The hostage crisis overshadowed Carter throughout the summer, during the convention, into the fall election season, the losing Election Day, his lame duck last two months in office, his final hours in the White House, and even Reagan's Inauguration. The Iranians toyed with him, probably laughing at him. Reagan soundly defeated him and then took office. Carter's last aborted attempts to free them while still in office failed. Virtually the first act of Reagan's Presidency was the return of the hostages, but officially under his watch. It was a last insult to President Carter.

In December, Beatles legend John Lennon was slain outside his New York apartment. He was as much a part of the incredible music of the 1960s as anybody. When he left The Beatles, it ushered in the eventual downgrade of musical quality. By 1980 rock music was not nearly as good. It would not improve.

For Jim Murray, the move to Brentwood in 1973 was now, in retrospect, a necessary one. With his eye problem, getting anywhere from Malibu would have been almost impossible.

The bad political news was the backdrop for one of the great sporting events of all time when the United States won the famed "miracle on ice" Gold medal, defeating the vaunted Soviets at the Winter Olympics before a chanting crowd in Lake Placid, New York. With the crowd screaming, "U.S.A! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" the victory raised hopes at a time in which the hostages were still being held in Iran, the economy and interest rates were terrible, the Soviets were invading Afghanistan, and as a result President Carter announced the U.S. would not travel to Moscow for the Summer Olympics.

It was a lively Los Angeles sports year. Mercurial UCLA basketball coach Larry Brown surprised everybody by making it all the way to the NCAA championship game before losing to ex-Wooden aide Denny Crum and Louisville. A rookie from Michigan State, Ervin "Magic" Johnson combined with the old pro, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, to lead the Lakers to a six-game victory over Julius Erving's Philadelphia 76ers.

The Dodgers needed to sweep a three-game series at Dodger Stadium with Houston, forcing a play-off, but Nolan Ryan's Astros prevailed in the extra game to capture the division.

Both USC and UCLA went on probation during the 1980 football season. The Bruins beat the Trojans in what was dubbed the "probation bowl." The Rams moved to Anaheim. It was part of a dark period in franchise history. Owner Carroll Rosenbloom drowned in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Florida. Many suspected his ex-showgirl wife, Georgia Frontiere, of foul play. A terrible fight ensued between Frontiere and Rosenbloom's son for control of the team, with the ex-wife winning. Nothing good came of it.

Bjorn Borg defeated former Stanford ace John McEnroe in what may have been the greatest tennis match of all time, winning at Wimbledon. The U.S. did not participate in the Moscow Olympic, a nefarious decision by Carter. Murray, out of curiosity as much as anything, worked the Olympics. While at Sports Illustrated in the 1950s he was frustrated when a colleague traveled to the U.S.S.R. for the U.S.-Soviet meet and ended up reporting about "a track meet."

Murray was determined to give readers the flavor and color of what he "saw," which of course was still tempered by vision impairment, but a half-blind Jim Murray could paint a better visual picture than 10 other scribes. On July 16 he wrote, "Ivan, you're not going to believe this but the American Olympians are here and they're an average of 55 years old, alcoholic, wear bi-focals, hearing aids, and they smoke in bed and complain of gas in the stomach." The Russians required a "special permit" to smile. Obviously they were the "happiest people on Earth," because they did not need to smile in the fake manner of Hollywood actors. The weather was usually mildly cold, but overall "It Wasn't too Bad." Of course Murray was not given a tour of the gulags or death camps, either.

He wrote "it's a handsome city. Oh, it's not Palm Springs. Or even Palm Beach." He noted that the homeless and the riff-raff were "floated out of town for the Olympic party." He saw no graffiti. The people were "neither friendly nor unfriendly, just unsmiling." The Russians "won" the Games, but not by the margins their propagandists hoped for. "The rulers wanted the Soviet Union on page one for something besides troop movements," he wrote. Finally, he concluded "it's a great place to visit – but you wouldn't want to live there."

In February, Murray wrote a piece advocating for Raiders owner Al Davis's right to move his team from Oakland to Los Angeles if he so chose. In it, he demonstrated what could only be called a laisse-faire economic philosophy. It was straight out of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. He said previous leagues were formed by dint of men simply deciding to do it. Teams were moved, as in the Dodgers and Giants of 1958, on no more pretense than their owner's decision to make the moves. Therefore, Murray asked, what had changed? He did not like the idea of the government and the courts imposing themselves on a man's desire to operate his business where he felt like it.

Still representing Oakland but increasingly exploring a move to Los Angeles, the Raiders found lost glory that season. First they had to beat Dan Fouts and the explosive San Diego Chargers before capturing their second Super Bowl over Philadelphia. Reclamation project quarterback Jim Plunkett, the 1970 Heisman Trophy winner at Stanford but a bust for a decade in the NFL, made one of the great comebacks of all time.

Murray compared golfer Tom Watson to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, because Watson had always enjoyed the game, but now that he was a star he had responsibilities, just as Sawyer hated being "civilized."

On March 13 he re-visited familiar territory, Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant ("The One and Only"). The old recriminations about race were gone. Now, Bryant was a heroic figure, closing in on Amos Alonzo Stagg's all-time record for college football victories. Fresh off his second straight national championship (1978-79), Bryant was playing golf in a celebrity tournament in Palm Desert, one of his favorite off-season activities. His voice was "an indistinct rumble," and he was a "refugee from a steam iron for 40 years." When he hit a golf ball in the water and did not walk "over the top of it," it was obvious he was an "imposter." After all, he "wouldn't need a boat to go to Cuba." This was a reference to the Coke ads in Birmingham that showed him walking on water.

Murray wrote a column on April 16 about the emerging possibility of baseball going on strike. In it, he suggested that he found sympathy for the players. He furthermore added that they no longer respected the press even though it was the media who drummed up the excitement and fan support making it possible for them to become wealthy in the first place. It was a real sign of the times.

Murray enjoyed re-visiting his boyhood in a piece about former USC law student Buster Crabbe, whose life was changed when he won a Gold medal for swimming at the 1932 L.A. Olympics. Crabbe later became a movie star, seen in the science fiction matinees of Murray's Hartford youth.

In "World Class Leprechaun" (May 8), Murray wrote of the champion miler Eamonn Coghlan, "There is no need to ask, did your mother come from Ireland? Aye, you can see, and his mother's mother's mother – and so on, all the way back to Brian Boru."

Later in the year he wrote "All-Time Greatest Name," waxing romantically over some of the best names in sports history. These included Napoleon Lajoie, Germany Schaefer, Dummy Hoy, and Van Lingle Mungo, who he saw pitch in Hartford in the 1930s. Murray wrote the Dodgers of the era had a lot of guys "named Rabbit."

On July 13 Murray joined a growing chorus of pundits who believed the "Green Monster," the huge left field wall at Fenway Park, ultimately hurt the team over the years. They had two great left-handed hitters in recent seasons, Carl Yastrzemski and Fred Lynn. "With the right field fence two zip codes away, they looked at the seductive left field fence – and became inside–out hitters," he wrote. "That's like teaching Dempsey to jab." Only two pennant-deciding games were ever played in the American League, both at Fenway Park, "And the Wall won both of them." In a 1978 play-off both Yaz and Lynn hit 375-foot shots to right. Both were caught. Bucky Dent of the Yankees, whose 314-foot shot to left was a homer, won the game. "The Wall," he concluded, "has done more damage to the Red Sox than Harry Frazee. Only the Berlin Wall has caused more misery to the home team, to the good guys."

"Murray was totally wrong about Yaz trying to be an inside-out hitter," recalled Boston Red Sox pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley before moving to Marin County, then starred at the University of Southern California. "Yaz hit towards the Wall more times at the end, but before that I thought he could have been the best hitter in baseball, but he tried to be a dead-pull hitter and constantly rolled grounders to second base. Fred Lynn could go the other way and did so effectively. But I think Murray was totally wrong. People should want to hit the ball off the Wall, not over it. It makes right-handed hitters dead-pull hitters and they lose concept of hitting pitches where they're pitched. That's why I was so successful at Fenway, because I understood this psychology and pitched away from their tendencies."

"I remember he wrote an article where he called me a 'hitting machine,' " recalled Fred Lynn, an L.A. native, USC All-American, and 1975 American League Most Valuable Player with the Red Sox. "When I first got into the league, both Carl Yastrzemski and I were pull hitters, but it was foolish not to take advantage of the Green Monster. Outfielders would shy away from the warning track, so it wasn't just about hitting homers over the wall or doubles off it, but outfielders were less aggressive and they'd let a fly ball drop in and you'd have an extra base hit.

"He was a columnist I enjoyed reading a lot. He was a great writer. English is not my best subject, but he was a poet, very rare and fun to read, and if he wrote about you, you were special. I loved Jim. I considered him a friend and missed him when he passed. He was around a lot and he never forgot anything you said, but anything you told him always came out better in print.

"He wrote an article I think called 'The Hitting Machine.' I imagine I was still with the Red Sox, but he liked USC and played the hometown boy kind of thing. Plus Tom Seaver was a Trojan and he won a lot of Cy Young Awards, so Jim liked the angle that a lot of USC guys were stars in the big leagues in the 1970s.

"I never would suggest to Jim what he should or should not write about. Nobody ever said a bad word about him. He was the kind of guy who always did something good. He was like a dinosaur, the last of a dying breed because sports journalism became a lot different after him.

"I grew up in L.A. in El Monte, reading Jim Murray and listening to his counterpart Vin Scully. They were the same kind of guys. Both had a vocabulary unlike anybody else. We were spoiled, what with Murray, Scully, Dick Enberg and Chick Hearn.

"It was a privilege to be interviewed by him. The conversation always swung back to USC. He was a USC fan. To me, when USC recruited me I slammed the door on everybody else. Jim was an absolute SC fan. He favored them. He painted a picture of USC that made people want to go there. He helped create the mystique of the Trojans, an image that was very appealing."

In November Murray took on a very interesting different subject. Ken Uston was the world's greatest black jack player. Eventually a screenplay, 21 was written about his exploits. It was obvious, from Murray's Hartford background and his uncles, who were gamblers, that this was a very romantic notion to him.

When a TV movie (staring Robert Urich) depicting the life of Rocky Bleir of the Steelers aired, Murray reviewed it. Murray had been at a press conference in 1969 when Bleir, a former Notre Dame captain, announced he was going to play pro football. He had just had his foot blown up in Vietnam, but he fought his way back. When he did actually make it, Murray wrote, "You made us look good. You made America look good."

Shortly after Christmas, Murray wrote a charming column about his granddaughter, Danica Erin Skeoh. He started it out as if confessing to having fallen in love with a younger woman, leading the reader into the punch line, which was that his unrequited love was for a beautiful little girl who stole his heart.

President Reagan took office in 1981. He inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. Federal monetary policies made it virtually impossible to get a loan to buy a house, the American Dream. Motorists planned their days around trips to the gas station, bringing reading material while waiting out long lines.

On March 30, the Times ran a screaming extra edition headlined, "Reagan Shot." 22-year old John Hinckley shot the President on a Washington street. As in the great question, "What if Richard Nixon beat John Kennedy in 1960?" the next Shakespearean drama could have revolved around what might have happened had Reagan been killed, or unable to regain his health and resume his duties. Incredibly, he did recover. His fortitude in overcoming from the assassin's bullet popularized the Republican in a way few policies ever could.

Then, a little over a month later, Pope John Paul II was shot at the Vatican. He too survived. The amazing drama surrounding these two failed attempts to kill the pre-eminent Western leaders of the world would play out over the decade with results no scriptwriter could have penned.

In June, the Israelis bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor built by Saddam Hussein when they found out Saddam was almost ready to make it operational.

1981 was a rather desultory sports year. Even the Dodgers' World Series victory will forever be marked by an asterisk. The Lakers failed to repeat, losing to Houston in the play-offs. Larry Bird and Boston captured the championship. The Dodgers were the toast of baseball in the first half of the year. They were led by a rookie left-hander, Fernando Valenzuela, who was the biggest thing to hit baseball in years. He was unbeatable and exciting. Attendance was up all over baseball. Then the players struck. That ruined everything.

While the players were on strike, Murray wrote a column in which he expressed his distaste for lawyers, agents and unions ruining baseball, all the while quoting Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when he said "baseball was a sport, not a business."

They finally returned, but so much of the season was lost that everything – statistics, standings, play-offs – meant little. They figured out a way to determine the "champions." The formula was so "brilliant" that the team with the best record in baseball, Cincinnati, did not make the play-offs in a year in which extra play-offs were added.

Without having to face Tom Seaver and the Reds in the post-season, the Dodgers managed to win the league championship. Trailing the Yankees in the World Series, two games to none, they managed to rally and take four straight for the title. Valenzuela was Rookie of the Year, also winning the MVP and Cy Young Award. His Cy Young was not deserved. As good as he was, Seaver's 14-2 mark was better. He was more deserving. The Bay Area was making a comeback. The Oakland A's under manager Billy Martin captured a division title.

The San Diego Chargers were one of the greatest offensive forces in pro football history, but playing in freezing conditions in Cincinnati, Dan Fouts and Don Coryell's team was rendered ineffective in a play-off defeat.

Marcus Allen had one of the greatest seasons in college football history, rushing for over 2,000 yards and the Heisman Trophy at USC. The Trojans defeated Oklahoma, 28-24 in an epic game at the Coliseum.

On February 15, Murray wrote "Master of the City Game," a . . . masterful . . . column about the emerging superstar Larry Bird, then in his second year with the Boston Celtics.

"You don't get basketball players out of French Lick, Indiana," he wrote. "You get them off the playgrounds. The projects. The sidewalks of New York. Or the sidewalks of Chicago. Or North Carolina. Marquette. UCLA. You get apple pickers out of French Lick, Indiana."

The Celtics were Bob Cousy, "cool cats" like Sam Jones, a "glowering" Tom Heinsohn, "Street-smart immortals like Bill Russell. Hondo Havlicek." They wanted guys with nicknames like "The Glide," or "Dr. Dunkenstein," or "The Truck" or "Magic." Instead Boston had American Gothic, and they were well on their way to a return to glory, another NBA title. Bird did not even have a wrist watch because in French Lick "they tell time by the cows." Murray concluded by predicting, accurately, Bird's jersey would some day hang from the rafters of Boston Garden (or any other future arena they played in).

After giving the Webster's definition for "legend," Murray started his piece on golfer Sam Snead:

"Ever regret you didn't see DiMaggio hit? Gehrig homer? Hubbell pitch?

"Feel cheated you never got to see Dempsey punch, Grange run, Jesse Owens jump, Nagurski block? Like to have seen Jones putt, Luisetti shoot, Sande ride, Seabiscuit race? Maybe you wish you could have seen Nijinsky dance, Barrymore act, Tilden volley?"

Sam Snead, he continued, "belongs to the past." He was one of those guys. None was "a bigger legend than Snead." He was "pure Americana" whose "first golf club was a swamp maple limb with a knot in the end and the bark left on for a grip." He grew up in the north Virginia hollers so narrow "the dogs had to wag their tails up and down."

He was "Dan'l Boone with a one-iron, Huck Finn in a hat. Mark Twain would have loved him. Sam Snead, coonskin golfer. We shall not see his like again. A legend past his prime."

His March 18 column honored a fellow superstar of the media, albeit the spoken word. Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn was simply the best in the business (although Warriors fans correctly argue that their guy, Bill King was at least Hearn's equal). Hearn "talked so fast the game couldn't keep up. Most basketball announcers are telling you what happened two minutes ago. Not Chick. Chick tells you what's going to happen."

In "He Needn't Take Number, It's His," Murray wrote a retrospectively eerie column about the auto racer Richard Petty. Noting that Petty was distinctively "number 43," he wrote that he dominated his sport more thoroughly than Babe Ruth or any other athlete dominated his. He also wrote this of the man who died in an accident some two decades later: "24 years of the most hairy wheel-to-wheel racing and he doesn't have a mark on him. He has all his teeth, marbles. Limbs, walks without a limp, can eat steak and corn, doesn't need glasses and his thick, black hair doesn't look as if it was ever set afire."

In a piece on the trend towards funky baseball uniforms, Murray belittled the odd looks of the Chicago White Sox and Oakland A's. Told the White Sox were holding a contest to determine what fans wanted future uniforms to look like, Murray suggested simply find a 1936 newspaper photo of Joe DiMaggio "with his hat on straight, his shoelaces tied and his hoes shined. Submit that to your contest board. That's what a ballplayer should look like. Always."

"The Eternal Cowboy" (July 13) Walt Garrison looked like "trouble just sitting there. He's coiled. You'd imagine the members of the Dalton Gang looked like this. He looked like he might have a price on his head somewhere west of the Brazos. Wyatt Earp would be nervous if he rode into town."

He opened up a fabulous column on track superstar Carl Lewis like this:

"The last time the world had anybody who could run faster and jump farther than anyone else on Earth at the same time, Hitler was ruling Germany, Roosevelt was running for a second term, and the King of England was giving up his throne for love.

"That's how hard it is to do."

Murray wrote a column just before Christmas in which he wistfully listed all the things he wished he saw in sports, among them referees, bigger than the players, who beat them with one-two combos when they argued; or some clown football player doing a "funky dance," only to fall, embarrass himself and, for good measure, incur an injury (not too serious); and maybe a baseball player who nonchalants everything, thus committing a replay of the "Snodgrass Muff."

American track star Mary Decker Tabb was so youthful looking that if you saw her in Disneyland you would "take her picture with a police cap and page her mother."

Murray did not realize he was seeing the "steroid era," which in track (particularly during Communism) was at its height long before it hit in baseball. Noting the huge size of so many "female" athletes, he wrote in a world in which most girls wanted to look like Bo Derek, the athletes more likely resembled Bo Schembechler. "In a world of perfect '10s,' they're 'minus threes.' "

Murray also wrote a satirical piece describing "himself" looking in the mirror every day and seeing a guy who was "much older than I." He made fun of himself, describing how in his fantasy he looked like Rudolph Valentino while the guy in the "mirror" had paunches; how he could eat chili relleno and drink Dos Equis, but the guy in the mirror got heartburn. He said he was ripe and ready for the Sunset Strip while the mirror says "go to bed."

"If he says write nice about Cincinnati – or Seattle, or Santa Clara – I tear into them," he concluded. "If this ol' geezer thinks he owns me, he's got another think coming."

After another perfect Rose Bowl game played on another sunny Chamber of Commerce day, Murray wrote the sort of column he was famous for. As a transplant, he captured perfectly the ambience of his adopted homeland in a piece called, "We Just Have It too Good." He started out by writing that the Rose Bowl "is plotting the destruction of California as we know and love it." On New Year's every year, the weather at the Arroyo Seco is perfect. This had to be a plot. "Lush, sunny," he wrote. "Snow in the mountains. Orange blossoms blinking in the sun." This, he added, was "insidious" and "subversive."

The problem was that millions of Americans who "look outside and it's Duluth" view this spectacular of bare-chested bodybuilders, tanned girls in shorts, and pretty cheerleaders. Consequently, they all move to California, which of course would eventually result in the Golden State sliding into the ocean. The "Rose Bowl menace," he wrote, needed to be "neutralized." He briefly suggested getting the Japanese to attack again, but nixed that idea.

Murray suggested fans be mandated to wear ski muffs and mittens, that "Tickets should not be sold to anybody with a tan," and that NBC "should be forbidden to zero in on anyone not wearing a shirt, even if it's Cheryl Tiegs." Sunglasses should be "confiscated on the spot." Views of the San Gabriel Mountains should not be allowed, "unless they are on fire." MGM, he suggested, could truck in a snow machine. The Rose Parade was definitely out. He certainly did not want to convey the impression they could actually "grow roses in January, for Heaven's sake."

Leonid Brezhnev should be the grand marshal. No young movie stars would be allowed at the game, seducing viewers with million-dollar Pepsodent Beach Boy smiles. Instead of the Big 10 and the Pac-10, who usually gave America the most exciting New Year's bowl game, he suggested "inviting Harvard and Washington and Jefferson."

Murray's column was not meant as a dig at San Francisco, but it was. San Francisco hated Los Angeles. Los Angeles did not care. San Francisco hated Los Angeles even more for not caring what they thought.

Murray's missive was meant for the rest of the nation, but in fact it was boosterism of a kind made famous by the L.A. Times since General Harrison Gray Otis, Harry, and then Norman Chandler owned the paper. Otis Chandler had cut that kind of rhetoric down a little bit, figuring by the 1960s and 1970s the city could show itself off by virtue of its most obvious strong points; its economy, the museums and opera halls built in large measure by his mother, Dorothy "Buff" Chandler and the Chandler philanthropies; plus its world class universities, and many other wonderful things.

But San Franciscans thought Los Angelenos were just too smug, arrogant and into themselves. Murray's column was the kind they hated, even though they had their own homer, Herb Caen, who lacked one-100ths of Murray's talent. Where Murray was a poet, Caen was a guttersnipe. But in 1981-82, a small chink was found in L.A.'s armor.

The Rams, long the dominant team in the NFC West, were no more. Joe Montana and San Francisco arrived on the scene with a thunderclap reverberating around the pro football world for the next 15 years. San Francisco finished 13-3 in the regular season, then defeated the vaunted, longtime champion Dallas Cowboys in the National Football Conference title game at Candlestick Park, 28-27.

The victory hearkened the memory back to Charles McCabe's 1962 columns, when he posited the notion that San Franciscans were satisfied being second best, that just coming close was all they really wanted, that "ultimate victory" was some sort of jingoistic, too-American virtue; the kind of thing to be saddled on New York or Los Angeles, not the City.

But when Montana, Ronnie Lott and genius coach Bill Walsh beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl, everything changed. It was a turning point, perhaps not really understood at the time, but in retrospect a moment for the ages. It unquestionably was the first real championship San Francisco ever experienced. It turned out McCabe was wrong; denizens of "Baghdad by the Bay" liked "ultimate victory" just fine, thank you.

Total Victory was not completely new to the Bay Area. In the 1920s the University of California's "Wonder Teams" won three national championships and were unbeaten over 50 straight games. The Golden Bears won another national title when they beat Alabama in the 1938 Rose Bowl. Stanford under coaches Pop Warner and Clark Shaughnnessy finished number won in 1926 and 1940, respectively. The Indians and Golden Bears won a few NCAA basketball titles in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Golden State Warriors captured the 1975 NBA crown.

But aside from that one season, the Lakers dominated the Warriors. The Dodgers dominated the Giants, the Rams dominated the 49ers, while USC and UCLA dominated Cal and Stanford. The sense of Los Angeles superiority in all things, if not outright hegemony, was broken up only in little old Oakland, where "Lost Generation" writer Gertrude Stein once said, "There's no there there." At least there was not until Al Davis came along. What followed was the building of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the Oakland Coliseum Arena, Charlie O. Finley's Athletics juggernaut, and the "greatness that is the Raiders." When the A's won three World Series and the Raiders two Super Bowls, in addition to the Warriors' championship, Oakland took to calling themselves the "city of champions."

But east bay greatness was received with muffled haughtiness in San Francisco. It was still only Oakland. There was nothing to brag about in San Francisco except for USF's two lonely basketball titles in 1955-56 . . . until Joe Montana came along. He brought excellence to the City, the kind that was never expected of their athletes, much less their politicians or much of anything else in a place that always settled for second best and second rate. A place that could build a stadium as bad as Candlestick Park. A place where Willie Mays, as great as he was, popped up in the clutch. A place where Rick Barry, as great as he was, skipped town. But now San Francisco had something to be ultimately proud of.

Los Angeles would achieve its fair share of ultimate athletic victory in the 1980s, but the total dominance of the past was gone. Politically, the Southland still controlled everything. California voted Republican. It was the home of the "conservative Revolution." The Los Angeles Times was the greatest paper in the world. The San Francisco Chronicle sucked. But the success of the 49ers, symbolically as it may have been, would usher in an era of change. San Francisco would chip away at Los Angeles over the next decade-plus, in sports and elsewhere. Its voices would be heard, its votes counted, its political heroes elevated.

In February of 1982, a meeting was held in one of the high conference rooms of the Bank of America Tower in San Francisco's downtown financial district. With a breathtaking view of the City, the Bay Bridge, the bay, and seemingly all of America beyond, the presidents and CEO's of some of the nation's leading corporations – banks, stock brokerage firms, utility companies, others - met with U.S. Senator Robert Dole (R.-Kansas) and Treasury Secretary (soon to be Secretary of State) George Schultz, a longtime San Francisco player with the Bechtel Corporation.

The subject was the economy. President Reagan had been in office one year. He inherited a failed system amid much angst and even belief that capitalism was dead. The Soviets were a powerhouse. China was on the ascendancy. England and Europe had gone Socialist in the 1970s. Perhaps, as Richard Nixon himself said after initiating price controls in 1971, "we're all Keynesians now," a reference to British economist John Maynard Keynes, one of the theorists of the New Deal.

Then Schultz stood up to speak. There were no reporters in the room. What he said was not meant for public consumption. The men in that room were the movers and shakers of American capitalism, and in this respect considered allies of President Reagan. Schultz, who had worked in the Nixon Administration, plainly stated that President Nixon was going to do "it," but "Watergate (deleted) 'it' up." Now they had a second chance to do "it."

"It" was never referred to by specific words, but the men knew what "it" was. Now, Schultz stated, Reagan was prepared to "wreck the economy." The economy was ostensibly what "it" was. Reagan had cut a deal with the Democrats in 1981, going against his own instincts, but that was to set up his opponents. Now he was prepared to implement his long held, most cherished beliefs about the financial system. Schultz stated that the systems put in place not just by Carter but also by Nixon and before that Lyndon Johnson had to be excised like a cancer. Nixon could not do it in his first term but planned to implement this plan in 1973-74 until Watergate blew his chances.

Now, here they were again. Reagan planned to "break up the unions," starting with the air traffic controllers, and install free market concepts, mainly in the form of massive de-regulation. Stock brokerages, banks and insurance companies could now merge businesses. Money market accounts could now have check-writing privileges. A freewheeling economic experiment was about to be unleashed.

When Schultz was finished, a sense of drama pervaded the room. Men ran to phones. The plan was on. Senator Dole was in a hurry. He went downstairs to his limo. The driver asked if he was going to the airport.

"Yes, but we have to stop at the Palace Hotel to pick somebody up," Senator Dole stated. The man they picked up was Alan Greenspan, the future head of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan was accompanying Dole and Schultz back to Washington, to implement the plans Schultz spoke of at the Bank of America Tower. The Reagan economy was at the starting gate.

By the end of the year, its first effects were known. Gone were the long gas lines, the embargoes, the high interest rates. With that homes could be built and bought, jobs could be had. The U.S., and also the world economy, was on the rebound. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was implementing the same free market principles. It was the beginning of the greatest uninterrupted run of economic expansion in the 20th Century.

Internationally in 1982, the news was dominated by the geo-politics of Soviet expansion, Chinese growth, the Japanese economy, and Israel, who followed up their bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor with a full-scale invasion of neighboring Beirut. It was in response to the Palestine Liberation Organization using Lebanon as a staging ground for hit-and-run terror attacks.

Jerry Brown, after holding the office of Governor for eight years, ran for the U.S. Senate It was a Republican year in a Republican state, the influence of Reagan too strong. Brown lost to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. Republican state senator George Deukmejian beat Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley for Governor. People still speak of the "Bradley effect." The black Bradley ran competitively in polling right until election day. His defeat led some to conjecture that at the "last minute" white voters were not willing to vote for a black candidate.

The Lakers dominated the NBA in 1982. Coach Paul Westhead lost an argument with Magic Johnson. Westhead was fired, replaced by Pat Riley. The team powered through the season, beating Philadelphia in the Finals. The Los Angeles Kings had their first "highlight moment" when they pulled off the "miracle on Manchester," a huge comeback to beat Wayne Gretzky and Edmonton in the Stanley Cup play-offs. The Atlanta Braves got off to a rousing start, but the Dodgers rallied to pull back into contention. On the last day of the season, San Francisco's Joe Morgan hit a dramatic home run to ruin Los Angeles' chances.

Under manager Gene Mauch, the Angels were again an offensive juggernaut. Rod Carew, Fred Lynn, Don Bailor, Reggie Jackson and a host of others powered them to the division title, but in what was becoming a classic Angels choke they blew the play-offs to Milwaukee after winning the first two games at home.

The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Brewers in the World Series. Ross Newhan, Jim Murray's colleague at the Times since 1968, is also in the Hall of Fame for his baseball writing.

"Jim wrote all those great columns," recalled Newhan. "I remember we attended the 1982 World Series between Milwaukee and St. Louis. We were in St. Louis and because of the press overflow we were not all in the main press box. Jim and I were sitting in a special press section down the right field corner, right behind the foul pole. The wind was blowing and it was very cold in St. Louis. I had to go downstairs after the game but Jim was gone. I didn't know what he was going to write. The next day I read this absolutely wonderful column he wrote about the right field foul pole. I don't know how he did it, but he found a way to write a funny column about sitting behind the foul pole. I always brought that up when speaking with him."

Neither the NCAA-penalized Trojans nor UCLA was particularly dominant during the 1982 football season, although the City Game was a barnburner won by the Bruins, 20-19 after a furious fourth quarter USC comeback was stopped. The pro football season was a disaster. The players struck, rendering it a joke of sorts, but it was interesting in that Al Davis and the Raiders moved to Los Angeles. The team still trained in Oakland. The players and coaches still lived there, but flew to the L.A. Coliseum for games and did pretty well before losing in a play-off to the Jets. They were a talented crew, immediately captivating the L.A. imagination.

In an April column about The Master's golf tournament, Murray wrote of its notoriously difficult holes, giving each a horror movie name like "Five Graves to Cairo." In a piece about horse racing, he used statistics to show that "Breeding Counts But Doesn't Add Up."

On December 15 he wrote a classic, "Coach of the Living Dead." "It starts like a horror movie," he began. "The man comes into focus. It is the face of a man who knows there is no longer any use in screaming."

The man, Chargers coach Don Coryell, was known for the most pained expressions since Czech long distance champion Emil Zatopek. "His mouth is turned down . . . his eyes register sheer terror. His is the face of a man tied to a plank with a buzz saw slicing its way toward his torso. His eyes are slightly bugged, as though a tombstone just talked to him. He is a man looking at his own corpse." Coryell always had the look of a guy the cops were asking about the murder of a mother and her child.

Murray was the recipient of the Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement by the Associated Press Sports Editors in 1982. He wrote a tribute to the great New York columnist after his passing. When Rudy York hit a home run just as a wartime blackout caused the electricity to go out at the Polo Grounds, Smith wrote, "The scorer ruled it self-defense." Murray was obviously influenced by Smith's turn of phrase. He recalled the time Red accidentally came across a very shady story involving controversial manager Leo Durocher. It would have been a big scoop for him to reveal it, but since he did not come across it on his own he let it ride.

Murray's kind words for Smith came from a generosity of spirit. According to one colleague of Murray's who asked not to be quoted by name, Smith once called Murray a "joke writer" when he first came on the scene. At some point he most likely realized Murray's talent, but his cutting words reflected a New York bias that took years for Murray, and many other things associated with Los Angeles, to be given due credit.

"Red Smith was by far the greatest of all writers," said the iconoclastic former big league pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee. "He was the Secretariat of writers. Lee is a . . . talker.

"The Boston press was terrible. If Peter Gammons was the best they could do then they were in deep 'doo doo.' Of all those guys, nobody could even speak English. They were the most racist, bigoted, pessimistic guys. They bashed Ted Williams. They were all a bunch of Democrats in a Kennedy town and Ted was a Republican from California. But Ted was an arrogant and nasty SOB, meaner 'n' squat. I'll tell you a Ted Williams story; he hit on both my first two wives."

In 1982, Lee's controversial Major League career ended when he told the press he sprinkled marijuana on his pancakes before jogging to combat the bus fumes in Montreal, where he was playing for the Expos. A California native and USC star, Lee grew up with Murray and was interviewed by him on occasion.

"I was with Expos when Jim Murray interviewed me and did a story about me," recalled Spaceman. "I had gotten into trouble with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn because I said I sprinkled marijuana on my pancakes before I went jogging, and he wanted to shut me up, and it was a free speech issue. Murray approached it as such with the local angle of a flaky California southpaw from USC. I can't remember exactly what Murray wrote about me, but Joe Falls of the Detroit Free News also wrote about me at the time.

"I thought Murray's writing was spectacular. It was kind of like an Eastern writer writing in a Western environment. He should have been in the New York papers, he was above the California readers. No one in California reads.

"He had the biggest Coke bottle glasses and it always amazed me that a guy who was so blind could see so much. I read him all the time, but Murray was the kind of guy who came around a little but he was always in the background, not striking up one-on-one conversations. He maintained good olfactory sense and always knew when someone stunk, or was in a state of decomposition (laughs).

"I loved Murray's references to Rome conquering Gaul. I didn't always agree with him all the time but I always read him, but I consider Smith to be better. I rank him number one and Dick Schaap number two. Writers are basically guys who wanted to be ball players, who couldn't play, and most don't know anything about pitching except it's hard to hit."

In March, 1983 Reagan made the speech that defined his Presidency. Speaking to Christian evangelicals in Florida, he referred to the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire," a movie term, straight out of the Star Wars series. It was a shot across the bow. The Soviets were in the midst of a period in which several premiers were given power, only to die in office. Reagan was promoting another "Star Wars," a missile defense system planned to shoot down Soviet nukes before they could land on American soil. He was actively arming "freedom fighters" defending against Communist expansion in Latin America. He and his CIA director, William Casey, were formulating ingenious ways to disrupt Russia's occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviets were scared of him, and installed a moderate, Mikhail Gorbachev, to lead their nation. The idea was that Gorbachev might be less confrontational, therefore appeasing the "cowboy" Reagan.

In 1983, the Christian right was in major ascendancy. With Reagan in office they figured it was time to make their strongest move. Priority one was Roe v. Wade, the decade-old decision making abortion a national right. On June 16, however, Times staffer Jim Mann reported from Washington that the Supreme Court, despite having been buffered by some of Reagan's choices, upheld Roe. This issue was at the heart of a cultural battle that had long been growing in America, and would continue well after this decision.

In August, the Soviets shot down a South Korean passenger plane. It was likely a mistake, but the result of provocative action on the part of the Russians. The shoot-down amped up the Cold War to its highest tensions.

In support of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, President Reagan sent a detachment of Marines to Beirut, but on October 23 Muslim terrorists bombed their barracks, killing 299 Americans.

Screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, All the President's Men) released Adventures in the Screen Trade that year. This book described how Hollywood fell after two golden decades, its demise brought about in large measure by the disastrous Heaven's Gate.

The 1983 Dodgers were an entirely new team. After years featuring the infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Ron Cey and Bill Russell, they were replaced by a corps of young players. To the surprise of many, they captured the National League West. After beating Philadelphia with regularity in regular season play, however, L.A. lost to them in the play-offs.

Murray wrote of legendary Dodgers. In a "great victory for apple pie, ice cream, soda, biscuits and honey and whole milk," Murray wrote ex-Dodgers manager Walter Alston's 1983 induction into the Hall of Fame was "a marriage made in Valley Forge or the Declaration of Independence. They're as made for each other as cider and donuts. As American as pumpkin pie with whipped cream."

Alston, he wrote, was fearless, a man you wanted next to you in a lifeboat. As far as the columnist was concerned, the Dodgers' tremendous success from 1954-76 was as much his doing as Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills, Steve Garvey, Don Sutton or any other star player.

"He was a good manager because he was a good man, a walking advertisement for the Good Book, an Old Testament model," he wrote. "Players black and white knew him as a man of probity and character." Alston never had an agent, never asked for more money or a longer contract, and "redefined the meaning of the word 'man' . . . a Man with a capital M . . ." In lauding Alston as he did, Murray was saying something about himself. He was saying that quiet, dignified, religious folks were simply better people than blowhards, lechers, money-hungry egomaniacs. He made it clear that the latter was far more prevalent than the former, that the likes of an Alston or a John Wooden were rare. The world was filled with Leo Durochers and Muhammad Alis, who might be entertaining but were unimpressives beyond their specialty. Alston was the kind of Rock of Gibraltar for the ages, the salt of the Earth.

Perhaps inspired by Alston's upcoming election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Murray wrote another column, "Scully Handles a Mike Like Ruth Did a Bat." Vin Scully and Alston were two of a kind, moral arbiters in a sea of second rates. True quality amongst an ocean of athletes all but stealing money from their employers and the fans. Murray was part of a tiny group of men transcending this sort of character flaw. He, Alston, Scully and John Wooden rose above and beyond all other sports figures, not only in Los Angeles but also in the world. They were giants not merely because of their respective talents, but because they possessed moral character others did not. Each was a rare combination, of the highest success in their chosen professions as well as a generosity of spirit rarely seen. A professional manager, a college coach, an announcer and a sportswriter; each stayed with the same team until the end. No one athlete or owner fit into this group. At one point Steve Garvey seemed headed that way, but he was not made of the same stuff. Orel Hershiser was in their company, but his greatness as an athlete did not measure the professional accomplishments the others exhibited.

Of Scully, who announced other sports in the 1970s, Murray wrote, "Rembrandt could probably paint soup cans or barn doors, if it came to that. Hemingway could probably write the weather. Horowitz could probably play the ocarina. What a waste!"

Baseball fans, Scully knew, were "ancestor worshippers, like the British aristocracy," and through his words, "We suddenly see knights in shining armor out there carrying on glorious traditions instead of two rival factions of businessmen trying to land an order." Whereas football required "screaming," baseball needed what Scully gave it, "humor, deft drama, a sprinkling of candor, mix well and served over steaming hot tradition." Scully's pairing with Joe Garagiola on the Baseball Game of the Week was inspired casting, as important as "Ruth and Gehrig or Tinker and Evers and Chance."

Los Angeles sports fans long realized how very lucky they were. The best sportswriters and sportscasters in the world plied their trades in the City of Angels: Bud Furillo, Mel Durslag, Mal Florence, Bob Oates, Dick Enberg, Bob Miller, Chick Hearn, and Tom Kelly were among these great talents. But Scully and Murray stood head and shoulders above all of them. Character as well as talent linked their names together. Two 20th Century giants of Los Angeles casting a Rushmore shadow over the American sports scene.

UCLA rebounded from an early slow start, defeating the reeling Trojans. Behind quarterback Rick Neuheisel, Terry Donahue's squad destroyed highly touted Illinois, 45-9 in the Rose Bowl. The Rams featured rookie sensation Eric Dickerson, one of the greatest players in football history.

The Los Angeles Raiders provided the kind of glory the Rams never were able to. Featuring former USC Heisman winner Marcus Allen, Hall of Famer Howie Long, and re-born quarterback Jim Plunkett, they ran the table, clobbering the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl.

On August 21, Murray tackled one of his greatest subjects, the superstar pitcher Tom Seaver. The title, "Almost Too Good to Be True," said it all, for Seaver was. As with his 1962 column on Willie Mays, it was the best meeting the best, a master writer given free reign to write about a larger than life subject. He began the piece exactly as he had with the Mays column 21 years earlier. "The first thing to do with a person like Tom Seaver is to establish that there is one." Seaver was a real-life inspiration from the boys' adventure stories of his youth. "You have to make sure he didn't just walk in off the pages of A Lad's Pluck or How Frank Merriwell Saves the Day at Yale." Indeed Seaver was one of the rarest of all athletes; the absolute superstar, one of the greatest of the all-time great, yet possessing the intelligence of the Secretary of State, the "collar-ad good looks," and the All-American background of . . . Frank Merriwell.

Seaver had a Los Angeles pedigree, having starred for Rod Dedeaux at USC in the mid-1960s. The Dodgers could have had him for $50,000 in 1965, but Tom Lasorda only offered $2,000. He ended up with the New York Mets, where he was like a statue made out of flesh and blood, the greatest pitcher in the game, arguably as good as Sandy Koufax, all the while comporting himself as if running for the U.S. Senate.

"You have to find out if he isn't a public relations hoax," Murray wrote of him. Many had thought early on he was "too good to be true," but by 1983 he was nearing the end and, indeed, he was that good, all the way around. Murray made the usual Seaver comparison, with Christy Mathewson, one of baseball's earliest heroes, credited with giving the game respectability. Seaver never got thrown out of bars and did not pay alimony to two wives. It was probably not a coincidence Murray chose to write of Seaver in 1983, the same year he wrote of Alston and Scully. It was an off year for the ace right-hander as he neared the end. His performance on the field was not what made him a feature story. Murray saw in the pitching great the same noble characteristics.

"What's a goody like him doing with a 97-mile-an-hour fastball?" he asked. His skin was clear. He did not even spit. With his tools he should look more "like Burleigh Grimes than Christy Mathewson." Seaver, Murray wrote, was that rarest of athletes, the true New York sports icon who "awed" the Big Apple, a place in awe of only the most elite of the elite, whether that be Babe Ruth, Dwight Eisenhower or John Glenn. They called him, "Fearless, faultless, a hero out of the dime-novel era. The guy who would rescue the orphan from a burning building, warn the train trestle was out, capture the runaway horses with the heiress in the carriage. Thrash the bully. Tom Swift and his Electric fastball."

Seaver was as "motivated as a monk," who instead of discussing "booze, broads," enjoyed the merits of finger pressure and proper wrist snap. Now back with the Mets after a sojourn in Cincinnati, Seaver was closing in on 300 career victories. Murray displayed as much honest to goodness admiration of Seaver as any athlete he ever wrote about.

1984 may well have been the ultimate glory year in the history of Los Angeles. Everything the city, the region, the state had ever aspired to be seemed encapsulated by that magical year. Oddly, it was the year chosen by George Orwell as a period of gloom and oppressiveness in his 1948 novel, but it may have represented the ultimate opposite of that: free market capitalism and Democracy at its highest peak. Whatever 1973-75 was supposed to have been, when the Los Angeleno Richard Nixon gripped the reigns of world power as tight as it had ever been but let it all slip away, and Vietnam with it, 1984-85 was a chance, one decade later, to re-gain all that lost ground. This time, Ronald Reagan did not let it slip away.

USC, the school producing so many of Nixon's Watergate conspirators, and now many of Reagan's key aides, was unapologetic about its conservatism. When G. Gordon Liddy spoke on campus, he was given a heroes' ovation by a packed audience chanting, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" A sorority sister asked Liddy how students should protect themselves, since the school was located in a rough neighborhood.

Liddy told her they should round up swimmers, football players and assorted "tough guys," and in vigilante style pro-actively walk the streets to "take back was is rightfully yours." O.J. Simpson never heard greater cheering.

Democrat Walter Mondale spoke on campus. He was met by the thunderous chant, "Reagan country!" He admonished the students, stating "You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is the school that produced Donald Segretti." Nobody heard that because they were chanting "Reagan country!" Reagan was scheduled to address USC's 1984 graduating class, but it was too close to his return from an historic, yet exhausting visit to China.

Given the worst economy since the Great Depression, Reagan turned it around in a little over a year. By 1984, America was flush with success, secure in "peace and prosperity," a phrase given to Reagan throughout his campaign. A simple advertisement called "Morning in America" captured the essence of Reagan's homespun appeal. To Republicans at least, "the Gipper" was every bit as true and righteous as Walter Alston, Vin Scully, Tom Seaver, or Jim Murray, all of whom most likely voted for him.

"I think Jim was offended by Watergate," said his widow, Linda McCoy-Murray. "He had supported Richard Nixon, he knew him, and Watergate was an affront, he felt betrayed as did all of America, but I think he continued to vote Republican. Later, he lived near Ronald Reagan and he just loved Reagan. He knew him personally and found great humor in Reagan. At some point the Reagan's moved to Bel Air and Jim joked, 'I live about $6 million from the Reagans.'

"One night we attended a party. I chaired a dinner in 1992 honoring Jim, and the Reagans were on stage with Merv Griffin, who owned the Beverly Hilton. Griffin presented Jim an award. So yes, we socialized with the Reagans and were friends. Jim definitely loved him and voted for him. I'm a Republican but very independent. If I like a candidate I'll vote that way regardless of party and I think Jim was that way, but leaning to the right."

Politics being politics, Democrats disagreed with Reagan. Their choice of Mondale, a former U.S. Senator from Minnesota and Jimmy Carter's Vice-President from 1977 to 1981, was telling. Perhaps it was no more telling than the choice of the man Richard Nixon dubbed a "poet-Socialist," George McGovern in 1972, but for a brief period in 1983-84, it seemed they had a chance to go in a different direction.

While the 1980s offered few prizes in the way of great movies, one exception was the 1983 classic The Right Stuff. Based on Tom Wolfe's narrative story of the Mercury space program, it featured Ed Harris in his first big role as the heroic astronaut John Glenn. No political campaign could have presented a man in a more positive light.

Glenn was now a U.S. Senator representing the state of Ohio, a bellwether decision-maker in Presidential campaigns throughout American history. His heroism, patriotism and Christianity were above reproach. He declared himself a candidate for the Presidency, and The Right Stuff was dubbed his campaign commercial. Even some Republicans liked him enough to consider favoring him.

A Kennedy Democrat who loved his hero, the man who inspired the space program, Glenn received no love from his party in the Primaries. Colorado Senator Gary Hart and Walter Mondale quickly distanced themselves from him, and that was the end of Glenn. Many historians have pondered whether it was in some way the "end" of the Democrat Party or what men like Glenn knew it to once be.

Whether Glenn could have stolen Reagan's thunder or not probably was rendered immaterial by the strong economy of 1983-84. It seemed everybody voted for President Reagan in a re-election landslide to beat all landslides, a 49-state sweep.

Gore Vidal's Lincoln was published. William Shirer also wrote The Nightmare Years, which was a prequel of sorts to his original classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. His new book detailed his years in Vienna and Germany prior to World War II.

Never had the state of California been more influential. The L.A. Times was still at the height of its glory. A confluence of sports, culture and political power seemed to congregate at the Los Angeles Coliseum when L.A. hosted the most successful Olympic Games of all time. On July 29 the Times featured the Games on its front page with articles by Peter King ("Spectacular Show Provides Dazzling Start for Games"), Tom Gorman, Patt Morrison, Mark Stein and related others. An aerial photo of the Coliseum at night looked splendid.

Peter Ueberroth pulled off what many for years speculated would be a wasted effort. Sports Illustrated had written a dismal piece predicting the Los Angeles Games would be a disaster, mired in smog, crime, heavy traffic, crumbling facilities, and lack of fan enthusiasm. They were wrong. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.

The United States enjoyed one of its most dominating Olympics ever, led by such stalwarts as track stars Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, and Evelyn Ashford; gymnasts Mary Lou Retton and Bart Conner; diver Greg Louganis; swimmers Rowdy Gaines, Matt Biondi, and Tracy Calkins; basketball Gold medalists Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing; volleyball stars Steve Timmons and Karch Kiraly; and a host of other stars, many with strong Los Angeles ties. Baseball was prominently displayed at Dodger Stadium. The U.S. team, coached by the Trojans' Rod Dedeaux and led by USC superstar Mark McGwire, is still regarded as perhaps the greatest collection of amateurs ever.

The USC campus was the marquee attraction of the Games, with millions of people from around the world marveling at its facilities, some of which were built just for the Olympics. Many fabulous Trojans and Bruins athletes captured medals in the L.A. Games. It was a showcase for both schools and everything else associated with the region.

If anybody thought the Los Angeleno was jaded and bored, unwilling to attend all the Olympic events, attendance and financial success of the '84 Olympics totally belied that notion. President Reagan, in a shining moment in his hometown, presided over the opening ceremonies. Former UCLA and 1960 decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lit the torch. It all went smoothly from there. It was a high point not just for Los Angeles but also for America.

Murray, of course, was there. He was in his usual form, writing an August 7 column, "The Baryshnikov of the Barriers." "I like to see Edwin Moses run the hurdles for the same reason I like to see Rod Carew bat, Bing Crosby sing, Joe DiMaggio drift under a high fly, Joe Louis throw a left, Sammy Snead hit a drive, Swaps in the stretch," he opined. "Palmer putt, Koufax with the hitter in a hole, Marcus Allen hit a line – for that matter, a Swiss make a watch, an Arab sell a rug, a Manolete fight a bull or a Hemingway write about it, an Englishman do Shakespeare, or Roosevelt make a speech." His reference, "an Arab sell a rug" may not have been the most politically correct line, but that term had not been invented yet.

In other words, Murray wrote Moses was one of "those guys who make it look easy" (like, for that matter, Jim Murray). The Olympic hurdles champion, Moses was the best ever at what he did, "one of the great virtuosos." Knowing thousands of sophisticated Europeans and world travelers were in town reading his column at that time, it was filled with Murrayistic superlatives about Caesar inspecting the battlefield, Baryshnikov on the dance floor, and Tchaikovsky writing music. Naturally he played off the man's name, making Biblical references to Moses's seven undefeated years. A nationwide syndicated treasure, Jim Murray was now a writer of the world!

The L.A. Games helped spotlight previously little known sports, and Southern California's tendency to dominate those sports. The world knew that California, and the Southland particularly, produced a golden plethora of baseball, basketball, football, track, and tennis stars. These sports got big attention on television. But in 1984, swimming, diving and many other smaller sports received due attention. TV viewers learned that the Mission Valley Nadadores were the premier swim club in the world, and that USC and UCLA were much more than just O.J. Simpson vs. Gary Beban on the gridiron, or Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton on the hardwood.

The sexy sport of beach volleyball was a big hit. It had been around, but in 1980 the dour Moscow atmosphere and America's failure to participate meant it was not highlighted. It was a natural in Los Angeles, however. Murray was more than happy to write about it.

He discovered a gem that had been producing excellence in Westwood for years. Great sports coaches and managers had dotted the landscape for a century. Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, John McGraw, Connie Mack, Casey Stengel, Red Auerbach, John Wooden, Toe Blake; these and many others were legends, national heroes.

But there were men whose numbers put theirs to shame. Over at Cerritos Junior College, an unknown coach named Wally Kincaid arrayed a record of excellence in the 1960s and 1970s probably unmatched in the game of baseball. In later years, an unassuming theology teacher at De La Salle High School in Concord, California named Bob Ladouceur created a football dynasty to be envied by Bill Walsh's 49ers or Bill Belichick's Patriots.

Even more impressive perhaps was the record quietly compiled over the years by a fellow named Al Scates. "Al Scates?! Precisely. The one and only," wrote Jim Murray. UCLA was a school where John Wooden was a walking marble statue, where football stars roamed the green plains, where Rafer Johnson and C.K. Yang were international items. It was a school where Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe became men, where Jim Morrison cut his teeth arguing the merits of French New Wave cinema with Francis Ford Coppola, where Nobel Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche learned history and diplomacy, and where on some Friday nights sorority parties half-resembled the Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot.

But Al Scates quietly operated in this atmosphere of excellence, of champions, of glory, and won more often over a longer period than any of his more famed colleagues. Al Scates "is to volleyball what (John) Wooden was to basketball, (Red) Sanders was to football, Napoleon to artillery . . . " wrote Murray. It is interesting that of all the many, varied columns the great scribe wrote, many remember and refer to this, about a relatively under the radar volleyball coach. The military references, to artillery and Napoleon, seem to embody the Murray style.

Of course, Scates was probably the most successful or among the two most successful Divisions I college athletics coaches in history. His only real competition comes from cross-town rival USC, where Dean Cromwell seemed to win the NCAA track and field title every year between Versailles and Panmunjom. Rod Dedeaux? John Wooden? Pikers in comparison to Cromwell and Scates.

Cromwell also coached the U.S. Olympic teams, which in his day were basically Trojan athletes dressed in red, white and blue. So it was with Scates, whose UCLA teams also seemed to win the national title as regularly as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, and whose Olympians might as well be a bunch of Bruins gathered together on a Saturday afternoon at Manhattan Beach . . . and sometimes were.

"Oh my, sure, I'm very familiar with Jim Murray's claim that I was 'to volleyball what Napoleon was to artillery,' " Scates said. "Our SID for volleyball, Rich Bertolucci puts it in the media guide every year since that 1984 interview. 'Al Scates . . . the one and only . . . what Wooden was to basketball . . . Napoleon was to artillery.' I was just very happy he came to my office to interview me. I would open the L.A. Times and the first thing I always read was Jim Murray. I bought all his books. In fact one year at the California Sports Hall of Fame induction, Jim Murray and his wife were there. He was almost blind when he interviewed me.

"He was waiting for me, almost blind, but after we met it was a great time. I walked him down the stairs in front of the building. I asked if he needed help negotiating the steps. Well, he hardly saw them, but it was an honor to be in his presence. Such a humble man. He put me completely at ease. He wrote such great articles. He did his homework. He knew a lot of the stuff in the article. He knew we beat SC 16 times in row. He'd gotten the run-down from Bertolucci and Marc Dellums and was prepared."

Scates got his start playing at Will Rogers State Beach in 1958, when practically the only competitive volleyball players in the world could be found . . . at Will Rogers State Beach.

"The game evolved from there, to the YMCAs, to musty gyms," he recalled. "A lot of people knew nothing about volleyball until the 1984 Olympics, even though before the Olympics, on March 22, 1984 we were 24-0 at the time. He knew how many scholarships we had. It was the only time I ever saw him in the office, but that article benefited me and our program. We won eight more titles after that."

UCLA's plethora of NCAA volleyball titles helped the school become the first Division I program to win 100 official men's and women's champions by the 2000s. In a town where the greatest national competition in most sports can be found 10 miles away, that is a point of pride referred to as "the first to 100" (although Trojan supporters point out USC has more men's titles and, if they count their 11 national championships in football compared to UCLA's one – not official NCAA championships - USC still holds a slim lead).

"He was so different from T.J Simers," Scates recalled of a "poison pen" columnist who followed him. "T.J. was controversial. Murray did it with his prose, comparing things to legends like Lombardi and Rockne. He was well grounded in the history of sports in this country."

Scates apparently had a Murray column readily at hand and read randomly from it.

"Listen to this: 'It's the best of the world, action packed, cut throat competition by guys and gals going at a breakneck pace. It's about as polite as an air raid.' I invited him to a banquet to see Coach Wooden. I taught elementary school most of the years I coached at UCLA. At first I'd not heard too much about Murray, but over time I did. After the season there was a lot of talk about that particular article. It helped put my program on the map and led to higher salaries and full-time positions in the secondary sports. I always made sure my wife read it. It changed everything for us."

Due to smart planning, both traffic and smog were reduced greatly during the 1984 Games, a subject Murray wrote about from time to time. He always laughed at the naysayers who predicted disaster only to have glory follow. Looking back from the perspective of more than 25 years, the Olympics were the beginning of the cleansing of the Los Angeles Basin's air and overall environment. In the early 1980s, football fans could barely see the other side of the Coliseum. They often could not tell because of dirty air what was even happening on the field. The Coliseum press box and adjacent veranda are particularly situated with unobstructed east, west, north and south views of the Santa Monica Mountains, Hollywood hills, the Hollywood sign, the downtown skyline, the San Gabriel range, the entire L.A. basin stretching to Orange County, the endless strand, and the Palos Verdes peninsula. Prior to this period, all this and more, with the exception of rare, breezy winter days immediately following heavy rains, was like the Holy Ghost: you knew it was there, but you could not see it.

"Global warming" advocates may disagree with the logic, arguing the environment is getting much more polluted year by year, but in succeeding decades the L.A. environment has gone from worse than dismal to remarkably clean and clear. It started with Ueberroth's Olympics. This is not even opinion. These facts have simply manifested themselves before the very eyes of the citizenry, which are always the best kind of facts.

Aside from the Olympics, 1984 was an exciting year in California sports, although it did not quite turn out to be one of those great seasons like 1962, 1972 and a few others.

In his February 28 column on Boston's Larry Bird, the decidedly unprovincial Murray wrote "Bird Really Turns Pale With Losing." He wrote saying the Indiana native was "white" was tantamount to "saying a desert is 'sandy.' If Larry Bird were any more white he'd be invisible. You could read through Larry Bird. If you held him up to the light, you could see what he had for dinner. He's the only guy in the room who doesn't need X-rays. You just stand him next to a window and count the bones. He'd make a great Halloween decoration."

In an odd way, while Murray did not mean it to be, the column – as with the Olympics reference to an Arab selling a rug - was a reverse form of racism. Had he written of a black athlete something like, "He's so black he could be mistaken for an eclipse," it would have engendered angry letters. But after paragraphs of yucks and more yucks about "the White Shadow," Murray finally got around to describing the fact that, oh by the way, Larry Bird was one of the best basketball players of all time. At the time, he was considered better than Magic Johnson, even though the Lakers had captured two titles with Johnson (1980, 1982).

Magic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers appeared to have the NBA Finals sewn up, but Bird and Boston managed to launch a comeback, taking the title. It began an intense rivalry marking the mid-1980s and further enhanced the "Bird is better" arguments. Magic held his tongue, but after retirement revealed that the talk bothered him.

For UCLA basketball, it continued to be a period of doldrums. Since John Wooden's departure after the 1975 campaign, the Bruins were unable to ascend to such heights again. They made one brief foray near the top in 1980, but failed in the title game. UCLA hoops fans were beginning to wonder what was wrong, and whether they would ever see glory like that again. If USC thought they could fill the vacuum, they were mistaken. The Trojan basketball program was unable to rise above mere competence.

USC's baseball team had also slumped in recent years. In 1984 they featured two baseball players who would dominate Major League play, but despite having both Mark McGwire and Randy Johnson, Troy could not return to the glory days of the 1960s and 1970s.

Both the Angels and Dodgers slumped in 1984, but 100 miles to the south, the San Diego Padres, led by ex-Dodger Steve Garvey and managed by Fremont High alum Dick Williams, beat ex-Dodger Rick Sutcliffe and the Chicago Cubs, capturing the National League pennant. They succumbed to the powerhouse Tigers – managed by one of Williams's boyhood pals from rival Dorsey High, Sparky Anderson - in the World Series. It was the second time the kids from the old 'hood managed against each other in the World Series. In 1972 Williams and Oakland beat Anderson and Cincinnati.

It was an exciting football season. USC, led by second-year coach Ted Tollner and All-American linebacker Jack Del Rio, beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, 20-17. Eric Dickerson of the Rams broke O.J. Simpson's 1973 NFL rushing record. The Raiders looked to have a good shot at repeating as AFC champions, but finished 11-5 before losing to Seattle in the play-offs. Up north, the San Francisco 49ers featured a team for the ages. Led by Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, and Roger Craig, coach Bill Walsh's dynasty lost only one game, sweeping to a Super Bowl crushing of Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins. It was the first "home" victory in a Super Bowl, as it came at Stanford Stadium, just a few miles from their practice facility and the old stomping grounds of Coach Walsh. The 1984 49ers must remain on a short list of all-time best pro football teams including the 1966 Green Bay Packers, 1972 Miami Dolphins, 1976 Oakland Raiders, 1977 Dallas Cowboys, 1979 Pittsburgh Steelers, 1986 New York Giants, 1989 49ers, 1991 Washington Redskins, 1999 St. Louis Rams, and the 2004 New England Patriots.

Murray's March 28 column on Mario Andretti included this prize: "Mario is the most successful Italian export since pizza," although the great scribe was unaware that pizza was really invented in America. He was allowed an occasional small slip.

By and large, things continued to go Reagan's way in 1985. This made his Presidency unusual. Successful first-term Presidents historically tank in the second term. Cultural anthropologists who view the decade as one of extravagant wealth to the point of greed, view that year as its pinnacle. The movie Wall Street, which actually came out in 1987, was set that year. Wall Street, like The Right Stuff, was an excellent movie, an exception in a decade of poor film faire. However, it was one of those films made by somebody with a left-wing point of view (Oliver Stone) who, in the course of getting it right, get it too right, thus destroying the argument the filmmaker hopes to convey.

One case in point was Patton, screen written by anti-war activist Francis Ford Coppola. Hoping to show the maverick general to be a crazy war lover, the direction of Franklin Schaffner (who served with Patton) and Oscar-winning actor George C. Scott was so accurate and great that the film unquestionably rates as the finest war movie ever made, a favorite of military buffs.

Coppola again was a victim of his own talent with Apocalypse Now (1979), meant as a diatribe against Vietnam. Imagine poor Francis's consternation over the showing of the helicopter attack scene in order to fire up the troops at every basic training and staff college for almost 40 years.

A Few Good Men (1992) was made by two fellows not considered friends of the military, Rob Reiner and Aaron Sorkin. The idea was to portray a rogue Marine lieutenant colonel (Jack Nicholson) as willing to break rules and regulations meant to keep his kind from getting too aggressive. Nicholson gives the performance of his life, declaring to a Navy lawyer (Tom Cruise) wearing a "faggoty white uniform" with a "Harvard mouth" that "you can't handle the truth," launching a brilliant, precise dissertation on just why people like . . . Reiner and Sorkin should not be in charge of the military. In all the years since, A Few Good Men has been a staple at West Point, Annapolis, hardcore Marine parties, and wherever real men gather to love and honor America.

So it was with Wall Street. The purpose: show America to be immoral and greedy, proposing the myth that it is a "zero sum game" in which every dollar made by a rich Wall Street banker is a dollar "stolen" from the poor or the working poor. Millions of young hotshots saw only a "rising tide lifting all boats," glamour and excitement in the concrete canyons of Manhattan. The film has been a staple of stockbrokers and go-getters worldwide ever since. New York Times columnist William Safire's Freedom, a novelized version of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, was published to great fanfare that year.

Internationally the Muslim world, unable to defeat Israel, increasingly marginalized by world politics, increased their terrorism in 1985 by kidnapping Americans, but in a July 1, 1985 Times front page story featuring Vice President Bush shaking hands with them in Frankfurt, West Germany, 39 were released.

Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland. The two got along well. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher remarked that Gorbachev was a man she could "do business with." That seemed to be the case when the leaders of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to dismantle a huge payload of nuclear weapons. At the last minute, Gorbachev tried to spring one on the old man. He would agree if Reagan would de-fund "Star Wars." Reagan knew it was the ace up his sleeve and refused. The media blamed Reagan for "blowing" an opportunity to achieve world peace. He stuck to his guns, literally.

After the Soviet empire imploded, their leaders admitted publicly they were afraid of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and that the American President's refusal to give in was the ultimate kick keeping them down for the count. Archives of the Venona Project confirmed this, along with interviews with ex-KGB agents expressing downright admiration for Reagan's skill in a documentary called In the Face of Evil.

The 1985 Lakers beat Boston, establishing themselves as one of the greatest teams in NBA history. Magic Johnson finally picked up some bragging rights on his nemesis, Larry Bird. In the college ranks, USC won the Pacific-10 Conference basketball title. That was almost a "man bites dog" story. The Dodgers, featuring a righty-lefty pitching combo of Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela, won the West Division but blew the play-offs when reliever Tom Niedenfuer gave up a grand slam home run to Jack Clark of the St. Louis Cardinals.

UCLA dominated Pac-10 football play and blasted Iowa, 45-28 in the Rose Bowl. By the mid-1980s it appeared Congress had passed a law disallowing any chance of victory by the Big 10 at Pasadena. The Raiders were beaten by New England in the AFC play-offs. The 1985 season was one of the decade's highlights for the Los Angeles Rams, who won their division but were trounced in freezing conditions at Chicago in the NFC title game.

Bob Hope wrote to say he was having wallpaper made of Murray's July 4 column "so I can kiss it every day," adding he did not know how to thank him. "If I was a girl I could think of something, but since I'm just a hacker, I offer you two at Lakeside for a nickel any day."

Murray wrote a column about Miami quarterback Dan Marino, whose good looks he compared to Warren Beatty. He figured quarterbacks needed to be "hunch-backed, pigeon-toed guys in high-top shoes like Johnny Unites," but Marino was so hunky Murray could not understand how he ever dragged himself "away from a mirror."

In a March 28 column, "Fernando Throws Age a Screwball," Jim Murray described the Dodgers' ace as, "Grover Cleveland Alexander with an accent." Nobody knew how old the Mexican southpaw really was, "somewhere between 45 and infinity," according to the writer. Rival managers demanded not just to see the ball (to check for foreign substances), they also wanted "to see his birth certificate." He was "part Pancho Villa, part Cisco Kid." Murray said his first year ("Fernandomania," 1981) was comparable to Ruth in fan interest, a remarkable assessment. Valenzuela, Murray wrote, "might just disappear into the mountains some day, like Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon."

When German teenage sensation Boris Becker won at Wimbledon, Murray called him, "The pro from the Brothers Grimm." He dreamt of militaristic headlines like, "Boris Becker went through Wimbledon's seeds like von Moltke through the Low Countries here today." He hit his shots with the "authority of a Reichswehr 88-millimeter field piece." German readers, unaware that Murray made these kinds of German Army comparisons when writing of USC's Thundering Herd or the Yankees of Mantle and Maris, probably thought he was going too far.

When Howard Cosell left Monday Night Football, Murray pulled no punches. He did not care for the guy. Cosell was everything Murray was not; vain, pompous, self-serving. Murray was also smart enough to let Cosell do the talking. Murray often eschewed quotes, preferring the rarity of his own words, but when writing of a guy like Casey Stengel or Howard Cosell, he used quotation marks. Cosell dug a huge hole for himself, complaining about his old MNF booth mates Frank Gifford and "Dandy Don" Meredith. Murray wrote, "Howard Has Much To Be Vain About."

The inexorable advance of American Execptionalism under President Reagan hit obstacles in 1986. Early in the year, on January 28, the space shuttle Challenger exploded above the skies of Florida. In October, the Iran-Contra scandal hit. The United States, prevented by law from funding the Nicaraguan Contras in their struggle with the Communists, covertly decided to sell arms to Iran, who in turn were to release hostages being held in the Middle East. The money from the arms sales was to go to the Contras. It was discovered prior to the mid-term election, and played a large role in the Senate switching to the Democrats.

In an event of incredible symbolic truth, the Soviet Union literally seemed to melt down when a nuclear reactor located in Chernobyl, Ukraine incurred in an accident. The resulting explosion was a disaster of monumental proportions, killing many people, spreading nuclear waste over a large swath of the landscape, causing sickness and death among the citizenry for decades, making the region virtually uninhabitable for the remainder of the century and beyond.

In a 1986 Sports Illustrated profile, reprinted by the magazine in 1994, Rick Reilly noted that "Murray may be the most famous sportswriter in history. 'What's your favorite Murray line?' At the Indy 500: 'Gentlemen, start your coffins'? Or '[Rickey Henderson] has a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart'? Or UCLA Coach John Wooden was 'so square, he was divisible by four'? How many lines can you remember by any other sports writer?"

In a marvelous piece about Magic Johnson, Murray wrote: "If I were an NBA player, the last sight in the world I would want to see is Magic Johnson coming down court with the basketball.
"You imagine this is the way the captain of the Titanic must have felt when he saw the iceberg.

"It's like seeing Babe Ruth coming to bat with the bases loaded and your fastball gone. It's like having A.J. Foyt in your rearview mirror on the back straight with 10 laps to go. The feeling Al Capone must have had when he got on the intercom and they said, 'There's a Mr. Eliot Ness here to see you. He's got three men with him and he says it's important.'

"It's like seeing a hand come up out of the coffin, or hearing a wolf outside the castle in the moonlight."

Typical of Murray, he did his best work when describing the best individual athletes gracing the scene throughout his career. He used a Caesar metaphor to describe Johnson's looking over the floor, setting up a play. He was as "indefensible as a riptide," a phrase he probably came up with during his Malibu years, storing until the appropriate time. Magic "is a conductor. Magic gives you a symphony, not an aria. Magic is trying to win a war, not a medal." The column was written as a "warning" to the Houston Rockets, but the Lakers' dynasty took a turn sideways when the Rockets upset them, four games to one in the Western Conference finals. After Boston beat Houston in the Finals, Murray found a local angle, the Celtics' sixth man, Bill Walton. The sixth man was a long Boston tradition, going back to John Havlicek and beyond. Walton, one of the two greatest college players in history, led Portland to the 1977 NBA title, but injuries prevented him from attaining the level of greatness he seemed destined for. Still, he was on a team that won the 1986 championship, happily contributing as Larry Bird's teammate.

Interviewing Walton at a celebrity event at La Costa near San Diego, he wrote that in between his championship years – 1977 and 1986 – the creaky, oft-injured 6-11 center was "crystal ware on the ends of his legs." In Boston, Murray continued, Walton could now "rank with the Lowells and the Cabots and the cod. The Kennedys might not want to ride in the same car." Of the upcoming meeting with President Reagan, Murray quipped that politicians would say to him they would know who he is, "But who's that actor with you."

Under manager John McNamara, the California Angels survived a tough West Division race with defending World Champion Kansas City. Against Roger Clemens and the Boston Red Sox, they led three games to one at Anaheim Stadium with their ace pitcher, Mike Witt on the mound nursing a 5-2 lead. With two runs in and a man on, Witt was removed in favor of reliever Donnie Moore. Moore gave up a home run to Boston's Dave Henderson. The Angels subsequently tied the game but lost in extra innings. In Boston they fell apart. The "Angels' curse" was alive and well.

Nobody particularly distinguished themselves on Southern California football fields in 1986. When former New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings great Fran Tarkenton entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Murray wrote, "This is the look of a guy asked to go through Indian territory with only a map and a canteen, which is a fair description of his life in the NFL." The term "Indian country," probably a little on the politically incorrect side, was nevertheless used as a metaphor for danger by Murray as well as Vin Scully in describing brave men, often Dodgers manager Walter Alston. Murray allowed for the eloquent Tarkenton to be quoted extensively in the piece.

Prior to the 1987 Super Bowl, Murray wrote about superstar quarterback John Elway. Elway catapulted Denver into the championship game against Bill Parcels and the New York Giants on the strength of "the drive," remarkably moving his team down the field in winter conditions, defeating the Cleveland Browns and their increasingly despairing fans. He wrote that nobody knew anything about the Broncos, only of Elway. When the Broncos arrived, everybody turned, expecting to see a whole team. It was only Elway. All the Giants could talk about was Elway, as if there were no other players on their team.

Then he went to classic Murray prose. "There is only one story in the Mile High City. Elway is like Caruso in the opera, Paderewski at the piano, Nijinsky at the Bolshoi.

"If he wins, it'll always be 'Elway Slays Giants.' " Elway could throw footballs through "two time zones." He could make a football "sing Dixie." He was the "nearest thing to a one-man show since John Wayne cleaned up the Burma Road." If the Broncos' bus went over a cliff the headline would read, "John Elway, 44 Friends Hurt in Crash." When the Super Bowl was actually played, however, the Giants roundly smashed Elway and his team.

In a column about golf legend Jack Nicklaus, Murray wrote that he was a man who could "bring a sense of order, stability to our world." To watch Nicklaus in the links made it "1963 again," obviously prior to November 22. The Masters, he observed, were now "the Dallas Cowboys of golf."

"As the poet said, with Nicklaus winning the Masters, God's in his Heaven and all's right with the world," he concluded. Today, few national columnists are willing to write that such entities as "God" and "Heaven" exist lest the ACLU bring suit.

Of Greg "the Shark" Norman ("Shark May Have Bitten Off More Than He Can Chew," June 15), Murray wrote, "You could chop wood with his face." Of famed horse trainer Eddie Arcaro, he wrote, "He could do anything on horseback that Jesse James, Tom Mix, Buffalo Bill or the Lone Ranger could." On September 23 Murray wrote a column on tennis "brat" John McEnroe, quoting Revolutionary War Governor Patrick Morris. He stated that a man could be judged by who shows for his funeral. Presumably he did not think McEnroe would attract a very good crowd. At the time, he was one of the dominant players in the game but an incredibly controversial figure on the court.

Two events dominated American domestic news in 1987. The Iran-Contra hearings were held, meant to embarrass and possibly even impeach Ronald Reagan. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North turned the tables on them during his testimony. Lieutenant Colonel North had been the driving force behind the plot to go around laws designed to prevent American aid to freedom fighters battling the Communists. North effectively painted a picture of patriots, a little mis-guided and zealous perhaps, who were frustrated that an American political party did not wish to actively oppose an ideology (Communism) responsible for the murder of some 100 million human beings. As with G. Gordon Liddy, imprisoned for his role in Watergate, North could not be destroyed. North faced years of legal battles and eventually was exonerated of all criminal wrongdoing. He became a folk hero of the right and, like Liddy, remains one to this day, all causing much weeping and gnashing of teeth among their detractors.

In October, the stock market lost a record 508 points in a single day. Somehow, it was only a blip, as the economy just picked up and kept going strong. Reagan weathered these storms in large measure because he was negotiating a series of arms-control agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev, which increasingly had people seeing the end of the Cold War on the horizon, to the advantage of the U.S.

Despite efforts to make Reagan look bad, he towered above all world figures when he inspired West Germans with exhortations of Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" in a speech before the Berlin Wall. As with John Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of 1963, it was met with wild enthusiasm.

A CIA-sponsored war in Afghanistan, sponsored in large measure by a rogue Texas Congressman named Charlie Wilson, resulted in a Soviet defeat which historians dubbed "their Vietnam." The Cold War was all over but the shouting.

Despite America's good efforts on behalf of Muslim countries, the Middle East continued to roil in turmoil, a precursor of the next great challenge. A Palestinian Intifada rocked Israel, causing great consternation and a fair amount of bad feeling towards the Jewish state. For many it was a kind of "last straw" after years of fruitless hope that a peace, an accommodation could be found between the Israelis and their Arab neighbors.

Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities was a Best Seller. 1987 was also the year the great Jim Murray was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing." He was typically humble about the great honor.

Of all the great Los Angeles Lakers teams of the decade, the 1987 squad was probably the best, comparable with all-time NBA powerhouses, among them the 1967 Philadelphia 76ers, the 1972 Lakers, and the 1996 Chicago Bulls. Magic Johnson was at the height of his powers. James Worthy was a star in his own right. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still at the top of his game. The Lakers blasted past Larry Bird and Boston in a six-game Finals.

USC under new coach Larry Smith upset Troy Aikman and UCLA, advancing to the Rose Bowl. The pro football players went on strike again. It was the second NFL work stoppage in five years. Baseball had struck in 1972 and 1981. The 1987 football strike rendered the season meaningless, of no value to the memory. It was the kind of thing Jim Murray hated. It was a sign of the times, that the innocence of sports which he cherished since his youth, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, was a thing of the past.

With Ronald Reagan making arms-reduction deals with the Soviets, increasingly leading the U.S. to inevitable victory in the Cold War, his successor, Vice President George H.W. Bush ran for President against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Bush used a controversial ad featuring a black criminal, Willie Horton. Furloughed by Dukakis, Horton committed more violent crimes. Bush rocketed from 17 points down to a comfortable election victory in November. It was the last time California voted Republican. U.S. Senator Pete Wilson was re-elected.

For Reagan, it was like a great athlete in his last season, a swan song and chance for his fans to serenade him, to say good-bye. Under his leadership, the world was generally peaceful and prosperous.

In 1988 Murray was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Southern California Broadcasters Association. He also published his third book, The Jim Murray Collection (Taylor Publishing). Broken into sections such as "Personally Speaking," "Portraits," and "Fond Farewells," it was a collection of his columns going back to the early 1970s. He inscribed it, "For every guy who ever struck out with the bases loaded, took a 10-count, fumbled on the goal line, double-faulted, missed a lay-up at the buzzer, pulled a three-foot putt and bet into a pat hand of aces full . . . and every guy who ever closed a bar alone at two o'clock in the morning."

Murray joked that he often received letters from some "patch-elbowed, blue-jean college work-shirkers" asking him to "explain" the role of "sports journalism." He claimed it was merely a way to get him to do their homework for them. He wrote the best educational institution for journalism was not some place with ivy on its walls, but rather the New York Daily News. He said "great" was too often used for "mediocre," "sensational" for "poor," and "immortal" for "competent." His work hours varied, but when covering auto racing, "you just call the coroner periodically and he does your work for you."

Among books that influenced him, he joked that among them were Modern Theories of Cricket, Clifford Irving's biography of Duane Thomas, and The Religious Experiences of Leo Durocher.

His favorite spectator sport was the all-nude Broadway revue Oh, Calcutta! He loved being assigned interviewing duties in the locker room of the ladies tennis tour. His advice to future journalists was to "do your own homework" because, "You can't cover the Super Bowl by questionnaire."

Vin Scully was a huge admirer of Murray, his one equal in the pantheon, and exclusive member of a two-man mutual admiration society. According to Jim's fellow Irishman, "He can level cities with tongue-in-cheek descriptions, humanize by hyperbole, and puncture the pompous with his literary lance," adding "I marveled at his sensitivity when he wrote about losing the use of an eye as if he had just lost an old friend . . .

"He is, without doubt, a star of the first magnitude in the firmament that is sports writing, and well worth the looking. "

It was another wonderful year in California sports. The Lakers captured another NBA title, while Stanford won their second straight College World Series championship. The Dodgers, led by the fiery Kirk Gibson (MVP) and pitching ace Orel Hershiser (Cy Young) captured the division, then beat a favored Mets club in the play-offs.

In a piece on manager Tommy Lasorda, Murray led off with about a page and a half of hype before even mentioning Lasorda's name. He said when the movie was made it would be played by Vincent Gardenia (Bang the Drum Slowly). He invoked God and country. If Lasorda were a politician his foreign policy would be, "Beat Montreal!" Lasorda was not above fabricating stories if it would fire his team up. Lasorda was "Mr. Baseball." He was "as perfect for the Dodgers as peanut butter for white bread."

Pitcher Orel Hershiser broke Don Drysdale's all-time record for consecutive scoreless innings with 59 1/3, dramatically getting it in 1988 instead of having to wait until 1989 because his final start vs. San Diego resulted in a 10-innng 0-0 tie before he was pulled. As he was closing in on the record, Murray wrote "They Won't Call Him Dr. Zero For Nothing."

"Norman Rockwell would have loved Orel Hershiser," he started it off. He wrote his named should be Ichabod and, "He's so white you can read through him," a premise he also established in writing about Larry Bird. While Don Drysdale pitched in rage, throwing the ball "as if it were a grenade," Hershiser did not use intimidation tactics. His pitches resembled a "16-pound shot." It was obvious a Christian family man like Hershiser was the preferred kind of athlete in the Murray lexicon.

Los Angeles pulled off an enormous upset of the mighty Oakland Athletics in the World Series. In game one at Dodger Stadium, Gibson homered off Oakland relief ace Dennis Eckersley to give his team the win, propelling them onwards and upwards. Hershiser was as great as Koufax or any other post-season hurler, shutting out the A's at Dodger Stadium in game two, then defeating them in a complete game 5-2 win at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum to wrap up the 4-1 Series win.

Doug Krikorian was a young writer groomed for the business by Bud Furillo at the L.A. Herald-Express.

"I'll always remember as a young reporter covering the Lakers and traveling with Jim Murray on a train with the Lakers from New York to Baltimore," he recalled. "He couldn't have been nicer. Also, never will forget us sitting next each other in the Dodger Stadium press box and when Gibson hit his famous World Series home run. Both Murray and I had already concluded our columns for Sunday's papers, as he had written about Jose Canseco's early-game home run that had staked the A's to a big advantage and I had finished my piece for the old L.A. Herald Examiner. And, Murray uttered a curse when Gibson's home run landed into the right field bleachers.

" 'Now I have to write another column, (delete) it,' he said. I was always around Murray at big Las Vegas fights and Super Bowls. Good guy, affable to young reporters, never took himself seriously."

The 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea were the last in which the Soviet Union and East Germany appeared as their old Communist states. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was disgraced for steroid use, in many ways an event marking the beginning of the "steroid era," even though its use was prevalent, especially in football, and particularly in Communist Eastern Europe, since the 1930s.

Jose Canseco of the A's earned the American League Most Valuable Player award that year, although nobody really suspected he was "juiced" until several years later. According to Canseco, he either introduced his teammate Mark McGwire to steroids that year or a few seasons later.

The California theme continued during the college and pro football season. At the college level, it was as heavy with Los Angeles influence as any year since 1967. USC and UCLA dominated the national scene in football, reminiscent of the 1960s and early 1970s. Early in the season, both teams marked their territory with impressive victories; Southern Cal over Oklahoma and UCLA over Nebraska. As in 1967, when the Heisman Trophy came down to O.J. Simpson of the Trojans and Gary Beban of the Bruins, this time it was a shoot-out at the Rose Bowl between Rodney Peete of Southern California and Troy Aikman of UCLA. When Peete led his team to victory, it seemed to be a settled matter. But the next week unbeaten Notre Dame crushed Southern California at the Coliseum, 27-10. The pre-game hype was as great as any in history, but with Peete injured the game just fizzled out to the disappointment of the large L.A. throng.

After Peete bombed on the big stage, Oklahoma State's Barry Sanders ended up the Heisman winner. No longer competing for the national title, USC folded in an uncharacteristic Rose Bowl defeat at the hands of a team they normally whipped, Michigan. California glory continued into the new year when Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and the San Francisco 49ers defeated Cincinnati in the Super Bowl. Bill Walsh retired after the victory with three Super Bowl victories. By now Charles McCabe's old saw about San Franciscans being psychologically unable to handle the thrill of ultimate victory was rendered completely irrelevant. The 49ers were a dynasty as great as any in NFL history: Paul Brown's Cleveland Browns, Vince Lombardi's Packers, Don Shula's Dolphins, Tom Landry's Cowboys, Al Davis' Raiders, Chuck Noll's Steelers. Their fans expected them to go all the way each year and were disappointed if they did not. Montana was well established in the minds of many as the greatest signal-caller ever, Lott as great a defensive backfield man as had ever played.

During Spring Training, Murray wrote a compelling column about Nolan Ryan. In it he compared his statistics in various seasons in which other pitchers beat him out for the Cy Young Award. The way he framed the argument made it almost ludicrous to conceive that Gaylord Perry was better than Ryan in 1972, Jim Palmer in 1973, Catfish Hunter in 1974, or any of a number of other years. Always it was Ryan, consistently posting a high number of wins, over 300 strikeouts, microscopic ERAs, annual no-hitters, all with 300 innings and 20-plus complete games. "Give him the Cy Young Award?" wrote Murray, miffed. "Don't be absurd! Not when you have pitchers like Pete Vuckovich, Steve Stone, LaMarr Hoyt and Steve Bedrosian to give it to. You don't give the Cy Young Award to a guy just because he has set or broken 38 Major League records. After all, did Chaplin ever win the Academy Award?"

His arm "should go to the Smithsonian." Ryan did not "rob banks, kill kittens, sell government secrets, set fires" or "drink, smoke, chew or swear" for that matter. Other than that he was a pretty good guy. "He's polite, approachable," believed in God, was unimpressed with himself. "The Cy Young voters have managed to stay pretty blasé about it, too," he continued. "Maybe they're waiting for him to cure cancer."

In 1988 he wrote a column about horse trainer Chris McCarron and race driver Richard Petty. He re-visited the story of Bob Beamon, who set the long jump record in 1968 with a mark so outrageous the column was titled, "He Landed Somewhere in the Future." He also did a retrospective on 1948 and 1952 Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias (a teammate of Otis Chandler's at Stanford), who he called a "one-man track team." His bad javelin form resembled a guy throwing a "spear like a guy killing a chicken. He went over the vault like a guy falling out of a moving car, and his high jump looked like a guy leaving a banana peel. All he did was win."

When hockey legend Wayne Gretzky signed with the Los Angeles Kings after years of dominance with Edmonton, Murray flat-out wrote it was because he desired to be recognized on a large stage. His wife was an actress and "you can't be an actress" in Edmonton. "Trust me."

When Oakland outfielder Joe Rudi made a spectacular World Series catch, Murray noted that in New York it would engender songs, but as veteran writer Jack Lang said, "here, it's just F-7." Gretzky "wants to play the Palace."

The last year of the decade turned out to be what goes down in history as a "game changer," to use a sports term. In June the Chinese fired on pro-Democracy riots by their citizens who wanted the country . . . to be more like America! Thousands died. The sight of a faux Stature of Liberty dubbed by their people the "Goddess of Democracy" enraged the Chinese leaders who wanted only kowtowing to images of the murderer Chairman Mao and the reading of his stupid Little Red Book.

With George H.W. Bush having succeeded Ronald Reagan, the world picked up on the Chinese protests at Tiananmen Square. The quest for freedom, inspired by Reagan, was moving all over the world. In November Reagan's exhortation that the Berlin Wall be torn down came to fruition only two years after he asked for it to fall. It effectively meant the end of the Cold War. It was a moment of enormous triumph for the United States. He had forged victory eight years after the Soviets were on the march in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and, of course Eastern Europe. Now Eastern Europe was free.

It was also a defining year in the L.A.-San Francisco rivalry. For years, Los Angeles teams destroyed Bay Area teams. There were exceptions, mainly in the form of an Oakland A's dynasty and great Oakland Raiders squads, but until Joe Montana and the 49ers lit up pro football, the scales were heavily weighted in favor of the south. In the 1980s, however, the Dodgers slumped a bit, the Rams slumped a lot, and USC fell precipitously, at least by their lofty standards. California and Stanford were not exactly bringing back memories of Brick Muller and Frankie Albert, but they would over the next few years compete on a relatively even playing field with Southern California and UCLA. Certainly the old Bruin basketball dominance was a thing of the past.

In 1989, the Detroit Pistons ended the Lakers' run. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired and Murray wrote that he finally shut his many critics up. "God made him more than seven feet tall," he wrote. "He took care of the rest." He was finally "winning with class."

Then came the baseball season. The defending World Champion Dodgers struggled and the Angels never contended. Our National Pastime was a Bay Area affair, its teams exciting, featuring thrilling players like Will Clark, Kevin Mitchell, Matt Williams, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley. The A's in particular looked at that time like a collection of future Hall of Famers. In the case of Henderson, Eckersley and manager Tony LaRussa, they were.

The sight of winning A's teams were not new, but for Dodgers fans, who for years laughed at the incompetetent Giants playing in front of rude, foul-mouthed fans in the fetid Candlestick Park, the sight of the orange-and-black beating the Chicago Cubs in the N.L.C.S. to advance to the Fall Classic, the biggest of stages, well, that was an affront. Coming in confluence with utter 49ers dominance, it seemed as if the globe was off its orbit.

Southern Californians generally adopted the Athletics, to the extent they had a rooting interest in the Bay Bridge series. Oakland rolled, winning the first two games. They were on a mission, to exorcise the demons of Kirk Gibson's monumental shot off Eckersley. But nobody remembered much of anything other than a major earthquake just as game three was about to start at Candlestick Park.

The Bay Area re-grouped and the two teams ventured into the hinterlands to practice until it could be resumed. It was as anti-climactic as any event in sports annals. Oakland won two easy ones and that was that.

Murray loved San Francisco's skyline, bridges, bay and mountains. He was not enamored of its people, its politics, its low rent anti-L.A. fans throwing garbage and screaming obscenities at Tommy Lasorda, a baseball ambassador who believed in God and loved his country. Over the years Murray found a certain amount of satisfaction in writing how Divine Providence seemingly smiled on the Southland while turning San Francisco into a symbolic pillar of salt.

He wrote that Los Angeles hosted major sporting events almost annually – Super Bowls, Rose Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals, basketball rivalries for the ages, collegiate football wars, two Olympics – virtually without a hitch. The weather was always perfect, the fans well behaved (like they had been there before, which they had), the events well ordered absent riots and disasters. But San Francisco, a place that got a major event only occasionally, seemed doomed by dame fortune in the form of a completely rare Pacific rainstorm (1962) and a 7.1 earthquake (1989).

But try as Jim Murray might to put Northern California down, to put them off and laugh them away, they were comers by 1989. John Robinson's Los Angeles Rams thought they had a pretty good football team that season. Late in November they hosted the 49ers at Anaheim Stadium on Monday Night Football. Al Michaels informed the viewing audience that Joe Montana was having what some historians were beginning to say might be the single greatest season any quarterback had ever had.

With the hometown fans cheering wildly and pub denizens doing the same, the Rams built a big early lead. Then came Joe. 11 years after he rallied Notre Dame to the lead at the nearby Coliseum (before Frank Jordan's field goal gave USC the win), this time Montana was completely unstoppable. If Michaels had a point that Montana was having the best season in history, he probably wrapped that up on this evening, which may have been the best individual game ever played. He passed for 439 yards, rallying San Francisco to a 30-27 win. The Rams were done.

Los Angeles could not compete with Montana and the 49ers. When they met again in the NFC championship game, it was a joke. San Francisco 30, Los Angeles 3. Afterwards Murray wrote, "I thought Joe Montana was human." He "glows in the dark." Giving him the ball was tantamount to "giving Rembrandt a brush or Hemingway a pen." For " 'Joe World' . . . 'good field position' is his own three-yard line." He returned to the well worn but always brilliant comparisons: Spencer Tracey acting, Jascha Heifetz fiddling, Ty Cobb at the plate, and one of his obvious faves, the ballet artist Vaslav Nijinsky.

Murray was not finished. After the 49ers utterly annihilated Denver in the Super Bowl, he wrote a column on January 29 that was so good picking out really good lines from it is impossible. It was one of those pieces where you read one line and figure that is the best one, but the next is just better. It was absolute vintage Jim Murray. First, he listed things "that shouldn't happen." Among them was clubbing baby seals and other obvious things. Then he added to the list "the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl."

"Where is the Human Society when you need it?" he wrote. "Where are those organizations against cruelty to dumb animals?"

The Broncos "went to their fate like guys going to the electric chair . . . Cagney did it better." Then, "It wasn't a game, it was an execution. It was the biggest mismatch since the Christians and the lions."

He urged Bud Grant and the Vikings to return in order to re-claim their "Super Bowl record for futility." The Broncos were "the William Jennings Bryans, the Harold Stassens, Tom Deweys of football." This was classic stuff. Murray refused to write down to his audience. Many Los Angelenos had no idea who Williams Jennings Bryan, Harold Stassen or Tom Dewey were, but he refused to "dumb it down." It has been reported by many readers and observers that a Murray column caused them to find a history book or a library in order to learn more. The Internet was not around until very late in his career. Had it been throughout his years at the Los Angeles Times, Jim Murray's on-line columns would likely have engendered more Google searches than any other source.

"They should have a clause in the wire agreement with the league that they don't have to play in a game under 5,000 feet," he wrote of Denver.

"And they shouldn't play the San Francisco 49ers anywhere."

Not only were the 49ers better "they looked better in their uniforms . . . The outcome was as foregone as a tidal wave." As for Joe Montana, he probably could "walk on water" and bullets "probably bounce off him." Giving him tools like Jerry Rice and Roger Craig was like "giving a lion horses." Anybody who enjoyed the Niners' destruction of the Broncos probably enjoyed pictures of "the German Army going through Belgium.

"The 49ers aren't a team, they're a scourge. A dynasty . . . an empire."

USC won the Pac-10 Conference and defeated Michigan in the Rose Bowl behind freshman quarterback Todd Marinovich.

In 1989, one of the great feel-good human interest stories in sports history played out in Los Angeles. Jim Abbott was an All-American pitcher at the University of Michigan. He had defeated the vaunted Cuban national team in international competition. He was now pitching for the California Angels, having ascended to the Major Leagues without playing in their farm system. This made him exceptional enough, but great athletes were not exactly a novelty in the City of Angels. What made Abbott so different was that he had only one arm. That one arm, his left one, was the one he used to mow down opposition batsmen in short order.

"To often, the Major League ballplayer is portrayed as a churlish, graceless individual who comes into public view brushing the little kid autograph seeker aside, refusing to pose for pictures, announcing irritatedly that all he owes his public is a .293 average or an appearance at a baseball card show for which he gets $10,000," wrote Murray. One could half-imagine the ears of the nameless many he called out getting red.

"There are, to be sure, a few who fit this unflattering image. They take the $2 million and run. The fans' love is unrequited. The record books sometime identify these worthies as Most Valuable Players. The public concept of what these letters stand for is quite different. So, it gives me great pleasure today to check in with a different kind of story, the account of a Major League player who belongs to the world at large, is a citizen in good standing with the rest of the community, a man who cares."

Murray wrote about a despicable incident in which a little girl in Indiana lost her hands when somebody planted a bomb in a K Mart store. "It didn't kill Erin," Murray wrote of the five-year old. "It just blew off her left hand. You don't even want to think about it.

"In all the outpouring of sympathy for little Erin, one letter came marked with the logo of the California Angels. It read:

" 'Dear Erin:

" 'Perhaps somewhere later in your lifetime you will properly understand this letter and the feelings that go behind it. Regardless, I wanted to send something along now after being made aware of your terrible accident.

" 'As your parents have probably told you, I was born without a right hand. That automatically made me different from the other kids I was around. But you know what? It made me different only in their eyes. You see, I figured that's what the Good Lord wanted me to work with. So it was my responsibility to become as good as I could at whatever I chose to do, regardless of my handicap.

" 'I just won my first Major League game. When the final out was made, a lot of things went through my mind. I thought of my parents and all the help they provided; my brother and his support; and all of my friends along the way. The only thing, Erin, that I didn't pay attention to was my handicap. You see, it had nothing to do with anything.

" 'You're a young lady now with a tremendous life ahead of you. Whether you want to be an athlete, a doctor, lawyer or anything else, it will be up to you, and only you, how far you go. Certainly there will be some tough times ahead, but with dedication and love of life, you'll be successful in any field you choose. I'll look forward to reading about you in the future.

" 'Again, my best, Jim Abbott, California Angels.'

"Now that, you have to say, is the way to get an autograph. And the news from Indianapolis, as reported in the Star, is good: Erin, who turned six today, has been fitted with an electrically-powered hand at the Medical Prosthetics Center in Houston. It'll do everything a real hand will do - except throw the curve. If Erin wants to do that, she'll have to learn to do it with her other hand. As Jim Abbott has shown, that's no problem."

In an article about former Steelers star quarterback Terry Bradshaw, considered "dumb," Murray wrote of the Hall of Famer, "Some dunce! With a football in his hands he was Einstein." His March 24 column, "Pete Rozelle Sold Entire Nation on His Sport," stated, "Michelangelo has his David, Da Vinci his Mona Lisa – and Rozelle has the Super Bowl." As a PR man, "he could make Castro President of the U.S."

In a column on the Unser racing family, Murray wrote, "Victory Lane is like Buckingham Palace, the ruling family's ancestral home." He wrote a very utilitarian column about German tennis sensation Steffi Graf, mainly a question-and-answer piece.

Charlton Heston wrote Murray endorsing his nomination of Graf for Sportsman of the Year.

Murray wrote a wistful column about his hero, Ben Hogan. Recounting how hard he tried to break into the golf tour in the 1930s, when he played at Pasadena's Brookside Park in 1931, "Bread was only a nickel. But nobody had a nickel." They played for oranges, which Hogan lived on for a week. He followed that up with a paean to his favorite course, the beautiful Riviera Country Club in the Palisades, "a grande dame of American golf courses. A golf tournament at Riviera is like a World Series at Yankee Stadium, an opera at La Scala, a waltz in Vienna, a war in the Balkans. Fitting."

Love, tragedy, redemption

In a column dated March 16, 1986 called "The Sport that Time Leaves Alone," Murray wrote one of his most quoted lines: "I've never been unhappy in a ballpark."

This line and this column had double meaning. The column gave a laundry list of traditional, pure, Normal Rockwell-type things Jim Murray liked. It was all very innocent, almost child-like. It was also a mask.

Jim Murray was a man of social pathos. He came to this pathos by virtue of his upbringing. He had a big, extended family of uncles, Damon Runyon characters, little guys, underdogs. He was shaped by the misery of the Great Depression. Being an Irish poet, he naturally saw the world through the eyes – metaphorically, at least, since he went near-blind – of tragedy, as did such disparate Irishmen as Dylan Thomas, C.S. Lewis, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats and Jim Morrison. He was a product of parochial schools and Christian faith. Born in the shadow of the Great War, he saw his country fight in three more major conflicts, fighting the evils of Nazism and Communism. He knew how lucky he was to live in freedom.

But his 1986 column, in which he said he was never "unhappy in a ballpark," masked the fact that covering sports was an escape from his troubles, from the troubles of all Mankind, perhaps even a respite from Original Sin. Something innocent and pure in a world where innocence and purity are rare commodities. It also masked sorrow, for Jim Murray's social pathos came not just from the priests at Trinity College or the sight of Depression bread lines. He lived it. Up close and personal.

In 1982, the doctors had finally restored enough of his sight to "normalcy" to allow Jim Murray to live with some . . . normalcy. It had been a major blow, but he overcame it. Before he could celebrate his overcoming this "tragedy," he was met by tragedy that made his impaired vision pale in comparison.

A hint of what now had reared its head could be found in an odd inscription Murray made in his 1965 book, The Best of Jim Murray:

"To my three sons, Ted, Tony, and Ricky, who have never read my columns and doubtless won't read this book, and my daughter, Pammy, who won't, either. To their mother, Gerry, who not only read, but, bless her, laughed at all the jokes."

Here was the most popular sports columnist in the nation, yet none of his own children read his work. Not only that, they "won't read this book." Murray's writing reflected who he was; his faith, his love of things that were pure and righteous, yet his own children seemed to have turned from these principles. The inscription alone is not enough to make this assumption, but it hints at it. There is some frustration inherent within it on the part of the great scribe, who influenced so many Americans but, like so many parents during the 1960s and 1970s, when the unfortunate "generation gap" was at its height, was not the biggest influence on his own beloved children.

Unquestionably, this aspect of his own life may have been one of the things that tied the most readers to him over the years. Similarly frustrated parents, especially in crazy California, recognizing a kindred spirit who despite wealth, fame and influence, could no more reach young people than any number of insurance salesmen, stock brokers, cabbies, school teachers . . .

Chapter 18 of Murray's 1993 autobiography is titled, "The Baby of the Family." It begins, "There hangs in my bedroom a picture some 35 years old, and it is the first thing I see when I get out of bed in the morning. And it hurts to look at it."

Jim and Gerry Murray had two older boys, Teddy and Tony, and a daughter, Pammy. The "baby in the family" was named Erick Patrick but he went by Rick or Ricky. Gerry had a hysterectomy shortly after he was born. He looked like his mother, with big brown eyes, dark skin, and a generous mouth. He usually smiled.

In photos of him, he always looked like he had a cold, was stuffed up, which Murray did not really pick up on until it was too late. Ricky loved and trusted his sister, Pam. He loved his mother. Murray recalled that he always called out, "Mom" when he came home.

In 1956, the Murrays moved to Malibu from Pacific Palisades, which Gerry and Jim decided was "too urban." They wanted a wide-open place where their children could run free in a totally safe environment. They owned an acre-and-a-half of property, which was later sold to Bob Dylan. It was on headlands off of Pt. Dume, where "pirates once off-loaded their stolen gold," according to Murray. It was next to a place called Paradise Cove.

Ricky was three. It seemed idyllic, the beautiful sand and sea, the good life. But too much "good life" in the form of money, parties, girls, sex, drugs, alcohol, and Hollywood immorality can turn "idyllic" into a horror movie.

Malibu is the home to the Hollywood elite, the ones who "make it." Barbra Streisand, Martin Sheen, Nick Nolte. The list is endless. But most of these people come from someplace else. By dint of hard work, talent and perseverance they forge success in the ruggedly competitive world of movie, music, entertainment. They pull themselves up by the bootstraps, surviving, struggling against all odds until they get to the top, where they find it lonely.

Murray was also in the "entertainment" business, of a sort. He too was from someplace else and had by dint of hard work, perseverance and talent risen to the top. But these superstars, these winners of the American Dream, have children. Their children are born and raised into the luxury provide by their parents. The odds alone make it unlikely any will ever come close to matching their famed parents' success.

Some of the children of privilege who grew up and hung out together in Malibu in the 1960s and '70s included the Penn brothers, Sean and Chris; the Sheen brothers, Charlie and Emilio Estevez; and Rob Lowe. Most of these children have been in the headlines at one time or another for some kind of indiscretion; drugs, fighting, arrest. And these are the ones who made it big. For every "success" story there are hundreds of kids frustrated by expectations, lack of success, and the temptations of "the life."

Ricky was "totally a product of that environment," wrote Murray. "That meant surfing, guitars, the beach life, a cut-off from the frantic pace of the city." The Colony, movie wealth, the "horsey set."

"It looked like paradise," he wrote. "So, I think, did Gomorrah." Murray wrote the experience left him feeling the same way about guitars as a swastika to a rabbi. "I associate it with terror in the night, years when you picked up a ringing phone or answered a knock at the door with a pounding heart." A siren song tempting Ulysses to crash against the rocks. The "paradise cove" where pirates once smuggled treasure, where bootleggers once unloaded their illegal booze, was by Murray's time where drug smugglers landed their dope. The Murrays had moved to the West Coast distribution center of hard narcotics!

Jim became a columnist with the Times five years after moving to Malibu. Prior to that, when he worked for Sports Illustrated, he was on a weekly deadline heavy on editing duties. His hours were basically Monday through Friday, nine to five. Now his hours were three P.M. to midnight, always working Friday and Saturday nights. Sundays there was usually no time for church. He had to be at Dodger Stadium, the Big A, the Coliseum. Or he was out of town, with the Lakers, at the Indy 500, the Super Bowl, "March Madness."

In the mean time, the '60s snuck up on the Greatest Generation. Gidget was gone, replaced by The Beatles, the Stones and hedonism. Rebellion, war protesters, free love. Drugs, drugs, drugs. Being Irish, Murray always figured it would be alcohol. He was prepared for that. He could speak that language. This was an insidious, new, subversive enemy stealing the soul of his kids.

His wrote plainly that marijuana was a gateway drug leading to harder narcotics. He saw it up close. First he saw it with his neighbors. Then it happened to his family. The "generation gap" was in full swing, and his words to his son fell on deaf ears. They carried no meaning. Catholic guilt, Christian temperance, family values, old style morality; all of this was one big guilt trip to this generation.

Murray turned to his talent as a writer. He prepared a pamphlet to be distributed to other Malibu parents, hoping they could band together. He did not realize many of those parents were of the unimpressive class, Hollywood types who thought it "cool" to smoke dope with their kids, believing permissiveness in child-rearing to be a virtue. When the cops called they blamed the cops for being "pigs." If they were lucky they never got a call from the coroner.

"You could get 'em marching in the streets to save the whales," he wrote. "It was just too hard to organize a march or committee against drug abuse."

Ted was serving in the Army. Tony was good enough to play baseball at the University of California. Ricky was left to his own devices. He tried to follow in his mother's footsteps as a musician. He had skills on the guitar and, especially in the Malibu atmosphere, saw a future doing that. Rock stars and the allure of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle surrounded him. Keith Moon of The Who, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones; these among many, many other stars and troubadours could be found at the local clubs, on the beach, at parties, at the grocery store. The temptations were extraordinary.

"His idol was Jimi Hendrix," recalled Murray. "That should have told us something." The "generation gap" was profound, in that the Murrays did not even know who Jimi Hendrix was. Hendrix, of course was a world-famous rock guitarist, perhaps the best of all time. He also died in part from a drug overdose; incoherent, he passed out while lying on his back and choked to death on his own vomit. He was not the only rock star to leave this mortal coil in such manner. "By the time we found out, it was too late," Murray wrote of Hendrix's "influence."

Ricky attended Santa Monica High School, where so many sons and daughters of the rich and famous went to school. Known as SaMoHi, Charlie Sheen once was a pretty good pitcher there. It was actually was one of the bigger sports powerhouses in L.A. County in its heyday. The Vikings produced many great football champions, but baseball was their specialty. Rick Monday matriculated there. Tim Leary was a superstar at SaMoHi who led their summer American Legion team to the 1976 national championship before an All-American career at UCLA and a star turn with the 1988 World Champion Dodgers.

But Ricky did not play sports at SaMoHi. He played the guitar. Where rock music was played, drugs were used. One day the Murrays received a phone call from a counselor at SaMoHi. Ricky had been caught. A genial fellow, the counselor tried to assure them, that this sort of thing was a phase, a sign of the times, but not so serious as to be life-threatening. It would pass. He had seen it before and knew what he was talking about.

The counselor indicated that it would be best for him to handle things. Kids responded to his easygoing manner. Parents got emotional and the wrong vibe was created. He asked Jim to "stay out of the picture," not to impose his middle class morality and, for God's sake, his Catholic guilt upon his son.

Jim was okay with the plan until a terrible tragedy occurred. The counselor's own son was on drugs, too. One day, on an LSD trip, he killed his own sister with a shotgun while she watched television. Later, unable to overcome his demons, the young man climbed up a telephone pole on Sunset Boulevard and set a match, immolating himself against the electrical current in a horrifying scene.

Jim and Gerry were on their own. There were no answers. Rick was eight when Murray became a columnist. His father had great celebrity and fame. It was not an easy thing to live up to. He turned from sports, feeling he was not capable of following in such big footsteps. Jim was consumed by his work, often out of town or out of the house. His days were often spent cooped up in his office, concentrating over his typewriter on witticisms about John McKay or Walt Alston.

Once his daughter, Pam came home upset because "Emperor Hull" on KMPC "ranked on" her father all morning for something he wrote in his column. Slowly they began to understand the public nature of dad's work. Jim thought he could get "closer" to his kids by writing about their little league or beach exploits, or columns about Gerry called "Mom Sez."

"It all went by too fast," Murray wrote in 1993. "One minute they were all in the back of the car, shiny-faced, on their way to Disneyland. In no time, they were growing moustaches, letting their hair grow, insisting on torn jeans to wear at school." Ricky started riding a motorcycle. He became defiant. Jim was bewildered. His youngest son started growing pot in their backyard. That was when it got really bad. Years of late night phone calls followed from police, concerned parents, counselors. Murray "clung to the column like a life raft," but his poor wife was left to deal with the situation.

The Murrays' liberal neighbors tried to comfort them, saying pot was not so bad, everybody did drugs, it was part of the music scene, that half the rock songs extolled its virtues. Drugs unloosed inhibitions, increased sexual desire, increased creativity. Murray, who liked to pull a cork with Johnny McKay at Julies and unwind with a big pull of Scotch when he got home, felt like a hypocrite. Hey, all the great Irish poets were alcoholics, right? Hemingway was a famous drunk, his great writing seemingly spurred by his bouts with drink and subsequent "adventures," but then again Jim Morrison died of a drug-related heart attack, Papa Hemingway put a shotgun to his head . . .

Murray's boss, Otis Chandler was considered a Hemingway figure, but he was a health freak, a bodybuilder who neither drank nor smoked, but Ricky was not about to observe Otis's example and make it his own. America's youth was affected by movies like The Graduate, which might as well have been written about the Chandler family, depicting Pasadena-San Marino wealth in all its immoral hypocrisy, with the youthful Dustin Hoffman declaring he wanted to be "different."

Everything was tried. Screaming, yelling, recriminations. Kicking Ricky out of the house. Inviting him back. Psychiatry. Dr. Mack told Murray his son was "just a vagabond, a nomad." Murray tried to use his contacts to promote his son's "career" as a musician, but it was half-hearted since "I was a Beethoven man myself."

Once Gerry and Jim found their son homeless. They took him home. He planned a trip to England, where rock music was worshipped as a god. He spent a miserable year living as a bum, playing music in the dirty, drafty underground. He moved to New York, living amidst druggies and unscrupulous characters in the worst part of town. Gerry and Jim knew it was bad but did not really want the gory details. Finally Jim visited and was horrified at the squalor of his son's life.

Ricky returned to Los Angeles penniless, but by then it was worse than ever. Petty thefts. Arrests. Scuffles with the law. Bad addiction. Morass. Murray landed his son a low-level press room job at the Times. They had to let him go. He slept on the job. Ricky was arrested and sent to the county honor farm in Saugus. Would this be his wake up call? Ricky told funny stories about the other inmates. He had his dad's gift for tale-telling.

Bruce Jenkins grew up almost next door to the Murrays in Malibu. He attended Santa Monica High School and the University of California with Tony Murray, joining the San Francisco Chronicle in 1973. He is a leading sports columnist now who immediately understood the importance of Murray's story, adding "the subject of the Murrays is so intensely important to me." He told a shocking story and, to make sure he was quoted accurately, was given – and took - the chance to edit his own words.

"I'd known the Murray family since 1955, when they moved to Malibu and his son, Tony, and I were in second grade together," recalled Jenkins. "My father, Gordon Jenkins, was a well-known composer and knew Jim well; they were often at parties together. But I wasn't at all close to Tony at the start. He had a nasty Irish temper and was a total brat through grade school. He never struck me or any of my other friends as a good guy. But in the 10th grade, riding the bus together from Malibu to Santa Monica High School, we became close friends. I started hanging out at the Murrays' house because Tony and I turned out to have so much in common, but it didn't hurt that I'd wanted to be a sportswriter since the eighth grade. Now I've got Jim Murray, the greatest of all writers, virtually next door.

"Jim never took the time to give me any particular advice about the business, and that wasn't surprising, because he gave very little time to his own kids. I was at that house two or three times a week, often for hours at a time, and I rarely saw Jim. He worked in an office that was separate from the house, so he couldn't be distracted, and he was always in there. His work ethic was so fierce, it left him with virtually no time for his family."

Linda McCoy-Murray was particularly protective of Jim's legacy, particularly as it relates to this issue.

"Maybe Jim did not spend a lot of time with his kids," she stated. "That's what that generation was like. My own mother raised us. My dad worked two, three jobs and was never home. This was not unusual, especially in those days. Jim was not unusual."

"But he'd come out of there to watch the big sporting events, and that's where he had a deep, everlasting effect on me," continued Jenkins. "We're sitting there watching Bill Russell against Wilt Chamberlain, or Johnny Unitas dueling Bart Starr, and it was priceless to listen to Jim's comments during a game. His comments were biting, often sarcastic, but he revered the great athletes and loved to write about them. I learned then that you can never write enough columns about Unitas, or Arnold Palmer, or Willie Mays, because people always want to know about the great ones. And I watched Jim's utter dismay when some complete unknown took the lead in a major golf tournament. Where's Arnie? Where's Nicklaus? Jim wasn't truly happy until the great ones took over, like Ben Hogan, the athlete he respected above all others.

"The best moments of all, though, were at the Murrays' dinner table. They never struck anyone as a particularly close family, especially with Jim's three boys straying so far from the mainstream path, but they always gathered for dinner and -- at least when I was around -- had an uproariously good time. All of the boys were incredibly funny, just as wicked and sarcastic as Jim. So was Pam, the only daughter, and Gerry. They basically took turns just shredding each other, in a very incisive but good-humored way. Whatever issues were in place, they were forgotten at the dinner table. For that hour or so, everybody was a comedian. There were times when I was laughing so hard, I could barely see straight, and I can't tell you enough how much that affected my own sense of humor. I developed a sense of sarcasm, and timing, that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

"Over the years, a huge chasm developed between Jim and his kids. They were all extremely bright, but none was a particularly gifted writer, and none of the boys ever had a clear idea of what they wanted to in life -- aside from surf, play the guitar, smoke weed and shred their contemporaries with vicious humor. Ted turned into a nice, responsible adult, but he was a holy terror back then. It was almost painful to watch his cutting humor toward kids on the school bus, just mercilessly trashing some guy who was ugly or had a disability or whatever -- Ted didn't care. He just lived to shred people, and life in general.

"Tony had a lot more going, because he was one of the best athletes in school. He focused on baseball, but he literally could have played any sport, and played it well. I was a basketball player, and I hung out with a group of guys at SaMoHi that were all pretty good athletes, but budding intellectuals. Our whole mission at lunchtime was to find where Tony was sitting, so we could gather around him and witness his world-class humor in action. My God, was he funny. But he was a lonely guy, as well, because his dad paid so little attention to him. Ted seemed mad at the world, and Ricky wanted nothing to do with good grades or even girlfriends, but Tony seemed to have it all. We all thought he'd be drafted out of high school, sign a pro contract and be on his way as a pitcher. We went to Cal together, and one time, during a trip to San Diego, Jim set up a dinner with Tommy Lasorda and invited me to come along. Tommy was just a minor league manager at the time, but he had a lot of influence, and if anything, we thought the Dodgers would draft Tony as a favor - even though he had the talent to be considered on merit.

"For some reason, that never happened. He wasn't drafted at all. But this is what I remember most: as a sportswriter for the school papers, I saw every game Tony pitched through high school and college. That's 1964 through 1970. And I only saw his dad at ONE game. We'd travel to Los Angeles to play UCLA and USC, and these were really important starts for Tony, for his team and his future, his draft status. They're playing Rod Dedeaux and USC at old Bovard Field, huge games, but no Jim. To some extent, that was a sign of the times. Fathers weren't like the kind you see today, doting on their kids, driving them to their games and helping them with homework. They were always off working, and for Jim, it was all about the column. But there's a price to be paid for neglect, and he paid it.

"I'm not sure why the Dodgers -- or any other team -- never drafted Tony, but he lost direction after that. He could have been anything. Maybe not a doctor or a lawyer, but a professional. He had the looks and the charisma to really go places in life, and we all envied that. The first four years at Cal, Tony and I shared apartments together. We were inseparable. But we set up our curriculums to take another year, to stay out of Viet Nam, and something happened over that summer leading into the final year. Tony had done some serious experimenting with the drug culture - hell, we all had; it was Berkeley in the '60s - but that summer he got in deep. I wasn't recognizing the guy I'd known for so long. He wanted to go live off-campus, and I was fine with that. I felt like I'd lost him. He wound up living in near squalor with a bunch of bikers, drug addicts and troublemakers, just the worst collection of people you could imagine. He only needed a few more units to graduate, but he didn't. He quit on school, on himself, on life. And from that point on for Tony, it was a steady, grim descent into more drugs and less attractive company. I tried to stay in touch with him, but my God, was he going downhill. Here was a 6-1, 180-pound guy that had ballooned to well over 300 pounds, so overweight that his face seemed to be twice as large.

"I joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1973, and Tony eventually moved to Northern California, so we stayed somewhat in touch. He still had the humor, still had me almost in tears from laughter, and we shared some pretty good memories, but it never led to anything. He'd go back to Pacific Grove (near Monterey), where he was living, and dive right back into the depths. He was this horrid blob of a guy who drank heavily, smoked a ton of weed and did a lot of coke. He got a few offbeat jobs here and there, but couldn't hold them. He really didn't want to do much but get high."

In 1982 Ricky Murray came home and was clean for a while until he met a girl named Laurie. She was a valley girl and druggie. They moved in together, but it was the beginning of the end. Jim and Gerry tried to support them, but they could not pay rent or live normally. Ricky lived wherever he crashed. Sometimes he was with Laurie, sometimes he was not.

Ricky continued to dream his music would be discovered. His lifestyle was part and parcel of the "scene." He was arrested for fighting and came home. His parents dressed him for his appearance before the city attorney. He was amenable, always amiable, easygoing, willing to go along. Jim defended his son to the city attorney, but it was obvious he was being cut a break, probably because of his famous father.

That night the Murray's had their two-year old granddaughter with them. She enjoyed having her Uncle Ricky and was sad when he had to leave. They drove him to his ramshackle apartment. It was the last time they saw him alive.

Murray went to Las Vegas to interview boxer Gerry Cooney and for the City of Hope banquet. When they came home Jim noticed a card stuck in the knob of their front door.

"Oh, there's a card there," Jim said. "Someone's been here."

The card was from a city policeman. It stated, "Please contact the L.A. County coroner at 226-8001 re.: case #82-7193." Murray wrote about this in his autobiography. "I shake as I write this," he wrote. He called the coroner. Somebody said, "We've got your son down here in the morgue." Case # 82-7193 was Ricky Murray. He was 29.

That night he had gone to a party, filled with music, laughter and hot girls. He laced his drink with codeine and some other arcane chemical suspects known in the drug world as "a load." He drank until he passed out. He never woke up.

Gerry was inconsolable. She wept uncontrollably, screaming, "My baby! Not my baby!" He was the little boy in the photo Jim Murray woke up to the rest of his life, every day blaming himself. It was not Jim Murray's fault. It was a lifestyle, permissiveness, an age. Only time has revealed the truth about what the 1960s wrought upon America. Rick Reilly's 1986 Sports Illustrated profile of the great Murray focused on this terrible event. "Rearing teenagers in the late '60s and early '70s was a bitch, though the Murrays seemed to have done okay," he wrote. "Tony pitched for Cal and, at one time, had scouts bird-dogging his games. Ted and Pam were good kids, and Ricky, the baby, was a delight. 'He could play the piano like an angel,' Murray says."

"I don't know what happened," Murray was quoted. "Dedication is hard on the marriage, hard on the family life. Maybe it was the column. Maybe it was the Malibu beach scene. Maybe it was all of it.

"I think about it all the time," Murray told Reilly, "fingering that card, wrinkled from the years it has been in his wallet," according to the SI scribe. "I don't know if I should say this, but it was always easy for me, the column," continued Jim. "It's not like I spent long, long hours on it. I had plenty of time to be with my family . . . But I don't know. You lose a son and you think, 'Was I a lousy father?' "

"I don't know if he went to church," recalled Art Spander. "I do know his kids got into drugs, Ricky and Tony in particular. Jim didn't have a lot of forgiveness. He had no understanding of that and just thought it was wrong and made no real effort to understand it. It ruined Tony. Those kids grew up in Malibu during the drug culture. When Jim died they were all at the memorial service. I know he was close to his granddaughter."

"I thought Jim had a good relationship with his kids," said his friend Bill Caplan. "I remember he had this 1974 or 1975 Chrysler Imperial, which Jim called 'the tank.' It was the heaviest car there was at the time. This car was a tank. Jim lived in Malibu on a hill leading down to a bluff over the ocean, the rocks. The driveway was such that it sloped down to the street, and the rocks beyond that. I think it was Teddy who had a big load of pop bottles in the Imperial, and he starts down the driveway when the brakes gave out, rushing down that hill with glass bottles. Well, he was able to get it to stop in time but if not for this 'tank' I'm sure it would have turned over, so he almost had a bad injury with one of his sons."

"I think he was Irish Catholic, but he never used his column to promote an ideology," recalled his colleague Ross Newhan. "He never spoke with that Irish cutting humor that others described the way he did with his family. Bruce Jenkins and I would have a drink on occasion and he mentioned that to me, but I never had that kind of conversation with him.

"I'm not familiar with the family tragedies he experienced. All I can say about the comedic aspect of Jim, from the standpoint that a comic sometimes tells jokes to hide sorrow, is that I knew Jim from the mid-1960s and he was always the same writer, and those were years before tragedy befell him. I don't know if any of those events impacted his writing. It seems to be they did not. However, I'm sure the column may have been a terrific source of output for him, the life with Tom Lasorda, an escape from his troubles, but no, I do not see that he changed his writing due to it."

For Jim Murray, who called himself a "semi-famous father," there was in addition to Tony's troubles "another load to bear" after Ricky's death.

Or as Rick Reilly went on to write in Sports Illustrated, "There was one load yet to go."

Gerry Murray never smiled again. After Ricky's death, she lost her zest for life. Her eyes were dead. Murray considered himself a dysfunctional father, replaying the event leading to Ricky's death over and over in a morass of self-recriminations. Gerry never blamed him but he felt he should be blamed. He had taken his son to rehabilitation, tried to have doctors scare him straight. Rehab counselors had let Murray have it, blaming him for pursuing a successful career at the expense of his family. Now he was left with only his guilt, their words stinging him.

Six months later, Gerry visited her sister in Seattle. When she returned she noticed that her handwriting trailed off. Her speech was slurred. They figured it was an inner-ear disorder. One night as they lay in bed she told Jim, "Hold my hand. I know I'm dying."

"In that moment, I knew it, too," recalled Murray.

They went to Dr. Gary Sugarman. The CAT scan showed a brain tumor. It started in her colon and metastasized in the liver and brain. Gerry was told she had a year to live.

Did Ricky's death kill her? Nobody other than God can know that, but her death of spirit may well have caused whatever was happening in her body to get worse, to spread quickly. The year was a blur. She did not really have pain. She had phlebitis after colon surgery. She had little will to live after Ricky's tragedy.

"It isn't as if I'm leaving nirvana," she said. "It's been five years of hell. My baby son is dead, my other son is gone. Ricky was the only one who truly loved me.

"I don't want to leave my little granddaughter. What makes me sad is I'll never see our desert <condo> again."

Gerry periodically built up the will to live, to fight. She tried to play music but could not. Then they went to the desert. It was their 38th wedding anniversary. Her brother and sisters came out to celebrate. They tried to put on brave faces, but a while later Gerry slipped in the middle of the night, hitting her head. She and Jim wept. The next day her head throbbed. The next day they went to the hospital. She lapsed into a three-month coma. The chemotherapy did not work. A device called a "shunt" was used on her, to relieve pressure on her brain. It was a difficult decision, as it could leave her paralyzed.

Jim Murray regularly went to work, amidst the laughter of the Dodger Stadium club house, the wise cracks of Tom Lasorda. His colleagues knew he was going through hell and tried to be respectful, but nobody could control an environment like that. Jim never blamed anybody. He probably appreciated the levity as a sop to his own sorrows.

Gerry awoke from her coma and seemed relatively okay, albeit with no real memory, but she recognized her husband. Plans were made to send her to the Thalians' Clinic for rehabilitation. A miracle! Glad tidings. Then she slipped into a coma and died. She and Jim were married 38 years.

The first X rays showed the cancer had not spread. But there had been a mix-up at the radiology clinic.

"Sorry," the doctor said. "The cancer has metastasized."

"The most terrible collection of syllables in the language," Murray said.

"She always came into a room like a sunrise," a neighbor said of her. She was buried next to Ricky.

On April 3, 1984, Murray's column "She Took the Magic and Happy Summer With Her" was printed in the Los Angeles Times. "This is the column I never wanted to write, the story I never wanted to tell," it led. He wrote that he "lost the sunshine and roses, all right, the laughter in the other room. I lost the smile that lit up my life," that "God loved Gerry," as did everybody else. He wrote of her "big gorgeous brown eyes," how, "She never did anything to be ashamed of."

She was "this little girl running across a field with a swimming suit on her arm, on a summer day on the way to the gravel pit for an afternoon of swimming and laughing . . . I don't mean to inflict my grief on you, but she deserves to be known by anyone who knows me. She has a right to this space more than any athlete who ever lived. I would not be here if it weren't for her. I feel like half a person without Gerry. For once, I don't exaggerate. No hyperbole. If there was a Hall of Fame for people, she would be number one. She was a champion at living.

"She never told a lie in her life. And she didn't think anyone else did. Deceit puzzled her. Dishonesty dismayed her. She thought people were good. Around her, surprisingly, they were. Her kindness was legendary.

"She loved God. I mean, He made the trees, the flowers. He made children, didn't He? And color and song, and above all, babies. She knew He'd take care of her.

She loved babies. Anybodys. She played the piano like a dream."

Rough-hewn athletes, he continued, fell for her charms and her piano abilities. She went to her death with faith. She bore the loss of her son . . .

Reilly's column came a couple years after Gerry passed away. It was in some way Murray's cry for help, his pronouncement that his job, its settings – baseball stadiums, sports arenas – while they had taken him away from his family on many an occasion, ultimately were his refuge. His opening up to Reilly was therapeutic.

Called "King of the Sports Page," the Reilly piece was dated April 21, 1986. "The thing about Jim Murray is that he lived 'happily,' but somebody ran off with his 'ever after,' " Reilly wrote. "It's like the guy who's ahead all night at poker and then ends up bumming cab money home. Or the champ who's untouched for 14 rounds and then gets KO'd by a pool-hall left you could see coming from Toledo."

Murray, "Got mail from Brando," was "mentioned in a Governor's state of the state address," and "Flew in Air Force One.

"How big is Murray? One time he couldn't make an awards dinner so he had a sub - Bob Hope.

"Murray may be the most famous sportswriter in history. If not, he's at least in the photo" but, "The end is all wrong. The scripts got switched. They killed the laugh track, fired the gag writers and spliced in one of those teary endings you see at Cannes. In this one, the guy ends up with his old typewriter and some Kodaks and not much else except a job being funny four times a week.

"They say that tragedy is easy and comedy is hard.

"Know what's harder?

"Both at once."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Murray wrote. "I was supposed to die first . . . I had my speech all ready. I was going to look into her brown eyes and tell her something I should have long ago. I was going to tell her: 'It was a privilege just to have known you.'

"I never got to say it. But it was too true."

Reilly wrote that on the way to Palm Springs Gerry, wearing a wig after chemo treatments, had a sudden hankering for her first milkshake since high school. It was apparently their last laugh together.

"I have sat down and attempted humor with a broken heart," Murray wrote of the experience. "I've sat down and attempted humor with every possible facet of my life in utter chaos . . . Carmen was announced. Carmen will be sung." He wrote with the voice of the doctor, the accusatory people in the rehab center, ringing in his ears, the image of Ricky and Gerry in his head. Through it all he wrote over "those infernal voices."

"You write punch lines your whole life and then the last joke is on you," wrote Reilly.

Reilly attended a banquet at the Hotel Bel Air with the great Murray. Famed athletic figures like Red Auerbach, Bob Lanier, and Bob Uecker were in literal awe of him. 1970 American League Most Valuable Player Boog Powell was too awed to even approach him.

"I haven't ever met him," said Powell, "but I've been reading his stuff for many years. And he's written about me, I don't know, half a dozen times, but I've seen him in a locker room only twice. He's a great man. I'm one of his biggest fans."

"This is how it is now for Murray," wrote Reilly. "He is in that the-legend-walks-and-talks-and-eats-breakfast stage. The Last King of Sports writing, boys, sitting right over there."

Named the nation's best columnist for 1984 by the Associated Press sports editors (when he was in the middle of his worst period), Murray was still going strong, his writing all he had left, more awards in his future.

"Why he has never been awarded the Pulitzer Prize is an unsolved mystery," wrote Reilly. Only Red Smith, Dave Anderson and Arthur Daley of the New York Times had won it for sports writing.

"If Murray worked for the <New York> Times," said Dan Jenkins, author of Semi-Tough, "he'd already have three."

"Gerry's gone," said Murray. "So what? I'll be watching TV once in a while and I'll see somebody we knew and I'll say, 'Gerry, come take a look at . . .' And then I'll catch myself."

Friends told him to move out of his home in order to forget, but he replied he did not want to forget. The only place with life was the corner of a small downstairs bedroom where he wrote his column by the light of a lamp and a window, straining his poor eyes while staring at a portable computer. He had a magnifying monitor installed.

"It is chilling to watch him with his back to the door, his shoulders hunched over an eerie green light, writing jokes for the greater Los Angeles area," observed Reilly.

Murray never missed a column. "What else would I do?" he said to Reilly.

He showed the Sports Illustrated columnist a three-by-five photo on his piano.

"This is my favorite," he said. "I don't know if she'd like it or not. But I like it. Look at those eyes. Look at them. There's just no jealousy in those eyes. The final curtain is pretty bad, isn't it? The last scene, the last act, is pretty bad.

"Put it this way. It'll never sell in Dubuque."

Murray did not laugh at his own joke.

"I cried when he wrote of the passing of his lovely wife Gerry," recalled Vin Scully.

Jim took the blame, but there is an anonymous source who says Gerry "could not handle those kids," that once she even locked one of them in a closet. The times were tough, children full of rebellion. She, like her husband, was of a different generation. Despite her sweet disposition she was no better equipped to handle this new breed than Jim was. Bruce Jenkins saw it all up close and personal, from the beginning to the bitter end . . . and beyond.

"Jim Murray died in 1998 and left Tony $300,000, a fair amount of money, but he blew through it in a manner of months," recalled Jenkins. "He didn't really care where he lived. It was more important to him that he was a purveyor of drugs, the life of everyone's party, and that's how he wanted to spend his money. He loaned some of his friends $100,000 on a house deal, but it was a completely nefarious setup in which two of the 'partners,' complete low-lifes, conspired to cut Tony out of the picture. They did that by making sure he kept doing all those drugs. They figured, hell, he'll just die on his own. And that's what happened, in 2000, when Tony died of a drug overdose at 52.

"I saw so much of this kind of thing in Malibu. So many of us were the children of rich, famous people with astonishing talent. In my case, it was a dad who could arrange a 40-piece orchestra for an upcoming Frank Sinatra album in three days - or less, if necessary. My dad was always cool that I went my own way, into sports writing, but I saw a lot of intolerance and neglect. So many kids were into the drug and surf culture, and it didn't take long for them to reach the point where they were too far gone to get back into society. It's scary how quickly things can go wrong. Irrevocably wrong. Reading Jim's autobiography, I realized that it haunted him until the day he died.

"As I reached the point where I started covering major events, I'd occasionally run into Jim in press boxes. He was always very bitter about Tony. Wouldn't even bring up his name. I always called him 'Big Tone,' and one day at the L.A. Coliseum, I said to Jim, 'Hey, I ran into Big Tone the other day.' Jim's reply: 'What, did you lose a bet?'

"I was always in such awe of Jim - right to the very end - our conversations never lasted terribly long. But he always wanted to know how I was doing. He even mentioned me in a column once. I think he was happy that he'd had a lot to do with my becoming a columnist. He might even have viewed me as family, in an unspoken way, since I'd been around the house so often. I've never tried to write like Jim, because I'm not a humorist. There's nothing worse than trying to be funny and just bombing, horribly, like some awful stand-up comic. There haven't been many real humorists in recent American sports writing - Jim, Scott Ostler, I can't even think of another. But I can be funny on occasion, and I attribute that entirely to Jim, from all that time watching games or sitting around the dinner table. I needed an edge back then, and he sharpened me up.

"Every now and then, I mention Jim in my columns. That's always good for a few angry letters, people who don't want to hear anything about L.A., but others tell me they can't get enough. Some even say I remind them of Jim, which I find incomprehensible, but I know this: some of the lines I've written came straight out of that house."

****

She was described as a "pint-sized dynamo with boundless energy and infectious laughter, whose perfect sized-two physique belies her brute strength - inner and outer." Linda McCoy was a young woman, about 20 years younger than Jim Murray. She first met him in 1969. At the time, she worked for the Indiana Pacers of the American Basketball Association. The team president asked her to drive Murray around the week he was planning on spending in Indianapolis for the 500. Murray's eyes were failing. He was unable to handle a rental car on unfamiliar roads.

"I thought, this is going to ruin my weekend," she said. "He was old enough to be my father. He looks at me and says, 'Do you have a driver's license?' "

Linda was a vivacious, athletic, attractive blond. Murray immediately had a fond, paternal feeling for her. She thought he was attractive for an older man, but was just that . . . an older man. They immediately struck up a friendship. For Linda, it was nice to have a sports writer who did not treat her condescendingly. It was long before the age of the 'sports babe,' women in the clubhouse, on the sidelines, and in the booth. Sports were thought to be a "good ol' boys" fraternity. Women were supposed to make themselves available for the guys in the bar after the game, or to bear their children. Period. She was a pioneer in a man's world, trying to hold her own, to gain grudging respect.

Over the years, they ran into each other at various sporting events, but eventually drifted apart. She moved to New York.

"One day in the fall of 1985, I asked a mutual what happened to Jim Murray?" she said. "Does he still write that column? Is he still alive? My friend said 'Yes, it's very sad, he lost his son to drugs and alcohol, his wife died, he had open heart surgery and lost an eye.' I said, 'I'm sorry I asked.' "

She sent a birthday card to him. She did not want it to be a sympathy card. She wanted it to be something to cheer him up a little bit. She wrote something with a little "wit and sarcasm."

Murray read it and smiled. Was it his first genuine smile since 1981, 1982? Something made him write her a letter. Being a letter written by Jim Murray, it was of course filled with wit and humor. Jim Murray probably wrote his checks with wit and humor. Everybody who received a missive from him thought his wit and humor aimed directly at them. Linda instinctively knew that, but the letter seemed . . . directed at her.

The wit and charm of the letter caused her to pick up the phone and call him. She was living in New York. He was in L.A. Would he be on the East Coast any time soon? He said he hated the East Coast, but then remembered that the U.S. Open was at Shinnecock on Long Island that year. The Times would probably assign him the story. So it was that she met him at the tournament and "the rest, as she says, was history," wrote Shelly Smith of ESPNLosAngeles.com.

Linda McCoy was Jim Murray's redemption. It is possible readers of the Los Angeles Times and national fans of his syndicated column were given an extra decade or so of his great talent because she came into his life just when he was at his lowest point. Blindness, Ricky's death, Gerry's tragic . . . he had his column, his work, his clubhouse repartee with Tommy Lasorda, but at night the poet of Brentwood returned to a big, empty, unfriendly house. Such an experience can drain a man of years of life's most energetic will to live.

Friendship became romance. Romance became marriage. Marriage became partnership. Thus did Jim Murray have the will to live again. Nobody deserved it more. Few had brought more joy to more people. Nobody was going to deny Jim's right to joy in his own life.

"Thousands of people had breakfast with him every morning," she said.

Linda identified Jim as a Republican, a product of the Great Depression, a man of faith, but disappointed that his children seemed caught up in the permissiveness of a new era.

"He was never off a payroll," she said. "That was very important to him. His work ethic was such that it described his political identity. Jim was a Christian. I would not say that he wore it on his sleeve. He had his sorrows, but he had his Christian faith since grade school, and he had his sorrows, and his basic faith pulled him through a lot of tragedy. He said, 'I only go to church so I have something to do on Sunday mornings.'

"He was not a regular church-goer. He was not compelled, that he had to get to church. I went with him to a couple of midnight masses. In later years he did not go to church that much because he found some of the biggest hypocrites in church. He hated holidays because that's when all the problems started in his family, the drinking, but he had deep faith. He was something of an Irish stoic. He probably applied Catholic guilt with his family. He was not all about joie d'vivre. He did not reveal himself to the core.

"I would agree that Jim sometimes revealed his true beliefs between the lines of his columns. Like the column when he referred to 'God's writers . . . Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.' So if you're asking me, did he believe in God, I'd say sure. We'd talk about it. He'd ask me, 'Do you believe in God?' I would say, 'Do you believe in God?' He'd say, 'Sure I do,' and he'd say, 'I hope there's a God,' and he'd chuckle like he's challenging me, and he'd talk about Heaven. I had a younger view, and I was raised Lutheran, a Midwestern Protestant, so I was taught differently. Jim really believed there was a Heaven, but let me tell you, Jim believed in Judgment Day, believe me.

" 'There's a Judgment Day and it's coming,' he'd say. Jim made Old Testament references in his column, too, like writing that Lyle Alzado was a prophet railing against the sins of his fellow man. He would absolutely write about that kind of stuff.

"Jim disliked hypocrisy and saw it in Malibu when he lived there. He tried to raise awareness over the use of drugs amongst the kids but could not generate concern even though it was their kids, but was frustrated that they'd rally to save the whales. He'd read about a mountain lion that killed two kids and there'd be a big rally to save the cubs after the mother was shot, but nobody seemed to care about the kids who died. They'd raise money to save the lion. He'd draw a line in the sand and say, 'What is going on in society? I don't belong in this world.' He was like a 19th Century man."

Jim and Linda traveled to Super Bowls, horse races, golf tournaments and World Series games. She was his driver. His always-failing eyesight was no hindrance. She loved sports, had grown up with it, chosen it as her own profession. Now she had a Jim Murray column 24/seven. What a treat!

"I'd give him some compliment about something he did," she said.

"Oh, Linda, sweetheart, six months after I'm dead, they won't even remember my name," he would reply.

Oh, how wrong he was.

A Times to live and a Times to die

Jim Murray's career and the history of the both Los Angeles Times and the city of Los Angeles have a way of neatly fitting into the decades. There is Murray in the 1960s after he started with the paper in the decade's second year; an innocent, exciting time, the rise of great teams in great stadiums that played such a role in building such a great city that replaced New York and Chicago as the center of a post-modern universe of wealth, political power and movie culture.

Then there is Otis Chandler, who so symbolically took over as publisher in 1960; the year of the monumental Kennedy-Nixon campaign, the Democrat nominated in L.A. vs. the Republican from L.A. The rise of a newspaper from a "Republican rag" to world class, as much a symbol of a cities' rise as big league teams and glittering sports palaces.

The 1970s: Murray's halcyon days, his firmament of greatness well established. For his paper, consolidation of its excellence, recognition as the best in the world. For its city, one of the few bright spots in a decade of drug abuse, sexual immorality, war, dirt and corruption.

The 1980s: the great writer's decade of discontent, yet from it he rose like the mythical Phoenix bird. Both his paper and his city, glory and power above all previous conceptions. The New Rome. Center mass of America in the American Century.

So we enter the 1990s, and so fittingly we do, for it is in this tumultuous, very different kind of decade, that the great writer rides into a proverbial sunset, amidst praise and adoration, but at the same time a little confused by all the changes amidst; the Internet, the post-Soviet world, the changing landscape of sports. For his paper, the final, official ousting of Otis Chandler was the beginning of the end. With his departure, true excellence was replaced by mediocrity. It did not happen over night, but year by year the kind of greatness embodied by Jim Murray was lost, until only Murray remained great in a sea of political correctness and myopia. For the city of Los Angeles, a similar fate; drip, drip, drip. One event after another, symbolic or metaphorical as they may have been – had Murray not lived by metaphor? – the greatest city ceded its power. New York rallied. The South rose again. San Francisco swept past them, its sports teams, its political power, its economy and cutting edge role in technology eclipsing L.A., the old dinosaur of the Howard Hughes era gone with the last beleaguered Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan.

Pride goeth before the fall.

****

In 1984 a pudgy disc jockey from Cape Girardeau, Missouri named Rush Limbaugh was given the chance to air his right-wing political commentary on a local radio station in Sacramento, California. It was the year Ronald Reagan swept to victory over Walter Mondale. Angry phone calls and letters ensued. Limbaugh was almost fired until the station's ratings began to show steady improvement. By 1988 he was syndicated nationally. He moved to New York City, where he broadcast to millions during the George H.W. Bush-Michael Dukakis campaign. Pundits have tried to dissect how Bush rose from 17 points behind that summer to a comfortable eight-point margin of victory. They could do worse than analyzing the effect of Rush Limbaugh.

He was a huge hit on KFI in Los Angeles. In liberal San Francisco he enraged listeners, but he made KNBR the biggest ratings winner in town. Left-wing commentators were weeping and gnashing their teeth, relegated to the midnight time slot while Limbaugh dominated drive time. By the 1990s he was a phenomenon. He was featured on 60 Minutes, in all the major publications, had a TV show in addition to his radio program, and wrote Best Selling books. He was extravagantly wealthy. His influence among Republicans and the conservative base was beyond all previous figures with the exception of Reagan. The left said Limbaugh lied, and ipso facto, because he lied, therefore his show would not last very long.

More than two decades later, the results are indisputable. If in fact lying will catch up to somebody in Limbaugh's position, causing them disgrace, firing, dismissal, low ratings, and all other manner of public failure, then either Limbaugh does not lie, or he has gotten away with lying, never having been actually caught despite protestation from his enemies that what he says is not true.

This set of circumstances leaves the left in a discomfiting position, forced to contemplate a Platonic fact of political science, as with analysis of the South. In all the years they were "ignorant" and "racist" they voted Democrat. Over time as they modernized, became educated, acquired knowledge, facts and actual information, they were husbanded into the mainstream by the GOP and, therefore, voted Republican. This is the sort of straight-forward bit of pure information that is not opinion but rather manifests itself as the thing one knows when they learn all there is about it!

So too with Limbaugh. If the left was correct, that a liar will be caught, disgraced and humbled, then sent away never to be heard from again, then ipso facto, the fact Limbaugh thrives more now than ever verifies their most horrid reality, which is that he is right, they are wrong, and worse yet, millions of patriotic citizens who register and vote possess this knowledge.

Republican winning streaks cannot be solely attributed to Rush Limbaugh. Conservatives at least think the Founding Fathers were basically . . . conservative. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, if read today by somebody not knowing it was written in 1835 and 1840, would probably be called a "conservative manifesto" placing too much of America's success on Christianity. The GOP dominated after the Civil War, from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt. They presided over the Roaring '20s and the 1950s. They won big 1966 mid-terms, and Richard Nixon won by an astonishing margin in 1972. Reagan won big in 1980 and by massive sweeps in 1984, when Limbaugh was unknown outside Sacramento.

But the Republicans held power more regularly, and recovered from disaster faster, during the age of Limbaugh than they ever hoped to before him. Bush defied historical odds going back to 1840 when he succeeded his boss in 1988. The 1994 GOP mid-term sweeps were almost beyond comprehension. George W. Bush defeated a sitting Vice-President with the wind at his sails in 2000, saw his party totally buck historical trends to win in 2002, and won more votes than any President in American history in 2004. Limbaugh's influence on the '94 mid-terms and all of Bush's successes is impossible to deny, but perhaps most distressing to his detractors is the fact that he always reaches the apex of his popularity, power and influence when the Democrats are in power. He rode the Bill Clinton Impeachment like a Colossus, and in 2010 unquestionably led the repudiation of Barack Hussein Obama, possibly the most complete, jarring, tidal wave of rejection any sitting President has ever endured.

The question, then, is what does any of this have to do with the Los Angeles Times? In 1990, very little. But the new editors, publisher and executives running the Times back then would have done well to listen to Limbaugh, to his complaints, and glean lessons from him on what not to do. From the beginning, Limbaugh leveled some of his harshest criticisms at what he called the "dominant media culture." He railed against left-wing Hollywood making anti-American films, depicting Republicans as bad guys, creating the fiction that no Communists ran amok in Tinseltown during McCarthyism, while making movies like Oliver Stone's Platoon (the American experience in Vietnam could be encapsulated by My Lai), Dances With Wolves (Native Indians were all just peaceful environmentalists of no threat to settlers), and JFK (right-wing industrialists, Pentagon brass and the CIA, not Fidel Castro or the Mob, killed Kennedy).

At the time, there was no Fox News or MSNBC. Limbaugh railed against the bias of CBS in particular, but also NBC, ABC and new cable station CNN. But his biggest peeve was reserved for the print media. Time, now thoroughly removed from the influence of Henry Luce, Newsweek, The Nation, the Washington Post, and in particular the "old grey lady," the New York Times, were on the receiving end of his wrath, all heard by 20 million people a day. Limbaugh had broken the cardinal rule of public commentary: never criticize any entity that buys ink by the barrel. The fact that he thrived on this criticism led to what can only be another inescapable conclusion, which is that a huge number of Americans agreed with his assessment.

Having failed to prove him a liar, the left took to calling him a homophobe, a racist, and fat. Limbaugh just laughed all the way to the bank, or the nearest golf course, losing 40 pounds while at it.

But in the early 1990s, a battle was begun. Nixon had his "enemies list," but he was paranoid. It was a given, really. The New York Times was liberal. Some called then anti-American, especially when they agreed to publish the Pentagon Papers. After Watergate the right quietly asked where was Woodward and Bernstein, Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee, the power and resources of this great newspaper, when JFK stole the 1960 election from Nixon in plain sight? These were just facts of life, to be lived with. The GOP was willing to live with it, like a West Coast baseball team that knows their home games won't be seen by Eastern viewers at night.

But Limbaugh did not "live with it." He made it his Holy Grail, and boy did it piss off a lot of people in East Coast publishing. But there was something unspoken in all of this. Limbaugh did not attack the L.A. Times. At the time, they still had the imprimatur of Chandler Republicanism. Cartoonist Paul Conrad was no friend to conservatives, but in the 1980s Reagan was popular, the state was still "red," and the L.A.-Orange County political structure clung to its "conservative revolution" roots going back to Barry Goldwater. If indeed the newspaper wanted to make itself a sounding board for Democrats, there were no really viable ones on the scene to give a lot of support to. Golden State politics were dominated first by Reagan, then by Republican U.S. Senator Pete Wilson and Governor George Deukmejian. The popular notion that the L.A. Times was the "best newspaper in the world" was still a respected concept, and probably verified by any "vote" at the time. The fact they were viewed as fair, that conservatives enjoyed reading it, played into this view. After all, polls consistently have shown over the years that only 20 percent of America calls itself "liberal." The numbers were hard to argue. Partisanship aside, Chandler was a businessman unwilling to inflame a potential 80 percent of his readers.

In 1991, the United States attacked Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces that had invaded neighboring Kuwait. It was a highly political war. It created fissures. It started something that grew wider apart ever since.

In November of 1989 the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner shut down. With it went an institution. A great city often judged its greatness in part by its newspapers. The Times was Los Angeles. The Herald-Examiner paled in comparison, but the idea that the Times could be read in the morning, the Herald-Examiner at night, long clung as a popular notion. In San Francisco, businessmen read the Chronicle at home in the morning, then picked up the Examiner to read on the bus, the train, the ferry or BART on the way home after work. The fact L.A. had no real public transportation system did not help the Herald-Examiner's "evening paper" designation. It could not be read while negotiating the Hollywood Freeway. But there was no Internet yet, and the paper had a following. They had great sports scribes over the years: Bud Furillo, Doug Krikorian, Steve Bisheff, Loel Schrader, Melvin Durslag.

Its closing seemed a victory for the Times. It was like New York in 1958, when the Yankees had the city all to themselves after the Dodgers and Giants split town. But it was a hollow victory, or would prove to be one. Yankees attendance actually went down in the years following their departure. Caesar captured Gaul but could not make her love him. Baseball attendance would go down all over the country, and the Yankees would eventually hit rock bottom in the late 1960s.

The Herald-Examiner's failure was a forecast of general newspaper failure that would eventually affect the Times. Competition is what America thrives on. Absent its motivating force, complacency becomes cancerous.

Tom Johnson resigned from Times Mirror in 1990 to take over CNN. Conservative members of the Chandler clan pushed for his ouster. Privately, Johnson was disappointed that Otis did not fight for him. Circulation was at an all-time high in the immediate wake of the Herald-Examiner's closing, 1,225,189 daily and 1,514,096 on Sundays. It passed the New York Daily News. The quality was astounding; the same long, fabulous articles on virtually any subject from any country. Something for everyone. To a true newspaper aficionado, there remained no greater pleasure than lingering for hours over each section of the Times with a pot of coffee.

The paper was at the top. The parent company owned numerous profitable businesses and other media outlets within its conglomeration. They expanded, building new plants, more out-reach. But now it was official. Long thought of as the best paper, its circulation a little lower than the New York metropolitan giants not because of a lack of quality, but due to demographics, the reading tastes of the on-the-go, hyper-active, transplanted Southern Californian; well, not anymore. Now they were "number one." On paper.

But the beginning of the end came in 1990 in the form of a genial gent from genteel Virginia roots named Shelby Coffey III. Otis Chandler discovered him lifting weights. This was a big plus in the eyes of Chandler. Coffey was brought on board and groomed at the Dallas Times Herald, a subsidiary paper. When Johnson left he ascended. He had ideas.

USC football coach John Robinson said when he took over for the legendary John McKay, he made no changes. Why fiddle with success? He kept everything as it had been and the Trojans continued to beat Notre Dame and UCLA like red-headed step-children, capturing a national title, Rose Bowls, and continuing conquest. Not so Shelby Coffey III.

Coffey started printing editions in Armenian, Vietnamese, and as a "service to the boy and girls in uniform," a special edition to be delivered by various forms to service personnel shipped to the growing crisis with Saddam in Saudi Arabia. Critics said he wanted his paper to be all things to all people everywhere instead of Los Angeles' paper in L.A. A corruption scandal involving Mayor Tom Bradley was skirted by Coffey. The inside word was that Coffey did not want to go after a black Democrat.

Coffey changed the look of the paper, designing a "faster format" comparable to USA Today, disparaged as "McPaper." He created a list of "pejoratives," banning a slew of words, many of which were staples of the Jim Murray lexicon. It was pure censorship. Ghetto, skirt chaser, inner city, bitch, Dutch treat, Indian giver; these were among the words no Timesman dare speaketh. There is no available record of Jim Murray's reaction, but one can imagine he viewed this as pure hogwash.

"At the height of the Shelby era, you couldn't swing a dead cat on Spring Street without hitting some touchy member of the Diversity Committee, who would then most likely announce that such metaphor was offensive to feline-Americans and stomp off to organize a petition," said one former staffer. He was said to water down controversial stories if they concerned "protected" political groups and liberal causes. The term "politically correct" was just becoming a common phrase. It had its roots in the Tailhook affair being investigated by female members of Congress, with Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign, and the attendant "Year of the Woman" election of prominent females to the U.S. Senate. Rush Limbaugh got a hold of the term, which is probably why it lives today, but Shelby Coffey III and the L.A. Times were among the most active in carrying out its "mission."

Former Times staffer Dennis McDougal wrote an all-encompassing history of the newspaper and the Chandler family, Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty (2001). In it he described what probably could be called the high point of the Times's history, its phenomenal coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Coming on the heels of Jim Murray's Pulitzer and news that they had the highest circulation in the world, they earned praise from Time magazine for having provided the "most extensive and informative coverage of the war." Pulitzers were won for the paper's extensive coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and an aborted military coup against Boris Yeltsin's government, and also for domestic coverage of the Rodney King beating trial, thus earning another Pulitzer for this effort. From there McDougal describes a drip-drip-drip in which the paper slowly fell in many respects over the course of the 1990s.

By the end of 1992 the Times saw a cut in their profits. The paper was extended, having bought a number of entities and investments, while expanding their operation, including the creation of a huge printing plant a few miles from their main offices. But in an effort to cut costs, they began offering buy-outs to veteran staffers. Once dubbed the "velvet coffin" because no writers ever left, employment under Chandler being better than all alternatives, the paper was finally unionized and paying for it. A drain of talent began.

"It took 20 years for the paper to build up a great staff and it took just a few months to dismantle it," observed Washington bureau reporter Doug Frantz, one of three dozen Timesmen to defect to the New York Times. In Chandler's heyday, the Times routinely raided the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time and other established East Coast publications. Now it was going the other way.

"I remember when they paid you to come to the Times," quipped columnist and former city editor Peter King. "Now they pay you to leave." In less than five years, the Times lost 30 percent of its reporters. Forbes published a report on the business troubles of the newspaper industry, which alarmed many.

In 1992, Presidential candidate Bill Clinton campaigned using futuristic terms like the "Information Superhighway" and "a bridge to the 21st Century." He was talking about the Internet, which was not invented by his Vice-President, Al Gore, but owed its roots to college and military communications projects, some of which traced to USC as far back as the 1960s.

In 1993 the World Wide Web made its "debut." That year, Otis Chandler's second son, Harry was put in charge of a program exploring the emerging nexus of personal computers, newspapers, and the Internet. "This Harry Chandler appeared equipped to guide the Times into a new century," said narrator Leiv Schreiber in Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times.

Otis sent Harry a Christmas card, expressing great hope that this time a Chandler would emerge to pick up where he left off. However, a Vanity Fair piece in which Otis all but unloaded on the rest of the Chandler family derailed much of the support Harry would have needed to wrest control from the powers that now were at the paper.

"He was pitted against this nefarious group of family members; nefarious and anonymous," said David Margolick, author of the of Vanity Fair piece. In Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times, these people are depicted as such, using shadowy, fleeting images to give them a sense of behind the scenes string-pullers.

"You never saw them. No one ever saw their pictures. They were lurking in the distance somewhere, these malign influences. Right-wing, intolerant, xenophobic people." The article quoted Chandler saying they were "elitists," bored with the problems of AIDs, the homeless, and other social problems. They were depicted as early 20th Century examples of Republican greed, a part of the past, yet here brought to life almost as if in a Stephen King movie, a ghost ship scene of jazz flappers. Either way, it spelled doom for Harry's chances at succession, and in so doing it was the beginning of the end for the paper. Not only did the Los Angeles Times need a dynastic Chandler presence, Harry may well have gotten a handle on the role of the Internet before it swallowed up the paper's profits. It was not to be.

In the meantime, Otis Chandler sat to the side. Many have speculated over the years at what he was thinking, and what his motivations were at this time. McDougal's book described a man in repose. Chandler, the adventurer, engaged in a wild attempt to re-capture his youth. He divorced his first wife, was re-married, but had mixed relations with his children. There was a certain amount of resentment at his not having promoted his off-spring to positions of high authority at the Times over the years. That was long the Chandler way, from General Gray to Harry, Norman and Otis Chandler. Otis seemed to believe his children lacked the essential qualities of leadership necessary to steer a ship as great as the L.A. Times.

He had handed the keys to the kingdom to the likes of Tom Johnson, Shelby Coffey III, Bob Erberu, Mark Willes; and they had collectively, over time, allowed what the Chandler's made great to slowly become, still above average, but less than outstanding. But Chandler was too busy big game hunting, trekking the ice caps, racing cars, surfing, hitting the weights; whatever he needed to do to maintain his youth.

But he and his family positioned themselves through Chandis Securities and various airtight trusts, maintaining and building enormous profits. McDougal's book enthusiastically described the glorious rise of the paper. It did not avoid controversy, detailing Chandler family corruption, nefarious land deals such as the Owens River Valley Aqueduct, illicit gains, and the like, but by and large provided an admiring look at how they, and particularly Otis Chandler, created one of the greatest, most powerful entities in the annals of American capitalism and power.

But McDougal also did not steer away from Otis's strange 1990s malaise, his twi-light years. He described an extremely selfish man and a selfish family. The book was written with Chandler's grudging cooperation, unlike a 1977 tome called Thinking Big by Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolf, which Otis gleefully reported as only having sold 5,000 copies. McDougal noted that while he admired Chandler and his paper, the former publisher would not be entirely happy with all his conclusions. His view of Otis and his family after he was forced out would fall under that category.

Otis had little good to say about his various cousins and extended family. He was the only one of them who truly made a big name for himself by virtue of actual accomplishment. Chandler had been given the keys to the kingdom, but he worked hard to forge greatness. The rest were described as being just rich San Marino conservatives, peeved at the world they now lived in, dominated by a liberal media and a Democrat Party bent on demonizing them with class warfare, aghast at a country that could elect the likes of Bill Clinton, for God's sake! But those cousins and extended Chandler family were continuing to live in enormous wealth courtesy of the trusts established, and in particular by the business model and investments envisioned and carried out by Otis Chandler.

But the Los Angeles Times itself was hemorrhaging money. It was not just the unimpressive leadership, ideas and model of Shelby Coffey III. Bob Erberu was a USC graduate, well-placed in Los Angeles society, who somehow found himself at the top of the Times after Chandler's departure. He was the chairman of the Times Mirror Company.

"The family should have taken Erberu out and shot him," said Dan Akst, a business columnist. The general attitude among Timesmen was that Erberu "wrecked that company." It was all a maize of big-money deals, stock options, inside deals between Erberu and the family. They all got rich, but they began the demise of a newspaper. The national media was noticing it all. Newsweek and Newsday among others ran stories of the Times's financial problems.

Then came Mark Willes. The former vice chairman of General Mills, he was dubbed the "Cereal Killer" because he seemed to think he could sell a newspaper the way he sold Honey Nut Cheerios. He was the anti-Chandler. In many ways he was a product of business school theory. He had his theories, his class room concepts. The jock Chandler graduated from Stanford but nobody ever accused him of being an intellectual. He was a real-world business executive. It was like the scene in Back to School when the snooty professor tells the class how to sell "widgets," but Rodney Dangerfield contradicts him with descriptions of how a businessman must first pay off the Mob guys, grease the unions, and keep the corrupt politicians happy.

In the mean time, Coffey made a decided left-leaning turn in the editorial and reporting of the newspaper. "The paper tries to be all things to all people, but in the process it becomes very little to anyone," reporter David Freed of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote. "It has no soul."

Accuse Kyle Palmer and the Los Angeles Times of "building Richard Nixon," of being a "Republican paper," and call Otis Chandler "greedy," but nobody could ever say they lacked a soul!

McDougal concluded that Willes's and Coffey's "Column Left" and "Column Right" op/ed format split so closely down the middle that the paper now produced "politically correct pabulum."

"Under Coffey and <David> Laventhol, the Times had developed a vacillating news policy that <Catherine> Seipp described as 'All the News That's Fit to Print . . . As Long As No One Gets Hurt,' " wrote McDougal.

Coffey was described by Buzz magazine's Catherine Seipp as "the quintessential guilty white male: insular, kindhearted, cluelessly patronizing, endlessly infuriating." Rank-and-file reporters contrasted Coffey from Otis Chandler, typically agreeing with her opinion, favoring Otis in comparison.

On "Black Friday," July 21, 1995, 750 people were fired at Times Mirror Square. Willes oversaw the operation in the detached manner of a Mob hit man. The "Velvet Coffin" was thereafter called the "Pine Box." Then Willes had a staff conference and asked the remaining employees how they could "shape people's thinking." Reporters, used to longtime journalistic practices of reporting both sides of a story, "sat dumbfounded," according to Privileged Son. Willes did not say it, but the unsaid message in his pleas might as well have been, "How do we help Bill Clinton get re-elected?" A Presidential election year was coming and California was in play. Otis Chandler's  
"Republican paper" was now openly advocating for Democrats.

The old paper, with its wonderful, long, analytical articles, was now dubbed, "Read this. Quick," by detractors. Old hands called on Chandler: please help, come back. Otis ranted to Vanity Fair about what was being done to his jewel. Michael Parks, renowned for his work covering South African Apartheid, was brought in. Richard Schlosberg and Coffey left in 1997. Otis began to evaluate his life and place in history. He did not like what Willes, Coffey, Erberu and a host of lightweights had done to his legacy.

"Can you believe this turn of events?" he wrote to his old secretary, Donna Swayze.

Dorothy "Buff" Chandler died that year. She was as responsible as her late husband or her son for the making of Los Angeles. A great city needed a great paper, a great sports palace, a President or two to emerge from its political structure, but it also needed an opera house, museums, and culture. She was the number one reason Los Angeles was now equal to New York, San Francisco, Paris, London – whether the pundits cared to admit or not – when it came to this.

Back at Times Mirror Square, employees were in rebellion. Willes's response was that he would use a proverbial "bazooka, if necessary." More re-organization followed. Subscriptions slipped. He was even changing the Times masthead. Old bromides promoting business and "jingoistic" slogans boosting Los Angeles and America were replaced by political correctness. Willess was accused of not understanding the Internet. Reporters were afraid to go out of the office on assignment, much less vacation, for fear that upon their return a pink slip would be waiting. Instead of one great product, Willes's "Our Times" concept created separate papers catering to different ethnicities, languages and neighborhoods. It failed. He courted Latinos with advertising in the Mexican-American media, to no avail.

Coverage of a police shootout in North Hollywood, later depicted in a movie, awarded the paper a Pulitzer in 1998, but it was a rare bit of good news. Ranked number one in every way a paper could be ranked just a few years earlier, the Times dropped precipitously to fourth behind the New York Times, USA Today and the right-leaning Wall Street Journal. The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal were ranked ahead of them on journalism lists. Willes eliminated Chandler's position as a director, his last official tie to his pride and joy. Otis stated he was "glad I'm not around" Willes anymore.

An untrained woman, Katherine Downing was made president of the paper. She was not qualified and offered little, but she was a woman. Otis fumed from the sidelines. He was "horrified," offering "she knows nothing about newspapers." McDougal described Willes during this period as similar to the Humphrey Bogart character in The Caine Mutiny court martial. Willes tried to say he "studied generals," but whatever lessons he may have "learned" from George Patton or Sun Tzu were not correctly applied. He cut more of the paper. Readers had less to read, less to analyze and think about and pore over. They noticed. Circulation slipped more.

Then came the Staples Center fiasco. Willes presided over a partnership deal with the Lakers' new basketball arena sponsors that broke standard journalism practices, engendering tremendous criticism from all sources. Downing was caught in the middle like a deer in the headlights. She had no idea how to handle the fall-out. Otis chimed in with public criticism. Petitions were circulated in-house protesting the deal.

Finally Otis and old hand Bill Boyarsky, one of his leaders in the glory days, approached Michael Parks to say enough is enough. They communicated their profound displeasure to the entire staff of the paper. The result: cheers throughout the corridors of the paper. Old photos of Chandler popped up. He represented a kind of cult of personality, a rallying cry against inferiority, political correctness, bad marketing, and all other forms of unimpressiveness. He was a champion, a winner. He was admired, an icon. He had been there before, but now he was heroic.

"Otis is Zeus," deputy managing editor John Arthur raved. Then there was this classic in Privileged Son: "Otis was General Patton," said Bill Dwyre, the sports editor, "and you want to go out and get on the tank and ride with him. If Patton comes back and says, 'Let's go! There is one more mission,' you go with him."

"Otis was also Odysseus, home from 20 years of hard sailing and not at all happy with what the suitors had done in his absence to his palace and his Penelope – his one true mistress, his Times," wrote McDougal.

National attention followed and the paper was forced to back out of the Staples Center deal. Willes, Downing and Parks all were rudely deposed, but were not replaced by Otis Chandler or anything like Otis Chandler. Unfortunately, the final indignity that did nothing for the Chandler legacy was endorsed by the Chandler family. On June 12, 2000, the Los Angeles Times was sold to the Tribune Company, parent company of the Chicago Tribune.

Unbelievable.

What was really unbelievable was that Otis and his family just took the money and ran. They received a huge buy-out, as if they were not all rich enough already, and faded into the San Marino sunset, or wherever Otis happened to be. Between moving from mansion to mansion and his adventure trips he was never in one place very long. The Chandler's greed did not go over well with the old Times hands who shortly before fantasized he would lead the charge in saving their beloved paper.

The sale to the Tribune Company was a symbolic gut punch of monumental proportions, meaning so much more than just a business transaction. California had built itself into the greatest state in the union through blood, sweat and tears. The Gold Rush, the Trans-Atlantic Railroad, the Owens River Valley Aqueduct, the Hoover Dam, two world wars, bridges, freeways, Hollywood, Presidents, sports dynasties and athletic "colosseums" rivaling the one that stood in Rome; all of these accomplishments had made the Golden State number one. Los Angeles was its shining city on a hill, the Times its "herald of angels."

As California and Los Angeles rose, among those entities they surely surpassed big old Chicago, the Second City. In the late 1960s they passed them in population, but long before that they passed them in importance. Now they ceded their crown jewels to their defeated rivals, and for what?

Shelby Coffey III, Bob Erberu, Mark Willes, Katherine Downing. There were others, but this unholy foursome go down as enemies of the Los Angeles Times's legacy, destroyers. They led the paper down a path paved with good intentions, not to hell, but to mediocrity in comparison with the pillar they once stood as. They did this terrible thing in a decade, probably less. Of the four, Coffey and Willes deserve the greatest scorn.

After the Tribune Company buy-out, the paper closed various plants. Otis Chandler died in 2006 at the age of 78. Sam Zell bought the Tribune Company and, with it, the Times in 2007. He was said to be a conservative. There is no evidence that if he is, his politics can particularly be found in the paper. They continue to flounder.

****

Prior to 1994, the Democrats ran the U.S. House of Representatives for all but four of 62 years. The Republicans picked up 54 seats to take control of Congress, 230 seats to 204. They captured eight U.S. Senate seats to take control by 52-48. The GOP swept a large majority of Gubernatorial elections and took over most of the state legislatures, including huge majority gains in Sacramento.

During the period between 1994 and 1996, "conservative media" swept America. Before that, there was Rush Limbaugh vs. the world. All by himself he daily battled the New York "slimes," the Washington "compost," the Atlanta "urinal and constipational," meet the "depressed, slay the nation," the "Clinton news network," and all other forms of liberal media he blasted using humor and sarcasm, making fun of their solemnity. He was "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have."

The left figured they could wait him out, he was a phenomenon, a flash in the pain. He would get old, retire, depart for a retirement of golf and football. Limbaugh refused to go gently into that good night. He never went anywhere. But if his enemies felt he was just a right-wing voice crying in the wilderness with a very loud bullhorn, alone, they were astounded to discover he created a vast new industry that could only be described as their worst nightmare. By 1994-95 the radio airwaves were filled with conservative talk show hosts, most of whom drew big ratings and were quite effective. Ken "the Black Avenger" Hamblin, Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity in Atlanta, Michael Savage in San Francisco, of all places, were the beginning of a huge surge: conservative media. The left countered with Air America. It went bankrupt. Conservative talk radio got bigger and bigger and bigger, its ratings exploding wherever it was tried. A juggernaut.

Over time the right consolidated an empire. Successful publications either slanted to the right or fully doing its bidding ranged from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Newsmax, the American Spectator, and others. Rupert Murdoch, a conservative Australian mogul, created Fox News in 1996. At least in the beginning, Fox was "fair and balanced." Detractors said they were conservative, but that was because they just sounded that way after being dulled by liberal news since Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, who thrived when little competition was offered. Later Fox actually took a distinct right turn, but that was not until well after the start of the Iraq War in 2003, then more so in reaction to Barack Hussein Obama.

Fox became a ratings juggernaut. Cable television changed the whole dynamic of news delivery. It was a 24-hour stream. Viewers need not wait until six o'clock to sit down with a martini in time for a one-hour showing of the ABC World News. Murdoch eventually bought the New York Daily Post, HarperCollins Publishing, Fox studios, and numerous other media holdings. Whatever William Paley, Henry Luce, Katharine Graham, Otis Chandler, Arthur Sulzberger; whatever The Powers That Be once described by David Halberstam were, Rupert Murdoch now was times 10! An openly conservative man had power and was willing to use it to express a political point of view. The left exploded in indignation. The right just replied that they had been doing it from their angle for decades, and it was all just a matter of "winning in the marketplace of ideas."

During the 1992 Presidential election, Democrat candidates Bill Clinton and Albert Gore, Jr. used effective, futuristic language in describing the World Wide Web. The Internet is too monolithic, too all-encompassing to say now what it all meant. It changed the world. Politically, it has been used with equal force, venom and deceit by the left and the right. Eventually it created something called "blogs," which had a profound impact on the media. It rendered newspapers literally "yesterday's news." Its greatest impact has probably been pornographic, both "mainstream" as well as the insidious ability to easily watch children having sex without borders. In this regard, the religious among us are not disabused of the notion that it is a tool of Satan, but it has been used for much good and efficient use by those on the straight and narrow, too.

There is no question, however, that the Internet had a negative effect on newspaper circulation. By 2000 this was established orthodoxy. It was a very serious concern for people in the publishing game, whether it is daily papers, magazines or books. The Internet did not completely reduce the power of papers. In many ways they increased them, because articles could be read on-line anywhere in the world. For the writers of the articles, they found a certain amount of prestige and influence came from this. Within seconds an article written in the Los Angeles Times could be sent as a link by email to a person in L.A. to a person in Jakarta, who could read it within a minute or so, and then email comments to the writer via email a few minutes later.

One need not be the chief of staff to the President, with a subscription to 10 major papers to be pored over every morning in the Oval Office, in order to be informed. It was egalitarian and Democratic in scope.

As for the L.A. Times, as with so many other papers, many, many people read the paper regularly, only without paying for it. They tried to charge for on-line use but it went over like a dead weight. Too much was free on the Internet to pay. Forget LATimes.com. If you just want to read of the Dodger game or the press conference from Heritage Hall, it could be found at Dodgers.com, OCRegister.com, USCTrojans.com . . .

But for major newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, circulation, subscriptions, income have all gone down in the 1990s and 2000s. The future is not bright. There is no guarantee the bottom has not been reached, and that does not take into account the "next big thing," some new technological innovation that further erodes the old print versions of the news, information and books.

But there remains a debate, a question. Have newspapers fallen because they are too liberal? This is the premise of the Rush Limbaughs of the world going back to the late 1980s. In the 2000s, Michael Savage unquestionably says it is so. The conservative media gleefully touts the premise. It is to them a Holy Grail, a premise, a justification proving that they are right about the left, they are riding the whirlwind, they have the numbers, the influence. Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity routinely crow about their high ratings compared to the poor ratings of rival MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post . . .

The right could be right, but it is not a decided issue. It is not the whole picture. Maybe the whole picture has not been painted as yet. But what is absolutely unquestioned is that the Los Angeles Times was, if not conservative, certainly fair and palatable to the right as late as 1990 or 1991. Otis Chandler was ousted. People who did not share his worldview were brought in. They imposed their opinions within the paper's pages. Criticism ensued, and circulation dropped.

While Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and their like railed against the New York Times and CNN for years, generally they did not criticize the L.A. Times. Perhaps it was just a left-over perception, the memory and influence of Chandler, but they were, you know, the Times. The Times was not . . . liberal? Were they?

By the 2000s they were. By then the Tribune Company owned them. Chicago Tribune politics were now L.A. Times politics. When the right found bias, they no longer relegated complaints to the East Coast publications. The L.A. Times backed Clinton, opposed Impeachment, backed Gore, opposed George W. Bush and Iraq. Jim Murray's contemporary, Bud "the Steamer" Furillo, was an unabashed liberal, a "New Deal Democrat." He was undoubtedly to the left of Murray. Interviewed in the mid-2000s, he was disgusted with the media's treatment of President Bush and the Iraq War.

"I hate the war, but the way these people oppose the President, I mean, it's almost treasonous," he stated.

When moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger – hardly a reactionary - ran for Governor against Gray Davis in 2003, they not only backed Davis, they got in trouble, crossing journalistic boundaries in order to protect the Democrat when they printed a nebulous story about Arnold's past actions with women. It was sad. They did not even have much influence any more. Schwarzenegger coasted to victory. National conservatives routinely lump them in with the New York Times as an example of left-wing bias. In the Southland, the conservative Orange County Register has managed to hold a competitive line, which many would point to as proof that liberal bias is bad business. The Wall Street Journal thrives.

It is still a relatively great paper in an age in which great papers are rare, mostly a thing of the past. There simply are no newspapers in the world today comparable to Otis Chandler's L.A. Times. Comparing newspapers in the 2010s is a relative matter, not a historical one. It is not an all-consuming liberal rag. It is not nearly as partisan as the New York Times, which in the 2000s took major hits such as the Jason Blair scandal, part of a wide-ranging series of events in which several East Coast publications were found to be untruthful, printed false stories, and provided shoddy journalism, more often than not in an effort to favor a liberal cause or discredit a conservative one.

The L.A. Times tries for fairness. There are still talented scribes, hard-working editors. It still represents Los Angeles and all that means, but it has gone downhill. It gets worse, not better. For those who grew up with it in its hey day it is a sad shell of its old self.

Perhaps the Times is merely a victim of the partisan divide which goes back to the Founding Fathers and the Civil War, but which became irreparable with the Alger Hiss conviction. The left put all their efforts into backing Hiss. They never accepted his guilt. The New York Times wrote glowing retrospectives of his unfair conviction until the Venona Papers, unearthed in the U.S.S.R.'s old archives of the early 1990s, proved he was guilty.

But in sticking to him they painted themselves into a corner, the same corner they painted themselves into when they backed Clinton against all odds, then were stuck with him during Impeachment and proof of his lies. The same corner that painted them into an anti-war corner even when 1.5 million Cambodians died in a demonstration of "why we fight." The same corner that forces a Harry Reid to declare, "The war is lost" just as "the Surge" succeeds. The right just says, "Keep saying it." Ultimately it results in their victories at the polls and the ratings.

To those who think psychologically, who ask, "Why would somebody go against their better interests, cost themselves money, lose customers, annoy their base?" the answer might just be, "They can't help themselves."

But things go in cycles. The media used to be generally conservative, a la the Hearst papers. Hollywood was once patriotic. Perhaps over time it will swing that way again. If so, the uniqueness of conservative media will be lost as it all morphs into the mainstream.

Or maybe not.

The future will determine whether indeed the Times will be a-changin' still again.

****

The first couple of years of the new decade appeared to be a consolidation of the American Empire. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In the old days, the U.S. would not have done anything, as they did not fight Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, but unlike Egypt then Iraq now was alone, not a Soviet client state. President George H.W. Bush sent the full force of American resolve into the Middle East and had the Iraqis beaten in a month or so. He had 91 percent approval ratings. There was no chance he would not be re-elected.

The historians all tried to make sense of it. Bush made a speech and called it the New World Order. That sounded about right. Whatever that was, the boss was America. A writer named Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay called, "The End of History." The argument basically was that everything America fought for had been accomplished. Slavery, Nazism, Communism, radical terror; all had been defeated, forced to bow down at our altar.

Russian militarists tried a coup against Boris Yeltsin, but it was put down. The Soviet Union officially broke up, and pundits proclaimed, "Peace has broken out all over."

With that came the "peace dividend." In a new, peaceful world, we would no longer need to build mega-weapons to defeat our varied enemies. They were all slain in one form or another. Therefore, we could use the money normally spent on SDI and nukes and use it to feed the poor. "Guns for butter," they called it.

In 1992, Bush ran for re-election, still hoping his 91 percent approvals from the Persian Gulf War would carry the day. Called the "resume President," in the history of America he may well have been the most qualified man, with the greatest background for the White House ever, and that did not include the fact he already had four years on the job!

Pundits called the Democrat field the "seven dwarfs." When Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton won, the Republicans laughed. He was the man they wanted to run against. He had a reputation as a womanizer who needed a full-time staffer to stem "bimbo eruptions." He was a draft dodger running against a World War II fighter pilot twice shot down by the Japanese. There were reports that he oversaw an airplane strip in Mena, Arkansas that was a drug-running operation. His detractors described something called the "Clinton body count." There was a list, somewhere between 15 and 100 people, who posed threats in one way or another to the political careers of Governor and Mrs. Hillary Clinton in Arkansas. All had died; in mysterious car accidents, hunting mis-fires, strange heart attacks and drug overdoses . . .

Holy cow, it was easy pickins. Clinton was not heading to the White House, he was ticketed for the "big house." Pride goeth before the fall.

Remember the Berlin Wall, which came down amid much triumphalism in Reagan-Bush/Republican circles? Remember the peace dividend, which the media said was the money we no longer needed to spend on military hardware to defend against the Soviets? Remember after beating Saddam how "peace broke out all over" and it was the "end of history"? Well, having triumphed over these grave threats "without firing a shot," as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said of Reagan, we stopped giving Northrop and General Dynamics and Hughes Aircraft and a host of other big, bloated giants of the Military Industrial Complex billions of tax dollars to build missiles like it was Dr. Strangelove or other something. A funny thing happened. They started laying off workers. The California economy took a dive. As California goes, so goes the nation (at least in those days).

In 1991-92, the United States was in a recession. It was, as recessions go, fairly mild. It was the kind of recession that used to hit every five years or so, but when free market principles really became the way of this land, were diverted to every 11 years or so, as in this case. The last one had occurred under President Carter. But Bill Clinton had an advisor named James Carville, and he kept repeating, "It's the economy, stupid." He had his guy run around America calling it, "The worst economy since the Great Depression." In fact, the statistics later showed that it actually ended a week before Election Day, 1992, but it was too late. Bush killed himself after raising taxes in 1990 after having famously declared, "Read my lips, no new taxes."

The Republicans were victims of their own success. If Tom Clancy or Allen Drury or some other political novelist were coming up with the best possible made-up career for a President, it would not be as good as what Bush actually did before his Presidency, but retail politics is about connecting with people. He did not speak well. He could not communicate. The actor, Reagan, could. So could Bill Clinton. Clinton was brilliant, highly educated and well read. Not just well read; he actually retained everything he read and could recall it at a moment's notice, a rare talent. Somebody would mention an essay in an obscure journal. Clinton had read it. He was a born politician. He had a genius for it.

George H.W. Bush still would have eked out a victory over him, but Texas billionaire Ross Perot, a conservative, ran as an independent. He tapped into something America was looking for and won 19 percent of the vote. The great majority of that 19 percent came from Bush's base. Clinton got only 43 percent, barely more than Carter when he was badly beaten in 1980, but it was enough.

America's repudiation of Clinton, his wife's health care plan and the prospect of allowing gays to openly serve in the military, appeared complete when the Republicans destroyed his party in the 1994 mid-terms, but Clinton was the "comeback kid" again in 1996.

Clinton benefited from the world Reagan and Bush left him. With the break-up of the Soviet empire he was able to reduce military spending. All of those tech-savvy workers who lost jobs in the Military Industrial Complex helped fuel the Internet economy of the 1990s. The Internet was a gift, like Manna from Heaven, creating a tremendous economic boon in the decade.

When the Republicans took over Congress, they imposed new policies, namely tax reduction. Clinton was smart enough to adopt House Speaker Newt Gingrich's bills. He triangulated, ending "welfare as we know it," and in adopting Republican philosophies enjoyed success.

In 1996 Clinton ran for re-election against Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R.-Kansas). As in the 1992 campaign, it was a draft dodger against a World War II hero. Ross Perot ran again. His influence did not cost Dole the victory, but it did not help. Clinton won, but failed again to capture a 50 percent plurality.

Clinton accepted millions in campaign donations and illegal personal money and gifts from a shadowy Pakistani businessman named James Riady and the Lippo Group. This combined with essentially "selling" America to China, and was the roots of Pakistan becoming a quasi-terror state with America the enemy. China did not have the technological capability of sending nuclear missiles to the U.S. In return for donations and bribes, Clinton allowed Red China to buy the technology to release throw weights of their missiles, thus now allowing them to reach American shores.

In 1998 Clinton was Impeached for lying under oath in a lawsuit.

Some conflicts broke out in Eastern Europe. Clinton had U.S. markings taken off American jets, replacing them with U.N. insignia, and bombed Christian churches in Belgrade. If this action in defense of Muslims resisting "ethnic cleansing" was expected to create gratitude in the Muslim world, events over the next decade proved it did not.

He had a chance to kill Osama Bin Laden, but chose not to do it. He also established as U.S. policy the premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and, if possible, they should be removed or destroyed.

Fueled by the Internet, the stock market exploded, but it was built on many false promises of just what the Internet could and could not do. By the time Clinton left office in 2001 it collapsed and the "dot.com" economy was lampooned as the "dot.bomb."

After 9/11, President George W. Bush looked at the landscape and decided to "engage the enemy at a time and place of our choosing." He saw a world in which Muslim Jihadists were attacking America and Western interests in the West, on our home turf so to speak. He found two places that were already "hell holes" – Afghanistan and Iraq – and decided to lead most of the terrorists into these two places, where they would be closely gathered together, and then send his military in to destroy them. This he largely accomplished.

First he defeated the Taliban, removing them from Kabul, Afghanistan and scattering them into the neighboring Pakistani mountains. Then he gathered much of the remaining Al Qaeda remnant, or tares to use a Biblical term, leading them into an ambush of sorts in Iraq, where he eventually defeated them.

After 9/11, the American economy tanked. On October 9, 2002 the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed out at 7,286. Whereby the 1990s economy was a false Internet "bubble" that burst, in the 2000s Bush built the economy back using tax cuts and solid financial principles. After inspiring confidence domestically and internationally, he led the United States to what was probably its greatest economic run ever, peaking with an incredible stock high of 14,279 in 2007.

Under President Barack Obama the economy has failed to approach such levels, the stock market mired some 4,000 or 5,000 points below Bush's high-water mark.

****

San Francisco was the city, or the City, the "Paris of the West," after the Gold Rush all the way to the 20th Century. The building of William Mulholland's aqueduct, the rise of the film industry, the Federal highway system; by the 1960s Los Angeles was the city in the West, and eventually the world. Nobody thought the ride would end. In the 1970s, when America struggled, Los Angeles thrived. In the 1980s, when America thrived, Los Angeles led the way. Its longtime rival in everything, San Francisco, fell by the proverbial wayside. L.A. hardly noticed. San Francisco despised the fact L.A. did not care.

But years earlier in a non-descript part of the San Francisco Bay Area set next to coastal mountains called the peninsula, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made monumental discoveries and innovations with micro-chips and computers. Thus did their non-descript peninsula take on the name Silicon Valley. By the early 1990s, it had transformed the area's economy. The Silicon Valley was cutting edge, the future. The Military Industrial Complex was a dinosaur, the past. The money, the talent, the investment once poured into the "405 corridor" between LAX and Long Beach were now poured into start-ups and high-techs between San Francisco and San Jose.

This began a huge shift in the San Francisco-Los Angeles dynamic. In the decade in which the great L.A. Times would tumble, San Francisco rose. It was a rivalry again. Once dirty, corrupt, a shadow of its once high-livin' self, the Silicon Valley culture glamorized San Francisco again. It created something called SoMa (south of Market Street), an entire business and residential community hewed out of old, previously run-down San Francisco neighborhoods. Thriving companies, high-rise condominiums, happening nightclubs, and something people thought was almost banned in the City for years: beautiful girls. The spirit of entrepreneurial business adventure was so great that San Francisco even elected a quasi-Republican Mayor, Frank Jordan. He told people he was a registered Democrat, then winked.

In 1991, a group of high-flying Navy and Marine fighter jocks gathered at their annual Tailhook convention in Las Vegas, named after the contraption that affixes to the wheels of a jet as it lands on an aircraft carrier, bringing it to a stop. Young and full of testosterone, they drank and whooped it up. Some pretty women happened by and they whooped it up some more. Somebody complained to Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D.-Colorado). She and her female colleagues reacted as if it were the male chauvinist pig version of My Lai, the Holocaust and the Gulags combined. They hounded Navy and Marine brass endlessly. It was so bad one of the officers involved later took his own life. A Republican Senator from Oregon had the temerity to notice some women were attractive. So did one of President Bush's colleagues from Texas, former Senator John Tower. For this they were excoriated.

Also in 1991, Bush nominated a black man to the Supreme Court. Somebody came forth and said that Clarence Thomas once offered a can of coke to a female colleague and, in so doing, made a sexually suggestive remark. Same thing. He was hounded as if he were a child molester.

As with Tailhook, the women – none of whom were the ones identified by the aforementioned as attractive - went ballistic. Schroeder, Congresswoman Barbara Boxer (D.-California) and others marched to Capitol Hill in a famed photograph, acting as if they were protecting womanhood from Thomas. His accuser was not found to be believable and Thomas was confirmed, but on lines divided to this day.

The kinds of things that happened at Tailhook were probably the kinds of hi-jinx that marked most every day of Otis Chandler's rambunctious life, but now they were de facto crimes. Guys like Shelby Coffey III were calling them politically incorrect, and banning a slew of words that might reference this kind of now-verboten behavior. A new age was on us.

In 1992, the Democrats ran a host of aggressive women for the U.S. Senate. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Patty Murray of Washington, Carol Mosely Braun of Illinois, and both Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California were elected on Bill Clinton's coattails in what came to be known as the "Year of the Woman."

There is a passage in the Book of Psalms that describes men being "ruled by women," ornamented, with "mincing, princing" steps, and "Instead of fragrance there will be a stench," leaving men to "fall" while "The gates of Zion will lament and mourn."

So it was in 1992.

The elections of Feinstein and Boxer marked a major shift in the SoCal-NoCal rivalry and dynamics of the state. Not only were they women, they were both Jewish and from San Francisco, considered the epicenter of liberalism. Feinstein was much more moderate. She was only nominally Jewish. She also had Catholic roots and while definitely Democrat, was and never would be viewed as a real left-winger. She was the former Mayor of San Francisco, but also owned a vacation home on the Marin County coast.

Boxer was a different story. She was Jewish, although how observant was not really known. She lived in Marin, where she had represented a district encompassing parts of San Francisco as well as Marin, Sonoma and Solano. She was highly partisan, extremely aggressive, a militant feminist, and considered as liberal as any Federal elected official in America.

In a state long dominated by the Republicans, it was jarring. Californians had long gone for strong, hawkish, white Southern California men cut out of the Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian mold. Mostly WASPS; Earl Warren, Richard Nixon, Tom Kuchel, William Knowland, Sam Yorty, Daryl Gates, Caspar Weinberger, George Schultz, Edwin Meese. Pro-business, pro-family, pro-law enforcement, pro-military.

The Southern California political scene was bereft of strength and ideas. John Seymour, a milquetoast Orange County state Senator, was appointed to the U.S. Senate after Wilson went to Sacramento. He got clocked when he tried to run on his own. Suddenly the star power, the fundraising money, the clout was in the north. But that was only part of it.

The Los Angeles economy was in the tank post-Berlin Wall but it would take more hits. In 1991, white L.A.P.D. officers beat a black motorist named Rodney King to a bloody pulp. It probably was not a rare thing, but a relatively new device was at play in the world: the camcorder. An amateur videographer caught the whole thing on tape. CNN played it over and over and over for months on end.

In 1992, the cops went to trial. South-central L.A. was none too pleased when they were assigned first the venue of Simi Valley, as white bread a town as could be found in the Southland, and naturally an all-white jury. When the jury acquitted three of the officers, wild, rampaging blacks tore up Los Angeles. It made Watts in 1965 look like the Rose Parade. Racial politics were at their most overheated.

Gangs roamed the L.A. streets. The cops, afraid of lawsuits, riots and discipline, let them ply their trades. The Bloods and the Crips ran rampant. Raiders games were veritable gang conventions. It got so bad that one day a USC football player was struck by a stray gang bullet. A few years later, Orange County, of all places, declared bankruptcy. It was totally shocking. The OC symbolized wealth, the good life.

As bad as the King riots were, the O.J. Simpson trial took the cake. O.J. was jealously claimed by western New York (Buffalo Bills) and, therefore, New York City (where he partied with Joe Namath). His hometown of San Francisco loved him, but L.A. was his domicile and place of greatest hero worship as a USC icon. He lived in Brentwood. It was "the life," the blond bombshell wife, membership at Riviera, Hollywood fame, mistresses, a coast-to-coast free lunch, and he was welcome to it.

In 1994 he probably murdered his wife and a handsome waiter. An all-black jury acquitted him. The racial angle was infuriating. If L.A. thought they were the city that "got it right," that did not play when it came to O.J. While USC reeled in its worst-ever football decade, O.J.'s travails, his slow speed freeway extravaganza and embarrassing trial, were the worst possible publicity.

But all of this was still not the whole story. San Francisco and the Bay Area surpassed Greater Los Angeles in just about every way. There were a few good movies made in Hollywood (Glengarry Glenross, The Player, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, American History X, Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting, The Thin Red Line), but it was no replay of the 1960s and 1970s. The right continued to rail at un-patriotic, anti-family fare.

But perhaps it was on the fields of play where it really played out in its starkest terms. What a difference. The San Francisco 49ers were the most dominant team in pro football. They transitioned smoothly from coach Bill Walsh to coach Bill Seifert, from quarterback Joe Montana to quarterback Steve Young. When they won their fifth Super Bowl in January of 1995 over the San Diego Chargers, it marked what probably is the greatest continued dynasty the game has ever known. They continued to perform at a high level throughout most of the 1990s.

1994 symbolized the shift in sports power. While the 49ers went all the way, the Los Angeles Raiders, anemic in L.A. over the last years, playing before the embarrassing sight of gangbangers who took to their silver-and-black colors, packed it up and moved back to Oakland. The city where there was "no there there" was preferred to Hollywood, the City of Angels, dreamland.

That was not the half of it. The Los Angeles Rams were an institution at the Coliseum. They once played before 102,000 fans. The move to Anaheim was bad enough, but it was still L.A., kind of. But in 1995 Georgia Frontiere left for St. Louis. The last insult was their glorious 2000 Super Bowl win over the Tennessee Titans.

Pro football has never returned to Los Angeles. Fans were left to root for the San Diego Chargers, or the Raiders from afar, or the Packers or Cowboys or the team people said was L.A.'s "real pro football team" in the 2000s, the Trojans.

In 1991 the University of California beat UCLA in basketball. It would not have been a really big deal. Neither team was going anywhere, particularly, although the Golden Bears had recruited some recent studs. But it was the first time Cal beat the Bruins since 1961. This game was an excellent metaphor for the changing dynamics between the north and the south. UCLA appeared to have come all the way back when they won the 1995 NCAA championship in impressive style, but coach Jim Harrick became involved in an unfortunate accounting scandal that wiped out all their gains. They have never recovered. Unbelievably, in a city where champions seemed to grow on trees like oranges, UCLA's 1995 title was the only championship of any kind won by a Los Angeles team in a major sport in the decade (unless one counts USC's 1998 College World Series win).

In 1991, Cal annihilated USC in a football game at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. Cal had beaten the Trojans before, albeit rarely, but never ran up a score on them as they did in track meet style that year. Cal's star running back, Russell White grew up in L.A. and was the nephew of USC Heisman Trophy winner Charles White. USC was reeling from the Todd Marinovich disaster. They were brutally bad in '91 while Cal competed for the national championship, denied them by a close loss to eventual number one Washington.

On the decade, UCLA beat USC eight straight times. The Trojans went from 1983-95 without beating Notre Dame. USC was relatively strong, and won the 1996 Rose Bowl, but it was the worst decade in their history. Cal never got to the Rose Bowl, but the overall rivalries between Cal, Stanford, USC and UCLA were pretty even and competitive. The old stompings were a thing of the past.

The power base of the Pac-10 Conference in the 1990s was centered mainly with the University of Arizona in basketball. In football, the Washington, Arizona, and Oregon schools all caught up with USC and UCLA, if not surpassing them.

The California (then Anaheim) Angels blew the 1995 division in monumental style. That was their only hurrah. Up north, Oakland was a powerhouse of Bash Brothers fame. In 1990 they looked like the 1927 Yankees before faltering against Cincinnati in the World Series.

The sale of the Los Angeles Times, coming on the heels of the Rams move to St. Louis, were emblematic of the cities' fall. There is really no objective way of looking at the Times's sale to the Tribune Company and determining it to be anything other than a disaster. After that, the paper was never remotely close to what they had once been. While the Tribune take-over hurt the Times, the Hearst Corporation's buy-out of the San Francisco Chronicle that same year had the opposite effect. The Chronicle was long a laughing stock, as much a sign of the City's inferiority compared to L.A. as Candlestick Park vs. Dodger Stadium.

But the Chronicle improved dramatically under Hearst ownership. Scott Ostler, once a rising star in the Murray mold at the Times, was among their star sports columnists. It would not be accurate to say the Hearst Chronicle was ever as good as the Times, but at least for a while they were comparable.

"Now San Francisco has the better writers, and its ironic in that they were influenced by Murray," said longtime Los Angeles sports radio personality Fred Wallin. "Bruce Jenkins grew up next door to him in Malibu. Scott Ostler was his protégé at the Times in the 1980s. But back in the day you'd wake up in the morning to Jim Murray and the Los Angeles Times, then read the Herald-Examiner when it came in the afternoon. I read both."

But of all sports symbolisms, the demise of the Los Angeles Dodgers most clearly represented the way the city fell, and how the rivalry clearly favored San Francisco in sports and other ways. After winning the 1988 World Series, the team suffered on the field and had a series of embarrassments off it. Tom Lasorda was half-forced to the sidelines and in a brutal move, one of those kids born to be a Dodger, Mike Piazza was traded away.

But in 1997 the absolutely unthinkable happened. The O'Malley family sold the team to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Peter O'Malley said that changes in tax estate law enacted under President Clinton made it impossible to continue family ownership of the team with a smooth inheritance. Of all the great business moves Rupert Murdoch engineered, this remains his one glaring error. He put a man named Bob Daly in charge of the team. Daly was a movie executive with no baseball background. It was like asking Tom Lasorda to direct The Godfather. Their glory days were done.

But above all events – the election of Feinstein and Boxer, the Chronicle catching up with the Times, Cal and Stanford competing evenly with their old tormentors, the Raiders leaving L.A. for Oakland – the building of Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco, and the subsequent performance of Barry Bonds demonstrated the newfound superiority of San Francisco. It was unbelievable.

After almost moving to Tampa Bay, the Giants were saved by Safeway magnate Peter Magowan. In 1993 they made the move of all-time moves when they signed Barry Bonds. That year Bonds elevated himself to the stratosphere of a Ruth, a Williams, in leading his team to over 100 wins.

Bonds's superstar status was the driving force behind the building of Pac Bell Park, which opened in 2000. Nobody thought it could be pulled off. Everything San Francisco did, seemingly since building the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge before World War II, failed. Unions, corruption, criminality; a host of factors always prevented them from achieving excellence.

Various attempts to build a stadium with public money had failed over the years. Voters, noting that Candlestick was "good enough for government work," never approved, so Magowan led a private initiative. Everything about the plan and implementation was perfect.

The location was perfect. The stadium was perfect. The weather was vastly improved over Candlestick, the design of the park itself a bulwark against the wind. Pacific Bell Park was better than Dodger Stadium! The old China Basin neighborhood, once a dreary backdrop of Dirty Harry movies, already improving by the SoMa renaissance courtesy of Silicon Valley tech investment, became a prime destination of fans and partygoers seeking its upscale restaurants and bars. High-class condos with spectacular views were erected. San Francisco finally got it right.

But the building of a spectacular facility was only the first step. They needed a competitive team to excite fans. To say they accomplished that goal would be like saying Henry T. Ford accomplished his goal of getting Americans to drive cars.

Sure, Bonds was juiced out of his mind, but nobody knew it or, if they suspected, did not care at the time. No comparison, no hype is too over-the-top in describing Bonds's incomparable performance in the 2000s, the breaking of the single-season home run record (73 in 2001), winning four straight MVP awards, eventually passing Hank Aaron on the all-time career list, and seriously bidding for the title "greatest baseball player who ever lived."

Not only had L.A. fallen behind San Francisco while their newspaper was now just a subsidiary of Chicago, but New York passed them after a long down period. Starting with the Wall Street resurgence under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who used the RICO statutes to drive a stake into the heart of the Mob, New York cracked down on crime and smut while cleaning up the city, making it a destination again. The Yankees' dynasty had some of its greatest glory years.

But L.A. fought back. After Ervin "Magic" Johnson announced he had the HIV virus in 1991, the Lakers entered a desultory period that lasted most the decade. The comeback started with the building of Staples Center in 1999 and the Lakers winning three straight NBA titles (2000, 2001, 2002) followed by two more in 2009 and 2010. Republican Mayor Richard Riordan led a revitalization of the downtown corridor, building new skyscrapers and attracting major corporations. The 2000 Democrat National Convention was held in Los Angeles. The two-mile stretch between Staples Center and USC was cleaned up, with the building of the Galen Center leading the re-building of the campus and surrounding neighborhood.

The air in Los Angeles was much, much cleaner in the 2000s than it had been in the 1960s, when a knife could seemingly cut it. Sports writers in the L.A. Coliseum press box gazed out upon the Hollywood sign, individual homes in Beverly Hills, the San Gabriel range. Drivers heading north on Lincoln Avenue from the airport towards Marina Del Rey came over the rise, stunned to see an unencumbered view all the way to the downtown skyline and beyond. Workers in high rises stared out at the endless basin all the way to the ocean. The citizens of West Covina discovered Mt. Baldy was actually a few miles away!

In 2002, the Anaheim Angels helped restore pride in the Southland when they beat the great Barry Bonds and the Giants in a thrilling seven-game World Series. The Dodgers parted ways with News Corporation. After Bonds's steroid revelations he eventually faded away and the Dodgers won divisions, although they did not quite reclaim the glory of past decades.

Perhaps the rise of USC under Pete Carroll symbolized the L.A. resurgence more than any factor. Not only did he lead the program to football glory comparable with Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma in the 1950s and Knute Rockne at Notre Dame in the 1920s, but the excitement of capacity Coliseum crowds completely revived the neighborhood and the city.

Under bad leadership, the state of California completely lost its mojo in the 1990s and 2000s. The state, built by William Mulholland, Otis Chandler, Buff Chandler, William Randolph Hearst, Howard Hughes, Darryl F. Zanuck, Louis B. Mayer, Ronald Reagan; that was no more. It had become reliably "blue," but often the rest of America ignored them, voting their way. Its huge Electoral College votes were not needed any more. The Southwest, led by Texas, was more efficient, successful, and produced more. Ravaged by unions and illegals, California had the worst public school system in the U.S. The economy tanked. A huge migration of the middle class moved to Oregon, Nevada, Colorado. It was no longer on the cutting edge. Its trends no longer started there and led the way.

Politically, the election of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was viewed as a touch of Hollywood panache, but the thrill was quickly gone. In 2010, Republicans hoped to reverse of the "Year of the Woman" elections. Two Republican women, Meg Whitman, the founder of eBay, ran against the dinosaur Bay Area pol Jerry Brown. Barbara Boxer was challenged by ex-Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina. While the Republicans won saweeping victories of breathtaking proportion, California appeared to be stuck in the 1960s. Both Republicans were beaten. The state stayed Democrat, mired in its worst period ever.

Both California and America appear to have seen their best days. It is doubtful that either the state or the country will rebound in our lifetimes, in our generation, to the glory days of Ronald Reagan, when California led the way and the greatest nation on Earth followed in its footsteps. A period of Socialism, of malaise, of unimpressiveness, in which the second rate, the low rent have become the common place, the expected, have afflicted this great country. Whether the Tea Party movement can reverse this trend remains an open question.

The Los Angeles Times under Tribune ownership completely turned from what it had been under Otis chandler. They had a guy named Robert Scheer writing op/eds that the conservatives flat called unpatriotic. George Bush and the Iraq War; maybe it was a bad idea, mistakes were obviously made, and there were no WMD found, but the Times joined a chorus of liberal voices; what they did to Bush was so far over the top that America stopped buying what they had to sell. It had a strange, unintended consequence. From a purely political point of view, liberal criticism helped the right. The unreal stance of the New York Times, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, one Hollywood movie after another lambasting Bush, none making money; it all motivated the right to vote and win. The liberals and their allies in the so-called mainstream media spawned the very things that defeat their causes and cause them to lose influence: among them, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement that, in 2010, resulted in the most total repudiation of their ideology and its face – Barack Obama – in memory, if not history!

Still, as if in a psychological daze, the left could not stop. They could not help themselves. Theirs is an odd psychosis, but we have seen it before. The left is motivated on their side as Henry Luce once was motivated on his side. Luce was convinced that he was doing God's work, that American propaganda, even if it meant tamping down Theodore White's reports from China, was an imperative on the side of righteousness.

The left is reacting to Luce and the Los Angeles Times pre-Otis Chandler; to Alger Hiss, HUAC and McCarthyism; to Vietnam and Watergate. In their view, past excesses by the right imbues them now with a new kind of "moral authority" to promote their liberal agenda, even if it requires lying, but this is their god! As with Hiss and Clinton and Cambodia, they have determined there is a thing called "global warning," that it is man-made, and that Socialism is the only way to destroy it. In sticking to this stance against all facts, they dig their own grave.

Without addressing this dynamic they will keep making the same errors and paying for it all the way to bankruptcy. William F. Buckley, Jr. pointed it out as far back as God and Man Yale, but still they persist. It is in their nature.

The Rush Limbaughs of the world were their unintended beneficiaries. If ratings were supposed to be the slightest indication of who was telling the truth, Fox News appeared to be the ones doing that. The left said, no, that was not it. It was jingoism, false patriotism, war mongering. America did not buy that, either.

The newspapers say their lack of subscriptions, sales, advertising revenue, are not the result of political opinion. It is the Internet. It is failure to harness the Internet's potential. Maybe, but if they are unwilling to look at themselves they will continue to fail. Something is very, very wrong in the mainstream media today. The Orange County Register hangs in there pretty well. The Wall Street Journal is a powerhouse, as great as ever. The Washington Times has a specialized right-wing audience, but a big one. The old powerhouses, however, are all shadows of themselves.

Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, G. Gordon Liddy; they are media giants. When they go on vacation a host of talented newcomers demonstrate their future is strong beyond them. Savage in particular . . . savages the "liberal media," particularly newspapers like the New York Times, and magazines such as Time, Newsweek and the ultra-left The Nation. He rubs salt in their wounds, calling them out, saying they are going out of business because of their politics.

Savage and others who air similar views, like Bill O'Reilly, may be exaggerating or making the point in order to advance both their agendas and their shows. The left pointedly refuses to listen to them because in the case of Savage (not really O'Reilly) at least, these "noise machines," as the left derides them, are just that, not to be trusted or given credence. In dismissing them, the left do themselves no favors, because no matter how uber-partisan the conservatives are – and they are – within their rhetoric is the kind of truth the liberals are not listening to and need to in order to survive. It is the ancient story, "The emperor has no clothes." It is the same as any battlefield commander, who needs truthful intelligence in order to make the best decisions. Hoped for information, the death knell of the commander, is having that effect on the liberal media, and if they are not careful, the Democrat Party sooner than they suspect.

Air America is in the "dustbin of history." Blogs are hard to pin down. WorldNetDaily and others thrive. Apparently so do liberal blogs like the Huffington Post and Media Matters. The left has its angels, its Murdochs, mainly in the form of a shadowy European named George Soros, who as a young man worked as a Nazi collaborator confiscating the property of Jews, and on 60 Minutes declared, "If I wasn't doing it, somebody else would be taking it away." If somebody like Soros attempted to exercise influence on the right, they would self-enforce his banishment within minutes.

Jim Murray steered clear of politics. The fact that his grandfather owned buildings, and Jim's recollections trying to collect rent from some of the low-lifes living in them, probably steered him clear of the Democrats, at least after "I made my first $40,000," but he may well have been swept up in the adulteration of FDR.

He was described by those who knew him best as most likely a moderate Los Angeles Republican, a Nixon man who "confessed" he voted for him in 1960 even though he "loved" Jack Kennedy. Watergate turned him away, but one can glean from his writings not just pathos for 1960s blacks and the downtrodden of life, but also middle class morality, even Catholic judgment, and common sense, not moral relativism. He stayed quiet during Vietnam, but his paper was not embedded with the Viet Cong, either. He would have stayed quiet about Iraq. He would not have liked what he saw in the war or with his paper. He would have thought the leftward turn a mistake.

The great scribe in his twi-light years

There is little evidence the great Jim Murray involved himself much in the politics of the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s. He no doubt had an opinion. His politics probably differed from the changing view of his paper, but he was always moderate and down the middle, not offensive to either side. Besides, he had gone through too much over the previous decade-plus to concern himself. Maybe the long toil of life was the reason Chandler sidelined himself for the most part while his old charges were "Waiting for Godot," as Dennis McDougal wrote.

Chandler and Murray. Two old war horses of the newspaper game. Now there was just Murray. Over at Dodger Stadium, Vin Scully. In an Encino condominium, on Saturdays to be found at Pauley Pavilion, John Wooden. The old guard of Los Angeles as the city entered a perilous new age of Internet pornography and stained dresses.

But Jim Murray, the world historian, had to be fascinated at the events unfolding as the 1990s began. Born two years after the Russian Revolution, he had lived to see it murder 100 million of his fellow human beings. Now they were opening up their archives, admitting their wrongdoings. Murray was not alone if he said he never thought he would live to see it.

When the 1990s started, there seemed little indication that much had changed at the paper. Chandler stepped down as publisher in 1980, but took over the Times Mirror Company. His influence, his stamp on the paper was profound throughout the decade. Towards the end of the decade, Dorothy "Buff" Chandler had health setbacks. Her influence on the paper and the family waned considerably after that. For a few years after Chandler was forced out in a final power struggle, the façade was maintained; that it was still the Chandler Times. There was no indication that the paper was any less outstanding than ever before.

One true indication of just how outstanding they still were came in that first year of the new decade, when the great Murray was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. The punditocracy had longed bewailed the fact it took this long. New York Times spots scribes had won it, but not Murray, nor any writer in California, the West, or any newspaper other than the New York Times. As Slim Pickens said in Blazing Saddles, "What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin' on here?"

Was it "East Coast bias," the subject so often brought up when discussing Heisman Trophies and Associated Press college football polls? Well, whatever it was, it was no more. Jim Murray, the poet of Brentwood who rarely ventured downtown to the paper's headquarters near the civic center, at 202 West 1st Street, came in that day. Somebody ventured out to a nearby liquor store in the gritty neighborhood, which was not yet under the revitalization that it would later undergo, and bought some champagne. Glasses were tipped. Jim smiled for the camera with sports editor Bill Dwyre, a one-time Milwaukee Bucks beat writer during the heights of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; a fellow Irish Catholic who graduated from Notre Dame, and whose favorite sport was tennis.

Then he and Linda flew to New York, where they officially accepted the Pulitzer Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Murray was typically modest and funny.

"I'm perfectly astonished at getting a Pulitzer," he said. "Joseph Pulitzer and Horace Greeley must be spinning in their graves. I always thought you had to bring down a government or expose major graft or give advice to prime ministers to win this. All I ever did was quote Tommy Lasorda accurately.

"One of the nicest things about the Pulitzer was the elation of my friends. Frankly, that was my Pulitzer and I'm grateful to the Pulitzer Committee for making it possible to hear from so many old pals and to share the honor with them.

"This is going to make it a little easier on the guy who writes my obit!"

Lasorda pitched in the Major Leagues, managed the Dodgers to two World Series titles, and is in the Hall of Fame. He has said that among the things he is most proud of was the fact he came to Jim's mind when thinking of how to respond to the Pulitzer.

The congratulations came in, far and wide.

"I'm old enough to have read the best of Arthur Daley, Red Smith and Dave Anderson, but the Jim Murray work is at the 'head of the class,' " opined former President Gerald Ford, a former football star at the University of Michigan.

"When someone has brought as much joy and enlightenment to others as you have, he sure as hell deserves something terrific in between," said the great actor Jack Lemmon

"Not many guys have a Spinks and a Pulitzer and you certainly deserve both," said Jack Lang, the executive secretary of the Baseball Writers Association of America, referring to Murray's awarding of the prestigious J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the BBWAA's highest honor.

Pete Rose called him "one of the fairest and most knowledgeable writers around."

"Congratulations, it's about time!" said dancer Gene Kelly.

"We are thrilled but not surprised," said acting great Jimmy Stewart and his wife, Gloria.

"You have a true gift for writing in a way that makes all sports fans look forward to the morning paper," wrote ex-President Reagan, now in retirement at his Santa Barbara ranch, where he could relax with the L.A. Times every morning instead of getting national security up-dates. "You're writing enriches our lives and I am proud to be among your many fans."

"It's about time the prize committee came to its senses and gave the prize to the one man who could retire the trophy if he wanted to," wrote political columnist George Will of the Washington Post. Will was a huge Cubs fan who occasionally delved into baseball writing, and had his book Men at Work favorably reviewed by Jim.

"If I wrote you a congratulatory letter every time I think you deserve one you'd be hearing from me every day," wrote comedian Steve Allen.

Murray's writing "has proved to be as important to me (and countless readers) as my orange juice, coffee and cereal," said TV game show host Monty Hall.

Kirk Douglas wrote Jim "gives so much pleasure to others."

"Those two winners alone keep the Pulitzer at the front of the pack," network news anchor Tom Brokaw remarked of Red Smith and Jim Murray.

". . . It is nice to see 'them' make it official," remarked Jack Whittaker.

"Roy Riegels ran the right way," joked Tom Callahan, hearkening back to the 1929 Rose Bowl when a California player accidentally ran the length of the field in the opposite direction of his team's goal line, giving Georgia Tech the win via the margin of a safety.

"Did you get the prize for your funniest lines - you're expense accounts?" joked Bill Shirley, the Times's former sports editor.

"You are one of the people who has always made me proud to do this work," stated writer Mike Lupica.

"How many Indy 500 wins does it take to equal a Pulitzer?" asked driver Danny Sullivan.

The New York Times "monopoly was broken when you so deservedly were awarded a Pulitzer last month," stated football Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

In addition, the Associated Press sports editors awarded Murray its recognition for best column writing.

"I came to the Times in 1968 and eventually worked for the Orange County edition, covering baseball and the Angels," recalled Hall of Fame baseball writer Ross Newhan. "We were working acquaintances. I saw him a lot at Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium. I sat next to him at several World Series games. Like Vin Scully he was as nice and good a person as he was a great writer.

"Look, Jim I'm sure would tell you he was in the entertainment business. He wasn't a sports writer, per se. No, I don't think so, he was not just a sports writer, but he intermingled sports with a tremendous talent, with a touch for entertainment.

"There were times I was on the baseball beat, covering the Angels and the Dodgers, and he came out to do a column on, say, the Reds or Pete Rose. They'd come out to L.A., and then the Reds would be gone out of town before he broke the column. Sometimes that would bother me, to the extent that I was more of a journalist taught to write the news when it was there. I even talked to Jim about that at times. I'd tell him, 'I wished you'd written that Reds column when the team was in town,' but he was syndicated and responsible about his main responsibility, and that was entertainment.

"I did not mean to say it seriously bothered me, but I was under a deadline and didn't have the freedom he had.

"The L.A. Times became great during these years. Otis Chandler deserves a tremendous amount of credit. He recognized that the Times could not be a great paper until it nationalized and did a better job of covering the news. Otis created worldwide bureaus and deserves the credit. This was a huge step in gaining worldwide national recognition for Jim.

"We had great reporters in the bureaus and outstanding sports writers, headed by Jim. He was very much responsible for the national recognition. It got to the point where you would say, 'I'm with the L.A. Times,' and they'd say, 'Oh, that's Jim Murray's paper.' It still happens to me. People always bring that up.

"I can use the word colleague because we were on the same staff and covered the same events together but from a real personal sense I didn't really know his family, not in the ways I knew a lot of beat guys I traveled with.

"I had drinks with Jim when we covered the World Series, which I did until 2004. During this period, at least unless his sight prevented him from it, we covered the same events and occasionally had dinner. From a personal standpoint he was not a jokester. He was kind of kind of quiet, not a barrel of laughs.

"I could get away with asking Jim what angle he was leaning towards, but there were some people who if they asked him he'd tell 'em to mind their own business. There were guys on our own staff who if they asked he'd say 'don't worry about it.' "

****

In the 1990s Jim Murray, who had seen it all, observed the changing world around him as if living a Rudyard Kipling poem:

"If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

"If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on';

"If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With 60 seconds' worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!"

After USC won the 1985 conference championship under coach Stan Morrison, the Trojans felt they were in a position to wrest the mantel of basketball greatness that had been largely unclaimed since John Wooden's departure from UCLA a decade earlier. Morrison recruited the best incoming class in the nation. Called the "four freshmen," led by two Philadelphia wunderkinds \- Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble - they were expected to lead the Trojans to a Final Four and maybe even a national championship.

Instead, Morrison left and was replaced by George Raveling. Three of the "four freshmen" departed. That was the end of USC's basketball glory. Two of them, Gathers and Kimble, opted to stay in Los Angeles with Loyola coach Paul Westhead, who led the Lakers to the 1980 NBA championship before being forced out in a power struggle with Magic Johnson.

The old days of excitement at Pauley Pavilion were over. Now, everybody was flocking over to Loyola, a little Catholic school near the airport, to watch Gathers. He was the most exciting player in college basketball, his team the greatest, high-flying story in the game.

Then Gathers died on the court of a heart attack. Murray's column began with A.E. Houseman's poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young." How could a "franchise basketball player" be a "walking invalid?" he wrote. "What kind of cosmic joke is at work here" when athletes like Gathers and Lou Gehrig, "the most powerful baseball player I have ever seen" could within a short time be made so weak he could not "lift a cup of coffee"?

The Los Angeles Dodgers were pedestrian at best, but Murray noted that they remained excellent in the announcer's booth. Of Vin Scully ("His Touch Made Dodgers Special," August 26), "Scully without the Dodgers was Caruso without an opera . . ." It was Murray who pronounced Vin the "most valuable Dodger."

The Los Angeles Raiders made a big comeback, finishing 12-4 and winning the AFC West, but were absolutely embarrassed in a snowy 51-3 throttling at the hands of Buffalo in the conference title game.

When former Michigan legend Tom Harmon passed away Murray either made up or repeated one of the all-time one-liners. As a member of the Rams, he was one of three Heisman winners. The others were Les Horvath and Glenn Davis. Ruth Hirsch, the wife of teammate Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, saw the award at all their houses on social occasions. At a party at Harmon's his wife dusted off his 1940 Heisman, announcing what it was. "Oh, is that what that is?" Mrs. Hirsch blurted out. "I thought everybody had one!" Murray also repeated a great punch line from a banquet when the MC noted that Harmon, a World War II fighter pilot, was involved in two plane crashes, in China and South America.

"I don't know how to tell you this," the MC said, tongue in cheek, "but we were at war with Japan and Germany. What were you, on the way to bomb Peru?"

When political columnist George Will wrote the baseball analysis Men at Work, Murray joked that as soon as he saw the title, "I knew right away it wasn't about Washington, D.C." He said that if a wonk could write a book on baseball maybe he should write one "analyzing the State Department's policy in Latin America, which, come to think of it, is not too different from the St. Louis Browns' at that."

"Buster Douglas entered the ring looking like something that should be floating over the Thanksgiving Day parade," he wrote on October 26 of the bloated boxer. It was "very clear" the man did not show up at his $20 million payday "doing any real fighting."

Parnelli Jones was a "race driver's race driver." Tennis star Martina Navratilova, winner of nine Wimbledons at that point, "just may be the greatest tennis player in history," male or female.

In 1991, the U.S. wiped out Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, sweeping to victory in the Persian Gulf war. Soviet militarists attempted a failed coup d'état in Russia, and on Christmas day, the U.S.S.R officially disbanded. At that precise moment in history, the United States of America was probably the single most powerful political entity the world had ever known. After the Soviet Union disbanded, they opened up their archives.

In association with it, the Venona Project, which J. Edgar Hoover knew about but for security reasons could not tell Richard Nixon about in 1946-47 after Whittaker Chambers approached him, was revealed. Much of what was suspected was confirmed. Alger Hiss was a paid Soviet spy, as were numerous members of Franklin Roosevelt's Administration. Many Hollywood directors, writers, and actors of the McCarthy era were members of the Communist Party, some paid spies and informants. Just as Ronald Reagan and Duke Wayne told HUAC they were. The Communists funded much of the 1960s protest movement, and those groups were still in existence under different names and umbrellas. 100 million human beings were murdered by Communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Red China, East Germany, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, and other countries. It was as if the United States settled World War II by treaty, only to find out the entire truth about Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan years later, after Auschwitz and Dachau had been paved under mini-malls and highways.

Norman Mailer's CIA blockbuster, Harlot's Ghost was published that year.

The Los Angeles Lakers were at the end of the "Showtime" run. It in fact had run its course a few years earlier. The glory days of Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics were also coming to a close. In a February column on the Celtics, Murray wrote, "basketball needs the Celtics. It's no fun beating the Charlotte Hornets or the Miami Heat. Beating the Celtics is climbing Mt. Everest, swimming the Channel, breaking the bank at Monte Carlo." Boston was "like an old dowager. They never throw anything away." Like the Yankees, journeymen from other teams became all-stars with the Celtics.

But it was the age of Michael Jordan, and the "last hurrah" of Magic Johnson. The two legends met and youth was served when Chicago ran the Lakers out of the Finals in five games.

"Pro basketball, like Caesar's Gaul, was divided into three parts – Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird," Murray wrote in his autobiography, reflecting his column. Of Jordan he wrote, "You needed the RAF to stop him."

That year Murray wrote one of his best-remembered columns about a subject close to his heart, Cincinnati Reds non-Hall of Famer Pete Rose. When reflecting upon his long career, the choices he made, Murray once opined that had he not been a sports writer, he never would have met Rose. Banned from baseball for life, and not allowed in the Hall of Fame because he bet on games when managing the Reds in the 1980s, he was a controversial subject. People took sides. Murray was clear: Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. There was "no such person" as Pete Rose. It was as if baseball was trying to tell us to pretend he never played.

"Pete Rose never played the game for 24 years with the little boy's zeal and wonder until, if you closed your eyes, you could picture him with his cap on sideways, knickers falling down to his ankles and dragging a taped ball and busted bat behind him, looking for all the world like something that fell off Norman Rockwell's easel," he wrote. Facetiously.

Murray argued passionately on Rose's behalf. He wrote that he was really not a "figment of our imagination." He was not a "cartoon character." He argued that all the years Babe Ruth was addicted to rye whiskey it was illegal (Prohibition). He showed that he was not quite the liberal some made him out to be.

"I wish I could figure out why guys who kill eight nurses in five states get people holding candle vigils outside their prison cells while Pete Rose gets the book thrown at him," he wrote, adding, "I'm a law-and-order man myself." He wrote Pete was no genius, but that should not be held against him.

Murray chose to make Rose one of the subjects in his autobiography. "In the age of the briefcase ballplayer, the walking conglomerate, Rose was a ballplayer right off the Saturday Evening Post cover," he wrote. " Norman Rockwell invented him." He went on to write, "Pete hoarded his records like a squirrel with nuts." He "played baseball with the fervor of a guy trying to get his high school letter." Rose "liked his women flashy. Just go find the nearest beehive hairdo, the shortest mini, the wad of chewing gum being cracked, and you would find Pete Rose's women."

"Jim once said, 'You ask Pete a question and then stand back," recalled John Sheibe, who drove Murray during the period of eyesight loss, on interviewing Pete Rose.

But Rose met his match when he went up against Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti, who Murray compared with Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. "The indefatigable, relentless, implacable upholder of the law on the track of his quarry, the helpless victim of his own addiction, who only happened to be the greatest hitter in the annals of baseball, whom Giamatti was accusing of betraying the game that made him," he wrote with dramatic flourish.

"He could quote the Iliad – or tell you why the Red Sox blew the 1949 pennant with equal expertise and enthusiasm . . . He saw himself as a kind of complicated Pope . . . Bart Giamatti was not afraid of his student body nor was he about to knuckle under to Chicago Sevens or other spearheads of campus unrest," Murray wrote of his tenure at Yale during the Vietnam protests.

Rose "apparently thought he was too big and too famous to be a victim of Mob vengeance," Murray wrote of Pete's run-ins with organized gamblers. "But the floor of the East River has been filled with people who thought that . . . Pete didn't know who the Secretary of State was, but he could identify most of the small-town hood bookmakers in this country by their first name . . . Pete wasn't his own worst enemy. Not while Bart Giamatti was alive. It was Richard Nixon who said when he was brought low by Watergate, 'I gave them the sword.' So did Pete. He became an unfrocked hero . . . There never was a deadlier face-off than Giamatti vs. Rose. Nobody won. Baseball lost . . .

"Like World Wars, there were no clear winners. They should set it to music and put it on Broadway. I have the name for it. 'The Miserables.' "

In March Murray wrote a column about baseball language in "Reads Between the Lines When Talkin' Baseball."  
"Everybody wins the pennant," he wrote, while spring and baseball are "perfect for each other" as they both exude optimism.

"We can play with anybody in the game" really meant, "We can play with them. We just can't beat them."

"We're as good as any team in the league" actually meant the "Carolina League."

"This team doesn't know the meaning of the word choke" really meant they did not know the meaning of much of anything. Because "the only thing lower than their batting average is their IQ." When a manager was reminded of "great combinations of the past" Murray wrote he was secretly referring to Laurel and Hardy or the Marx brothers. To have "great balance" meant nobody could catch, throw or hit. To determine a player had a "lot of desire" could be verified by asking "any waitress in town" or adding up "paternity suits and sexual harassment charges." A manager who emphasizes fundamentals had no choice when the team was a bunch of .218 hitters. "We're going to surprise a lot of people" could mean the owner shelled out $30 million for "overpaid underachievers."

"He's going to be my stopper!" meant he stopped a winning streak.

When overweight old-timer George Foreman made a comeback, fighting the powerful Evander Holyfield, Murray wrote, "One guy looks like a Greek god. The other looked like a Greek restaurant." Foreman resembled a "plate of hamburgers or a pizza with everything." Jockey Bill Shoemaker "asked little of life. And got it."

On August 19, he wrote, "I'm going to hate myself in the morning. I know this is not the popular stand, but I have to weigh in with the minority report on a major controversy confronting the Republic.

"The question of the breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Saddam Hussein? New rounds of taxes?

"No, sack dances."

He went on to write, "Picture John Wayne doing a sack dance after he has killed Geronimo or saved the fort, can you?" Joe Louis would never have bragged, "I should have killed the sucker." Then he added, "Hitler did a sack dance at Compiegne after the fall of France. Look it up. But General Grant returned General Lee's sword."

In "Whatever It Was, Arnie Still Has It," Murray wrote, "Look! Mickey Mantle isn't hitting curveballs into the seats anymore. Willie Mays isn't hauling down three-base hits in center field. Rod Laver isn't blasting anybody off Centre Court at Wimbledon." But Arnold Palmer was still excelling at golf. He caught the essence of the old pro when he declared, "He never hit a safe shot."

Of driver Rick Mears, Murray wrote that the headline "Mears Wins Indy" would become as standard as "Iowa Goes Republican" or "Taxes Go Up."

After years of joy, in which it "was good to be alive and at a Laker game," Murray wrote a poignant piece about a player he had great love for, Magic Johnson. Called "Warning, HIV: No Hiding Now" (November 10), it came on the heels of Johnson's shocking pronouncement that he tested HIV positive. Murray predicted Johnson would not "hide," but would take on his disease aggressively and in public. He was right. If Johnson could beat HIV, Murray wrote way back then, "I want to see that smile!"

Looking back on the event, a number of facts appear to have manifested themselves. First, HIV/AIDS can be controlled through drugs and lifestyle. Johnson remains healthy with no reason to believe he will not remain so.

The AIDS virus first became prevalent within the public sphere in the gay bathhouses of New York and San Francisco in 1981. By 1987, medical experts were warning the world that it was not a "gay disease." While it spread through male homosexual activity and the sharing of dirty needles during the act of drug use, heterosexuals were told it was just as prevalent in male-female sex. Johnson, a notorious womanizer, appeared to be proof of this. After Johnson, it was expected that numerous straight men and women would come forward, stricken by AIDs through the act of straight male-female sex. It has not happened. Virtually, if not actually, no straight men have been afflicted with HIV/AIDs since Johnson except through dirty needles. What this means simply exists without commentary.

In 1992, the highlights were few and far between in Los Angeles sports. USC basketball star Harold Miner was probably the highlight of the year, which says what a dismal year it was. Pepperdine beat Cal State, Fullerton to win the College World Series. The Dodgers were mired in abysmal times. USC football was a shell of its old self, unable to beat either UCLA or Notre Dame. The Irish were a powerhouse under Lou Holtz, the Bruins a solid program under Terry Donahue. The Raiders and Rams just plugged along. Attendance, enthusiasm; how could it all go downhill so fast?

It was such dismal year Murray found himself writing about the Clippers. Their coach, Larry Brown was "America's Bedouin, the Vanishing American" who moved from job to job to job. He was "just a drifter," Murray wrote. He kept his "camel double-parked." When he moves on, "He doesn't even leave a note." After the Clippers won five of seven, Murray wrote it was "bad news" because whenever he has success, the coach "starts looking at travel posters."

"The ballad of Bo Jackson is a sad song, a melody, a lament for what might have been," Murray wrote in March of the former Los Angeles Raiders superstar and baseball hero, his great promise cut down by injuries. Arguing that only those injuries prevented Jackson from going down in history as one of if not the greatest single athlete who ever lived, he mentioned other "cult legends" like Stave Dalkwoski, and wrote Jackson's  
"exploits will grow in the re-telling. It's the nature of myths . . .

"He was the real thing. When you talk of all-time greatest athletes, there's Jim Thorpe. And then there's Vincent Jackson."

In a column on the Indy 500, Murray returned to a theme he often visited, which was the comparison between race car driving and driving on the L.A. freeways, which he contended may well have been as challenging and dangerous. He had been writing satirical columns about the Hollywood Freeway since the 1960s. Little had changed on the roads to make the articles any less relevant.

On May 17, Murray re-visited ex-Lakers coach Pat Riley ("L.A.'s Showtime Becomes Crunch Time in New York"), now successfully handling the Knickerbockers. It was more a standard journalistic piece, absent his colorful turn of phrase. But his December column on tennis great Bjorn Borg was extremely incisive. It was just good reporting. First, Murray pointed out that by the time Borg was 26, he had accomplished almost everything his sport could offer. Then he compared him to Babe Ruth, Pete Rose, Rocky Marciano, even Jack Nicklaus, none of whom hit their stride in full by that age. Borg was "burned" out, and admitted it in a candid statement. "I remember the '81 final against McEnroe at Wimbledon," he said of his legendary rivalry with the American. "I felt as if I were just playing backyard tennis."

His June 16 column on boxing champion Evander Holyfield revealed a part of Murray's personality. He wrote about Muhammad Ali screaming, "I am the greatest!" but obviously admired the fact Holyfield, a devout Christian, "never raised his voice in his life," according to promoter Lou Duva.

"Maybe Holyfield could get more credibility if he went around banging on bars and bragging, making noises, showing disrespect, sneering at his opponent, belittling his skills," he wrote, adding that he was not raised to act in such an immature manner. He was not raised "to be a loudmouth," he was raised "to be a champion." Reading between the lines, there was a tacit criticism of Ali's prideful attitude, and beyond that perhaps the conclusion that his long physical maladies, which have forced him to shut up, appear to be punishments from on high for his varied offenses over the years.

His July 26 column, "Reveling in Spotlight Of World," was a letter addressed to Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics at Athens (1896). It was a curious inquisition in which the great writer pointed out that in the century that followed, the Olympic Games, created "to produce a race of happy people who would never again have to go to war," unintended or not, ushered the worst wars in human history. That was not the crux of the "open letter." Murray the traditionalist was somewhat aghast at the commercialism of the Games. 1992 was the first year the Soviets could no longer compete as a monolith. It was also the first truly "professional" Olympics, led by America's "Dream Team" basketball squad.

The column was filled with historical references to the Greeks, Hollywood extravagance, Communism, German militarism, and Woodrow Wilson's failed vision of Democracy

In a piece about long jumpers Carl Lewis and Mike Powell of UCLA, Murray wistfully described Lewis's long pursuit of Bob Beamon's record, set in the rarefied air of Mexico City in 1968. Now in Barcelona, Lewis was making his "farewell tour," evoking comparison with the likes of Jesse Owens, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, replete with a comparison with Powell, who broke Beamon's record. The competition between Lewis and Powell was heated.

On September 17, Murray penned "The 'Tying Irish' Just Doesn't Make it." Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz ran the ball into the line against Michigan with a minute left in a 17-17 tie in the era before overtimes. Murray felt that unconscionable, but also in the tradition of Ara Parseghian, who infamously "tied one for the Gipper" against Michigan State in 1966. Once upon a time Murray was an East Coast Catholic with a strong rooting interest in Notre Dame. Now he was firmly a Los Angeleno, obviously far more admiring of USC's great history. In particular he lauded the great "gunslinger" John McKay, who went for two while going down in noble defeat against Purdue in the 1967 Rose Bowl.

On September 22 Murray paid homage to Jimmy Cannon, "a pal and an idol of mine," who wrote an occasional column called "Nobody Asked Me But." Murray called it "good fun" and a "day off" in reminiscing of Cannon. He penned his own version, riffing on opinions about grown men wearing caps backward, his Uncle Frank, Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt, Roseanne Barr (he could not stand her), student-athletes, Woody Allen Movies, and other minutiae.

Murray took on a controversial subject in a piece about Karl "the Mailman" Malone of the Utah Jazz. Magic Johnson was making a comeback, but Malone was fearful of competing with a player who had the HIV virus. Malone had cuts and scabs all over his body from diving after balls, and was worried that he could be vulnerable. Murray interviewed a number of players and found the concerns were widespread.

After Michigan beat Washington, 38-31 in the Rose Bowl, Murray lamented that the game was a shadow of its once-proud self. With USC and UCLA in down periods, the contest – once the cream of collegiate football – now was "a sandlot game" a "fight in a bar at two A.M. All offense."

After the Super Bowl, played at the Rose Bowl, Murray wrote "Image Problem Is Everything," returning to a time-honored theme, the winter weather and public image of Los Angeles on television. It was quite interesting, he pointed out, that it never rains on L.A. when they feature a sporting event on national television. The weathercasters thought the Super Bowl would get some, but Murray pointed out all they needed to do was ask him and he could have pointed out it would not be inclement.

"I don't have to know meteorology," he wrote. "I know L.A." When the city  
"knows the world is going to be looking on at her, she gets out the eye shadow, lipstick, puts on her net stockings, her highest heels and shortest skirt, piles her hair up in a beehive, bats her eyes and adopts her most seductive pose." Like an old-time movie star "she always looks her most glamorous in public." He pointed out that indeed it did rain in Los Angeles, but never on "major sporting events." Only one Rose Bowl was ever rained on. Murray pointed out that the odds were vastly against rain only once in 39 New Year's, implying there was something magical or mystical to this phenomenon.

Fog, fires, smog, wind; all part of the L.A. landscape, but never televised in an international event. When the Olympics came to L.A. in 1984, a British broadcasting crew came to him asking how L.A. would look amidst smog, heat, traffic and other horrendousness. Murray correctly predicted that it would come off without a hitch.  
"That old strumpet L.A. will be at her chamber-commerce best," he said. He said L.A. reminded him of a Ralph Henry Barbour novel, which always seemed to read, "The day of the big game dawned bright and clear" regardless of rain the night before.

Murray compared L.A. to San Francisco, which he did numerous times over the years. The City was given the stage far less often. Twice the World Series was held there. In 1962 it coincided with a Pacific rainstorm of Biblical proportions, the October likes of which nobody could recall prior to it, and which has never returned since. In 1989 a major earthquake hit at prime time, game three of the Fall Classic. These things would never happen in Los Angeles.

"I have addressed this crucial situation before," he wrote, pointing out this form of advertising created unwanted "hordes" of people moving to the city, while listing a number of attractions that should be banned from TV coverage in the future: Rose Bowls and Super Bowls.

"People from L.A. love and respect San Francisco, but San Francisco has no ability to love and respect anybody but themselves," said Jim's longtime friend, Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge. "He described our city so beautifully, from Malibu to Orange County to Palm Springs, but his knowledge was not just of sports. He understood L.A. He understood golf, boxing, even surfing. He had it all. The city's not as strong because he's gone.

"I always loved Jim Murray. I'm 57, I've known him my whole life. He wrote the 'Ballad of Willie D.,' about Willie Davis, who had great talent but faced great challenges. He also wrote 'Right Corner' about Mike Haynes of the Los Angeles Raiders. He described him as a beautiful athlete who was the best at his position. Willie Davis was my favorite ball player. Mike and I were high school teammates, so when Jim captured their memories, putting it all in great words, full of world of history, quoting like it was big action with World War II references, well it was really exciting for me.

"I grew up going to Wrigley Field, Gilmore Field. I go back to the days when Jim broke in and L.A. was still 'minor league.' On a personal note I worked for 24 years for NFL Films, on the sidelines of the Coliseum. Jim would come down with the other writers towards the end of the fourth quarter. They'd all walk down the steps onto the field, then stand by the end zone. I was just a young man then, and I'd say a few words to Jim Murray. In Los Angeles, talking to Jim Murray was like talking to God. He was so nice to me, why he made me believe there is a God. Jim knew my father, too. He was a newspaperman. He passed away. Jim was approachable.

"When you walked in the press box, I'd help the camera guy for NFL Films, and you could just see Jim's silhouette and hear those Underwood typewriters banging away. He was a heroic, iconic writer. They did it every day. No columnist does that now, they deliver once or twice a week. Today all they want to be is on TV criticizing everything. That's not talent. Jim was a giant.

"I worked for John Ferraro, the great USC All-American who was on the city council for many years. He knew and respected Jim, too. I look now at the 'flash in the pan' writers who do a little ESPN work, but it's mostly just hatred. They're all out of work eventually because the written word is more powerful than the spoken word, the written word lasts.

"Jim documented all that he had experienced, and he did it all. He knew all the politicians, the Hollywood crowd, the athletes. They all wanted to know him and had respect for him. Jim helped build L.A. He advocated for the Olympic Games when everybody said it could not be done. He was a total optimist. The pundits said there were would be too much traffic, no parking, too much smog, all doom and gloom. Jim just laughed because he knew L.A. was a big league town that handled big events better than any city in the world."

In 1993, Bill Clinton took office and his deputy White House counsel, Vince Foster died of a gunshot wound. Conspiracy theorists on the right, pointing to the "Clinton body count" in which numerous men and women in Arkansas who knew bad things about Bill and Hillary Clinton were mysteriously killed over the years, said it was more of the same. When the White House usurped normal FBI investigation procedures, the accusations intensified. If the Clintons killed people in Arkansas as well as Foster, they got away with it.

In 1993, Shawn Hubler of the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the year. It was an odd "tale of the Times," the new "big story" in the age of porn and the Internet. The once-proud "paper of record" that heralded the doings of Los Angeles figures on the world stage like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, now turned its focus on adult film stars-turned-escorts.

The Jewish community reeled. Heidi Fleiss was what might be called a  
"Jewish American Princess" (JAP). Once reserved, American Jews were the people of intellect who accomplished great things in order to gain acceptance. Jonas Salk, Albert Einstein, Louis Brandeis; these were among the great thinkers and creators of medicine, science and the law.

But anti-Semitism was more or less a thing of the past. The modern Jew was allowed to run free, unfettered, with little moral restriction lest it be seen as stifling their individuality. So it was with Fleiss, a rich girl from Beverly Hills whose life was focused on shopping and parties, lest her parents dare to judge such a nebulous concept as "right and wrong." Most figure that out on their own and grow up.

Heidi gathered the sexy women of Los Angeles, the girls of adult films, the nude models, the chicks who come to the City of Angels only to become fallen ones. She gave them an alternative to seedy sex shoots in Chatsworth, or worse, hustling the streets. Operating out of her fashionable Westside home, she threw lavish parties and made her stable of women available to the rich and powerful men of Hollywood. Hundreds of producers, directors, agents and power brokers paid enormous sums for Heidi's call girls.

The police found out and cracked down. One man, actor Charlie Sheen, "took a bullet" for the entire movie community by admitting to paying thousands for "heterosexual services." He was the sacrificial lamb the press and law enforcement needed to satisfy whatever moral outrage there really was.

The entire Heidi Fleiss saga leaves one scratching their head today. It was not unlike the overdose of producer Don Simpson a few years later, or the cocaine charges leveled against Robert Evans in the 1980s. The fact that Hollywood hotshots paid for hookers and were stuffed to the gills on blow, all of which was as available as the Daily Variety, had existed as common knowledge of the industry since the 1920s. It was simply the thing that was known about them. No "investigative reporters" were needed to uncover these "revelations," yet every once in awhile an incident (Evans, Fleiss) would come to the fore in which the "authorities" decided this, as opposed to thousands of cases paid no attention to, needed to be handled. The right said it was all of a sign of the new "age of Clinton," an age of immorality and sexual misconduct.

Republican businessman Richard Riordan was elected Mayor of Los Angeles. Jim Murray was in his "twi-light years." He decided to write Jim Murray: The Autobiography of the Pulitzer Prize Winning Sports Columnist. Macmillan published it in 1993.

One bright spot shone upon the L.A. sporting scene that year. Rookie catcher Mike Piazza broke in with the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was one of the most spectacular freshman seasons of all time, comparable to Joe DiMaggio (1936), Ted Williams (1939), Frank Robinson (1956), Fred Lynn (1975) and Fernando Valenzuela (1981). The team was mediocre while San Francisco, with newly acquired superstar Barry Bonds, won over 100 games. However, on the final day of the season at Dodger Stadium, the two teams met. Los Angeles had nothing to play for except to knock San Francisco out of the race. The Giants were battling with Atlanta for the West Division championship. Piazza put on an offensive show and the Dodgers defeated their rivals – who were finally rivals again – 12-1.

On April 25 Murray again addressed the notion of San Francisco, who he wrote was "not so much a city as a myth" and was "in the United States but not of it. It is so civilized it would starve to death if it didn't get a salad fork or the right wine. It fancies itself Camelot but comes off more like Cleveland. Its legacy to the world is quiche. People speak in whole sentences and polysyllabically. It suffers from a superiority complex."

When the City lost Joe Montana, "You would have thought they were losing the Golden Gate Bridge, Nob Hill, Coit Tower, cable cars, Fisherman's Wharf, the Embarcadero." The superstar was "the most visible symbol of the City by the Bay since Dirty Harry." Once saluted as "the Paris of the West," the Parthenon of the Golden West, it was on a losing streak while Los Angeles, the "complicated hobo jungle to the south, has long since passed it as a center of commerce, finance, even, if Herb Caen will forgive me – culture. San Francisco has nothing but its frayed legacy left. "

Its World Series got rained on or suffered an earthquake. It built a stadium that was immediately a "haunted house." He joked about weather reports referring to "the coldest day since July 6." But Montana had "brought a new element to the City – winning." San Francisco never knew how to accept this sort of ultimate victory. Murray hit upon a very telling fact, which was that by the early 1990s the rivalry between L.A. and San Francisco was much more even. Montana brought something San Francisco never knew before, or was previously relegated strictly to the east bay. It was not a coincidence that his column came the same year two San Francisco women, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, took office representing the state in the U.S. Senate.

UCLA beat USC, in the first year of John Robinson's second tenure, on their way to the Rose Bowl. Wisconsin edged them at Pasadena. San Francisco won the NFC West, but lost to Dallas in the play-offs.

The Master's might have been "the Vatican of golf," wrote Jim Murray, but the course was so tricky he wrote it was really "Devil's Island." In a column on Mario Andretti, Murray asked who won the 1981 Indianapolis 500?

"Penske's lawyers," replied Andretti.

Murray wrote that Wayne Gretzky achieved his goals even if he never won the Stanley Cup. "He put hockey on Page One and Prime Time," he wrote. "That's a hat trick all on its own.'

When Don Drysdale died young, Murray wrote, "God took him out in the top of the seventh." On July 4, Murray wrote of his relationship with the late Arthur Ashe. He once had lunch with Ashe, who felt the white and black races were so far apart perhaps they would never get together. Ashe felt perhaps there was something "glandular" separating blacks from whites, from their way of thinking. Murray gulped and said that he disagreed because so many blacks had white blood in them. He pointed out that many of General William T. Sherman's Union soldiers fathered children with freed black slaves during the "march to the sea." At first Murray thought he had "overstepped our relationship." But Ashe, a "well-read man," knew about this history and agreed, pointing out he was a product of it, being light-skinned and from the South himself.

Ashe disagreed with a recent NCAA law requiring certain academic requirements for athletes. Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson called it "culturally biased," but Ashe took what can only be described as a conservative approach, stating that the real bias was to hold blacks to lower standards without expecting them to do as well. Murray quoted Ashe extensively, his highest form of compliment since he so often fell in love with his own ability to turn phrases. Ashe was a man he respected tremendously.

Murray wrote a column about the newest superstar of tennis, Pete Sampras of Palos Verdes Estates. "On court, waiting for a serve, he frequently hangs his head like a guy who is a suspect in a child murder or has just spilled soup on his hostess," he wrote. After he slammed another service ace past opponents, he "looks apologetic." Murray compared his tennis ability to Ted Williams in baseball, as big a compliment as possible. Watching him was like seeing Stan Musial with a full count or Joe Louis "with his man on the ropes," among other lofty analogies.

When Reggie Jackson entered the Hall of Fame Murray recalled that after he had eye surgery Reggie called to cheer him up. "He didn't promise to hit a home for me, but I remember he made me smile," he wrote. Jackson "had the most exciting at-bats in the history of baseball. He didn't swing at a pitch, he pounced on it like a leopard coming out of a tree.

"He finished his swing like a pretzel" and looked like "a corkscrew."

The crazy World Series between Philadelphia and Toronto was "one for the ages. But was it baseball? Lord, I hope you didn't let the kids stay up to watch it!

"It wasn't a game, it was baggy pants comedy." Toronto's 15-14 win was "four-and-a-half hours of batting practice." Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams "wasn't wild." He "threw these nice straight strikes – and Toronto hit them all over the place for six runs and the victory."

Buffalo Bills coach Marv levy "reads Dickens and Shakespeare" and "runs a football team the way Plato might." His game plan "might be likened to a symphony." Levy had coached at California, "about as far from a football factory as you can get, west of Harvard," while his upcoming opponent, Dallas coach Jimmy Johnson, coached at Miami, "about as close to being a football factory as you can get, football's version of The Dirty Dozen."

Legendary movie producer Robert Evans published The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994). It may be the best Hollywood book of all time, made into a popular audio recording and later a documentary. Rwanda exploded in genocide that year. The White House and the U.N. dithered mainly over whether they should officially classify it as genocide or not. It was also one of the ugliest years in the history of sports. Ice skater Tonya Harding directed a thug, or a thug did her bidding, bashing the knee of her American competition, Nancy Kerrigan, prior to the Winter Olympics. Both the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Raiders left Los Angeles after the season ended. Georgia Frontiere took the Rams to St. Louis. Al Davis and the Raiders departed for Oakland.

The lack of a new pro football stadium concerned Murray, who openly asked whether the city lost its soul. The town that built "the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, the first freeways, the movie business," that "brought the Olympics to America," that effectively chose not to participate in the Great Depression, and then all but saved the Olympics in 1984, that always knew how to get thing done, that "made pro football, saved Major League baseball, put pro golf on the map," that laughed at naysayers . . .

"We had guys, we had drive, we had vision," he wrote. Not anymore, he said, lamenting the weak leadership in the city and the state, and the recent term "political correctness," complaining how Christopher Columbus of all people was now being "dumped on – by people who would be stomping grapes or picking tarantulas off banana bunches if he didn't have the guts to sail off to the end of the world in the first place."

Under the current political class running the city and the state of California, "the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn, the Rams in Cleveland and the Olympic Games in bankruptcy."

The loss of the Rams and Raiders was nothing compared to what the Major League Baseball Players Association did to America, allowing the players to go on strike in August. They never returned. The World Series was post-poned. It would have been the first year of the new play-off format. Tony Gwynn of San Diego was threatening to hit .400. Barry Bonds and Matt Williams of San Francisco were in sight of Roger Maris's record of 61 home runs. Greg Maddux of Atlanta was having one of the best seasons in history. None of it mattered. They left the fans twistin' in the wind in an act of greed and selfishness unmatched in professional sports history.

Murray wrote, "Once upon a time in this country there was a game called baseball.
"You would have loved it."

The "best afternoons of your life were spent in a ballpark." A poet wrote time spent in a ballpark "didn't count against your life span," that it made you younger. Suddenly dead, the epitaph read, "Here Lies Baseball – Negotiated to Death."

He asked "what's October without a World Series? Italy without a song? Paris without a spring? Canada without a sunset?

"Once upon a time in this country, we had a World Series. You would have loved them. Ruth pointing. Sandy Koufax curving. Pepper Martin stealing. Kirk Gibson homering.

"You should have been there."

It was all San Francisco in the fall. Led by two Hall of Famers, quarterback Steve Young and wide receiver Jerry Rice, the 49ers annihilated all opposition. They were a team for the ages. Incredibly, Young was so good he did not actually make people forget Joe Montana, but he forced them to acknowledge that nobody, including Joe, could have done it better.

In "You Can't Burn Rice, But He Can Easily Burn You" (November 29), the great Murray started, "Jerry Rice, like second hand smoke, germ warfare and insider trading should be banned." He should "carry a surgeon general's warning on his helmet.

"He's not really a player, is their view. He's a terrorist. He works undercover, so to speak. He's the NFL's Jackal." Defensive backs were not sure if he was "real." He was "the phantom of the opera." Opponents recognized him by "police composite." He "would make a world-class spy" detected only by "radar." He has a "rap sheet longer than the Gambino family." He could "outrun you" and "outsmart you." He was "an uncontrolled substance" who should be "illegal anyway." He finished by writing Rice, "Probably arrives by saucer. From outer space."

Rice was spectacular in the Super Bowl. Young arguably had the greatest Super Bowl in history, leading San Francisco to a 49-26 thrashing of the San Diego Chargers. The great USC linebacker Junior Seau led San Diego. What a "fine kettle of fish" Los Angeles fans found them in. Here they were, the home of two failed franchises, one already packed and gone, the other on the way out the door. The biggest event in sports was played in Miami between one rival team 100 miles to the south and another arch-rival 400 miles to the north. Coming on the heels of the O.J. Simpson murder it was one of the low points if not the low point of the decade for once-proud L.A.

After undergoing a complicated surgery, Murray joked that he entered Cedars-Sinai "a bigger underdog than the San Diego Chargers. You got me and 40 points. Vegas wouldn't post a line." He wrote that he went into the hospital and, upon awakening, discovered Oregon had played in a Rose Bowl and the Rams were in St. Louis.

Murray was prescient in his column about Andre Agassi when he wrote, "oddly enough, he didn't seem to particularly care for his line of work," which the tennis star confirmed years later in his autobiography. In "Football Once Was a Sport" (March 13), Murray wrote that the college game was once a sport for the "raccoon coat" crowd, in which coaches like Knute Rockne were actually "part of the faculty," but the press created a plethora of "Galloping Ghosts, Four Horsemen, Dream Backfields, Fighting Irish." Scholarship players were once called "ringers." Then they eliminated the "middleman," that being the college. The football team no longer had much in common with the school. Players no longer had their picture in Sports Illustrated but "in the post office." Football "went from being a sport to being a business . . . another mercantile or entertainment conglomerate."

In a column about basketball player Charles Barkley, who was basically a clown, Murray went way out of his way to try and place forth the notion that he was something other than a clown. In taking Barkley seriously, it was one of the few times Murray did not get it right. In a May 15 column on pitching star Orel Hershiser, Murray came up with one of his most quoted lines. Hershiser, once a pitching sensation who could not be touched, now survived on guile and guts. He was like a "swimmer crossing shark-infested waters with a nose bleed." Injured, Hershiser rehabilitated in the minor leagues, which was like "asking Pavarotti to sing a barbershop." His quote about "shark-infested waters," which he made before, was the one picked up on by Hollywood, a metaphor synonymous with its immoralities and lies.

The premise of "sharks in the water" was continued on July 7 when Murray trod familiar ground from his youth, interviewing "the great DiMaggio (as Ernest Hemingway's character, the ancient Cuban fisherman, keeps referring to him in The Old Man and the Sea)." He repeated the oft-repeated phrase "DiMaggio would have been waiting for it," which was his time-honored description of how fans complaining of this player or that always referred to Joe DiMaggio as the guy who could make the plays said player could not.

The Yankees of DiMaggio's era "came to the ballpark in three-piece suits and shined shoes, cut hair and clean shaven," he continued. "Their image was that of a company of Swiss bankers, not terrorists. Joe DiMaggio never got in a brawl on or off the field." Murray did not mention he used to hang out with Mob boys in New York.

Fans had no "empathy" for him, because he made it all look so easy. DiMaggio revealed that as a youth the great Ty Cobb acted as his unofficial "agent," writing letters to the Yankees demanding that the rookie be paid more. It earned DiMaggio an $8,500 contract and, for Cobb, free meals in his Fisherman's Wharf restaurant in later years.

When "Brazil won the World Cup, 0-0," he went on to say it was "like watching two woolly mammoths struggle in a tar pit all afternoon and end up gumming each other to death."

After Arnold Palmer retired, he wrote, "Palmer and golf were synonymous." Without Arnold golf was as out of place as "John Wayne without a horse, Ruth without a bat, Carl Lewis on a bicycle. An offense against nature." Palmer "came along just as television did and it was a marriage made in golf heaven." He "didn't make golf, he just put it on page one."

In 1995, "ethnic cleansing" was the term most often used to describe various struggles in breakaway Soviet republics of the old Communist Eastern Europe. Muslim communities that had existed for centuries since Arab armies conquered their territories, forcing Christians to accept Islam, were targeted. Germany was re-unified but finding it difficult to merge East Germany into the West. House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich (R.-Georgia) over-stepped his bounds when he forced President Clinton into a budget showdown that threatened to shut down the government. Clinton was called "irrelevant" by the press corps, which viewed Gingrich as the dominant political figure in Washington. The Republicans apparently mis-read their enormous gains in the 1994 midterms. Fueled by Gingrich's successful "Contract With America" (which Clinton dubbed the "Contract On America"), their victory was given the moniker the "Republican Revolution." Many in the GOP assumed a shift had been made; the United States was a "conservative country." It was a center-right country, but not a full-blown conservative one, especially not on social issues near and dear to the Christian right. Gingrich's mis-handling of the budget process opened the door for Clinton, a masterful politician, to regain ground heading into the 1996 Presidential election year.

UCLA's basketball program made an enormous comeback, losing only one game en route to the national championship, defeating Arkansas in the title game. California State, Fullerton's baseball team, led by pitcher-outfielder Mark Kotsay, may have been the best in college baseball history. They beat Southern California in the title game to win the national title in Omaha.

The big league baseball season limped along. Fans were still furious at the foul act of a strike costing them the previous year's World Series, and several games at the beginning of the '95 campaign.

At least the Angels thrilled their fans all summer long, then joined the 1964 Phillies and the 1969 Cubs among all-time September choke artists. Randy Johnson and Seattle rallied to capture the West. Atlanta beat Cleveland in the World Series.

Baltimore's Cal Ripken began healing heal the rift when he broke Lou Gehrig's longstanding record for consecutive games played. Baseball fans loved the game so much they had short memories.

Murray said this reminded him of one of his favorite novels, Somserset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, featuring a character named Philip Carey. He falls hopelessly for a "sluttish" waitress named Mildred who "keeps scorning him, cheating on him, abusing him, throwing things at him until you couldn't bear to look." Baseball fans were the same. On opening day in 1995, there was no drop-off in attendance. The fans just accepted the players back without recrimination. "That'll teach 'em not to mess with us!" he wrote. "We cut attendance by 38 people in Toronto."

When Ripken closed in on Gehrig's record, Pat Jordan of The Sporting News called it a "bore." Murray, on the other hand, made his sympathies quite perfectly clear. "First of all, before we go on, let me tell you where I'm coming from," he wrote in "Old School Is Fine, Thank You" (August 31), one year after the strike. "To begin with, I've had it up to here with tabloid America. The glorification of the rebel, the outlaw, the guy who makes up his own rules. And lives by them. You know what I'm talking about."

Athletes whose "wives plant one on the jaw of officials, basketball players who make millions and don't show up for team practices and make magazine covers, scofflaws whose very criminality gives them celebrity, the whole sorry, sick panoply of sports in the '90s."

He went on about his own grandfather, who was due at work every day at seven, "So he was usually there at six," who "raised eight children. He went to church every Sunday. He worked 14 hours a day." Murray deplored the "worship of the splashy and the trashy," especially when "sneering at the accomplishments of the dependable, the reliable, the guys who show up for work every day because that is the way they were brought up, that I rise to make a point of order."

Cal Ripken and his grandfather "have a lot in common." On top of everything, Ripken had never broken any "barroom mirrors, gotten into a scuffle with the cops, missed the team plane." He did not even chew tobacco. As far as Murray was concerned, the Cal Ripkens of this world were "good copy."

Also "good copy" was Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda, the man Murray said was "responsible" in a way for his Pulitzer Prize since he won it ostensibly by quoting him correctly. Lasorda was the last of a dying breed, and in many ways his departure from the scene – he was leaving as Dodgers manager – portended the end for the great Murray. It was men like Lasorda, the colorful, the iconoclastic, the Damon Runyon types who dotted the sports landscape, making Jim's job fun and a little easier. Casey Stengel, Leo Durocher, Red Auerbach, Bear Bryant; Murray knew 'em all. But many, a disproportionate many perhaps, had been part of Murray's Los Angeles. Red Sanders, John McKay, Tommy Prothro, Rod Dedeaux, Bill Rigney, even more modern fellows like Pat Riley . . . and now Lasorda was leaving as the others had. Murray understood that his likes would not be seen again.

"Who will speak for baseball when Tommy's gone?" he wrote in "He's Still Big Dodger in Dugout" (October 15). "One of those tight-lipped, monosyllabic bores who manage those Midwestern teams or sit glaring from the corner of the dugout as if they were watching the fall of France? Gimme a break!"

Tommy was "Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra rolled into one . . . Disney would have drawn and animated him." Murray made fun of the dingbats who said baseball was too slow. "If you're in a hurry, go to an airport," wrote the man who said he was never unhappy at a ballpark. Lasorda always said, "Where else would you rather be?" They captured baseball's ambience perfectly.

"Tommy is full of harmless hokum . . . but not when it comes to his country," Murray wrote. "Tommy will tell you the world is lucky there's a United States of America in it and if you don't think so, the conversation is over.

"He's never said, 'No comment' or 'That's off the record' in his life."

For the first time since World War II, there was no professional football in Los Angeles. Steve Young powered San Francisco to a division title, but ex-UCLA All-American Troy Aikman led the Dallas Cowboys to victory in the play-offs, then a Super Bowl win over Pittsburgh. Without the Rams and the Raiders, attention was diverted to the college boys. At first, USC looked to have regained their place in the pantheon. Under coach John Robinson and All-American receiver Keyshawn Johnson, the Trojans were unbeaten when they rolled into South Bend.

The playing of "Conquest" was haulted and silenced in a resounding loss to the Fighting Irish. Defeat at the hands of UCLA followed, but Troy still won the Pac-10 Conference. They defeated a surprising Northwestern team in one of the liveliest Rose Bowl games ever played.

"When Pittsburgh teams came out here in early years to lose, 47-14 and 35-0, the whisper was, they had spent all their time on the Sunset Strip," Murray wrote. Northwestern "even came to Planet Hollywood and sportingly joined in all the hoopla, hype and fun," but "didn't' leave their game in a nightclub."

"Don't Tell Him Golfers Only Drive For Show" (February 26) detailed the power-golfer John Daly. Writing that fans love big hitters who win by big scores, he wrote, "The fans like movies titled The Terminator, Rambo, Superman." Laurence Olivier was a better act but "John Wayne sold tickets . . .

"We go for Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, tennis players nicknamed 'The Rocket,' not 'Bitsy' or 'Bunny.' We want the 'Sultan of Swat' . . . 'the Manassa Mauler' . . . the 'Brown Bomber' . . . not guys named Evander or Ezzard."

The Raiders finally made their departure back to Oakland official in June. Murray wrote, "The Raiders were in Los Angeles but not of it," that they never worked their way into the city's hearts.

On June 5 in "A Little Guarantee Makes A League of Difference," Murray opened, "In baseball, 'Joe' meant DiMaggio. In boxing, it was Louis.

"Tennis never had any 'Joes.' Guys with 'Baron' in front of their names or Roman numerals after it or guys named Ivan or Boris." Then he wrote that great pro football quarterbacks were mostly named "Joe," as in Montana and the feature of the column, Namath. When Namath "guaranteed" the New York Jets would defeat the Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl, he entered the pantheon of sports greatness by backing it up with a 16-7 victory. Being flamboyant, loved by the ladies, and a New York icon made "Broadway Joe" a legend above "many others whose careers were better.

"Joe had an ongoing relationship with Johnnie Walker Scotch and most of the chorus girls of his day," he wrote. He did not know women named "Mary or Alice or Margaret or Jane, they were all named Candy, or Cherry, or Mitzi or, maybe, theVa-Va-Va-Voom Girl!

"Joe never had any trouble with zone defenses, but he was intercepted regularly by curfew." Now married with kids Namath, the "perfect passer," was getting up every day at 5:30 in the morning with his children.

"I can remember when I was just getting in at that time of the morning," he recalled.

Murray wrote "You Heard It Yelled Here First" on July 19. It was his paean to St. Andrews, the legendary Scottish golf course. Despite health problems, he made the trek to "golf's shrine. It's fountainhead. Its Garden of Eden."

When Mickey Mantle passed away after battling alcoholism, Murray displayed a lifetime of literature, education and wisdom. Opening with an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy," Murray wrote, " 'A success' is often just the opposite." He quoted Lord George Gordon Byron who wrote of Napoleon Bonaparte, "his life would be the funniest comedy of modern times were it not caked in human blood."

Murray openly wondered what would have happened had Mantle played in Texas or California, someplace other than New York, where he conjectured that he was frightened by the haute monde of Manhattan, leading to his need to escape to alcohol.

On September 14, Murray wrote "What They've Done To Game Is a Crime." He asked who was number one in college football. It was Nebraska.

"And how would we know? Well, for a start, one guy on the squad is charged with attempted murder and two others are charged with assaulting former girlfriends and another with carrying a weapon." These sordid details, "sounds like a national champion . . ."

The year before Nebraska was number one, "Florida State was the reigning champion. Half a dozen players were illegally treated to a $20,000 clothing and shopping spree by wanna-be agents."

Before that, Miami did it with a team photo that should have been "hung on the post offices instead of national magazines." Colorado was number one in 1990 with a "worse arrest record than the Mafia." Murray pointed out that legendary Nebraska coach Tom Osborne was a total hypocrite, but this certainly made him one of many.

Bill Clinton, who "loathed the military" and used all the skills at his legal disposal to avoid being drafted in the 1960s, defeated a man who left much of his body in the mountains of Italy, Bob Dole, in the 1996 Presidential election. That year, an American soldier who defected to North Korea during the Korean War in order to live as a Communist, was allowed to return to the United States. When asked why he came back, he answered, "To vote for Bill Clinton." Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy was a fascinating memoir of how he and Richard Nixon played the Soviets and Red China against each other in the early 1970s.

There was almost nothing to cheer about in Los Angeles sports that year. The lack of athletic glory mirrored the city's dismal straights. The state of California seemed to be a different world than the cutting edge place that led the way in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The only success came from San Diego, where Ken Caminiti was voted the National League's Most Valuable Player, leading the Padres to the division championship.

The Olympic Games were held in Atlanta. In a post-Soviet world, the United States dominated. Prior to the Opening Ceremonies, Murray tackled the enormous question, "Who would you have to say is the greatest athlete of the century?" He mentioned Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron, Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Bill Tilden, Don Budge, Pele, Joe Montana, Sandy Koufax, Michael Jordan and Jim Thorpe, then placed forth the notion that the answer was "Carl Franklin Lewis, Esq., of the New Jersey and Houston Lewises."

Arizona State, led by Pat Tillman, beat defending national champion Nebraska, 17-0. They entered the Rose Bowl unbeaten with a strong shot at the national title. A comeback win by Ohio State knocked the Sun Devils out as Florida captured the brass ring.

It was the age of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Even the Bulls' amazing 1995-96 run eclipsed Los Angeles in that they established themselves without question as the greatest single-season team in history. Previous contenders for such a lofty place in the pantheon included the 1967 76ers, 1972 Lakers, 1983 76ers and 1987 Lakers.

"You go to see Michael Jordan play basketball for the same reason you went to see Astaire dance, Olivier act or the sun set over Canada," he wrote of the Bulls' superstar. He was "Heifetz with a violin. Horowitz at the piano." Other players on the court never knew where he was until he yelled, "Up here!" He was as "unstoppable as tomorrow." He was 6-6, "Until he's airborne, that is. Then he becomes 20 feet." When he faced Magic Johnson it was "the most publicized confrontation since the second Dempsey-Tunney. It came out more like the second Louis-Schmeling." With his team at 41-8 (18 straight and counting towards the Lakers' 1972 record of 33; they did not break it), Murray suggested that the league should make it "illegal for him to make a basket without one foot (or both) on the ground" among other handicaps. Jordan was there with Babe Ruth, Bill Tilden, John Unitas and Wayne Gretzky.

"Man, they're scary!" said Magic of the Bulls. "We should send them to Bosnia," Murray wrote of Chicago.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep this from Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug or any of those fire-eating women's activists, but a female has never won the Santa Anita handicap," he wrote in a piece about horse racing. "I mean, talk about runaway sexism."

Murray wrote "Legend Of Legends Is What Power Begat" about Jack Nicklaus.

"No one ever saw him throw a club or kick a ball-washer or heard him cuss a caddie," he wrote, adding "And no one ever saw him smoke on a golf course although off it he did . . ."

"Oscar De La Hoya is too good to be true," Murray wrote on June 6 of the handsome, Los Angeles-born boxer dubbed "the Golden Boy." "I mean, he's more priest than pug, more altar boy than home boy." He was "too pretty" and spoke as if in "confession," comparing him to Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi.

When De La Hoya destroyed his opponent, Murray came up with this humdinger: "It wasn't a fight, it was an execution. As one-sided as an electric chair. If you liked that, you should get a collection of Stalin's home movies."

Murray made another pitch for Pete Rose on July 18 when he wrote that while he - Murray - was in the Hall of Fame, Rose was not. "I have a lot of difficulty juxtaposing those two ideas." Murray added "why pick on me?" adding that Rabbit Maranville was in Cooperstown with his .258 career average. He continued that Rose was barred from "a Valhalla he richly deserves admittance to." Murray offered to give Rose his spot in the Hall of Fame.

On September 22, Murray wrote of an interview conducted in Anaheim with Mark McGwire of the Oakland A's. The former USC All-American had more than 50 home runs, and Murray wanted to know if he could break Roger Maris's record of 61. McGwire said he could not do it in 1996, "But some year? It's possible."

Nobody really understood what was happening at the time, but 1996 could easily be pinpointed as the height of the "steroid era." Obviously McGwire was juiced, as was Jose Canseco. According to reports, Barry Bonds would not start taking performance-enhancing drugs for a few more seasons, but Ken Caminiti of San Diego was built like a football linebacker. An average player out of San Jose State, he developed in a short period of time into a superstar, but it did not last. He flamed out and eventually died from his steroid use.

The New York Yankees won the World Series. Just as the success of the 49ers and election of Bay Area Senators symbolized Los Angeles' loss of glory, the rise of the Yankees, coinciding with the most glorious decade in the Big Apple's history under rock star Mayor Rudy Giuliani, emphasized how far L.A. was falling. There was a time when L.A. was "the place," when New York City was depicted by dreary movies like Marathon Man and The French Connection. Under Giuliani and owner George Steinbrenner, New York was Fun City once more. It was again viewed as a town of glamour, hot night spots, gorgeous models on the arms of young sports heroes like their dazzling rookie shortstop Derek Jeter. L.A. and the L.A. Times were just muddling along, battling mediocrity in all its forms. Only Jim Murray and Vin Scully, it seemed, represented greatness, each assigned to brilliantly report on the doings of the second rate.

Of the Yankees' return to form after a long down period, Murray wrote after the 1994 strike, the team that once "almost killed the game with their ruthless excellence" now "may have saved it . . . And that's good for business."

Greg Norman was "Golf's Job" (November 14). He played with the "boldness of a bank robber." Murray wrote of Aristotle in comparing Norman's "undeserved misfortune" with others. When Tiger Woods made the scene, Murray saw his greatness immediately, declaring that, "Golf is now a five-letter word. It's spelled 'W-O-O-D-S.' " As he did with Willie Mays, Murray had to confirm that there was "such a person as Tiger Woods," that he was not made up. He was "John Wayne on horseback, as heartwarming as a Lassie movie. Beaver Cleaver with a two-iron." He was the perfect ethnicity for America in the coming century, an interesting and prescient prediction.

Economic principles endorsed by a Republican Congress were leading the American economy back in 1997. The Internet was also starting to explode, and with it the stock market. Skirmishes continued in Eastern Europe, but by and large the peaceful post-Communist world prevailed.

UCLA's basketball program, which seemed to be back on the right track under coach Jim Harrick, took a huge hit when Harrick was fired after filing falsified expense reports. He was replaced by a young, slick unknown with almost no experience, Steve Lavin. The sound of silence from unenthused hoops fans in Westwood was deafening. This was the program John Wooden built?

It seemed to be a further sports metaphor for the fall of a great city, its giants replaced by unimpressives in sports, politics, Hollywood. Shaquille O'Neal was now a member of the Lakers. If fans thought his presence meant an immediate return to glory, they were disappointed, but a new face joined the club that season. A rookie fresh out of high school named Kobe Bryant.

The Angels contended in the American League West before faltering. Young outfielder Tim Salmon was a star. Chuck Finley was their ace on the hill, but Mark Langston was no longer a great pitcher. The Disney Corporation bought the team from Gene Autry. Anaheim Stadium underwent refurbishing and took a new corporate name, Edison International Field of Anaheim. No longer called the California Angels, they now wore funky wing-adorned uniforms.

Mike Piazza of the Dodgers was already considered a near-sure Hall of Famer, and in 1997 he was incredible, slugging 40 homers, driving in 124 runs while batting .362. While Piazza has never been tainted or officially besmirched by steroid accusations, he remains one of those casualties of the era. Whether he took 'roids or not is replaced by suspicions that he might have, courtesy of the legacy left by Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.

Under new manager Bill Russell, Los Angeles seemed to be on the comeback trail. Aside from Piazza they featured two former UCLA Bruins, Eric Karros and Todd Zeile, and a veritable United Nations pitching staff consisting of Hideo Nomo (Japan), Ismael Valdez (Mexico), Chan Ho Park (South Korea), Pedro Astacio and Ramon Martinez (Dominican Republic). The old brilliance of their front office was gone with the firing of Al Campanis in 1987. So smart were they that they let go of Ramon's younger brother, Pedro.

The Dodgers challenged all year, but to everybody's surprise San Francisco hung tough all season. The Giants were a power team built in the old style of the Willie McCovey-Willie Mays teams, but general manager Brian Sabean made the kind of brilliant moves Dodger GMs no longer engaged in. He traded one of their power sources, fan favorite Matt Williams, to Cleveland for a collection of journeymen. One of them was Jeff Kent. They turned San Francisco into a team, and in a final season-ending showdown they emerged triumphant. L.A.: beaten again in the 1990s.

With USC reeling in the decade, the rest of the Pac-10 picked up the slack. UCLA was strong and beat the Trojans for the seventh straight year at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Perhaps no game better exemplified the doldrums of the '90s better than a non-conference contest between Florida and Southern Cal at the Coliseum. Here was USC, the dominant powerhouse of collegiate football, the legends and tradition of the Thundering Herd, of stirring comebacks over Notre Dame, of Rose Bowl glory and national championship imprimatur. In came Florida, a strong program but little more than a Johnnie-come-lately. The Gators were defending national champs, but for decades when Troy was the face of the collegiate game, Florida was just another program. No longer. USC played them tough, but their fans watched in mute agony when they could not move against the Gators' defense in a 14-7 loss. While the score was close, the game demonstrated how far the spread was between the two schools and, therefore, how far USC needed to come back if they were ever to regain their place in the hierarchy.

Washington State, led by quarterback Ryan Leaf, made a major challenge for the national championship before falling in the Rose Bowl against Michigan, who shared the number one slot with Nebraska.

Murray continued on a theme he regularly returned to, the lack of purity in collegiate sports. The " 'Four Horsemen' produced three coaches and a Federal judge," wrote Murray of the famed 1924 Notre Dame backfield. By 1997 "backfields sometimes seem to produce more defendants than judges."

Penn State coach Joe Paterno, however, was a "throwback" whose teams graduated 87 percent of their seniors. "He looks more like a nuclear spy than a football coach," he wrote. Most coaches of great note had fields named after him. At Penn State the library was named after the former Brown literature major. Penn State's uniforms looked like "the 1908 Frank Merriwell Yales."

When boxer Mike Tyson bit the ear of opponent Evander Holyfield, Murray was compelled. "I don't know what he could do to restore his dignity and professionalism," he wrote. "Become a vegetarian, for starters." He wrote a "public letter" to Tyson. The Brooklyn thug seemed to be the very picture of what Murray came to despise in sports; overpaid, violent, criminal, reprehensible, dumb as a box of rocks. But Murray wrote that despite Tyson's atrocious acts, he was misunderstood.

He liked Tyson, admired the former champions' understanding of boxing history. He was disgusted with the most recent acts of an out of control man. "I don't want to say I defended you to many of my friends, but I did tell them I saw another side to the brute they perceived in mid-ring," he wrote.

The ugly thug nature of sports was on full display in 1997. Latrell Sprewell of the Golden State Warriors attacked and choked his coach, P.J. Carlesimo. Murray was appalled that San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown "cheered Sprewell to the echo and said the coach had it coming. It might be the first time in history a Mayor of a city endorsed aggravated assault . . ."

Sports were now filled with dumbbells who took the slightest authority or coaching to be "You're dissing me." The reason, Murray felt, was because too many athletes lacked "a strong father figure in the home to lay down the law." He did not say it but might as well have: Lyndon Johnson's Great Society had failed and now its spawn was loosed in the land.

He turned from stupidity and criminality to intelligence and grace in an obituary about former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. Murray wrote, "Pro football became an American tribal rite."

In "Divine Course for Disciple of Golf," Murray wrote, "My late wife used to say, 'If Jim ever gets to Heaven and Ben Hogan isn't there, he ain't staying.' " Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm picked this theme up a few years later when he imagined Heaven was indeed playing golf with Hogan (along with Dustin Hoffman as a foul-mouthed Moses!).

"I hope today they have in Heaven this little 18-hole golf course with trouble on the right," he wrote after Hogan's passing. Paradise would look "suspiciously like Riviera in 1948." Murray did not wish to blaspheme, but imagined that if God played Hogan the Good Lord would have to take a "five-handicap."

In 1998, President Clinton was besieged by allegations from women across America accusing him of sexual harassment, intimidation, molestation, assault and rape. In the course of answering a lawsuit about his harassment of an Arkansas woman named Paula Jones, Clinton lied under oath. The sordid affair came to a head when Clinton lied about oral sex performed on him by White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was Impeached for having committed a misdemeanor, as Impeachment is Constitutionally brought for "high crimes and misdemeanors." Most felt the act of receiving a blowjob in the Oval Office was disgusting but ultimately not worthy of removal from the Presidency. The right went after him ostensibly because they had never been able to pin the Vince Foster killing or numerous Arkansas murders, or other crimes, against him. This was their "chance," so to speak.

In the end the Republicans did not muster the votes to oust Clinton. Many felt the punishment did not fit the crime, but political calculations entered the equation. Had Clinton been booted from office Vice-President Albert Gore, Jr. would have become President. He would have had the imprimatur of office while running for election on his own two years later.

President Clinton's wife, Hillary said the effort to destroy her husband was a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Pundits in the conservative media like Rush Limbaugh turned her comments on her, stating that essentially the "vast ring conspiracy" consisted of "millions of patriotic American citizens who register and vote."

In order to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal, which focused on Clinton's semen stain on her blue dress, the President decided, after doing nothing for several years, to bomb Belgrade using American planes disguised in United Nations markings. The bombings were designed to support a small Muslim community in the old Yugoslavia. Several medieval Christian churches were destroyed.

As for Lewinsky, her downfall came on the heels of the Heidi Fleiss affair with local implications in Los Angeles. The Jewish community of Beverly Hills, reliable Clinton supporters, was aghast that another "nice Jewish girl" from their city was nabbed in a sex scandal. Many openly desired that the girl providing oral pleasure to Clinton be some "white trailer trash from the South," but alas she was not. Others openly desired that the Jewish community produce some more "Jewish giants" like Einstein or Salk instead of Fleiss and Lewinsky, who bragged upon leaving for D.C. she was bringing her "Presidential kneepads" in order to be well-equipped to provide Oval Office blowjobs. The fact that the porn industry became a billion-dollar juggernaut during this period was not a coincidence. It was the age of Clinton.

The right wing asked whether such a thing ever would have happened under Reagan or Bush . . . Eisenhower. The answer did not need to be given. No commentary was necessary in order to determine what it was.

Nevertheless, the Republicans over-extended themselves in their criticism of Clinton, as they had done in the 1995-96 budget battles. Hillary Clinton complained that Newt Gingrich was given an enormous multi-million-dollar advance for a book. He gave the advance back. Sales of the book were good enough for him to make the money on merit in the end. A few years later Bill and Hillary took the enormous advances they criticized Gingrich for taking before he returned it. They did not return it.

Gingrich became a lightning rod for criticism throughout the Impeachment proceedings. If there was any question that the L.A. Times had turned completely from the old days under Otis Chandler, their 1998 coverage and criticism of the Republicans and special prosecutor Ken Starr ended that conjecture. It was the turning point for the Times.

A local Congressman, from Glendale, James Rogan, was one of Clinton's harshest critics. The Times targeted his swing district, and he was defeated in the November midterms. Clinton's considerable political skills were demonstrated as the GOP lost some of the seats they gained in the previous three elections in 1998.

Tom Wolfe followed up Bonfire of the Vanities with his long-awaited next novel, a decade in the works, A Man in Full. Jim Murray was getting old in 1998. His health was failing him. His writings did not suffer one slight bit. Curt Smith is a respected journalist who specializes in the media. In 2009 he wrote Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story.

"There are striking parallels between Jim Murray and Vin Scully," said Smith. "Scully was born eight years earlier on a November 29. Murray was born on December 29. They both became 'first among equals,' both their lives similar in that both were born in the urban East, Murray in Hartford, Scully in the Bronx. Both were Irish Catholic. Both worked their way through school. Both graduated from fine schools, Murray from Trinity, Scully from Fordham. Both knew early on what they wanted to be. Both were Republicans. Both joined institutions of great renown. In the case of Murray it would be hard to get a more distinguished journalistic enterprise than Time magazine under Henry Luce between 1948 and 1955. Then he joined this itty-bitty enterprise that became Sports Illustrated.

"Scully joined the most popular baseball team in America in Brooklyn, and moved west with them at the height of their popularity, and became the most phenomenally popular broadcaster of all time. Murray also moved west to become the poster child for journalism with the Los Angeles Times. Both made language their marquees. Nobody in print, radio or TV ever distinguished themselves more by the pen or the voice.

"Each dominated their profession. What was Murray, the national sportswriter of the year 14 times or something? Scully was 25 times voted California's sportscaster of the year, four times the national sportscaster of the year. Scully made the Baseball Hall of Fame. Murray did, too. Scully was named the greatest sportscaster of all time in all sports, and I would think the same is true of Murray, the proof being his winning the Pulitzer Prize. You cannot be honored by your peers more than both of them have.

"Both were very modest about their work, Murray's Lasorda quote that all he did was quote him correctly being proof of this. Scully just said it was a parade and he described it going by.

"Some of their greatest parallels are in their quotes. Murray wrote, 'Gentlemen, start your coffins,' or that John Wooden was 'so square he was divisible by four,' or his marvelous observation that Rickey Henderson's strike zone was 'smaller than Hitler's heart.' Scully quoted Shakespeare and once said it's so hot in St. Louis 'the moon got sunburn.' Look at Murray's columns and compare it to Scully, and there's this wonderful tapestry, grace under pressure, both extemporaneous speech, not a comment out of place. Read a transcript of Scully's description of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965, all perfectly spoken as if written out beforehand. When Murray was blind he read his columns to other transcribers and same thing, not a comment out of place.

"Both could write for any era. Both were affected by World War II. Both were very middle class Roman Catholics who worked their way through school. Both led very personal private lives tinged by some tragedy that the public knows very little about. Scully led a delightfully pristine life but he had tragic events, the loss of his first wife and a son.

"Both are emblematic of the rise of Los Angeles. Both were pioneers, De Soto or Cortes, choose your historical figure, who went where nobody had gone before and in so doing brought the big leagues stylistically to Los Angeles. They became role models, and to those in the East who thought of the people in the West as Philistines, of L.A. as a backwater, they changed perceptions, ignorance meeting arrogance.

"If you were a writer you had to love the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, where both encouraged writers to be gamblers and pioneers. You can argue the influence of Hollywood, but it was not until Scully and Murray that the town was given real respect. It is irrefutable that Scully and Murray were the 'Roy Hobbs' of their profession, praised by association, both credited with making Los Angeles, as Ernest Hemingway said, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place in both fact and persona.

"Still today in a 24/7 attention span world they are credited with challenging the media brilliance of their professions, and thus a consensus has been formed unilaterally on how these two men could make Los Angeles stand up and be proud. Neither was ever embarrassed in public or chastened by bad behavior. To add a third name, John Wooden, all three grew up with the church at the center of their lives."

The Dodgers seemingly flipped their fans off in '98. First, News Corporation now owned them. Some thought it might work out. Everything Rupert Murdoch did turned to gold, but not baseball. Murray was not optimistic. The O'Malley Dodgers "didn't exactly run the business like a mom-and-pop store," he wrote. "But it was a family business, catering to moms and pops. And grandpops. I don't know of any sport you can bring a granddaughter to more comfortably and confidently than Dodger baseball.

"I would hope that doesn't change. Before the Dodgers, L.A.'s hometown heroes were Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, John Wayne, Clark Gable, James Stewart and Bob Hope, to name a few.

"The Dodgers added Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Jim Gilliam, Maury Wills, Fernando Valenzuela, Steve Garvey, Tommy Lasorda, Vin Scully and Mike Piazza, to name a few.

"That's not a bad trade."

"Jim loved Walter O'Malley and had great respect for Peter O'Malley," recalled Linda McCoy-Murray. "He was a good friend. He'd be calling Peter right now, aghast over what has happened to the Dodgers with the divorce case of the McCourts."

Then they traded Piazza! In an age of free agency, of no loyalty, of fan abuse, it was the worst thing they could have done. It was like the Yankees trading Lou Gehrig in his prime. It was unthinkable. Footage of Piazza, looking bewildered in the teal uniform of the Florida Marlins, was disgusting. Many fans called in to complain that now Piazza's coterie of beautiful girlfriends, some of whom were Playboy models, would no longer come around Dodger Stadium. Piazza and Karros roomed together in Manhattan Beach. Stories of their exploits had reached the level of legendary status. Now it was another great thing leaving California for greener pastures while all that was unimpressive and second rate stayed in the Golden State.

His April 26 column on Tim Salmon of the Angels was first class Murray all the way. It was so good that attempts to find "highlights" from it are impossible. The entire piece is one pearl after another. The gist of it was that Salmon was so good he earned the "right" to act like "the Star." Instead of acting like the boor Albert Belle, Salmon acted "as unassuming as a butler. He hustles. He works out. He takes outfield. You'd think he was trying to make the team, not lead it." His great ability gave him the "right" to be "insufferable" but instead he was "as taken for granted as the U.S. mail," as dependable as "the tides." The "archangel" was utterly modest, a trait Murray really admired.

Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit 70 home runs that season. He beat out Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, who finished with 66. It was credited with saving baseball after the 1994 strike. In retrospect it was the "steroid era." A subsequent piece on "the Right Honorable Mark David McGwire" was just laudatory, but in retrospect reads with skepticism.

The Giants lost a play-off for the National League Wild-Card spot with the Cubs. San Diego captured the pennant but was mere cannon fodder for the unbelievable Yankees dynasty in the World Series.

Looking back, 1998 was the "last hurrah" for UCLA football. Under coach Bob Toledo, led by quarterback Cade McNown, the Bruins sprinted out to an unbeaten record. They destroyed Heisman winner Ricky Williams and Texas, then dismantled the out-manned Trojans at the Rose Bowl. But early in the season a game at Miami was post-poned due to a hurricane. The . . . Hurricanes were in a down period, having been hit by penalties after revelations surrounding their great 1980s and early '90s run came to light. But by the end of the season Miami was beginning to hit their stride. They had talent. A few years later they would be back, bigger and badder than ever. Miami could not be stopped, and in a major offensive shoot-out at the Orange Bowl, prevailed over McNown and UCLA by a score of 49-45 in the final regular season contest.

UCLA's best chance at their first national championship in football since 1954 went down the drain. Deflated, they fell to Ron Dane and Wisconsin in an uninspiring Rose Bowl defeat.

The NBA players went on strike in 1998. It was still a desultory period, in between the great "Showtime" run of the 1980s and the Shaq-Kobe teams. The Jordan- Bulls dynasty was over. Basketball fans yawned, openly rooting that the over-priced prima donnas stay on strike and, better yet, go forth and try making a real living in a competitive American marketplace.

In "How Can NFL Not Miss Us?" (August 9), Murray wrote, "The blackest day in the pro game's history was the day Carroll Rosenbloom jerked the Rams out of the Coliseum and took them south. He skewered the picture permanently. It was the main step in a series of steps that left L.A. abandoned on the doorstep with a note pinned on it."

Murray wrote of two great tennis stars of the era. "He Needs to Stay Focused" was about former hotshot Andre Agassi. " . . . Nobody had a longer free-fall in the history of sports than" the flashy fellow from Las Vegas who once said, "Image is everything." Andre was making what ultimately turned out to be a successful comeback. "If it's a question of image, it's coming back into focus better and better day by day and may soon overshadow them once again," Murray wrote.

Pete Sampras "has only one personality," he wrote. "He's the kind of guy who repairs divots, pays his taxes, is in bed by 11, he doesn't get into bar fights, throw anybody through plate-glass windows. He doesn't drink and drive, probably goes to church, takes his spoon out of his coffee before drinking it. He gets his hair cut and doesn't dye it purple. He wears white on the court. He doesn't even have an ear ring." In an age in which bad guys were good guys, Murray wrote he was "hopeless."

"There was a boxer named Butterbean," recalled Jim's friend, promoter Bill Caplan. "He was known as the 'king of the four rounders,' but he had a cult following. He was a fat guy who could punch. I explained who he was to Jim. He was this guy from Jasper, Alabama and would be a good guy for him to talk to. Jim was like, 'Bill, you want me to write about a guy named Butterbean?' I said, 'Jim, trust me on this.' And he did it out of friendship and trust, and it was a great column. One line was like, 'Butterbean's a bull made out of whipped cream wrapped in an American flag, and he's so white you could read by him.' I said, 'I told you.'

"So, yes, I got hired because people knew I could get Jim Murray columns. The last time I spoke to him was at a press conference at the Friar's Club in Beverly Hills. Azumah Nelson from Ghana was the featherweight champion, a great fighter. I called up Jim and asked him to come and he said, 'Okay, come pick me up and take me to the press conference.' That was the last piece he ever did for me.

"He had the vision problem. For years he was legally blind. He had surgeries done at the Jules Stein Eye Institute and got enough of his vision back to get a driver's license again. I got in the habit of picking him up and taking him to an assignment. I walked into his house in Bel Air one time before he passed away and asked to use his rest room. I'd been in the house many times, it was a beautiful home and every wall was filled with awards. But in the garage were framed awards stacked up against the wall. I was just admiring them and for some strange reason, Jim was kind of a stiff Irishman, a wonderful man but not big on grabbing, hugging and kissing. I grabbed him and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and I said, 'I just would like to thank you,' and he accepted it and said, 'Your welcome,' but he was uncomfortable.

"I've known George Foreman since he was18. I've been close to him a long time. He's an ordained minister and very spiritual, and I mentioned this to George, and he said, 'You were saying good bye to him, Bill,' and that's the last time I saw him.

"Jim would say over the years, 'I'm thinking of hanging it up' at least 45 times. He'd bring it up, and I'd argue and say, 'No, you can't quit.'

" 'Well, you know it's harder know, I have to think about it more,' he'd say. I told him he's writing better than anybody else, 'you'll get old real fast . . . You've been doing this all life your life . . . you're the best at it.'

"It was the only thing that made him happy and he never did quit."

For the great Jim Murray, it was all grist for the mill. He had seen it all. He saw Ruth hit a home run. He saw O.J. run the field. He saw Jordan fly. He also saw his boss, Otis Chandler, unceremoniously dumped while the newspaper they built together changed irreparably. He stuck it out, despite cancer, surgeries, heart problems, poor eyesight. He huffed and puffed his way down and then back up the long stairway at the Coliseum to get quotes after games, returning to the press box to finish his stories. He battled the traffic to Dodger Stadium and Anaheim. Supported by his younger wife Linda, he was able to get it done. He was older, the landscape had changed. Thousands of readers wrote letters to the Times, often complaining about the left-wing turn in its politics. There is no evidence that anybody wrote – or emailed, as they now could and did do – complaining, "Murray's past his prime" or "C'mon, Murray's so yesterday." Just as Vin Scully was an icon, secure in the love of a city, so too was Jim Murray. Named "America's Best Sportswriter" by the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters 14 times, and 16 years named National Sportswriter of Year, he was still the best of the best. He was 78.

Sic transit gloria

"Thus passes the glory from the world." At the end of Patton, George C. Scott in voiceover as the great general in repose says, "For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars were given the honor of a triumph, a tumultuous parade." As they walked the parade route amid great fanfare, "A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

For Jim Murray, who first began reading about the Romans when, as a sickly child he was given the gift of books and history while recovering in bed, the lessons of Rome, of the British Empire, of Hitler's attempt to conquer, of Stalin's 30-year reign of terror, of the "grand experiment" that was his beautiful America, a land he loved with a passion; well, he knew that "all glory is fleeting." His parochial school lessons, the priests warning, "Pride goeth before the fall," of man's ultimate downfall in a sinful world, had given him the wisdom and discernment to understand man's relationship with God, which was based on this most-fleeting little adventure on Earth, a mere grain of sand when measured against eternity and ultimate Truth.

Oh, how they had come and gone. Ruth, larger than life, masher of the most gargantuan of shots, felled by age, dead by cancer a few years later. Gehrig, gone in the wink of a young girl's eye. Koufax and Drysdale, princes of the city, sore-armed and retired. Big D, handsome and articulate, dead before his time. Tyson, the champion, felled by his own self-destructive forces.

Yes indeed Mr. Murray had seen them all. His glory was not so fleeting. He arrived in the City of Angels 44 years earlier, bright-eyed, happy to leave the old neighborhood where some G.I.'s mother might wonder why the 4-F "Murray boy" ran around healthy and happy while her own flesh and blood was sleeveless or worse.

Here he was in 1998, still banging away on his typewriter. Well, a word processor, actually. Unlike so many of the dinosaurs, Murray adapted to spell check and cut-and-paste, and why not? But it had been fleeting. There was Gerry and her "big beautiful eyes" working the piano in a Fairfax district tavern. There were Teddy and Tony, and Pammy, and the "baby in the family" Ricky, now gone.

Otis Chandler? Come and gone. John McKay, John Wooden? Come and gone. Walter O'Malley? Come and gone. My God, Peter O'Malley, come and gone, and with him the Dodgers of their glory years, gone seemingly for good.

Scully and Murray. Murray and Scully. Rushmores of the press box. Both historians, educated men of letters, both well aware that despite their longevity, in the scheme of things for them too "all glory is fleeting."

On the morning of August 16, 1998 Los Angelenos woke up as usual. A hot summer day. Some coffee, a donut, cereal, some fruit. The L.A. Times. A routine unchanged.

Jim Murray's column, just like most days since 1961. There it was: "You Can Teach an Old Horse New Tricks." It was about the successful jockey Chris McCarron. Typical Murray; funny, incisive. In celebration of a Free House victory at Del Mar, he wrote, "He's not a What's-His-Name anymore. He's a Who's Who . . . The bridesmaid finally caught the bouquet. The best friend got the girl in the Warner Brothers movie for a change. The sidekick saves the fort." Then his last written words: "Anyway, it's nice to know getting older has its flip side."

Linda accompanied Jim to Del Mar race track near San Diego, spending the afternoon in the hot sun. The day the column appeared, they made the laborious drive back to Los Angeles. The trip can entail much traffic, a check-point near the San Onofre nuclear plant, a battle to get through rush hour in Orange County, the infamous "south bay curve," and then airport congestion. They finally made it home after a long drive.

"We were home and he looked at me and said, 'Linda, something's not right,' " she said, "And he was gone."

It was a heart attack. He had been battling poor health for the better part of six years. He was a wreck, but he was still around. There was this odd, strange quasi-feeling that he was a survivor who was never going to leave. Logic tells us this is not possible, but to quote from the Gospel According to Matthew ". . . all things are possible." At least they are with God.

But Jim was mortal and on August 16, 1998 he left this "mortal coil," William Shakespeare's way of explaining the release from life's tensions to a dreamy, gauzy peace beyond.

The great Jim Murray was gone. His second wife, Linda McCoy-Murray; three children, Pam Skeoch, Ted and Tony; two granddaughters and a stepson survived him.

"The thing that made me most unhappy was that he was no longer in the Sunday Times," recalled Bill Caplan. "I read his last column and that Monday I got a call and it was the bad news. Somebody from the paper called and it was like, 'Oh, my God.' He suddenly got sick, it was a shock, and I called his widow. I called Linda and cried like a baby. I said, 'I apologize, I'm trying to give you comfort,' and she said, 'I understand,' because she knew the effect Jim had on people.

"Bill Dwyre arranged the memorial at Dodger Stadium. They had several speakers. Dwyre spoke, but Jerry West was the only one who was not very articulate. Afterwards we repaired to the Dodger Stadium club, what Allan Malamud used to refer to as 'the after' for food and conversation."

"When he did pass away, I was working for the Mayor of Los Angeles," recalled Councilman Tom LaBonge. "He could not attend the memorial at Dodger Stadium, so I had the honor of representing the city at the memorial, among many special people, including Vin Scully. He's much missed.

The writer who loved metaphors and symbols, who lived in a time and place and for an institution filled with symbolism – American Exceptionalism, California Dreamin' and the paper that built on those dreams, the promise and fulfillment of L.A., the world of sports as playground of the New Rome, much of it played in a place called the Coliseum – when he passed away it symbolized the passing of the L.A. Times. Otis Chandler left in increments, each with the promise that he was still involved, it was still his paper. The paper changed its structure, its corporate culture, it politics, lost panache in the 1990s, but they still had Jim Murray! It was the Yankees still featuring DiMaggio, Mantle, even at the end.

There were other significant events. Otis wrote his letter to the troops to protest the Staples Center fiasco, and sports editor Bill Dwyre likened that to Patton rounding up his troops for a final mission. But it fizzled out. Otis and the rest of the Chandlers took the money and ran. Bye-bye. The Tribune Company bought them. A shell of their old self they were after that.

Now Murray was gone and the paper was left to their own devices, a world of Tribune Companies and various "news groups," a world of Katherine Downings, John Puerners, Jeffrey Johnsons, David Hillers and Eddy Hartensteins. A world of journalism school graduates possessing better smarts and literary knowledge than Otis Chandler, but not one-10th of his common sense.

"Nobody runs the L.A. Times anymore," said Councilman LaBonge. "You can read it as fast as the Daily News, there's no local control, and it's gonna be tougher in the future for newspapers. There's been a transformation of people who don't respect newspapers.

"Politically they don't have as much weight as they used to. They 'want it now.' I use this in speeches I make, it applies to the Times. It must look like a farmer in the field getting up at four to check his crops. If someone is critical of he and his harvest at nine, then he thinks it's time to harvest now. We want the harvest at the beginning instead of giving it time. Without growth we'll miss those writers and leaders."

Sic transit Gloria.

If after what Bob Erberu, Shelby Coffey III, and Mark Willes did to the Los Angeles Times, anybody wanted to still call it the "greatest newspaper in the world," only Jim Murray's employment and column gave any hope to the phrase. With his passing went any semblance that they were anymore.

But life went on. Sports editor Bill Dwyre faced a daunting task. How do you replace Jim Murray? You do not, of course. The paper had bred their fair share of talented comers: Scott Ostler, Mike Downey, Randy Harvey, Bill Plaschke, just to name a few. All perfectly good sports writers. Ostler, and maybe Downey, had the potential for greatness. The others did not.

After Murray left, Dwyre had his chance. Talented scribes sent him resumes, writing samples. Dwyre stuck to the company line: "The Times hires from within and only from major metropolitan dailies." Some real talent was presented to him. He did not hire it. He would reward tenure, longevity, experience. These are not always the reservoir of great talent. Sometimes hunger deserves to be rewarded.

Over the years, many were called, none measured up. Inheritance of the "Murray column" is attributed to Plaschke. It was like a football team, trailing by three points, driving for the goal line with a chance to win. Instead of going for victory the Times kicked a proverbial field goal to tie. Plaschke was safe. He did not spur controversy. Nice enough guy. Play it down the middle. Boredom.

In 2006 Plaschke wrote a column about Murray's widow, Linda McCoy-Murray, and her creation of a foundation to memorialize her late husband while providing scholarships for deserving journalism students. The real purpose of the column, however, was to explain his position as Murray's successor. It came off as an apology. Titled "Murray's impact still is plain to hear," he wrote that when he inherited The Column his name changed from Bill Plaschke to "You're No Jim Murray."

"It was a name carefully scrawled at the bottom of scented letters from elderly women and drunkenly shouted into my voice mail from middle-aged men," he wrote.

"I have heard it shouted from the rafters at Staples Center and whispered in the back aisles of Staples stores. I have felt its accusatory wrath from Coliseum steps to mausoleum parking lots . . .

"If my presence has truly caused Jim Murray to turn in his grave as much as readers claim, well, then, the poor soul has barely had a moment of eternal rest, and for that, I am truly sorry.

"But, as for my new name, I am not.

"It is, I believe, a distinct honor to be called 'You're No Jim Murray.'

"Because, after all, it is the only time in my life that I will be mentioned in the same sentence with the greatest sportswriter in history . . .

"Jim Murray was our Babe Ruth . . . our Michael Jordan . . . our Muhammad Ali, once being hailed as 'the greatest sportswriter of all time' by, well, Muhammad Ali . . .

"And to think, two of his most memorable columns were not about sports: the death of his first wife, Gerry, and the loss of his eyesight."

Plaschke recalled columns that, upon his passing, filled an entire Times sports page with letters about them. One reader, Tracy Odell of Rossmore, spoke for thousands when she wrote, "I have only one request of the L.A. Times. Leave Jim Murray's space in the newspaper empty and pray for reincarnation."

"Request granted," wrote Plaschke.

"I'm on the front page of the sports section three or four times a week, sweating and stretching and doing my darnedest to reach into the hearts and minds of the most sophisticated sports readers in this country.

"But, no, I'm no Jim Murray.

"And, yes, that space will forever remain empty."

It was not Plaschke's fault that the sports section of this once-hallowed newspaper became the average, the mundane, the every day, any more than it was Gene Bartow's fault that he was not John Wooden or George H.W. Bush's fault that he was no Ronald Reagan. Sometimes a Mickey Mantle succeeds a Joe DiMaggio, a Steve Young takes over for a Joe Montana. Not this time.

"There was no replacing Murray at the L.A. Times, you can't replace a Murray, a Scully or a Chick Hearn," recalled Fred Wallin. "It's impossible to find somebody like that. Somebody else may have talent, but it's not possible to be in the class of Murray. That doesn't happen in very many lifetimes.

"There's a 'dumbing down' of sorts with words, with these 'shock jock' talk hosts who don't have to write at the same level. They want to be mean, but he was funny. These guys today think it's funny, though they think it is when it's just mean. I kept entire Times sport sections like when O.J. was awarded the Heisman."

The old excellence, the astonishing, the great, was replaced by adherence to mediocrity. A fellow named T.J. Simers was given a column. Nobody yet has figured out what he is trying to accomplish or say. His stock in trade is iconoclasm and sarcastic criticism of the powers that be written in dot-dot-dot manner. This can be a powerful tool. A Pulitzer can be won on such an approach, but the ability to carry it out it is a very difficult margin. Simers does not have that ability. He seems to have only alienated teams and powerful people and, for that matter, a fair number of readers. If Simers was supposed to be some kind of an answer to Murray, whoever made that analysis did not accomplish the task.

Perhaps the Times, like other once-great newspapers, is just waiting it out until the people who remember the great days of yore die off and a new generation of readers unaware of true greatness just accept the new standards. Excellence replaced by the second rate.

"I get up early in the morning," said Jerry West. "There used to be a rush for me to get the paper and read Jim Murray's column. There's no rush today. I'll tell you that."

The odd thing of all this is that all this mediocrity supposedly is being produced by the most educated, intelligent generation of all time. The journalism schools, the film schools, the drama schools, the communications programs, the graduate business institutes; everybody goes to college today. But when the "ink-stained wretches" ran newspapers they were better. When the big screen was dominated by former Marines and roustabouts like Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen, films were larger than life, better than what is being produced today by pampered, self-indulgent stiffs who have studied acting since childhood. The directors? They used to be guys who served with George Patton, like Franklin Schaffner, who directed Patton. USC, UCLA and NYU produced a golden age of film school grads that changed Hollywood, but their influence peaked by 1980, replaced by kids with all the technical skills, but no vision. They certainly are not in touch with the audience any more and have not been for years, because they no longer live in real life! Immigrants with a dream once built businesses. Today's MBA's are clones and drones, with few exceptions. The old days, the days when America was built and thrived in ways no nation ever has; those were the days of Jim Murray. Murray represented it. He wrote about it. He had a pulse for it. Then guys like Shelby Coffey III came along with their lists of words that dare not be spoken or written. But there is uniqueness to America. Serious readers of Alexis de Tocqueville understand it. Amazingly, it does not die. It slowly but surely rises to the top while the politically correct fade into the distance.

"Kids today don't know about history, which is strange because supposedly they live in the Information Age, everybody goes to college, yet the more they learn the less they know," said Linda McCoy-Murray, who is putting together a collection of Jim's columns on women athletes over the years. "They don't know how to do research. Jim knew history and he did his research.

"Once at the Beverly Hilton the maitre d' came by and asked, 'Is that Jim Murray.' I said, 'Yes, do you want to meet him?' and he just said, 'No, no, no,' he was too intimidated. He told me he learned how to read and speak English by reading Jim Murray's columns when he first came to this country. This kind of exchange occurred all the time.

"Jim's favorite books were mysteries. He'd read anything, he was engrossed in books, but his favorites were paperback mysteries. He'd read history since his youngest days, but really loved any mystery. He loved AMC, old movies. He loved Jimmy Cagney, sentimental pictures. He loved David Niven, his elegance and suave ways. He loved stuff like that, like Gigi. He always loved getting dressed up. He never owned jeans, even if we went to Western parties, he never wore sneakers. He didn't like writers coming into the press box with sneakers and long hair. His shirts were always crisp. He loved wearing a tuxedo and going to nice restaurants. We'd go to the Hamburger Hamlet after the Rose Bowl, he enjoyed things like that."

News of Jim Murray's passing rivaled that of any other L.A. deity or icon. He was immediately identified as a man whose influence on Los Angeles rivaled any name thrown out there: George Patton, William Mulholland, the Chandler family, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Chandler, Tom Bradley, Edward Doheny, Darryl F. Zanuck, Cecil B. DeMille, Jack Warner, John Wooden, Vin Scully, Ronald Reagan . . .

"Since 1961, Murray had entertained and enlightened his readers several times each week, although occasionally sidelined for eye or heart surgery," wrote the Times. "His quick-witted style and gentle sarcasm became widely imitated but seldom matched. While becoming famous for one-liners and good-natured jabs at cities across the country, he also was adept at bringing a sports issue into focus with incisive commentary. He won the Associated Press Sports Editors' award for best column writing in 1984, and the same group's Red Smith Award for lifelong achievement in sports writing.

"In one span of 16 years, he was voted national sportswriter of the year 14 times, 12 times in succession."

"Jim Murray is one of the journalists who helped, in a very special way, to bring the Times to greatness," editor Michael Parks said. "His contribution over 37 years is best measured in the delight and pleasure - and even outrage, sometimes - and the insights he brought to two generations of readers."

The Times accurately stated that Murray was in the "Right Place at the Right Time." He was the "king of sports journalism" whose column "coincided with the meteoric rise of all sports and their transformation into industries - and with the ascendancy of Los Angeles as their capital. He was in the right place at the right time with the right words." Bill Plaschke wrote that his obituary "was three times as long as most of his columns."

The letters came pouring in. Amateur Murrays writing about "football teams that more resembled the Wehrmacht" and loving memories of favorite columns, Murray moments, chance meetings with the great scribe. Colleagues, athletes, they all had special Murray memories.

"Maybe because his columns were timeless, I assumed Jim Murray was as well," wrote Frank Newell of Long Beach.

"There are two kinds of sportswriters: Jim Murray and others," wrote Russ Hill of Huntington Beach.

Hal Dion of Los Angeles remembered an elderly woman sitting in a diner with a magnifying glass, shooing him away from her Times, saying, "Son, my morning is reserved for Mr. Murray."

On September 26, 2,500 fans showed up at Dodger Stadium for a final tribute to the great scribe hosted by Bill Dwyre. It was "a star-studded funeral that would have embarrassed this most humble of men," wrote Plaschke. It was also a very heartfelt tribute. In Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the Los Angeles Times, Dennis McDougal wrote that Dorothy Chandler's funeral, while well-attended by a whose who of Los Angeles society, lacked great love. Not so with Jim Murray.

Linda McCoy-Murray knew her husband was loved and admired, but even she was amazed at the out-pouring that flowed after his passing.

"Al Davis was there with Marcus Allen breathing the same air," she recalled. "Mike Tyson was there. People lined the streets of Sunset Boulevard. It was amazing."

The memories came flooding back.

"Some would find a Pulitzer Prize as an ending to a fine career, with a giant exclamation point," recalled Bill Dwyre. "Murray saw it as a confirmation of a fine career and chance to just keep writing sentences."

The great announcer Al Michaels grew up in Los Angeles after moving from Brooklyn. In the mid-1960s he was in high school when he read a Murray column about Cincinnati's freeway, which was being constructed. They had completed about nine feet over a long time, so he wrote, "It must be Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer." In 1971 Michaels was named the Reds' announcer. All he could think to say was, "Where is the cement mixer?" In his three years they only completed another nine feet. "Jim was always ahead of the curve," he joked.

When Murray started his column at the Times it was a "signal moment that was, not only for sports journalism in this area, but for the country, and what it did for the profession. And that's what Jim did. He didn't just write about the game, the dugout, the clubhouse, the press box. Jim saw a grander vision. And for Jim, he always took you on this grand tour, so you learned so much about so many other things and the peripheral things that you wouldn't even think about or thought you cared about."

Murray "was a teacher . . . an educator. And I think growing up and beginning to read him, when he started, he brought to all of us knowledge, for instance, he would write about an athlete and compare him to Caruso. Wow, I thought at that point Caruso was Eileen Eaton's attorney at the Olympic Auditorium. But then you look up Caruso and find out, Italian tenor, one of the greats of all. And I started buying Caruso albums because of Jim Murray."

Michaels said he was "an original" who spawned dozens of imitators. Los Angeles was the first to read him, and like others in the city, Michaels thought he "hadn't seen anything like this. Yet he was able to do it for 37 years." Michaels said when Jim started Dodger Stadium was under construction, the Angels were in their first year of expansion, the Rose Bowl was the bowl game of the day, John McKay at USC and John Wooden at UCLA had not yet started their incredible runs. The Lakers were new, Santa Anita and Hollywood park were drawing 50,000 on Saturday afternoons, and the Rams were drawing 80, 90, 100,000 fans.

Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus were "transcending their sport. Jim was here to chronicle all of it, to guide us through what was a very golden time . . .

"And we had a golden man who did it," Michaels said. He particular loved his golf work. He had an "innate incredible feel." He "astonishes" his readers and could only do it "with a lot of love in your heart." Murray "made us laugh, he made us cry, he could make you mad, he could make you sad." But most important he "made you think." Having Jim Murray was like winning the lottery. He was gone, "But thank God we had him as long as we did."

The final story he ever wrote was about Chris McCarron. Murray was a "true sports legend," recalled McCarron at the Murray memorial. He said that even though Murray never rode a horse he somehow got the feel for it. After Shoemaker rode Ferdinand at the 1986 Kentucky Derby he wrote, "Bill Shoemaker has the hands of a concert pianist. He doesn't ride a horse, he plays a horse."

It gave McCarron a "warm feeling all over my body" because it was so insightful. "Jim could paint a picture so vividly with his words for us to appreciate that he didn't even need, we didn't even need to attend the sporting event just to feel like we were there."

McCarron recalled, "I had dinner with Jim and Linda just two weeks before he passed away. We were down at Rancho Santa Fe during the Del Mar meet. And I used to love to ask Jim questions about Ben Hogan and players like that. And he told me Hogan very seldom, almost rarely, asked any advice of his caddie about a particular shot. And one day at Riviera, Mr. Hogan looked at the caddie and said, uh, 'What do you think we got here?' And the caddie says, 'Mr. Hogan, I think it's 145, maybe 146 yards.' Hogan looked at him and said, 'Well, make up your mind.' That I just love, love stories like that . . .

"However, I can tell you, without reservation, that Jim Murray was the kindest, most considerate and conscientious individual I ever had the pleasure of dealing with." Horse racing was "blessed and privileged to have Jim Murray as a fan and a friend."

Had Jim Murray played for the Raiders, said owner Al Davis, "with all his artistic pride" he would have done so "with poise, with class because he was a star among stars. With all his excellence, with all his artistic touch, with all his warm human compassion, the thing that captured my imagination most about Jim Murray was the fact that while the company man is a connotation, Jim Murray, to me, was an organization man. He played for the Los Angeles Times. His devotion, his dedication, his loyalty, his towering courage were the things that make organizations great. He won for 40 years. 40 years as a columnist.

"We believe that old-fashioned wholesomeness is not passé. When you talk about team of the decades, and we're talking about the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, Jim Murray was the sports columnist of the decades. If a great man is someone who inspires in others the will to be great, the testimonials that came from all over the country, by his contemporaries, the people who are here today, certainly establish Jim as a great man."

Davis recalled speaking on behalf of Murray in the 1980s. He refrained from making speeches but did it for Murray. They shared East Coast backgrounds, the Ebbetts Field connection. "And there were great memories between us because he reeked with tradition, which I loved. I love tradition, I love history . . .

"I was distraught, and I really was, over the news of Jim's passing. I admired the guy. I'm glad I came here today to pay tribute and to see some of the legendary heroes."

Davis chuckled over one of Murray's comedic shots at his town, Oakland. "You pay a dollar to go to San Francisco, but you get a free ride going back to Oakland . . .

"Time never ends for the great ones," Davis continued. "It just gives them a cloak of immortality. We continue to remember him, we continue to love him, and we continue to say, 'Godspeed, Jim Murray, I know you're up there with many great people and I know you'll do your part to make it easy for all to come visit you . . .

"Picture an Olympic procession. Every group would parade around the stadium; the rear of roar of the million fans would be deafening. Leading the group of sports writers would be Jim Murray."

"Well, I tell ya, he picked on the whole state of West Virginia, where I'm from," said Los Angeles Lakers superstar Jerry West. "In 1961, he said we traveled by covered wagon in professional basketball. And Jim was in that covered wagon going to an exhibition game in Morgantown, West Virginia, where I played my college basketball. When we left there, we played an exhibition game, a sellout crowd, people were just absolutely wonderful. And the people in West Virginia, I call them simple, simple in the most wonderful way. It's the place I love . . . All of a sudden Jim Murray became public enemy number one. I was the butt of every joke, and still today am the butt of every joke about West Virginia . . . I have never seen a man talk so badly about a state."

Murray joked about the state flower and people's cars, saying "People were sewing patches on their cars with needle and thread."

"But traveling with him was very unique," recalled West. "I didn't look at him as a sports writer. Most sports writers come into all of us after a particularly tough, tough loss or a tough game. And they'll come in and ask the obvious questions, 'Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? Boy, you were terrible.' Well, I'll tell you what. Jim Murray never had a bad day as a writer. With almost each and every word one of <us> athletes have failed, we failed in front of the whole world, it's not a very good feeling. This man did not fail. I heard Tommy Hawkins say Murray was the Babe Ruth of sports writing. Well, since I'm the basketball person, I will tell you, he is the Michael Jordan of writers. I have watched everyone mimic or copy Jim Murray. Can't do it. Just can't do that. This man is truly a legend . . .

"I had a chance to play golf with Jim early in my life . . . And I asked Jim, I said, 'What kind of golfer are you, Jim?' He said, 'Well, I'm not exactly Ben Hogan.' And he proceeded to prove it that day. When we got in, I said, 'What'd you shoot?' He said, 'I didn't, uh, keep score, I just weighed the score' . . .

"His articles touched so many people, so many athletes. I think we all, in the recesses of our mind, wish that we could write something as poignant and lasting as he's done over the years. . .

"I was more than someone who read him. I considered him a friend."

"The records of Jim Murray will never be equaled, let alone surpassed," said Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn. "He could write about a cockfight, he could write about an automobile race, he could write about anything, and find the heart and soul of the subject and put it into words. I called him a wordsmith. He, unbelievably, wrote columns that many mornings, I got up and ran over and got the Webster's dictionary, brought it back, or I'd read the paragraph, or the whole column twice to make sure that I had the gist of what he was saying, he was so clever with words. That's something that is God given, but it has to be mastered by someone with unbelievable, unequaled ability. And that's what Jim had. He was just unbelievable. He could start your day with a smile.

"I know a lot of people in the sporting world that he didn't think were doing the right thing, but he would never embarrass them by saying it. He would use innuendos that you would get the drift. He had some devil in him."

Don Drysdale's widow, the former UCLA All-American basketball star Ann Meyers, recalled that "in March of '78 I was privileged enough to win the national championship at UCLA, and my name appeared in Jim Murray's column. So for me, that probably was one of the pinnacles as far as an athlete, to have my name with so many others in Jim Murray's column. So it was pretty neat.

". . . And the biggest thing that I really admired was the admiration and the friendship and the respect that Don had with him. You couldn't wait to see the sports page, and see what he had written and what kind of picture he was going to paint for you . . .

"Jim could make you feel and think with their heart . . .

"And, again, Jim took the time to come over before we got teed off and told me stories about Sandy <Koufax> and Don, and to me that was so special, that he would take the time, and he was always coming up to me and doing these things. And for me, he was just that gentleman that was able to do that . . .

"And he not only made the world a better place, he made so many other people's world a better place, and God blessed him with such a special gift, and he was able to share that gift with us. And I've known that he just enriched all of us . . ."  
"Jim was a terrific friend," said golf legend Jack Nicklaus. "The mutual affection we shared grew with each year as we crossed paths on the professional tour and renewed the friendship . . .

"He had a gift for capturing the excitement of sports and making it come alive through the words he put on a page. Jim's contributions to the game of golf and all of sport, for that matter, are immeasurable. The stories he crafted brought many into our game, and his unique and clever wit captured the essence of this gentleman's sport. His talent will never be duplicated, but his qualities as a person are ones which everyone would do well to emulate."

Vin Scully said that if somebody missed an appointment of some kind, but his excuse was time spent with Jim Murray, that was as "valid an alibi as a letter from the chaplain . . .

"I once introduced Jim at a dinner, and I said this from the heart," recalled Scully. "I said that if I ever had to be stranded on a desert island with a man, he would be the man. And I meant it. He was a great raconteur, especially of Irish stories. He was literate and well read without being stuffy. He had a God-given talent that was out there for the world to enjoy, whether he was covering the fields of entertainment or sports. And yet, with all the honors he received, he remained ever humble, somewhat shy and self deprecating.

"Jim Murray was my dear friend, and I sincerely thank God for the gift of his friendship. You know, the great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. And Jim Murray used his life to the extent that he has indeed outlasted it. Wherever and whenever there will be sporting events, and wherever and whenever the media will gather to cover those events, Jim will live on as an icon to emulate. About 35 years ago, Jim and I were playing golf at Riviera – it was his favorite golf course. And somehow we got on the subject, he had just been starting to write the column, and he was talking about mail you receive. And I told him I would always remember the first letter I ever received, and it was addressed to Mr. Ben S. Kelly. From that moment on, I was always either Kell or Kelly. And to go along with that, he then became Murph or Murphy. And we would meet in crowded press rooms and press boxes at all-star games and World Series and a voice would cry out, 'Kell!' And I would turn around and say, 'Murph!' And everybody would look at each other as if to say, 'The poor devils don't even know their own last names' . . .

"You know, Shakespeare said it best, as he usually did, and when he wrote it, he might very well have been writing about Jim Murray. He wrote, 'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'This was a man.' "

Jim passed away on August 16, but already had a book in the pipeline. The Last of the Best (Los Angeles Times Books) was a collection of columns going back to 1990. It was the fourth book containing Jim Murray columns.

In the introduction, Bill Dwyre recalled that at the Murray memorial, Jerry West said it was his wish that a book containing "every column Jim Murray ever wrote," be published. At the time, The Last of the Best was already within days of going to press.

"He told the Indy 500 people to begin their race with the call: 'gentlemen, start your coffins,' " wrote Dwyre.

"He speculated that the interminably slow progress on building the freeway outside the new stadium in Cincinnati was because 'it was Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer.'

"He purified jockey Bill Shoemaker with a sentence that said it all: 'Shoemaker was born two pounds, seven ounces and it was the only edge he ever needed in life.'

"And he went to a boxing weigh-in and gave the readers the real truth with his own quick jab: 'Buster Douglas looked like something that should be floating over a Thanksgiving Day parade.'

"Jim Murray's loss is tremendous because he won't be writing any new words. But his legacy is tremendous because he left us with so many wonderful old ones."

Tom Lasorda wrote the foreword to the book.

"I was out of town that day in 1990 when I heard that Jim Murray had won the Pulitzer Prize," wrote Lasorda. "When I called home that night, it was the first thing my wife wanted to talk about. She was really excited.

"She said that the first thing Jim had said, as he was being quoted in the press, was 'I never thought you could win the Pulitzer Prize just for quoting Tommy Lasorda correctly.' I remember thinking, 'Wow, what an honor. I'm the first person he talked about.

"We were such good friends. I loved just being around him, listening to him, learning from him. I grew up in the East, reading Jimmy Cannon and Red Smith. And then I came to California and started to read Jim Murray. And to my mind, he was the height of them all.

"I remember when he used to come into the clubhouse, looking for a column. Back then, the players really knew him, who he was. He would walk in that clubhouse and things would change immediately. He'd ask me who would make a good column, and I'd suggest somebody. Then I'd go get the player and bring him into my office and close the door and say, 'Here, this is Jim Murray. Use my office. Take all the time you want.' Being interviewed by Jim Murray was like getting an audience with the Pope."

Los Angeles Times Books released The Great Ones in 1999. It was an inspired decision, to release many of his best columns going back to the 1960s. Some were in previous books, but most were out of print or hard to find.

"Jim Murray was blessed not only with a uniquely entertaining writing style but a keen grasp of the role that athletes and athletic competition play in society," the book's dustcover read.

"Only Murray could string together libraries of metaphors and then neatly cap them off with an insightful, incisive, and hilarious, one-liner. Only Murray knew, instinctively, that we wanted to view athletes like artists performing and creating at the highest levels.

"It is well worth noting that the ease with which Murray wrote – or at least the ease with which we all are able to read him – has the natural grace and fluidity that he admired in so many of the athletes about whom he wrote.

"How many times did he compare these men and women to such magnificent artists as Michelangelo, Picasso, Baryshnikov, Nijinsky, Mozart and Caruso? The comparisons weren't idle exercises in the use of the superlative. Rather they were Murray's way of singling out what he most cared about; athletics performed with seemingly effortlessly mastery."

Arnold Palmer wrote the foreword.

"One of the pleasures I always had when I came to Los Angeles was reading Jim Murray in the Times," Palmer wrote. "Whether he was writing about baseball or boxing, football or golf, I knew I would get a few laughs from his column before I went out to the course . . .

"Jim was very kind to me in print, but he had such a way with words, he could never resist a good line. He had a million of them, and some of them came at my expense."

One very nice column Palmer pointed out also contained such disclaimers as, "You watch Arnie and he looks like a guy you'd slicker into a double-press bet on the outgoing nine . . . You'd swear he got his swing out of a Sears Roebuck catalogue."

"I never took offense at such remarks; I knew Jim Murray was honestly writing what he saw, not so much with his eyes but with the incredible perception he possessed about people," continued Palmer. "That was what made him special.

"After a poor drive at Rancho Park during the L.A. Open years ago, I stood over a very difficult second shot. I turned to Jim standing nearby and said, 'Well, Jim, what would your beloved Ben Hogan do in this situation?'

"Jim looked at me and said, 'Hogan would never be in this situation.' "

Murray had written "nobody played golf the way Palmer did," but Palmer wrote, "I've often thought nobody ever wrote a column the way Jim Murray did. He could write about anything, but the best thing he did was tell stories about the people who made sports what it is. Can there be a more fitting combination than one of the best sports writers of our time writing about some of the best of the sports personalities he covered?

"Jim is gone now, but the library he left behind remains. I'm proud to be part of it."

Times assistant sports editor Mike James helped compile the book.

"What Jim did better than anyone and what made him connect with athletes and fans alike was to tell the personal stories of the competitors involved in these events: their hopes, motivations, styles, dreams and foibles. In sum, their lives as human beings," he wrote.

In 2003 Linda McCoy-Murray compiled Quotable Jim Murray (TowleHouse Publishing). It was a wonderful little "handbook" that seemed to encapsulate the essence of her late husband. The book contained selected quotations by the great scribe, separated into different chapters on auto racing, baseball, basketball, other sports, then "Different Arenas," capturing Jim's humor, social awareness, and unique view of everything from women in the clubhouse to, of course, different cities. But perhaps the book's best feature was a chapter titled, "And They Said."

It captured what many in and out of the sports world said about Jim Murray. It also featured letters written to him, often from celebrities and people famous beyond sports.

"Jim Murray was a legendary sports columnist who transcended the games and contests he covered," it read on the dustcover. "He was a maestro with words, whose knack for turning witty phrases capturing the essence of his subjects was unprecedented and unmatched.

"14 times he was named Sportswriter of the Year. In 1987 Murray was elected to the writer's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and in 1990 he won the coveted Pulitzer Prize. He was proof of the long-held belief that readers can often find a newspaper's best writing on the sports pages.

"Murray wrote about 10,000 columns as a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, in addition to writing magazine articles and giving speeches. For many years his popular columns ran in dozens of newspapers nationwide, giving him an audience of millions of sports fans who found his style as entertaining as his content was informative. Everyone has a favorite Jim Murray one-liner, ranging from his Indianapolis 500 classic 'Gentlemen, start your coffins,' to his assessment of golf: 'It's not a sport, it's bondage. An obsession. A boulevard of broken dreams.' "

"To call Jim Murray a writer is like calling Babe Ruth a ballplayer, the Grand Canyon a rock garden," wrote long time sports personality Roy Firestone in the foreword.

"I never thought of Jim Murray as a sportswriter. I always thought he was an observer of life who used sports as a vehicle; a prism from which he could measure and reflect character, integrity, honor, outrage, indignity, success, social ills, and, of course, humor . . .

"The truth is nobody ever wrote better, or more eloquently, about anything for longer . . . no one ever did it with a more self-effacing, pugnacious, yet graceful style, without self-celebration, than Jim Murray.

"He was outrageous in his descriptive prose at times, but he never poised, he never postured.

"Jim Murray was the most disproportionally humble man who ever rode his fingers across a royal keyboard. He could've written from Mt. Olympus, yet you never got the feeling that he ever felt he was anything more than a guy from down the block . . .

"He was better than the games themselves.

"He wrote of the exalted, and he wrote of the broken shells of humanity.

"He wrote about glory, and he wrote about dysfunction . . . Jim Murray wrote about the spirit in all of us, and about our own wretchedness, too!

"He could make us proud, and he could shame us . . .  
"The good news is that Jim Murray's words live forever, and through them, so does he!!"

"Picking and choosing the quotes for this book was fun, yet extremely challenging, as it was indeed a smorgasbord," wrote Linda McCoy-Murray in the introduction. "I'm certain many quotes were missed . . .

"Jim's loyal readers couldn't wait to wake to Jim Murray three or four times a week. I woke up to Jim Murray every morning. There were volumes of quotables that passed between us in the last dozen years of our life together. For instance, as an observer of human behavior, Jim often viewed my high energy and constant involvement in projects with, using my maiden name for emphasis, 'My God, Miss Carothers, don't you ever put it in the hangar?

"Jim was honored at a black-tie dinner, where, from the podium, he sweetly told the filled-to-capacity International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, 'Linda brought three little words into my life . . is Linda there?"

Linda wrote that when she dressed for social events, Jim would ask, "Can't you wear something a little more nunish?"

"My prodding Jim to drink more water only incited his, 'I've never known anyone to drink as much water as you do. You drink Lake Erie every day!'

"During our 1992 visit to a Hindu shrine in Bali, a monkey attacked me. Of that experience, Jim wrote a very funny column saying, 'I thought for a moment he was going to carry her <Linda> up the Empire State Building, and I would have to call out fighter planes to get her back – but all he wanted was the bottle of water under her arm.' For months after he called me Fay Wray. Buy then he also called me Luther Burbank the minute I put my hands in dirt. He was 24/7 with Murryisms.

"The most endearing personal quote came in a bowling column he penned four days after our long-awaited marriage in March 1997, noting, 'We were both free agents – 12 and a half years – and came in well under the salary cap.' In closing he wrote, 'Jerry Reinsdorf thinks he pulled the coup of the year signing Albert Belle for the White Sox. Forgetaboutit! I signed the real pennant winner. The Unreal McCoy. I wish I could have invited you all to the wedding, but home plate at Dodger Stadium was busy."

"Jim Murray the writer was Jim Murray the man – clever, humorous, unbelievably knowledgeable, insightful, and caring," said Jack Nicklaus. "How proud I will always be to have called him my friend."

"To have Jim write about you, that felt as great as having your name engraved on a trophy," said Jeff Sluman.

"You made me sound better than I am," said Jim Colbert.

U.S. Open women's champion Meg Mallon was asked who she'd like to have dinner with. She replied Babe Didrikson, Mother Teresa, Lou Gehrig, and Jim Murray because "he'd be able to capture the moment on paper."

"Murray never strikes out and is not a prize – but the prize – of our profession," said longtime Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich.

"You do the Los Angeles Times proud year after year with or without being named top sportswriter by your peers, but 13 wins is rather phenomenal," said Otis Chandler.

Murray "for 37 years, he has delighted, educated, amused, and outraged readers in the Times," said Michael Parks of his lifetime achievement award in 1998. "The lightness of his writing belies the depth of his thought. He writes about sports, yes, but he is really writing about life."

"They should hang a collection of his columns in the Smithsonian," said Woody Woodburn of the Daily Breeze in Torrance.

"I felt like an art student perched on Michelangelo's palette," remarked Edwin Pope of the Miami Herald on being befriended by Murray.

"Jim was a legend to everybody but himself," said Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Morning News, and "he was the toughest SOB I've ever known."

"For the younger guy in the business, we wanted to be in awe of him, but he wouldn't let us," recalled Bob Verdi of the Chicago Tribune.

"It didn't matter if you were the third-string tennis writer for the Modesto News, when you left Murray you were never quite sure which one of you was the legend," recalled Rick Reilly.

"In all those years of writing all his elegant, funny, thoughtful columns, Murray never lost anybody," said fellow Times writer Thomas Bonk.

When a cab driver drove through the Baltimore streets for an hour looking for a restaurant, Murray told him, "Cabbie, take us to a cab," recalled Mal Florence.

"Damn, that guy was good," said Scott Ostler. "And not a jerk about it. Jim was as impressed with his own writing as he was with the nightlife in Minneapolis. It was a pleasure – and honor for me – to sit next to him in the press box."

"My morning coffee will never be the same without Jim Murray's column," said Merv Griffin.

I "savored every word," said Mario Andretti, who "always read his words with a mixture of envy and admiration – wishing that I had half the command of language and thoughtful way of making points that he did."

"It's doubtful that any athlete he wrote about achieved as much greatness against adversity as he did," said Dan Foster.

"Solemnity was invariably a stranger in the words of Jim Murray," wrote Dan Freeman of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Murray was "the sultan of thought," said Mike Downey, a Times sports writer. "Jim brought a perspective to his work that most of us trying to work the same beat can't, providing a reminder that there was a Doris Day before there was a Demi Moore, an Elgin Baylor before Magic Johnson, an Art Aragon before an Oscar De La Hoya, a Bob Waterfield before a John Elway," said Randy Harvey of the Times.

"I've never known anyone so gifted who took himself less seriously," said respected sports columnist Skip Bayless. "No one could write the way he could. Yet he was an even better person than a columnist."

"He was an example of artistry so unique that it's not well imitated," wrote Bob Ryan in the Boston Globe.

"Reading Jim was always a treat, but knowing him was really fun," recalled longtime tennis commentator Bud Collins.

"He made his readers laugh and cry, all the while peppering them with enough one-liners to land you a week at the Palace," recalled Vin Scully. "He leveled cities with tongue-in-cheek descriptions, humanized by hyperbole and punctured the pompous with his literary lance, every day he faced the same challenge, the same blank piece of paper tauntingly unfurled and hanging out of the typewriter like a mocking tongue, daring him to be different, fresh, funny, and incisive. And every day for more than 37 years, Jim Murray not only accepted that challenge."

Veteran sports writer Frank Deford said, ''He could be brutal. But there was so much humor, people didn't get mad about it.''

****

Murray may be a part of our past, but technology makes him more than accessible. The Internet makes it very easy to find many of his columns on-line, as well as many of the things written about him. One web link, sportsjournalists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45896.35;wap2, produced a series of Murryisms and pieces written about him. It appears to include Rick Reilly's 1986 Sports Illustrated human interest feature after the tragedies of blindness, Ricky's and then Gerry's passing:

"Arnold Palmer had two of them bronzed. Jack Nicklaus calls them 'a breath of fresh air.' Groucho Marx liked them enough to write to him. Bobby Knight once framed one, which is something like getting Billy Graham to spring for drinks.

"Since 1961, a Jim Murray column in the Los Angeles Times has been quite often a wonderful thing. (He's carried by more than 80 newspapers today and at one time was in more than 150.) Now 66, Murray has been cranking out the best-written sports column this side (some say that side) of Red Smith. But if a Smith column was like sitting around Toots Shor and swapping stories over a few beers, a Murray column is the floor show, a setup line and a rim shot, a corner of the sports section where a fighter doesn't just get beaten up, he becomes 'sort of a complicated blood clot.' Where golfers are not athletes, they're 'outdoor pool sharks.' And where Indy is not just a dangerous car race, it's 'the run for the lilies.'

"In press boxes Murray would mumble and fuss that he had no angle, sigh heavily and then, when he had finished his column, no matter how good it was, he would always slide back in his chair and say, 'Well, fooled 'em again.'

"Murray must have fooled all the people all the time, because in one stretch of 16 years he won the National Sportswriter of the Year award 14 times, including 12 years in a row. Have you ever heard of anybody winning 12 anythings in a row?

"After a Lakers playoff game against the Supersonics in 1979, Muhammad Ali ran into Murray outside the locker room and said, 'Jim Murray! Jim Murray! The greatest sports writer of all time!'

"Which leaves only one question.

"Was it worth it?"

"In 1961 he jumped to the L.A. Times, where he was ready to take on the daily world of sports. Unfortunately, that world was not ready to take him on."

"Back in 1961, before the Computer Age, writers on the road would type hard copy and Western Union would wire it to the home papers. Except for Murray's stuff. The guys from Western Union would come back to Jim looking befuddled.

" 'Hey, Murray,' they would ask, 'you sure you want to say this?'

"Says Murray, 'I think they kept waiting for "and then, his bat flashing in the sun, the Bambino belted a four-ply swat," and it never came.'

"What came instead were one-line snapshots that a hundred fulminations couldn't top. Elgin Baylor was 'as unstoppable as a woman's tears.' Dodger manager Walt Alston would 'order corn on the cob in a Paris restaurant.' It was the kind of stuff that the guy with a stopwatch hanging from his neck hated, but almost everybody else liked - especially women. 'I love your column,' one female fan wrote him, 'even when I don't know what you're talking about.' "

"Murray and nuclear waste dumps have a lot in common. Everybody likes them until one shows up in the backyard.

"Take the state of Iowa. When the University of Iowa got stuck on its ear in the Rose Bowl this year, Murray felt for the visiting vanquished:

" 'I mean, you're going to have to start covering your eyes when these guys come to town in the family Winnebago with their pacemakers and the chicken salad . . . They're going home, so to speak, with a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge and a watch that loses an hour a day and turns green on their arm.'

"That ruffled Iowans so much that two weeks later Governor Terry Branstad began his state of the state message (as if he didn't have more pressing issues) with a comment for Murray: 'Jim, we're proud to be Iowans . . . ' the Governor said. 'We're tough and we're coming back.'

"No, no, no, Governor! You're taking it all wrong. To have your nose tweaked by Murray is to be hockey-pucked by Don Rickles. Look on it as a privilege. You're one of the lucky ones. Some people roast celebs. Murray roasts America. He has zinged and zapped every place from Detroit (' . . . should be left on the doorstep for the Salvation Army'), to Munich, West Germany ('Akron with a crewcut!'). In fact, Murray maintains Spokane once got to feeling neglected and wrote in asking for the treatment. Always helpful, Murray wrote: 'The trouble with Spokane . . . is that there's nothing to do after 10 o'clock. In the morning. But it's a nice place to go for breakfast.'

"Besides, if Murray had dropped dead as thousands have asked him to, sports wouldn't be the same. He has championed dozens of causes, many as stark as black and white, and they've made a difference in the nation's landscape. It was Murray's badgering of The Masters, for instance, that helped that tournament change its Caucasians-only stance: 'It would be nice to have a black American at Augusta in something other than a coverall . . .'

"He was incredulous that Satchel Paige was having difficulty being inducted into the Hall of Fame: 'Either let him in the front of the Hall - or move the damn thing to Mississippi.'

"He championed the cause of the beleaguered, retired Joe Louis: 'As an economic entity, Joe Louis disappeared into a hole years ago and pulled it in after him. He cannot tunnel out in his lifetime. He owes the United States more than some European allies.' "

"Despite eye problems and heart surgery in past years. Mr. Murray was still writing his column regularly, puncturing a subject's pomposity or skewering cities . . "This is the Jim Murray who once ripped the United States Golf Association for a setting up a weak U.S. Open course in Merion, Pennsylvania, and then raced to the press tent after the first day of competition to write that he was wrong.

"This is the Jim Murray who would stand up on press row after sending his column and sheepishly announce 'Fooled 'em again.'

"But if he really thought he didn't matter, then he was only fooling himself.

"Folks still remember how he laughed at the NBA.

" 'One massive pituitary gland.'

"How he chuckled at USC's beating Notre Dame.

" 'The crowd at the Coliseum could not have been more surprised if the Christian had begun eating the Lions.'

"And how he protested the resumption of the 1972 Munich Olympics after the terrorist killings at the Games.

" 'This was supposed to be a track meet, not a war . . . How can they have a decathlon around the blood stains, run the 1,500 over graves?'

One-on-one with Bill Dwyre

Babe Ruth had a manager. His name was Miller Huggins. Joe McCarthy managed Joe DiMaggio. Hank Aaron played under a guy named Fred Haney. Willie Mays toiled under men named Herman Franks and Clyde King.

Jim Murray had an editor. His name was Bill Dwyre. Dwyre "managed" a team of superstars, the Los Angeles Times sports section of the golden age, the 1980s and 1990s. It was like Miller Huggins filling out a line-up card each day with the Murderer's Row at his disposal. Murray was his "clean-up" guy. The newspaper version of George Steinbrenner, Otis Chandler gave him a near-unlimited budget to produce a section unequalled before or since.

A Wisconsin native, Notre Dame graduate and former sports writer who covered Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Milwaukee before coming west as Murray did, he provided an exclusive interview for this book.

Q: When did you become sports editor of the Los Angeles Times?

A: June of 1981.

Q: Did you ever have reason to change anything Jim Murray wrote?

A: Once or twice Jim got overly sexist, old guy stuff. We talked about it, very minor stuff, maybe two or three items in 15 or 20 years.

Q: Did any other writers ever try to imitate Murray, and who came the closest to him?

A: Every other writer of that day tried to imitate him. The most successful was Rick Reilly, who adored him, but nobody's Murray. Bad imitations of him were horrible and there were plenty of those. Scott Ostler was clever, quick and funny. He always was quick with the lines, but I would not say he really "imitated" Murray. There was nobody like Jim Murray.

Q: Did Murray and Otis Chandler have a good relationship?

A: Yes, Otis was in on the general hiring of Murray. It was down to Murray and Mel Durslag, then with the Los Angeles Herald-Express. He liked something about Murray. Durslag was better known as a writer. He was syndicated whereby Jim was with Sports Illustrated, but not featured as a "star" yet. Durslag was under contract and getting him to come over was problematic, which was a reason he was not hired, but as I recall Otis Chandler settled on Jim Murray and got him.

Q: Did you ever discuss politics with Murray? Was he a Republican or a Democrat?

A: Never had to. His politics were the same as mine. He would not go to The Masters because of their policies towards black membership. He would not soften that stance until they came around to change. Based on his views, mainly regarding race in the civil rights era, I would say he was a "liberal Democrat" from the standpoint of social issues. He was a champion of human rights. He may well have been a conservative Republican when it came to money.

Q: Did you ever discuss Christianity with Murray and was he open about his faith? Did you ever see Murray's religion and/or politics in his columns by reading between the lines?

A: Never. He was like me a basic Irish Catholic, although I'm not sure what that means. He discussed the death of his son Ricky with me, but in that respect he was a typical, stoic Irishman. He did not open up or psychoanalyze himself. I spoke to him a lot about his son's death, but these were conversations between two stoic Irish Catholic guys.

Q: Jim was a traditionalist. He moved from Malibu to Brentwood in part because of the drug scene that affected his family. Did he ever complain to you about the attitude of Malibu residents, who may have been as permissive as their own kids, who never responded to his efforts to do something about rampant drug use?

A: Yes, he did. He did make the move partly for that reason. His home was perched near where the bootleggers once unloaded Prohibition booze and then in his day was where drug smugglers came to shore. He saw it and did not like it. He sold his house to the rock star Bob Dylan. Dylan was like Murray viewed as a "poet," and perhaps Jim thought he was selling to a kindred spirit. He specifically told Dylan he would only sell his house if he promised to keep it as it was, it had special meaning to him, the den overlooking the ocean, you know. A while later Murray drove out there and Dylan just tore it up, changed the whole landscape. Murray despised him for that. There were only two guys Jim Murray really disliked. One was Bob Dylan, and the other was his namesake, Eddie Murray of the Dodgers. He was cantankerous and uncommunicative.

Q: Ben Hogan was his favorite subject to interview and write about. After Hogan who else was there?

A: Ben Hogan he loved, in that he came as close to having control over the game as anybody. There's the famed story where he asks his caddy a question, and the caddy says, "138 or 139 yards," and Hogan replies, "Well, which one is it, 138 or 139 yards?" Murray loved that kind of stuff

Koufax was high on his list. He was friends with Tommy Lasorda. He loved Jerry West, who was such a figure of psyche as I wrote about as well. But he loved writing about Elgin Baylor. How cheap he was, stuff he went through on the road. Baylor was a man of hype and that sort of thing triggered his greatest writing. Murray was like any other writer in that his best work came when his subject was great.

He always provided a quality column, but if he wrote about a gymnast or rower, unless there was something excessive in excellence or stupidity, his best stuff came when he was very interested in a great athlete like Elgin Baylor, to name just one. Therein came the confluence of best writing about the best: Jim Murray in his prime writing about Willie Mays in his prime. I mean, this is the essence of his art. Tom Seaver, greatness, things that inspired him. The biggest sports, the most well known stars, the biggest stages were where he excelled, although unquestionably he was responsible for up-grading some sports figures through his sheer talent, Al Scates being an example. "Al Scates is to volleyball what Napoleon is to artillery."

Q: Did Jim ever have bad days?

A: There were many times he'd have bad days, when I would cringe at something he wrote. You mentioned one, when he went overboard about Frank Howard. "When Howard arrives in town they call in the Army . . . Howard wasn't born, he was founded . . . when Howard shows up Fay Wray goes into hiding . . . Howard's homers are not measured by tape measure but by aerial photography . . ." So sometimes he went overboard, but Jim Murray "batted .920."

Sure, the subject matter makes or breaks the column. Writing about some gymnast might not have interested him as much as Roberto Clemente, but over the years he was on the money almost every time. His "bad" columns can be counted on one hand.

Q: In my humble opinion – and maybe it's because I wrote the book One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation – Jim's best column was his September 13, 1970 column on that game, where he wrote, "We welcomed the sovereign state of Alabama into the Union yesterday . . . the Constitution was ratified . . ." that kind of thing. If I had to ask you to rate his top 20 columns where would you put that and what else comes to mind?

A: I certainly read that column and agree it's in the top 20. His best was when his wife Gerry passed away, his second best was when he lost his eye. It would be tough for me to get there, to a top 20. Those two were 10-plus, the rest were 9.9s.

Q: Did you know his colleague Jeff Prugh, who was with him the weekend at Birmingham?

A: I just missed Prugh, Ron Rappaport, some of those guys. I knew Jeff a bit from calling in on occasion, Dwight Chapin, some went up to the San Francisco Chronicle. After Otis Chandler left there were shake-ups.

Q: Prugh was a close friend of mine who played a major role in helping me get my career off the ground, and in many ways it was his reminiscences of Jim that inspired this book. He passed away too young and shockingly unexpectedly. You answered my next question, which was, What were two or three of your favorite Murray columns? To what extent did Murray separate himself from Eastern writers like Cannon, Breslin, Smith?

A: He was more of a stylist. All those guys were great and had their own style, their own distinct style, but there was nobody like Murray. We would enter his columns into contests with no headline or by-line, but they'd win every time. There was no hiding him, you knew it was Jim Murray. Breslin had his style, but he was more of an "articulate reprobate" filled with iconoclasm and opinions.

Jim had opinions but he enjoyed the art and craft more than pushing his opinions down your throat. When he saw something he was passionate about, a cause, he could slice and dice more effectively than anybody in the country.

Q: A subliminal affect!

A: He didn't just have a hammer in his hand like Bill Plaschke, who writes about people like that sometimes. Jim wrote about people. He made people interesting.

Q: That reminds me of something. In the early 1960s the Times space writer wrote a lengthy piece about some new NASA invention that was going to give us the edge over the Soviets, but Jim just said it was boring. The space writer looked at him like he was crazy, this was an important break-through, but Jim learned his journalism from Henry Luce at Time. Luce popularized the space program by featuring his astronauts with large photo spreads of their families and the launches, photo-heavy, in Life magazine.

A: Well, that's exactly right. If he was pissed over an issue he'd call me and say, "You know, the fact this-or-that happened is because of this-or-that." So I knew when that happened a great column was in the works. Four or five days would pass and all the other columnists and pundits would weigh in, then after a big discussion he'd think about it and always, after listening to all the turkeys, he'd think about it, and he'd write a column that was just head and shoulders in thought above all the other commentary. I'd read this and just say to myself, "I wish I'd think about things like that," or "I wish I'd have thought of that." But everybody else thought about an issue with only 10 percent of the breadth and scope of Jim Murray.

Q: If L.A. erected a "Mt. Rushmore" in the Santa Monica Mountains or on Mt. Wilson, what five or six people would you vote to be depicted there?

A: Tom Bradley, Jim Murray, Vin Scully, Dorothy Chandler, John Wooden.

Q: How important was the sports section in separating the Times from competitors?

A: The sports section separated the paper from other papers. This may sound self-serving but it was - and still is, relatively - an incredibly good product. It's not as good as it once was. We all know that. What we did was not to be arrogant about sports. We were intelligent. The section never looked down its nose upon sports. We spent money on sports. In the hey day, the New York Times did not spend money comparably, but our attitude, our approach separated us from them.

This was one of the ways Otis Chandler, a former jock, saw the growth of the paper. I did the 1984 Olympics. That's why they brought me in. The New York Times thought our approach was excessive, but Otis didn't care. I lived during the golden age of that paper. We were not provincial, while everything about the New York Times sports section, ironically, was provincial. They were living in the past, thinking of New York City as the sports capitol, but that was a thing of the past and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics symbolized that. Otis knew it and spent money to take full advantage of that. It was our finest hour.

Today, the paper worships at the altar of the Dodgers, Lakers and USC. There is no space now to add what we used to do. We've reverted to being the opposite of what we were then. We currently do that but in the old days we covered all that and more, we covered all sports. The '84 Olympics was our masterpiece. We set the agenda. Every day in that era we produced a massive volume of sports information every day. Daily for years we produced the best sports stories anywhere with little regard for length or space or money constraints. Otis just said, "Keep going, kid."

Q: In your honest opinion did the L.A. Times ever ascend to being the "best newspaper in the world"?

A: Yes. In the world? I can say for sure we were the best in the country. I guess I'd say it had to be in the 1980s and early 1990s. Maybe the London Times. I can't say because of the language barrier, who knows, maybe some of the Chinese papers were equal . . .

Q: Well, perhaps I'm just an American jingoist, but first of all I'd eliminate any Chinese papers due to total government censorship. I've read the London Times. It's stuffy. If it's close, the L.A. Times sports section makes the difference.

A: Of course, the Chinese papers are a bad example. Nobody was our equal in sports. We were the best in the country. We were doing everything right back then. The talent was astounding: Jim Murray, Mike Downey, Rick Reilly, Scott Ostler, Randy Harvey, Mike Littwin, Tom Bonk, Chris Dufresne, Bill Plaschke. The talent was so deep. Just great guys. Regarding the question, we had just as many international bureaus as any other paper. I think our coverage of a variety of subjects was as in-depth and excellent as anybody. The paper was very well produced. Over time, as the Tribune bought us out, that changed dramatically, but overall for a time there yes, we were number one.

Q: Do you know three or four of Murray's favorites books/authors?

A: Wow, I do not. I would be speculating.

Q: When Murray left, did something happen to the paper that could never be replaced?

A: That's the heart of it. He was a voice. He could not be a complete voice as a sports writer, but he was a singular voice of the paper. Later Steve Lopez came the closest to matching that voice, but it's a long gap and we do not have that kind of voice anymore.

I've never seen a columnist as revered as Murray. His son Teddy did not have his ambition, but he was the same way as Jim. In the middle of a conversation he'd break into an Irish story like Jim. In the latter years, after the Pulitzer, there'd be so many calls for Jim to make speeches, I tried to get Teddy to make some to sub for his father.

For Jim towards the end, it was weighing on him. After the Pulitzer there were so many calls for speeches. I'd call him and ask if he'd like to speak to the Pacoima Rotary, and eventually he just had to say no, but I gave them an excuse. I'd say it was against company policy, and they'd have to run it past the sports editor. I'd look it over and if Jim said no, I'd tell them I'd decided no.

In some cases I changed it and made it a question-and-answer, where I would get the time to monitor the speech. I spent a lot of time bonding with Jim, driving to Orange County or wherever we went. It was like father and son, the last five or six years of his life. Today, there's nothing like it. I'd have Bill Plaschke or T.J. Simers getting on my ass. I'd listen to 'em complain and say, "How do I get ahead?"

Being with Jim was the finest time in my life. He had the strength of his convictions. He would not want to have to write about Kobe Bryant every day. He knew that if you wrote about the same thing you'd lose the truck drivers. Now we're in the wrong direction, stuck on the same themes. Jim could write about a little old lady who won the 1908 Wimbledon and it was interesting, he didn't need that days' argument or controversy to pound on over and over.

Later I'd have Simers always telling me what I'm doing wrong. I got tired of worshipping at the altar of T.J. Simers and the Lakers. The fact is that sports has great characters. Jim wrote about people. That's what attracted me to him. He was so smart. I remember at the Barcelona Olympics. My wife and I would go off somewhere with the translator. Later we would find Jim at breakfast. He'd sit down and have done the New York Times crossword puzzle in 10 minutes.

There's one more story. It was 1986-87, the Super Bowl played at the Rose Bowl between the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos. In those days the Super Bowl was played at the Rose Bowl regularly, and we were spending money like there was no tomorrow. We wanted something different, so I was authorized to hire a prominent non-sports writer to write articles from the Super Bowl, a prominent, world-class author. I hired Leon Uris, who wrote Exodus about the creation of the state of Israel. I think we paid him $5,000 apiece for 3,000 words each.

So we send him down to Newport Beach where the teams trained, and we brought in his young wife to shoot photos, and he wrote some advance pieces. Now we get to the day of the game. Uris is sitting in the press box. We've got 15 people covering every angle. Uris is sitting next to Jack Smith and Jim Murray, two esteemed writers. The Broncos lost big to the Giants.

I'm running around, making sure I don't have guys writing the same thing. Everything's running smooth except for Uris. I look over and I see him over there next to Murray, typing and humming away. Murray and Smith, two pros in their element. Finally, the game ends, the interviews are conducted, and it's getting towards deadline. Smith and Murray are finished and packed. I go to Uris, I ask how he's doing. He's got three or four graphs. He just looks up at me and says, "I can't do this."

This guy wrote long novels that took years, two or three years in some cases, research and contemplation, but he was too intimidated by Jim Murray. Murray had trouble seeing, the game was boring, and Uris sat next to him all game while Jim tried to come up with a column. Then all of a sudden when the heat was on Jim just pounded one out and Uris is sitting there, unbelievably intimidated. He spent two or three years to write the kind of stuff he did. I had to write the last 18 graphs for him. Considering his normal material, and Jim's penchant for historical and Biblical references, he should have written something like, "As with the parting of the Red Sea the Denver Broncos' defense opened up while the New York Giants proceeded to pass through, but when John Elway and Denver tried to advance they were swallowed up by waves of Bill Parcels' defenders . . ."

Q: What was the general attitude at the Times after the Chandler admonition over the Staples deal, and especially after the sale to the Tribune? Was there a feeling that something was lost that could never be regained?

A: We did not think that way at the time. We were so used to success and unable to imagine the horrors ahead. Now we're living them, but at the time we had no frame of reference as to what might come up when we were purchased.

Q: Discuss Murray, the rivalry with San Francisco, and San Francisco's notion of inferiority.

A: He loved San Francisco, but it was a way of poking fun at something. San Francisco amused him. For years they came up with reasons why they lost sporting events, rationalizing that it was okay to lose because winning was somehow "too American." Later when Joe Montana came along that dynamic changed, but before that San Francisco thought themselves too sophisticated to care about winning. Well, my, you talk about a fastball down the middle for Jim Murray! He loved to write about cities, like the stuff he did with Cincinnati. I was with him at a 1994 benefit and he trashed Cincinnati, all in good fun. Some of his best lines came in those columns.

But San Francisco! Anything that was pompous, arrogant, people who walked around with an air of superiority about them, well these were all reasons for Jim to make fun of them. His intellect was so great and he just sliced and diced these people down to size.

Q: You were like the Miller Huggins or Casey Stengel of sports editors, managing superstars, the Babe Ruths and Mickey Mantles of your profession. What a ride it was for you.

A: For a kid from Wisconsin, I could not have been more blessed. I arrived in Los Angeles and Otis Chandler just said, "Go to it, kid."

Famous last words

On Branch Rickey

"Rickey had always been held to be the second Great Emancipator but, like the first one, he had a double motive. The first wanted to win a war. The second wanted to win a pennant."

. . .

Rickey "could recognize a great player from the window of a moving train."

On Leo Durocher

Branch Rickey said, "Leo Durocher is a mental hoodlum with the infinite capacity for taking a bad situation and immediately making it infinitely worse."

. . .

"Leo's problem was, as Runyon said of someone else, he always saw life as eight-to-five against."

. . .

When he did not get into the Hall of Fame while alive, "Leo, inevitably, finished last himself."

On Walter O'Malley

O'Malley "followed his customers."

. . .

"O'Malley had about as high a regard for the freedom of the press as Thomas Jefferson."

. . .

Of O'Malley's handling of Dodgers players, "I always thought he regarded them as obstreperous children, fiscally irresponsible, functionally illiterate and as ineducable and temperamental as horses."

. . .

"A Dodger player, in the O'Malley view, always came out looking like a Republican candidate for the Senate. He wore a tie, took his hat off in elevators and, if possible, went to mass on Sundays."

On Sandy Koufax

Jim Davenport was asked about hitting against Sandy: "Jim, with Koufax, do you look for the fastball?" "Oh, (deleted), yeah," shot back Davenport. "The curveball you can't hit anyway!"

. . .

"But, Sandy always seemed to be running from something."

On Don Drysdale

With the hitters in the league Drysdale "could lose an election to Castro." Hitting him is like facing "hand grenades – with the pins out."

On Maury Wills

"Maury Wills was a trendsetter but he was, ultimately, a baseball tragedy . . .

"Wills was the darling of Hollywood. He was more than that to the screen actress Doris Day . . . She was smitten with Maury and began lavishing expensive gifts on him like color TV sets. The official word was the friendship was platonic but, of course, it wasn't.

"What happened to Maury after he left baseball made you want to sob. He descended into a miasma of cocaine addiction and self-destruction that confounded belief.

"Maury Wills, the ballplayer, had always been a man in firm control of his life. In all the years I studied him, I never saw Maury do a thing without a purpose, aimlessly. He was as organized a human being as I have ever seen . . .

"Maury Wills the addict was a pathetic sight to behold. Gaunt, grey, in thrall to a thousand raging masters. He tried briefly to manage. He was a disaster, falling asleep on the bench, putting wrong names in a lineup."

On Steve Garvey

"The harder he tried to be liked the more hostility he inspired. I don't know why. I think the notion persisted that no one could be that good . . . he was a superstar who acted as if he would do windows . . .

"I liked him because he was as available for an interview as a guy running for sheriff . . .

"Garvey did the honorable thing: he acknowledged paternity where it appeared. He got married. He paid child support . . ."

Garvey succumbed to "the temptation of the road."

On Walt Alston

"Walt Alston came from the kind of people who won our wars, plowed our fields, fed our children."

. . .

He came from a part of Ohio "where the train stopped only if it hit a cow."

. . .

"Every time I looked at Walt, I saw a Union soldier."

. . .

"The only guy in the game who could look Billy Graham in the eye without blushing, who would order corn on the cob in a Paris restaurant."

On Tom Lasorda

"Tommy never talked, he shouted."

. . .

"There were two men in my journalistic career I could always count on when I ran dry and needed a column. One was Casey Stengel. The other was Lasorda."

. . .

"Tommy was as American as a carburetor."

On Vin Scully

Scully can make watching a 13-3 game interesting because he can "take you to a time and place where you are suddenly watching Babe Ruth steal home."

On Ford Frick

"Ford Frick isn't the worst Commissioner of Baseball in history, but he's in the photo. I made him no worse than second place."

On Willie Mays

"Willie Mays is so good the other players don't even resent him . . . The only thing he can't do on a baseball field is fix the plumbing."

On Joe DiMaggio

"Joe DiMaggio played the game at least a couple levels higher than the rest of us."

On Hank Bauer

"He has a face like a clenched fist."

On Yogi Berra

"Yogi was a catcher who was as sharp as a Bronx housewife behind the plate."

On Mickey Mantle

"Mickey Charles Mantle was born with one foot in the Hall of Fame."

On Hank Aaron

"He is to enjoy only. The way he plays it, baseball is an art, not a competition. He is grace in a grey flannel suit, as poem with a bat in its hands."

On Stan Musial and Roberto Clemente

Stan Musial "was the exact opposite of Clemente. He was happy and his face knew it."

. . .

"Roberto didn't have the grace of Henry Aaron or the dash of Willie Mays, but if you put all the skills together and you had to play one of them at the same position, it would be hard to know which to bench."

On Rickey Henderson

Rickey Henderson "has a strike zone the size of Hitler's heart."

On baseball

"It was Hamlet. It was East Lynne. It was a morality play. It was life in a microcosm. It was religion."

. . .

Going to Ebbetts Field was "about on a social level with going to a cockfight."

. . .

"And if you don't know a newspaper isn't important to baseball, you don't know baseball."  
. . .

"Seven hours at the ballpark was as close to Nirvana as a kid could get. You hated to see the final out.

"I don't know when we got in such a hurry that everything had to be speeded up like one of those early jerky silent movies where the sprocket slipped."

. . .

"I like to look down on a <baseball> field of green and white, a summertime land of Oz, a place to dream."

. . .

"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball."

. . .

Baseball is a game played by nine athletes on the field and 20 fast-buck artists in the front office."

. . .

"The charm of baseball is that, dull as it may be on the field, it is endlessly fascinating as a rehash."

. . .

"Baseball writers are at that awkward age. Too old for girls and too young for Lawrence Welk."

. . .

"If it isn't <a business>, General Motors is a sport."

On Mike Garrett

Mike Garrett's "throat has the fingerprints of every linebacker in the league on it."

On Billy Wade

"I won't say Billy was clumsy, but on the way back from the line of scrimmage with the ball, he bumped into more people than a New York pickpocket."

On Deacon Jones

"Deacon Jones is, quite simply, 20 percent of the Rams' defense. Just to equalize him requires 2.2 players."

On Chuck Knox

After Knox arrived at a press conference announcing him as coach: "A limo pulled up, the passenger door was opened, and nobody got out."

On Al Davis

"Al Davis would have been a hit-and-run cavalry officer, maybe a general, in a previous incarnation."

. . .

"The German Army went deep. So did Davis's Raiders. Blitzkrieg football was a Davis trademark."

On Fred Biletnikoff

Biletnikoff "has a name longer than the Warsaw telephone directory and a reach even longer. He can run faster than he can walk but he's harder to keep track of than a mosquito in a dark bedroom. Sometimes, he seems to have arrived by parachute."

On Lyle Alzado

Alzado "always reminded me of an Old Testament prophet, the bearded look, the angry eyes. You could picture him on a hill in Biblical times, raging at the sins of his fellow man."

. . .

"Putting a Rutgers man alongside Alzado" was like "putting a nun in the Mafia."

On Marc Wilson

"You watch Marc Wilson play football, and you wonder how he gets himself dressed in the morning."

On the Raiders

"The Oakland Raiders are football's version of The Dirty Dozen. It's not a team, it's a gang."

. . .

"It's not the Oakland Raiders, it's Quantrill's."

On Bobby Layne

"For Bobby, life was all fast Layne."

On Bob Hayes

"The only thing that could keep up with him was trouble. Trouble runs an 8.6 hundred."

On Dick Butkus

"What makes Butkus so valuable is, he often catches a football before it is thrown. This is because, in addition to catching footballs, he also catches people who have them. He shakes them upside down till they let go."

On Terry Bradshaw

Bradshaw "always gave the impression he had just ridden into town on a wagon and two mules."

On Jack Lambert

"Lambert didn't come out of a college; he escaped from the laboratory."

On Conrad Dobler

"To say Dobler 'plays' football is like saying the Gestapo 'played' 20 Questions."

On John Elway

Elway "completed more passes than the Fifth Fleet on leave."

On football coaches

Paul Brown "treated his players as if he had just bought them at auction with rings in their noses and was trying not to notice they smelled bad."

. . .

Norm Van Brocklin was, "A guy with the nice, even disposition of a top sergeant whose shoes are too tight."

. . .

"Vince Lombardi looks as if he should be climbing down from behind the wheel of a six-wheel semi and saying, 'Okay lady, where do you want the piano?' "

. . .

"Nothing is ever accomplished by reason – look at Woody Hayes."

. . .

"Woody was consistent. Graceless in victory and graceless in defeat."

. . .

"What the iceberg was to the Titanic, what Little Big Horn was to Custer, Waterloo to Napoleon, Tunney to Dempsey, the Rose Bowl is to Bo Schembechler."

. . .

With Bill Walsh, "You half expect his headset is playing Mozart."

. . .

"I have seen guys look happier throwing up" than Don Coryell.

. . .

Of Nebraska running back Lawrence Phillip's arrest: "Getting a four A.M. call that one of your star players has just dragged a woman down three flights of stairs by the hair is like the head of Ford Motor Company being awakened to be told the assembly line has just broken down."

. . .

Asking coaches about strategy made "me feel as if I asked Einstein to explain the expanding Universe."

. . .

"I have nightmares thinking what might have happened if Edison could catch a football in a crowd, or the Wright brothers spent their evenings inventing the single wing. What if Louis Pasteur were a place-kicker?"

On football

"The interior line must be where guys on the lam hide out."

. . .

"If you smile when everything about you is going wrong, join the San Francisco 49ers."

. . .

"The 'Peter Principle' that everything keeps rising until it reaches its level of incompetence is best illustrated by the Minnesota Vikings in the Super Bowl."

On Jerry West

"Jerry West, with such fantastic peripheral vision it was said he could see his ears."

. . .

West "has the quickest hands and feet ever seen on a guy without a police record."

On Elgin Baylor

"Elgin Baylor was as unstoppable as a woman's tears."

On Wilt Chamberlain

Chamberlain "looked, in poor light, like an office building with kneepads."

On Magic Johnson

"Magic without a basketball is . . . an offense against nature."

On Shaquille O'Neal

"O'Neal is more than a building, he's a skyline."

On Chick Hearn

"Before Chick, basketball broadcasts were just more interesting than test patterns."

On John Wooden

Wooden was "so square he was divisible by four."

On Bob Lanier

"Rumor has it his shoes are off-loaded at the Detroit River docks by tug. It takes him 20 minutes to unlace them."

On Julius Erving

"It will be interesting to see if he can be seen by the naked eye."

On basketball

"A spy has a better social life" than an NBA referee. "The piano player in the bordello gets more respect."

On track and field

Bob Mathias "was brought up in the sunshine and breezes of the San Joaquin Valley, where vegetables and men grow in size to twice the national average."

. . .

"Bob Beamon was in the air just shorter than the Wright Brothers . . . It wasn't a jump, it was an orbital flight."

. . .

"Nothing this side of Man o' War could challenge Carl Lewis in his heyday."

On ice hockey

"Seeing a goal scored in hockey is like picking your mother out of a crowd shot at the Super Bowl.' "

. . .

"Hockey is the Bloody Mary of sports."

On tennis

"Tennis is a game in which love counts nothing, deuces are wild, and the scoring system was invented by Lewis Carroll."

. . .

"They can take only so much of a sport where a shutout is called love."

. . .

"James Scott Connors is about as popular in the world of tennis as a double fault."

. . .

Chris Evert "looked as unattainable as Garbo, a slope of Everest."

. . .

If Martina Navratilova "were a team, there'd be cries to break her up."

. . .

Getting beat by Stefan Edberg is "like getting beat by the statue of Fred Perry they have outside Wimbledon."

. . .

Pete Sampras "plays tennis like a guy dealing blackjack. All he does is beat you."

. . .

Andre Agassi looks "as if he were 10 minutes late for an appointment or trying to catch a bus."

. . .

Steffi Graf "is as German as a glockenspiel. And fittingly, she plays this kind of Wagnerian game, full of crashing crescendos, heroic passages, lyric transitions. She attacks."

. . .

"You know Monica Seles is on her game when center court sounds like feeding time at the zoo."

. . .

"The first look you get at Martina Hingis, you don't know whether to buy her a lollipop or ask her to dance."

On boxing

"Boxing dirties almost everybody who gets into it. It's hardly ecclesiastical."

. . .

A boxer has to "punch his way out of the ghetto."

. . .

"If you saw (Sonny Liston's) footprint in the snow in the Himalayas, four expeditions would be launched to capture him."

. . .

To "Sugar Ray" Robinson, "The world looked to him like a two-pound palooka with a glass chin."

. . .

"If Jerry Quarry's life story is ever made into a book the title will be Oops!"

. . .

"With his electric hair and long-running monologues delivered in the booming bombast of Moses addressing the children of Israel, <Don> King feels he is the apotheosis of the breed."

. . .

George Foreman "could kill anything that didn't move."

. . .

Of attending the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman fight in Africa, "Let's hope Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner get to fight over me in the jungle."

. . .

"You shouldn't fight Roberto Duran, you should hunt him."

. . .

When Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, "That may be the most expensive dining out in history."

On golf

"You know, golf isn't a talent. It's a trick. Just like writing a column."

. . .

"A golfer looking for new clubs is like Joe Namath on a pickup. He'll dance with every girl at the prom."

. . .

"The (golf) club has a natural instinct for trouble. It's a born outlaw. If it was human, it'd be robbing banks."

. . .

"When it comes to golf, I root for the course."

. . .

"I have a friend who calls golf the 'pursuit of infinity.' "

. . .

"For most players, golf is about as serene as a night in Dracula's castle."

. . .

"Actually, the only time I ever took out a one-iron was to kill a tarantula. And I took a seven to do that."

On auto racing

"It's not so much a sporting event as death watch. They hold it, fittingly, on Memorial Day."

. . .

"I'd never drive anything you had to climb in the window to start up."

On horse racing

"A race track crowd comprises the greatest floating fund of misinformation this side of the pages of Pravda, the last virgin stand of optimism in our century."

. . .

"Affirmed was the Star. A golden glow of a colt. A matinee idol. If he were human, he'd be Robert Redford."

. . .

Sunday Silence was, "A horse they thought so little of they did everything but leave him on a park bench with a note on him: 'Won the Kentucky Derby Saturday.' "

. . .

"Charlie Whittingham has been around horses so long he sleeps standing up."

On Los Angeles fans and stadiums

"When the Dodgers came West, the whole mood of the franchise changed. Laid-back L.A. was a far cry from Ebbets Field. I always noted the difference in the fans from each community could be summed up in the reactions of the two-dollar bettors in the home stretch . . .

" 'Call yourself a pitcher, Drysdale! You couldn't get my grandmother out, ya choke artist!' In L.A., the cheering was positive. 'All right, Big D, we're with you Don, baby! Let him hit! Willie'll get it.' "

. . .

"The Coliseum had about 92,000 seats – from about 28,000 of which you could actually see the game."

. . .

"Dodger Stadium is a place you can bring your granddaughter."

On cities

Murray was disappointed in a report from Moscow on a track meet with no imagery or color of the city. "I was never so disappointed in my life. I wanted to read about people in fur hats, cues in front of Lenin's tomb. I wanted to know what Brezhnev looked like close up. I wanted to know what the cabdrivers thought about America. I got non-winning times, splits in the 1500. I hear all about Rafer Johnson, who was meeting the Russian Kuznetsov in the decathlon. I knew all about Rafer Johnson. I wanted to know about Ivan the Terrible. I had a vision of my friend coming back from Heaven and, being asked what it was like, answering 'Johnson rapped out at 16 feet two inches.'

"I resolved never to get so afflicted with press box myopia myself that I would not comment on events surrounding an event . . ."

. . .

"I wondered out loud how you could get there since nobody ever went to Warsaw except on the back of a tank or the front of a bayonet."

. . .

He passed on Lenin's tomb because, "If I want to see dead people I would go to Kabul . . ." In Russia "the last group of tourists able to move freely through the country was the Wehrmacht" . . .

When they unfrocked Stalin the cartographers could do what "Hitler couldn't do – wipe out Stalingrad." It was like "renaming Gettysburg New Peoria" . . .

. . .

Los Angeles is ". . . under policed and oversexed."

. . .

L.A. architecture is "Moorish Nauseous."

. . .

L.A. "has a dry river but a hundred thousand swimming pools."

. . .

Long Beach was "the sea port of Iowa . . . a city which, rumor has it, was settled by a slow leak in Des Moines."

. . .

"That day in Cincinnati, I noted the state of disrepair of the city's freeway and speculated on the possibility that, if the Russians ever attacked, they would by-pass Cincinnati, as it looked as if it had already been taken and destroyed."

. . .

"They still haven't finished the freeway outside the ballpark" in Cincinnati because "it's Kentucky's turn to use the cement mixer."

. . .

"You have to think that when Dan'l Boone was fighting the Indians for this territory, he didn't have Cincinnati in mind for it . . . If Cincinnati were human, they'd bury it."

. . .

San Francisco is "not a town, it's a no-host cocktail party. If it were human, it'd be W.C. Fields. It has a nice, even climate. It's always winter."

. . .

San Francisco was the only city "that couldn't tell the difference between an earthquake and a fire" and next time would "say it was a flood."

. . .

Candlestick was built where it was "when the Ketchikan Peninsula was available."

. . .

Oakland ". . . is this kind of town: You have to pay 50 cents to go from Oakland to San Francisco. Coming to Oakland from San Francisco is free."

. . .

Oakland was "like a fighter who needed a knockout to win."

. . .

"New York should have a big sign on it: 'Out of Order' "

. . .

New York is "the largest chewing gum receptacle in the world."

. . .

When visiting New York he "carefully listed my blood type on my wrist."

. . .

In New York nobody should be allowed on the street after 10 – "in the morning."

. . .

In New Jersey "if you didn't have a tattoo they knew you were a tourist."

. . .

"I said Philadelphia was closed on Sunday and should be the rest of the week as well."

. . .

"I said Philadelphia was a town that would boo a cancer cure."

. . .

"63,000 fans showed up at Veterans Stadium expecting the worst. And getting it."

. . .

"Philadelphia was founded in 1776 and has been going downhill ever since."

. . .

"Minneapolis and St. Paul don't like each other very much, and from what I could see I don't blame either of them."

. . .

Louisville "smelled like an old bar rag" and had "more broken windows than any place this side of Berlin in 1945."

. . .

"I called the Kentucky Derby 'a hard luck race in a hard luck town.' "

. . .

"When Pittsburgh and Baltimore got in the World Series, I covered it by remote control."

. . .

"There were agents in the Russian secret police who had higher visibility than the Baltimore infield."

. . .

Baltimore is ". . . a guy just standing on a corner with no place to go and rain dripping off his hat. Baltimore's a great place if you're a crab."

. . .

Chicago was "a town where Al Capone didn't have a police record even though he kept the coroner's office on night shifts."

. . .

Birmingham was a place where " 'evening dress' means a 'bed sheet with eyeholes,' " where "white, male Americans are the enemies of America here. The Constitution being torn in half by the people whose ancestors helped to write it."

. . .

St. Louis ". . . had a bond issue recently and the local papers campaigned for it on a slogan 'Progress or Decay,' and decay won in a landslide."

. . .

"You can see where these freewheeling travel tips didn't endear me to the local Chambers of Commerce."

On other sports

Surfer "Margo Godfrey became as familiar as the Coast Guard."

. . .

Volleyball star Karch Kiraly is "Like Lawrence of Arabia, his domain is the burning sand."

. . .

Ice skater Kristi Yamaguchi is "the closest thing to a living poem as an athlete gets."

. . .

Fisherwoman Judy Pachner is successful because "the fish think she's one of them."

. . .

". . . Pool players are like spies – the less conspicuous the better."

. . .

Archer Midge Dandridge "makes Lizzie Borden look like a prankster."

. . .

"Not since the Christians and the lions has there been an athletic contest quite like rodeo."

. . .

Equestrian "Anneli Drummond-Hay is the most famous, fully dressed lady rider in British history."

. . .

Eight seconds on a Brahma bull "can seem like a year in an interrogation cell in the Lubyanka."

. . .

"Bulls aren't prejudiced," said black bull rider Charles Sampson. "They hate everybody, regardless of race, creed or color."

On sports

"Nothing is ever so bad it can't be made worse by firing the coach."

. . .

"You can kill all the buffalo, wipe out the cavalry, rob all the banks, sell the Statehouse, run rum, or join the Mafia – but don't mess around with America's sports idolatry."

On free agency, contracts, the media and money in sports

"Never envy the big star of the show. That turkey you're eating thought he had a no-cut contract."

. . .

"Today, high school kids make more than any Rockefeller then."

. . .

"A free agent is anything but."

. . .

"You can fool all of the people all of the time – if you own the network."

On large people

Frank Howard was "so big, he wasn't born, he was founded . . ." He is "not actually a man, just an unreasonable facsimile."

. . .

"When the real Boog Powell makes . . . the Hall of Fame, they're going to make an umbrella stand out of his foot."

. . .

Merlin Olsen "went swimming in Loch Ness-and the monster got out."

. . .

"Once, when an official dropped a flag and penalized the Rams for having 12 men on the field . . . two of them were <Bill> Bain."

On philosophy

"Things always get worse before they get impossible."

. . .

"Anger is always a proper substitute for logic."

. . .

"The guy with the coat slung over his shoulder without his arms in the sleeves in movies is up to no good."

On sex

"I am not big on how-to manuals anyway; my credo is, if they taught sex the way they taught golf, the race would have died out long ago."

On society

"Heartbreak is playing to a capacity" at the Shriners Hospital.

On himself

"But, what did I do – out-adjective the next guy?" after election to the Sportswriters Hall of Fame, 1978.

. . .

"I like to keep people at arm's length because sooner or later I'll probably have to bit 'em in the ass. Some still have the teeth marks."

"Letter From a Rookie's Wife"

"Dearest Darling:

"How are you? . . . I am working now at the Bon Ton Grill . . . All the fellows from the box works ask for you and say, 'Boy, I bet if that old husband of yours could only see you in them net stockings he'd bat a thousand . . . '

"The other night was election night and the bar had to be closed; so I had the whole gang over to our house . . . The party wasn't as noisy as the papers said . . . I didn't see why the police came . . .

"I sure want you to meet Cesar [a new roomer] . . . [He] feels terrible he had to take this long business trip just the time you come home . . . He'll come back. He has to; he has the car.

"Faithfully yours, Cuddles."

****

Jim Murray was a chronicler, a herald of the 20th Century, the American Century. Not since the gladiators dazzled Rome has sports played so active a role, and been so symbolic, of a society as it was when Murray was its mouthpiece, its conscience and its booster.

In 1994, when one of his contemporaries, former President Richard Nixon passed away, President Bill Clinton presided over his memorial service at the Nixon Birthplace and Library in Yorba Linda.

"It was the age of Nixon," Clinton pronounced.

Indeed it had been. Nixon's life mirrored the growth of his hometown and his home state. Murray, who covered Nixon early in his career, before the Presidency, Watergate and his eventual rehabilitation as an "elder statesman," rode that wave. As sports became big money through television and corporate sponsorships, Murray did not merely benefit from it. He was one of the reasons its popularity grew as it did in the first place. He was certainly in the right place at the right time: post-World War II California; Time, Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles grew like no city in history. There was Jim Murray, from the typewriter and the telegram to the computer, the word processor, and the Internet. He passed away before Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and the blogs, but he would have overshadowed all of that as he overshadowed every other novice idea and gimmick that came along.

Murray was part of our past, not to be seen again. He is among the Mt. Rushmore of our greatest writers, and this is not relegated to the sportsmen. Legions of pensmen who dabble not just in sports but write screenplays, novels, report the news, and chronicle history, count him as a major influence.

Any list that includes the likes of Homer, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Thomas Paine, Alexis de Tocqueville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leonid Tolstoy, Lord George Byron, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grantland Rice, Lowell Thomas, William Shirer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Miller, Joseph Mankiewicz, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, William Faulkner, Preston Sturges, Budd Schulberg, Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, John Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, George Orwell, Zane Grey, Jane Austen, Carlos Castaneda, J.D. Salinger, John Updike, Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey, Philip Roth, Roger Angell, Pat Jordan, Dan Jenkins, Theodore White, William Safire, Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, William Goldman, David Halberstam, Ann Coulter, Joan Didion, David Mamet, Paddy Chayefsky, Robert Towne, George Plimpton, Roger Kahn, Neil Simon, Tennessee Williams, John le Carre, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, William Styron, Tom Clancy, Nathanel West, Raymond Carver, Joseph Campbell, William Saroyan, Stephen King, Joseph Wambaugh, Michael Lewis, William F. Buckley, Jimmy Cannon, Jimmy Breslin, Studs Terkel, Dave Anderson, Robert Woodward, Carl; Bernstein, Thomas Boswell, and Red Smith would not be complete without the name Jim Murray on it.

"Only Jim, of all the great sports writers, always got it right and always got it funny," said Dave Kindred of The Sporting News.

"My, my, he was one hell of a writer, but he was even a better person, seemingly without ego, without pretension," said Jack Whittaker of ABC Sports.

While he was "one hell of a writer," perhaps more appropriately Jim Murray attained in Heaven what the dustcover of his 1988 book, The Jim Murray Collection, said was the "Holy Grail of newspapermen - the 'column that writes itself.' " One imagines he is up there with Jesus Christ's re-write men - Matthew, Mark Luke and John - doing just that, reminding them, "People read to be amused, shocked, titillated or angered. "

The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

Jim Murray once told Linda McCoy-Murray that nobody would remember him after he was gone. It was not necessary for Linda to do anything in order to keep her late husband's words alive in the annals of sports writing. However, she wanted them to mean more than that. She wanted Jim's writing to have a positive lasting affect on the lives of other people. Beyond his talent, Murray's desire to help his fellow man was his real legacy.

For the next 13 years, McCoy-Murray was on a mission. Today, his name and his legacy are thriving after McCoy-Murray established the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, which raises money to award college scholarships to aspiring journalists. It's something she has become passionate about, travelling all over the country to spread the message.

"It's important to me for them to know as much as they can about Jim," she said. "His writings, naturally, but his integrity, honesty and humility along with a brilliant mind. There is a badge of honor being a Murray Scholar."

On the first anniversary of his death, she held a charity golf tournament at Riviera and raised enough money to provide seven $5,000 scholarships. Through donations and other events, the foundation has provided five scholarships a year ever since. Students are asked to write an essay on a topic selected by a group of judges, who then judge the submissions. ESPN Los Angeles' Arash Markazi was one of the winners when he was a junior at USC, and later served on the Murray board of directors.

McCoy-Murray travels across the country spreading the word, keeping

Murray's name and prose alive. She plans to publish a book of his more than 200 columns written on female athletes and has designs on future books, compilations of his writings on the Dodgers, Raiders, and of course, horse racing.

Linda recalled what Jim Bacon, publisher of Beverly Hills 213, said as they buried Murray at Holy Cross Cemetery in 1998.

"Jim would hate this," he said. "He's got a downhill lie."

McCoy-Murray laughed long and hard. To her, these kinds of observations, both made by Murray and about him, are what keep his legacy fresh. With in mind, she sends out one of his columns every Monday, relevant to what's happening in sports today. She calls it, "Mondays with Murray."

"He was an old shoe," she says. "There will never ever be anyone like him. I'm certain of that."

The Jim Murray Sports Journalism Workshop has become an integral component of the Los Angeles Times' program to develop student journalists from high school through college. 30 students attend the workshop each year.

"Jim Murray set a standard in sports writing that he maintained over many, many years," said former Times sports editor Bill Dwyre, noting Murray's desire to help young writers. Many older writers are notoriously unhelpful to up-and-comers, treating them the way veteran Tigers treated young Ty Cobb when he came up to Detroit from the South "with a chip on his shoulder still fighting the Civil War."

Not so Murray.

"After learning about Murray and his work in last year's workshop, the students were walking on air when they left here," said Dwyre. Dwyre selects workshop participants from applications submitted by sophomore and junior students nominated by journalism faculty at colleges across the United States. The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation's primary purpose is to raise money for journalism scholarships. Currently 28 universities participate annually in a national essay competition in which five $5,000 scholarships are annually awarded.

Shelley Smith of ESPNLosAngeles.com wrote of Linda's efforts in "Columnist lives on in words."

"Linda McCoy-Murray is on a mission to preserve the words of her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Murray," she wrote.

"Look, biceps," Linda said, flexing one day during lunch, before laughing, "Who knew?"

From Murray Scholars

Arash Markazi

I was sitting in front of my computer in the Los Angeles Daily News newsroom when I got the call from Linda McCoy Murray. I was an intern at the newspaper at the time, putting together the betting lines for the next day's races at Hollywood Park, when she introduced herself. I almost lost my breath and had to stand up and pace around my desk. "There's no way I would get this call if it wasn't good news right?" I thought to myself. Then Linda said the words I had dreamed of hearing for the past year.

"Congratulations, Arash, you've been selected as a Murray Scholar."

Linda is the only one who can recall what I said next because I must have blacked out and gone hysterical as I thanked her and told her how much Jim Murray meant to me. I always viewed winning the Jim Murray Memorial Scholarship as the equivalent of winning the Academy Award as a college sports writer. I had grown up reading Jim Murray as a kid. While other kids wanted to read fictional tales about legends and sorcerers, I wanted to read Murray's columns on Lasorda and Scioscia. He painted a picture so vivid and made each game so compelling I often looked forward to what Murray would write about the game than the game itself.

I became a high school football stringer for the Los Angeles Times in 1998, shortly after Jim's passing and was never able to fulfill my dream of having my byline in the same paper as Jim's or bouncing story ideas off him but being named a "Murray Scholar" and having a close relationship with Linda has been the fulfillment of an even greater dream. Now as a board member for the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, working with Linda to reward students with a scholarship in Jim's honor, I'm honored continue to pass Jim's legacy on to students who I can only hope are as excited as I was when Linda called with the good news.

Dallas Nicole Woodburn (Murray Scholar 2007)

A legacy greater than the written word

Jim Murray impacted my life immeasurably. I am a writer today in no small part because of him. Just as importantly, Jim Murray affected the kind of caring person I strive to be.

While I never got the chance to meet Jim Murray, my dad did. He grew up reading Jim Murray and idolized him. When my dad was a senior in college, he wrote Jim a letter seeking advice on becoming a sports columnist.

Jim wrote back a thoughtful page-long handwritten letter which included this quote that I have taped above my writing desk: "If you are meant to be a writer, you will be. No one can stop a writer from writing. Not even Hitler could do that."

My dad became a sports columnist. Even better, he became friends with Jim. I grew up reading my dad's columns and wanted to be a writer because of him. I always thought my dad was the best sportswriter ever – but after I started reading the Jim Murray books on my dad's bookshelf, I had to drop Pop to No. 2.

But, as I said, Jim Murray had a greater influence on me than inspiring me as a writer. The past eight years, I have held a Holiday Book Drive (www.WriteOnBooks.org) that has donated more than 11,000 new books to underprivileged children. My younger brother Greg started a nonprofit organization Give Running (www.GiveRunning.org) that has donated more than 9,000 pairs of running shoes to disadvantaged youth living in Third World countries. These endeavors have Jim Murray's fingerprints all over them.

My dad not only read the book The Best of Jim Murray; he was touched and changed by it. Specifically, by Jim's account of his time as a crime reporter for the old Los Angeles Examiner and about the heartache of doing a story on a little girl who lost her leg after being run over by a truck.

"The thought of her going though life that way made me shrink," Jim wrote.

He rose to the occasion by taking the $8 he had left from his paycheck ("which was only $38 to begin with in those days") and bought her an armful of toys and took them to her in the hospital.

The Christmas after my dad read that book, he bought an armful of basketballs that he donated to the Special Olympics. He has continued to do annually, and when I came along – and later my brother Greg – dad took us with to drop the balls off at various charities. In time, we began using our own money and picking out the sports balls ourselves. Today, we give books and running shoes.

Jim Murray was not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer; too, he was a Hall of Fame person.

Dallas Woodburn is a 2007 Murray Scholar, the author of two collections of short stories, and founder of Write On! For Literacy. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2009 and is now an MFA student at Purdue University. She can be contacted at dallaswoodburn@aol.com.

****

Years after burying her husband "with the heaviest of hearts amid a ceremony usually reserved for heads of state," indeed it was her strength of resolve that made the Jim Murray Foundation what it is today. A California Nonprofit Corporation established May 17, 1999 to perpetuate Jim's memory and his love for and dedication to his extraordinary career in journalism, the foundation engages in fund raising events. In order to help them create more scholarships for talented students, please contribute what you can to them at:

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

P.O. Box 995

La Quinta, CA 92247-0995

info@jimmurrayfoundation.org

Jim Murray's career

National Headliner Award, 1965 and 1977.

Honored by the Television Academy Awards 1966-1967 for writing contribution for the

Andy Williams Show, Outstanding Variety Series.

Alumni Medal from Trinity College, 1972.

Installed in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, 1977.

National Headliner Award, citation for outstanding sports writing, 1980.

Red Smith Award for extended meritorious labor in sports writing, 1982.

First sportswriter to win the Victor Award, conferred annually on outstanding athletes based on selections by sportswriters, editors and broadcasters across the country, 1982.

Associated Press Sports Editors Association award for best column writing, 1984.

Pepperdine University, Doctor of Laws degree, honoris causa, 1987

J.G. Taylor Spink Award for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing," 1987.

Award included induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York, July, 1988

Victor Award XXVIII Hall of Fame Award "in recognition for his remarkable contribution to sports journalism as a literary art form." 1994.

Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, 1990. Columbia University.

Best Sportswriter Award, 1991 from the Washington (D.C.) Journalism Review.

Lincoln Werden Memorial Award for excellence in golf journalism, 1997. Presented by the New York Metropolitan Golf Writers Association.

Times Mirror 1998 Life Time Achievement Award (for 37 years with the Los Angeles Times).

 NSSA's  Sportswriter of the Year award 14 times (12of those consecutively).

BOOKS

Best of Jim Murray, Doubleday

Sporting World of Jim Murray, Doubleday

The Jim Murray Collection, Taylor

Jim Murray, An Autobiography, Macmillan

Jim Murray: The Last of the Best, Los Angeles Times Books

Jim Murray: The Great Ones, Los Angeles Times Books

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DVD/Documentaries

_Breaking the Huddle_. New York: Home Box Office, 2008.

_Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant_. New York: College Sports Television, 2005.

_Inventing L.A.: the Chandlers and their_ **Times** _._ **Los Angeles: KCET/Public Broadcasting, 2009.**

_History of USC Football, The_ **.** Produced and directed by Roger Springfield. Burbank, CA:

Warner Home Video, 2005.

_Songs of Our Success_. Hosted by Tony McEwen, 2003.

_Tackling Segregation_. New York: College Sports Television, 2006.

Additional video

_History of Notre Dame Football_.

_Trojan Video Gold_. Narrated by Tom Kelly. Los Angeles: University of Southern

California, 1988.

Index

The Daily Travers

Southern California, University of

Marks, Terry

Los Angeles Times

Prugh, Jeff

Murray, Jim,

enclosed in Daily Travers

Daily Travers, The

Cole, Bradley

Cole, Darren

Silano, Tim

Charles Schwab and Company, Inc.

A Depression kid

Murray, Jim, 1

early years, 2

Hartford, Connecticut, 1

Twain, Mark, 2

Murray, Jim,

Family, 2

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 5

Ruth, Babe

Murray, Jim, 1

at Yankee Stadium, 8

_Hartford Times_ , 10

_New Haven Register_ , 10

Trinity College, 10

". . . Beyond the darkness the West"

Otis, Harrison Gray, 11

_Los Angeles Times_ , 11

building of Los Angeles, 11

Chandler, Harry, 11

Noir and marriage

_Los Angeles Examiner_ , 13

Murray, Jim, 13

early L.A. career, 13

Richardson, Jim, 13

Reece, John, 14

"Rewrite Man, The," 14

Brown, Gerry, 15

Murray, Jim, 16

marriage, 16

Show biz is not a business

Luce, Henry, 19

Luce, Clare Boothe, 19

_Time_ , 19

_Time_ and _Life_ , 19

Murray, Jim, 19

covering Hollywood, 20

Monroe, Marilyn, 20

Flaherty, Vincent X., 21

DiMaggio, Joe, 21

Wayne, John, 22

Ford, John, 22

Brandon, Marlon, 23

Murray, Nixon and Checkers

Nixon, Richard, 25

Graham, Billy, 25

Time, 26

Luce, Henry, 25

McCarthyism, 25

Eisenhower, Dwight, 26

Brashear, Ernie, 25

Nation, The, 25

Kirchway, Frieda, 25

_Los Angeles Daily News_ , 26

_New York Post_ , 26

_Frontier_ , 26

Rogers, William, 26

Bassett, Jim, 26

Nixon, Richard, 26

_Washington Post_ , 26

_New York Times_ , 26

Time, 26

Weeks, Max, 26

Rogers, Ted, 27

Nixon, Patricia, 27

Best, Bill, 27

United Press International, 27

"Checkers" speech, 28

Murray, Jim, 28

covered Nixon campaign, 28

voted for Nixon, 28

Kennedy, John, 28

_Sports Illustrated_ **  
**

_Sports Illustrated_ , 29

Gifford, Frank, 29

James, Sidney L., 29

_Sports Illustrated_ , 30

Murray, Jim, 29

goes to work for _Sports Illustrated_ , 29

Luce, Henry, 29

**The** _Times_ **they are a changin'**

Chandler family, 31

Chandler, Otis, 32

Chandler, Harry, 31

Chandler, Norman, 31

Chandler, Otis, 33

Chandler, Missy, 32

Williams, Nick, 34

Murray, Jim, 31

hired by L.A. Times, 31

Chandler, Otis, 34

Decade of change

Gifford, Frank, 37

Nixon, Richard, 37

Kennedy, John, 37

Murray, Jim, 38

first column with L.A. Times, 38

West, Jerry, 46

Baylor, Elgin, 46

Koufax, Sandy, 38

Drysdale, Don, 38

Berra, Yogi, 38

Chandler, Otis, 38

Los Angeles Times, 38

mahor international coverage, 38

Nixon, Richard, 38

Washington Post, 40

New York Times, 40

San Francisco Chronicle, 41

San Francisco Examiner, 41

Caen, Herb, 40

McCabe, Charles, 41

Hoppe, Art, 41

"Akron of the West," 41

Sports Illustrated, 41

Bisheff, Steve, 43

Mays, Willie, 43

Los Angeles-San Francisco rivalry, 43-44

Alston, Walter, 44

Cousy, Bob, 46

Louis, Joe, 46

Furillo, Bud, 44

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 46

Krikorian, Doug, 45

Bisheff, Steve, 45

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 44

Nahan, Stu, 46

Baylor, Elgin, 46

"Elgin Has Elegance," 46

Johnson, Lyndon, 47

Goldwater, Barry, 47

McCurdy, Jack, 48

Berman, Art, 48

Los Angeles Times, 48

coverage of Watts riots, 48

Alcindor, Lew, 50

Russell, Bill, 48

Nixon, Richard

Bergholz, Richard, 49

Reagan, Ronald, 49

Simpson, O.J., 50

"Louisville Loudmouth Secedes From the Union," 52

Clay, Cassius, 51-52

Kennedy, Robert, 52

Jones, Deacon, 52

"It's a Bird! A Man! A Car! A Bullet! . . .," 52

West, Jerry, 53

Dwyre, Bill, 52

 "Jim Murray: of Pulitzers and pretenders," 53

Ali, Muhammad, 54

The Column

Caplan, Bill, 57

Wallin, Fred, 59

Murray, Gerry, 58

Furillo, Bud, 58

Durslag, Mel, 58

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 58

Schrader, Loel, 58

Long Beach Press-Telegram, 58

Florence, Mal, 58

Hall, John, 58

Best of Jim Murray, The, 58

Sporting World of Jim Murray, The, 58

Stengel, Casey, 58

Baylor, Elgin, 61

Caruso, Enrico, 60

Carmen, 60

Cousy, Bob, 60

Wanderone, Rudolph, 61

Minnesota Fats, 61

"Pun My Word," 62

"Nice Guy Also Wins," 63

"Castilian from Tampa," 63

"Life on the Road," 63

Best of Jim Murray, The, 63

"Fight On For Old $C," 63

Rice, Grantland, 63

Murray, Jim, 63

role in glamorizing USC, 63

Southern California, University of, 63

Dyer, Braven, 63

"Gold Line Stand," 64

"The 'Heart' of Football," 64

"De-emphasis – '82 Style," 64

"Color Me Purple," 64

McKay, John, 65

Hayes, Woody, 64

"What's in a Name?," 65

Liston, Sonny, 65

Sporting World of Jim Murray, The, 66

Belinsky, Bo, 66

Van Doren, Mamie, 66

Allen, Maury, 66

"One Day in April," 67

Clay, Cassius, 67

Koufax, Sandy, 67

"Taste of Rubble, A," 67

"Goof Balls Find Niche," 68

"Worker of Art," 68

Garrett, Mike, 69

"Sad Song for Sonny," 65

People, 71

Spander, Art, 70

Civil war

Bryant, Paul "Bear," 74

McKay, John, 78

Fertig, Craig, 82

Murray, Jim, 75

role in civil right, 75

role in 1970 USC-Alabama game, 84

Hayes, Woody, 73

Connor, Eugene "Bull," 74

Wallace, George, 74, 76

Los Angeles Times, 74

coverage of Civil Right Movement, 74

Civil Rights Movement, 74

New York Times, 74

Washington Post, 74

"Jack Be Nimble," 74

Robinson, Jackie, 74

"Lot of Character," 75

"Tribute to Abe," 75

Harlem Globetrotters, 75

Saperstein, Abe, 75

Wallace, George, 83

Bryant, Paul "Bear," 81

" 'Bama in the Balkans," 75

Murray, Jim, 75

coverage of Alabama's racial policies, 75

Bryant, Paul "Bear," 76

reaction to Jim Murray, 76

McKay, John K. "J.K.," 81

Look, 77

Notre Dame, University of, 77

Spander, Art, 77

Bryant-McKay friendship, 80

Fertig, Craig, 82

Hunter, Scott, 82

Murray, Jim,

covering 1970 USC-Alabama game, 80

Prugh, Jeff, 83

"Trojans Fall on Alabama; Bruins' Rally Defeats OSU," 83

Cunningham, Sam, 81

Murray, Jim, 83

column about 1970 USC-Alabama game, 83

"Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union," 83

Spander, Art, 85

Murray, Jim, 85

aftermath of 1970 USC-Alabama game, 85

"Language of Alabama," 87

Dunnavant, Keith, 85

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 86

Missing Ring, The, 85

Coach: The Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant, 85

"Some of My Best Friends Are . . .," 88

Robinson, Jackie, 88

Campanis, Al, 88

McKay, John K., 80

McKay, John, 79

Prugh, Jeff, 80-81, 84-85

Halcyon days

Bisheff, Steve, 90

Furillo, Bud, 90

_Los Angeles Herald Examiner_ , 90

Chandler, Otis, 98

Reagan , Ronald, 101

Chamberlain, Wilt, 100

Wooden, John, 94

"Manson Verdict: All Guilty," 93

Manson, Charles, 93

Blake, Gene, 93, 98

Nelson, Jack, 93

Ellsberg, Daniel, 93

"Pentagon papers"

New York Times, 93

Washington Post, 93

Torgerson, Dial, 93

"Whew! Now It's Smog, Blackouts With Fierce Heat," 93

Butkus, Dick, 114

Nixon, Richjard, 97

Mao Tse-tung, 99

Kissinger, Henry, 98

"Hoosier hotshot," 94

Wooden, John, 94

Davis, Anthony, 95

1972 USC Trojans, 95

1972 Los Angeles Lakers, 95

Chapin, Dwight, 96

Prugh, Jeff, 95

Chapin, Dwight L., 95

Watergate, 97

Los Angeles Times, 97

coverage of Watergate, 97

"Knew of Burglary, Erllichman says," 97

"Ziegler Offers an Apology," 97

"Five held in Plot to Bug Democratic Office," 97

Lewis, Alfred, 97

Segretti, Donald, 98

"USC Mafia," 98

Chapin, Dwight L., 98

Chamberlain, Wilt, 100

"Wilt, You Can't Win," 100

Clemente, Roberto, 99

"Clemente: You Had top See Him to Believe Him," 99

Cosell, Howard, 100

Foreman, George, 100

Frazier, Joe, 100

Secretariat, 100

"Thankful, But . . .," 100

Symbionese Liberation Army, 101

"SLA Hideout Stormed, 5 Die," 101

Martinez, Al, 101

Kistler, Robert, 101

Hearst, Patricia, 101

Nelson, Jack, 101

"Nixon Quits," 101

Reich, Kenneth, 101

Ford, Gerald, 101

Dedeaux, Rod, 102

Hayes, Woody, 102

punched L.A. Times photographer, 103

McKay, John, 103

friendship with Murray, 103

McKay, John K. "J.K.," 103

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 103

Haden, Pat, 103

Mantle, Mickey, 104

Foyt, A.J., 104

Orr, Bobby, 104

Robinson, Brook, 104

Rigney, Bill, 104

Dean, Dizzy, 105

"Catchin' Up With Satch," 105

Paige, Satchel, 105

"Blasting a Golf Trail," 105

Connors, Jimmy, 109

"Weird Site For a Fight," 105

"Woman of the Century," 105

Bundy, Mary Sutton, 105

Wooden, John, 106

"He Dared Stand Alone," 106

"Death of an heirloom," 106

Stengel, Casey, 106

Dedeaux, Rod, 106

Mays, Willie, 107

Elder, Lee, 107

Erving, Julius, 107

Veeck, Bill, 107

"Baseball's Showboat, 107"

Comaneci, Nadia, 108

"Baby-Face Bomber," 107

Crenshaw, Ben, 107

Hogan, Ben, 107

Ali, Muhammad, 108

Shoemaker, Bill, 108

Rutherford, Johnny, 108

Thompson, Danny, 108

Dedeaux, Rod, 108

West, Jerry, 109

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 109

"A Rejected Landmark," 109

Jackson, Reggie, 109

five home runs, 1977 World Series, 109

Yankee Stadium, 109

Seattle Slew, 109

"It's a Fairy Tale Finish," 109

McEnroe, John, 109

Kneivel, Evel, 110

Karras, Alex, 110

Alzado, Lyle, 110

Krausse, Charles, 111

Barkdoll, Robert, 111

Greenwood, Leonard, 111

"Jones Ordered Cultists to Drink Cyanide Poison," 111

"Started with Babies," 111

"Sam Old Song, The," 111

Thompson, Hunter S., 112

Rolling Stone, 112

Swann, Lynn, 112

"Graceful as a Swann," 112

Affirmed, 112

"The Hall of What?," 112

Murray, Jim, 121

elected to NSSA Hall of Fame, 112

Gilliam, Jim, 113

Braddock, Jim, 13

Howard, Ron, 113

Cinderella Man, 113

"Laws of Murray," 113

Los Angeles Times, 113

coverage of Three Mile Island, 113

Bryce Nelson, 113

Girard, Penny, 113

Hume, Ellen, 113

Shogan, Robert, 113

"Trouble Hits Tape," 113

Hayes, Bob, 113

Staubach, Roger, 113

Wilkinson, Bud, 114

"Recruiting Sales Talk," 114

Lambert, Jack, 114

"First Test-Tube Linebacker," 114

Visionaries

Chandler, Otis, 117

"On My Blindness, with Apologies to Milton," 117

Perry, Dr. John, 118

Sime, Dr. Dave, 118

Sports Illustrated, 118

Scheibe, John, 119

"Road-tripping with Jim Murray"

Davis, David

On the Road With Jim Murray, 119

Schoeppens, Dr. Charles, 121

Jungschaffer, Otto, 121

Kratz, Dr. Richard, 121

Kelman, Dr. Charles, 121

Morton, Craig, 121

Best American Sports Writing of the Cebntury, The , 122

Halberstam, David, 122

Stout, Glenn, 122

"If You're Expecting One-Liners, Wait, a Column," 122

"Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union," 122

1970 USC-Alabama game, 122

Los Angeles Times,123

Pulitzer Prizes, 124

Shaw, Gaylord, 124

Chandler, Otis, 123

Andover Academy

Salazar, Ruben

Luce, Henry, 123

Reagan, Ronald, 125

New York Times, 124

Washington Post, 124

Nation, The, 124

Time, 124

Sulzberger, Punch, 124

Graham, Katharine, 124

Chandler, Norm, 124

Chandler, Jane Yeager, 124

Johnson, Tom, 124

McWilliams, Carey, 126

Reagan, Ronald, 126

Conrad, Paul, 124

McDougal. Dennis, 126

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty, 126

Chandler, Otis, 126

Front Page: A Collection of Historical Headlines from the Los Angeles Times, 127

The poet of Brentwood

.Lee, Bill "Spaceman," 139

Ostler, Scott, 129

Ostler, Scott, 130

Newhan, Ross, 138

Carter, Jimmy, 130

Davis, Al, 131

Watson, Tom, 131

Bryant, Paul "Bear," 131

"One and Only, The," 131

Crabbe, Buster, 132

"World Class Leprechaun," 132

Coghlan, Eamonn, 132

"Green Monster," 131

Yastrzemski, Carl, 132

Lynn, Fred, 132

Fenway Park, 132

Uston, Ken, 133

Bleir, Rocky, 133

Skeoh, Danica Erin, 134

"Reagan Shot," 134

Reagan, Ronald, 134

"Master of the City Game," `134

Bird, Larry, 134

Snead, Sam, 135

Hearn, Chick, 135

"He Needn't Take Number, It's His," 135

Petty, Richard, 135

DiMaggio, Joe, 135

"The Eternal Cowboy," 136

Garrison, Walt, 136

Tabb Mary, Decker, 136

Caen, Herb, 137

"We Just Have It too Good," 137

"Breeding Counts But Doesn't Add Up," 138

"Coach of the Living Dead," 140

Coryell, Don, 140

Red Smith Award, 139

Smith, Red, 139

"Evil Empire," 140

Reagan, Ronald, 140

Mann, Jim, 141

Alston, Walter, 141

"Scully Handles a Mike Like Ruth Did a Bat," 142

Scully, Vin, 142

Seaver, Tom, 142

"Almost Too Good to Be True, 142"

King, Peter, 145

Gorman, Tom, 145

Morrison, Pat, 145

Stein, Mark, 145

_Sports Illustrated_ , 145

"Baryshnikov of the Barriers, The," 146

Moses, Edwin, 145

Scates, Al, 147

1984 Los Angeles Olympics, 145

Bird, Larry, 149

"Bird Really Turns Pale With Losing," 149

Andretti, Mario, 150

Marino, Dan, 150

Valenzuela, Fernando, 151

"Fernando Throws Age a Screwball," 151

Becker, Boris, 151

Cosell, Howard, 151

"Howard Has Much To Be Vain About," 151

Johnson, Magic, 152

Walton, Bill, 152

Reilly, Rick, 151

Sports Illustrated, 151

Tarkenton, Fran, 153

Elway, John, 153

Nicklaus, Jack, 154

"Sport that Time Leaves Alone, The"

Norman, Greg,. 154

"Shark May Have Bitten Off More Than He Can Chew," 154

Arcaro, Eddie, 154

McEnroe, John, 154

Jim Murray Collection, The, 155

New York Daily News, 155

Scully, Vin, 156

Lasorda, Tom, 156

Hershiser, Orel, 156

"They Won't Call Him Dr. Zero For Nothing," 156

Krikorian, Doug, 156

Furillo, Bud, 156

Los Angeles Herald-Express, 156

Ryan, Nolan, 157

McCarron, Chris, 158

Petty, Richard, 158

Beamon, Bob, 158

"He Landed Somewhere in the Future," 158

Mathias, Bob, 158

Gretzky, Wayne, 158

Bush, George H.W.. 158

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 159

Murray, Jim, 159

attitude towards San Francisco Bay Area, 159

Montana, Joe, 159

Abbott, Jim, 160

Bradshaw, Terry, 161

Rozelle, Pete, 161`

"Pete Rozelle Sold Entire Nation on His Sport," 161

Unser family, 162

Graf, Steffi. 162

Hogan, Ben, 162

Riviera Country Club, 162

Love, tragedy, redemption

Murray, Jim, 163

death of Gerry, son Ricky, marriage to Linda, 163

"Sport that Time Leaves Alone, The," 163

Murray, Gerry, 163

Murray, Ted, 163

Murray, Tony, 163

Murray, Ricky, 163

Murray, Gerry, 173

Best of Jim Murray, The, 163

"She Took the Magic and Happy Summer With Her," 174

Los Angeles Times, 174

"King of the Sports Page," 175

Caplan, Bill, 172

Jenkins, Bruce, 168

Newhan, Ross, 172

Reilly, Rick, 172, 175

Jenkins, Dan, 177

Semi-Tough, 177

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 169

Smith, Shelly, 178

ESPNLosAngeles.com, 178

A Times to live and a Times to die

Murray, Jim,

career, at L.A. Times 1961-1990

Los Angeles Times

Chandler, Otis

Chandler, Dorothy

Murray, Jim,

Pulitzer Prize

Lasorda, Tom

Ford, Gerald

Lemmon, Jack

Lang, Jack

Baseball Writers Association of America

J.G. Taylor Spink Award

Rose, Pete

Kelly, Gene

Stewart, Jimmy

Stewart, Gloria

Reagan, Ronald

Will, George

Washington Post

Men at Work

Allen, Steve

Hall, Monty

Douglas, Kirk

Brokaw, Tom

Smith, Red

Whittaker, Jack

Callahan, Jack

Shirley, Bill

Lupica, Mike

Sullivan, Danny

Newhan, Ross

Tagliabue, Paul

Limbaugh, Rush

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

New York Daily News

Johnson, Tom

Coffey III, Shelby

Chandler, Otis

Robinson, John

USA Today

McDougal, Dennis

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty

Time

Los Angeles Times,

coverage of Persian Gulf War

Pulitzer Prize

Frantz, Doug

New York Times

Washington Post

Time

King, Peter

Chandler, Otis

Chandis Securities

Thinking Big

Gottlieb, Robert

Wolf, Irene

Akst, Dan

Newsweek

New York Newsday

Willess, Mark

Freed, David

Columbia Journalism Review

"Column Left"

"Column Right"

Buzz

Seipp, Catherine

Pulitzer – Iraq coverage ("last hurrah")

Chandler forced out, loses influence

Chandler family makes money

"Cereal Killer"

Laventhol, David

Coffey III, Shelby

Seipp, Catherine

Palmer, Kyle

"Black Friday"

Times Mirror Square

Willes, Mark

Chandler, Otis

Vanity Fair

Parks, Michael

Schlosberg, Richard

Chandler, Dorothy

Swayze, Donna

Los Angeles Times,

1998 Pulitzer

comparison with other newspapers

ranking in circulation

New York Times

USA Today

Wall Street Journal

Washington Post

Downing, Katherine

Staples Center

Parks, Michael

Boyarsky, Bill

Arthur, John

Dwyre, Bill

Chandler, Otis

Staples Center

Los Angeles Times

Tribune Company

Chicago Tribune

Chandler, Otis

Downing, Katherine

Willes, Mark

Erberu, Bob

Coffey III, Shelby

Limbaugh, Rush

ABC World News

ABC World News.

Murdoch, Rupert

New York Daily Post

HarperCollins Publishing

Fox News

Paley, William

Luce, Henry

Graham, Katharine

Otis Chandler,

Sulzberger, Arthur

Powers That Be, The

Halberstam, David

Clinton, Bill

Gore, Jr., Albert

The great scribe in his twi-light years

Clinton, Bill, 206

Clinton, Hillary

Clinton, Bill

Bush, George H.W., 214

Scully, Vin, 183

"His Touch Made Dodgers Special," 186

Harmon, Tom, 186

Will, George, 184

Men at Work, 184

LaBonge, Tom, 213

Douglas, Buster

Parnelli, Jones

Bird, Larry, 187

Johnson, Magic, 187

Jordan, Michael, 187

Rose, Pete, 187

Giamatti, Bart, 188

"Reads Between the Lines When Talkin' Baseball," 188  
Foreman, George, 189

Holyfield, Evander, 189

Shoemaker, Bill, 189

"Whatever It Was, Arnie Still Has It," 189

Palmer, Arnold, 189

Mears, Rick 189

"Warning, HIV: No Hiding Now," 189

Johnson, Magic, 189

Brown, Larry, 190

"America's Bedouin, the Vanishing American." 190

Riley, Pat, 190

"L.A.'s Showtime Becomes Crunchtime in New York," 190

Borg, Bjorn, 190

Holyfield, Evander, 190

Ali, Muhammad, 190

"Reveling in Spotlight Of World," 190

Lewis, Carl, 191

Powell, Mike, 191

Holtz, Lou, 191

"The 'Tying Irish' Just Doesn't Make it," 191

"tied one for the Gipper," 191

Parseghian, Ara, 191

McKay, John

Cannon, Jimmy, 191

"Nobody Asked Me But," 191

Malone, Karl, 191

"Image Problem Is Everything," 191

Murray, Jim,

comparing L.A. to San Francisco

Hubler, Shawn

Los Angeles Times,

breaking Heidi Fleiss story

Sheen, Charlie

Jim Murray, 192

diagnosed with cancer

wrote autobiography, 192

L.A.-San Francisco rivalry, 193

Jim Murray: The Autobiography of the Pulitzer Prize Winning Sports Columnist, 192

Montana, Joe, 192

Andretti, Mario, 193

Gretzky, Wayne, 193

Drysdale, Don, 193

Ashe, Arthur, 193

Sampras, Pete, 194

Jackson, Reggie, 194

Williams, Mitch, 194

Levy, Marv, 194

Johnson, Jimmie, 194

Agassi, Andre, 197

"Football Once Was a Sport," 197

Rockne, Knute, 197

Sports Illustrated, 197

Barkley, Charles, 197

Hershiser, Orel, 197

DiMaggio, Joe, 197

Hemingway, Ernest, 197

Old Man and the Sea, The, 197

Cobb, Ty, 198

"You Can't Burn Rice, But He Can Easily Burn You"

Rice, Jerry

Palmer, Arnold, 198

Ripken, Cal, 199

"Old School Is Fine, Thank You." 199

Lasorda, Tom, 200

"He's Still Big Dodger in Dugout," 201

Daly, John, 198

Wayne, John, 198

"Don't Tell Him Golfers Only Drive For Show," 198

"Little Guarantee Makes A League of Difference, A," 198

Namath, Joe, 198

"You Heard It Yelled Here First," 199

Mantle, Mickey, 200

"What They've Done To Game Is a Crime," 200

Jordan, Michael, 202

"Legend Of Legends Is What Power Begat," 202

Nicklaus, Jack, 202

De La Hoya, Oscar, 202

Rose, Pete, 203

Murray, Jim, 203

in Hall of Fame, 203

Maranville, Rabbit, 203

Smith, Curt. 206

Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story

McGwire, Mark, 203

Norman, Greg, 204

New York Yankees, 204

Jeter, Derek, 204

Steinbrenner, George, 203

"Golf's Job," 204

Woods, Tiger, 204

Lavin, Steve, 204

Paterno, Joe, 204

Tyson, Mike, 205

Holyfield, Evander, 205

Sprewell, Latrell, 205

Carlesimo, P.J., 205

Rozelle, Pete, 205

"Divine Course for Disciple of Golf," 205

Hogan, Ben, 205

Sic transit gloria

"You Can Teach an Old Horse New Tricks," 212

McCarron, Chris, 212

Murray, Jim, 212

last column, 212

death, 212

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 212

Dwyre, Bill, 214

Plaschke, Bill, 214

"You're No Jim Murray," 214

Murray, Jim, 215

memorial tribute at Dodger Stadium, 215

Dwyre, Bill, 215

McCoy-Murray, Linda, 215

West, Jerry, 214

West, Jerry, 214

One-on-one with Bill Dwyre

Dwyre, Bill, 217

Uris, Leon, 224

Famous last words

Wills, Maury, 228

Musial, Stan, 230

Clemente, Roberto, 230

Garvey, Steve, 229

O' Malley, Walter, 227

Alston, Walt, 229

Durocher, Leo, 227

Lasorda, Tom, 229

Rickey, Branch, 227

West, Jerry, 235

Davis, Al, 232

Alzado, Lyle, 232

Hearn, Chick, 235

Murray, Jim, 239

on cities, 239

Scully, Vin, 229

Frick, Ford, 230

Mays, Willie, 230

Bauer, Hank, 230

Mantle, Mickey, 230

Aaron, Hank, 230

Henderson, Rickey, 231

Murray, Jim, 231

on baseball, 231

on the Raiders

on football coaches, 234

Garrett, Mike, 231

Wade, Billy, 231

Jones, Deacon, 231

Knox, Chuck, 231

Davis, Al, 231

Biletnikov, Fred, 231

Alzado, Lyle, 231

Wilson, Marc, 232

Brown, Paul, 234

Hayes, Woody, 234

Oakland Raiders, 233

Schembechler, Bo, 234

Layne, Bobby, 232

Murray, Jim, 239

on stadiums, 239

"If You're Expecting One-Liners, Wait, a Column," 245

Musial, Stan, 246

The Jim Murray Memorial Foundation

McCoy-Murray, Linda, vii

Jim Murray Memorial Foundation, ix

Dwyre, Bill, ix

Jim Murray's career

Book description

Forget Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, Westbrook Pegler, Red Smith, Jimmy Cannon or Jimmy Breslin. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times was the single greatest columnist who ever lived. Not merely the best sports columnist; the best writer, period.

His column was read by millions daily for decades in arguably the most important media market in the world. What makes book so relevant and credible is that it was Murray who was responsible for making Los Angeles the most important media market in the world.

Murray and L.A. were inter-changeable. Every metaphor and parable for Tinseltown described Murray. New York, with Wall Street and its "paper of record," the New York Times, promoted the myth they still held the lofty perch. By the mid-1960s the combination of population growth, New Hollywood, electoral politics, big time sports and Beach Boys panache swung to L.A. It became the new paradigm of public opinion, the trendsetter of the Baby Boomer generation.

It was precisely Murray's background that lent itself so perfectly to this new style. The days of the "ink stained wretch" were over, replaced by hipness, personality and political awareness.

Murray, like so much else in Los Angeles, came from the East Coast after World War II. The Connecticut native was sent to Hollywood by Time magazine to cover the movies. There he got knee deep in the last vestiges of the studio system; the bacchanalias of Frank Sinatra and the "rat pack"; the days of sex and excess. His research led him to Marilyn Monroe; a half-date, half-interview at the Brown Derby. Murray's fantasies were dashed when, upon completion of the Q&A period, Ms. Monroe excused herself. Joe DiMaggio was hiding out in a corner booth.

As the 1950s turned into the 1960s, Murray saw the future. He approached Time and Life magnate Henry Luce with a brilliant idea, a glossy magazine with a lot of photos of gossipy stories about celebrities in movies, music, fashion and the like.

"No one'll ever buy such a tabloid," Luce told Murray.

People magazine would have to go on without Jim Murray, he without its millions of dollars in profit.

Opportunity presented itself in 1961. Otis Chandler was a young Stanford graduate, just taking over his family's newspaper, the Los Angeles Times. Chandler, like his family and his newspaper, was a rock solid conservative Republican. The Times reflected the politics of its city.

After the Civil War, sympathizers of the Union, usually from the North (Boston, New York) ventured west, settling in San Francisco. They tended to be more libertine in ways. Thus did San Francisco become the city of the Barbary Coast, the dock worker's unions, the labor movement, Robert Oppenheimer's transformation of the University of California, and eventually ground zero of the Free Speech Movement, the environmental movement, the gay liberation movement, the feminist movement, the ant-war movement, the sexual revolution, the "summer of love,' and the Democrat Party.

Southerners of the defeated Confederacy chose the warmer climes of Los Angeles. This did it take on a more Southern, Christian, evangelical, and republican identity. By the 1960s, the Rose Bowl attracted still more people from the "heartland," so much so that Murray himself nicknamed Long Beach "Iowa west." The L.A. Times catered to a constituency of readers best exemplified by Benjamin Braddock's (Dustin Hoffman) landed gentry Pasadena parents in The Graduate. The Southland was a land of Christian churches and fierce anti-Communism.

Its politics and its newspaper were one and the same. In the 1950s, McCarthyism dominated the political scene. In Los Angeles, its main advocate and beneficiary was a Congressman-turned-Senator-turned-Vice President named Richard Nixon. Chandler and his paper supported Nixon. His brand of Orange County John Birch politics rode the whirlwind; the Goldwater transformation of the Republican Party; Nixon's sweeping electoral triumphs; and the Reagan Revolution.

But Chandler was a visionary. He decided to turn from his own partisan instincts, and in turn to make the Times the equal of the New York Times, Washington Post and London Times. A world-class newspaper for a new, world-class city.

His first act was to hire Jim Murray as his sports columnist. He chose him over long-time Times sports reporters and elevated him over the dean of the L.A. press corp, Braven Dyer, a man singularly responsible for creating the mythological nature of USC Trojan football lore.

Worried not over ruffled feathers, young Chandler knew sports was entertainment. He knew L.A. was a short-attention-span town that was not easily amused. He needed a man with movie-type panache to spike his sports page with wit and humor. He had no idea just how much.

The timing was made in Heaven. The Dodgers were in their third year. In 1962 they would move to the gleaming Dodger Stadium, half Cecile B. DeMille set, half Hanging Gardens of Babylon. All previous assumptions of sports patronage in term of attendance records, celebrity glitter, and sports glamour were eclipsed over the next two decades.

In addition, the Los Angeles Angels arrived, a cocky band of ruffians who seemingly did their training on the Sunset Strip in its nostalgic hey day. From Minneapolis came the now-Los Angeles Lakers, who would change the face off basketball-as-showmanship.

At USC, a moribund program was about to enter the greatest two-decade run in the history of collegiate football, led by a witty, Whiskey-drinking Irishman named John McKay, the greatest quotemeister in any writer's dream book.

Across town at UCLA, a deacon's son from Indiana took advantage of the full integration of the Westwood campus to create the UCLA basketball dynasty.

All of this happened under the watch of Jim Murray. None would be remembered as such a golden age had it not been for Murray. His columns never were written down to people. The Trojans were "not a football team. They were the Wehrmacht taking Poland; Napoleon advancing on Vienna; Patton's Army striking into the hearty of the Fatherland."

A low level coach named Al Scates "was to volleyball what Napoleon was to artillery."

A thousand other scenarios involved upsets and surprises worthy of Hannibal crossing the Alps; moments reminiscent of the Gettysburg Address; or things of beauty an poetry evoking the image of the Mona Lisa or a Botticelli Angel.

Day in and day out, Los Angelenos were treated with their morning coffee to Murray saying, "Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball."

People called each on the phone to read that, "Don Quixote would understand golf. It is the impossible dream."

Comedians borrowed from Murray at the Candy story or the comedy Store, quoting him as if the material was theirs: "I'd like to borrow his body for just 48 hours. There are three guys I'd like to beat up and four women I'd like to make love to" (Murray's line on Muhammad Ali).

Willie Mays' glove was where "triples go to die."

"I never saw any of man's baser acts of inhumanity to man. I never saw screaming 'witches' burned at the stake, Christians tossed to starving lions, maidens pushed over the edge of active volcanoes," Murray wrote of Ben Hogan. "I never even saw a man going to the electric chair. But until I do, watching Ben Hogan walk up to a five-foot putt is my idea of cruel and inhuman punishment, only a Hitler would enjoy. You feel like saying 'Go home to your wife and kiddies and don't look upon this terrible thing!' "

But in the mid-1960s, Murray's wit landed him some powerful enemies: the American South. Throughout the 20th Century, the sports intelligentsia pretended there was nothing incongruous about the fact black athletes did not play at Southern colleges. When the West Coast, the Big 10 and the East Coast began populating their rosters with the likes of Jim Brown and Bobby Bell, Alabama and its ilk conveniently stopping playing in the Rose Bowl, staying at home in the Orange Bowl or the Sugar Bowl or the Cotton Bowl, all played in the old Antebellum Confederacy.

Murray had the temerity to not only observe that with which was before his eyes, but to acknowledge what it was in his newspaper. Why should Alabama or Ole Miss before declared the "national champion," he wrote, when they did not venture north of the Mason-Dixon Line?

How could it be that an All-Pro of the Kansas City Chiefs was raised within buckshot of the University of Auburn, but never received so much as letter from them at the time? Or a man leading the New York Jets to Super Bowl glory could see Legion Field from his bedroom, but as a high schooler never received an invite to play on its turf? Could skin color by chance be at play?

When 'Bama was denied the 1966 national championship, the good denizens of the Magnolia state placed all their venom and fury upon Murray, whose national column advocating against the all-white Crimson Tide in favor of those Catholics from Notre Dame.

It all came to a head in 1970. Because of Murray's iconoclasm and advocacy, Bear Bryant knew he had to do something. Fate met in Birmingham on September 12, two ideologies on the 50-yard line not at Gettysburg, but at Legion Field.

According to the myth and lore, propagated by images of the smiling Beach Boys; Sinatra yakking with Sammy Davis, Jr.; and Hollywood's portrayals, real or imagined; the world thought L.A. had "gotten it right." Its high schools had never really been segregated. Black professionals were educated at USC as early as 1900.

But it was sports where the myth was closer to reality. USC's first All-American in 1925 was black, Bryce Taylor. UCLA featured a black athlete of the 1920s, Ralph Bunch, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for - don't laugh – brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians in 1950.

But it was integrated football games played before 75,000 Coliseum patrons of the 1930s between the Bruins of Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington, and the integrated Trojans, which were social statements. It was USC and UCLA who built the two dominant collegiate sports traditions in this nation largely on the strength of an integrated policy. It was John McKay who was considered a modern day Moses of Progressivism when it came to opportunity in the form of O.J. Simpson, Mike Garrett, and a hundred others. It was not an accident that USC came to Legion Field on September 12, 1970. Among those as responsible as any was Jim Murray.

That week, Murray and colleague Jeff Prugh were invited into Bear Bryant's ornate office. If Bryant was resistant to integration before, he sure was not now. The game was scheduled to prepare 'Bama fans for his first class of black players in the coming decade. The decorum he showed to Murray indicated Bryant knew the power of his nationwide, syndicated pen.

The game was played. USC blew 'Bama out. The long and the short of it was that it convinced the South they needed more people who looked like the 10 or 15 black fellas who scored touchdowns, threw passes, caught balls, and made tackles for Southern Cal.

Murray's September 13, 1970 column was, in my humble opinion, the finest in sports journalism history. Titled, "Hatred Shut Out as Alabama Finally Joins the Union," it read in part:

On a warm and sultry night when you could hear train whistles hooting through the piney woods half county away, the state of Alabama joined the Union. They ratified the Constitution, signed the Bill of Rights. They have struck the Stars and Bars. They now hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal in the eyes of the Creator.

Murray would go on to write that the previous time he had been in Alabama, the only black man in the stadium was carrying towels. But "a man named Martin Luther King" thought that if you paid for a seat on the bus, one ought to be able to sit in it. The only thing white folks in the state cared about was "beating Georgia Tech."

Murray pointed out that the citizens of Alabama took their football so seriously that they realized that if they wanted to play in the big time, it would require integration. Otherwise, instead of invites to all the best bowl games, they would continue to be relegated to the Bluebonnet Bowl.

"And," wrote Murray, "if I know football coaches, you won't be able to tell Alabama by the color of their skin much longer. You'll need a program just like the Big 10."

He was prescient, but remarkably few others were. It was years before the media acknowledged what Murray knew to be so important when he saw it the eyes God gave him.

He went on to win a Pulitzer. In 1985 I mailed his column daily to friends in Paris. It came to be known as the "Daily Travers." Their memories of Paris are infused first and foremost by the fact they never missed a Murray column.

He wrote for the Times until the late 1990s, most of his last decade-plus legally blind. His influence was profound. To me, he is the reason I write.

Author bio

Steven Travers, a former professional baseball player with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Oakland A's organizations, is the author of over 20 books, including the best-selling Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman, nominated for a Casey Award as Best Baseball Book of 2002; and One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game that Changed a Nation (a 2007 PNBA nominee, subject of the CBS/CSTV documentary Tackling Segregation, and soon to be a major motion picture). He pitched for the Redwood High School baseball team in California that won the national championship in his senior year, before attending college on an athletic scholarship and earning all-conference honors. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Steven coached at USC, Cal-Berkeley and in Europe; served in the Army; attended law school; and was a sports agent. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and was a columnist for StreetZebra magazine in L.A., and the San Francisco Examiner. His screenplays include The Lost Battalion, 21 and Wicked. He has a daughter, Elizabeth Travers Lee, and lives in California.

Books written by Steven Travers

One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed A Nation (also a documentary, Tackling Segregation, and soon to be a major motion picture)

A's Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be A Real Fan!

Trojans Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be A Real Fan!

Dodgers Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be A Real Fan!

Angels Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be A Real Fan!

D'Backs Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be A Real

The USC Trojans: College Football's All-Time Greatest Dynasty

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly Los Angeles Lakers

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly Oakland Raiders

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly San Francisco 49ers

Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman

Pigskin Warriors: 140 Years of College Football's Greatest Games, Players and Traditions

The 1969 Miracle Mets

Dodgers Baseball Yesterday & Today

A Tale of Three Cities: New York, L.A. and San Francisco During the 1962 Baseball Season

What It Means To Be a Trojan: Southern Cal's Greatest Players Talk About Trojans Football

The Poet: The Life and Los Angeles Times of Jim Murray

The Last Icon: Tom Seaver's Town, His Team, and His Times

God's Country: A Conservative, Christian Worldview of How History Formed the United States Empire and America's Manifest Destiny for the 21st Century

Angry White Male

The Writer's Life

The USC Mafia: From the Frat House to the White House to the Big House

Ambition: My Struggles to Fail and Succeed in Baseball, Politics, Hollywood, Writing . . . and the Rocky Path I've Walked With Christ

What Is Truth? Powers That Were, Powers That Are

Vietnam, Longhorns, & Duke Wayne's Trojan Wars

Praise for Steve Travers

Steve Travers is the next great USC historian, in the tradition of Jim Murray, John Hall, and Mal Florence! . . . the Trojan Family needs your work. Fight On!

\- USC Head Football Coach Pete Carroll

. . . Steve Travers tells us all about the exciting and remarkable football . . . . that not only changed the way the game is played; it . . . changed the world.

\- Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

Steve Travers combines wit, humor, social pathos and historical knowledge with the kind of sports expertise that only an ex-jock is privy to; it is reminiscent of the work of Jim Bouton, Pat Jordan and Dan Jenkins, combined with Jim Murray' turn of phrase, Hunter Thompson's hard-scrabble Truths, and David Halberstam's unique take on our nation's place in history. His writing is great storytelling, and the result is pure genius every time.

\- Westwood One radio personality Michael McDowd

Steve Travers is a great writer, an educated athlete who knows how to get inside the player's heads, and when that happens, greatness occurs. He's gonna be a superstar.

- San Francisco Examiner

Steve Travers is a phenomenal writer, an artist who labors over every word to get it just right, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of sports and history.

- StreetZebra

Steve Travers is a "Renaissance man."

\- Jim Rome Show

He is very qualified to continue to write books such as this one. Good job.

\- Marty Lurie/Right Off the Bat Oakland A's Pregame Host

Steve's a literate ex-athlete, an ex-Trojan, and a veteran of Hollywood, too.

\- Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton/XTRA Radio, San Diego

You've done some good writin', dude.

\- KFOG Radio, San Francisco

[Travers is] one of the great sportswriters on the current American scene.

\- Joe Shea/Radio Talk Host and Editor

Travers appears to have the right credentials for the task.

\- USA Today Baseball Weekly

A very interesting read which is not your average . . . book. . . . Steve has achieved his bona fides when it comes to having the credentials to write a book like this.

\- Geoff Metcalfe/KSFO Radio, San Francisco

This is a fascinating book written by a man who knows his subject matter inside and out.

— Irv Kaze/KRLA Radio, Los Angeles

Travers . . . established himself as a writer of many dimensions . . . a natural.

— John Jackson/Ross Valley Reporter

Steve Travers is a true USC historian and a loyal Trojan!

— Former USC football player John Papadakis

Pete Carroll calls you "the next great USC historian," high praise indeed.

\- Rob Fukuzaki/ABC7, Los Angeles

You're a great writer and I always enjoy your musings, particularly on SC football – huge fan!

\- Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane

Steven Travers is one of the most accomplished sports journalists in our nation today and One Night, Two Teams is his defining work to this point.

\- Strandbooks.com

Travers, a USC grad, portrays the game and USC's victory as a tipping point in the integration of college football and the South, a triumph for the forces of equality . . . his larger view of the game hits home in most respects, and he provides a compelling account- drawing from dozens of interviews with participants, coaches, drawing from dozens of others - of a clash between two schools with decidedly different approaches to the composition of their football rosters . . . All in all, an intriguing premise and a well-told story.

\- Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

The book is not just about sports but how sports and that September 1970 game in particular relate to the intertwining of sports, race, politics, history, religion and philosophy.

\- Harold Abend, In Scope

One Night . . . is a tour de force.

- Marin I.J.

Travers combines wit, humor and historical knowledge in his writings.

\- University of Southern California

Wow what a great job!!!! . . . I love the book . . . It's one of those you look forward to reading at special times . . . I can't say enough!

\- Lonnie White, Los Angeles Times

This is a book about American society. It sheds incredible light on little-known events that every American must know to understand this country . . . In 20 years, people will say of this book what they said about Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer.

\- Fred Wallin, Business Talk radio

Steve is the USC historian whose meticulous attention to detail is a revelation. He is the best chronicler of USC ever.

\- Chuck Hayes, CRN Sports Corner

This is fabulous, just a terrific look at our history. Travers is one of the best writers around.

\- Rod Brooks, Fitz & Brooks Show, KNBR/San Francisco

You have created a work of art here, an absolutely great book. We love your work.

  * Bob Fitzgerald, "Fitz & Brooks Show," KNBR/San Francisco

When it comes to sports history, this is the man right here.

\- Gary Radnich, KRON/5, San Francisco

Author Steven Travers discusses his new book . . .

- Orange County Register

. . . Join Steve Travers . . . at the Autograph Stage . . .

\- ESPN Radio

. . . Steve Travers, author of One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game That Changed a Nation . . .

\- Los Angeles Daily News

Steve Travers, a sports historian . . .

- Los Alamitos News-Enterprise

Hear this dynamic speaker tell how this famous game changed history.

\- Friends of the Los Alamitos-Rossmoor Library

This is a fabulous book.

\- Michaela Pereira/ KTLA 5, Los Angeles

Travers presents this particular game in 1970 as a metaphor for the profound changes in social history during the emancipation of the South.

- Publishers Weekly

. . . Explored in rich, painstaking detail by Steve Travers.

\- Jeff Prugh, L.A. Times beat writer who covered the 1970 USC-Alabama game

You're a prolific talent.

\- Curtis Kim, KSRO Radio, Santa Rosa

Is there anything you've not written?

- Vernon Glenn, KRON/4, San Francisco

You are the Poet Laureate of the USC Program! Please keep writing.

\- Tony Pattiz, USC class of 1980

A's Essential: Everything You Need To Be a Real Fan offers a breezy history . . .

\- Bruce Dancis/Sacramento Bee

What A's Essential does give us in heaps is the history specific players and other A's personnel . . . Travers manages to dig up plenty of interesting quotes and his knowledge of other writings about the A's is voluminous. He finds enough fascinating material . . . interesting and add(s) to the reader's experience with the book . . . A's Essential can be a useful source to those who are students of A's history

\- Brian James Oak/www.atthehomeplate.com

As an Oakland fan, I was therefore interested to find A's Essential when browsing on Amazon recently

\- Matt Smith, MLB.com

(The chapter in One Night, Two Teams) on Martin Luther King - the description of the civil rights movement - your insights, the research - what an education I received from reading it. It should be required reading by every student in America! Every citizen. No wonder there were so many African Americans on the Mall a week ago! . . . I am sure there are many blacks who would say it is impossible for a white man to really understand the struggle. And, in one sense they are definitely right because you are not black. But, wow - I think you did an excellent job in bringing it together - telling the story and making me think!

\- Dwight Chapin, former Nixon White House appointments secretary

