ALL THOSE MORNINGS . . . AT THE POST
The Twentieth Century in Sports from Famed Washington Post Columnist Shirley Povich
Edited by Lynn, Maury, and David Povich and George Solomon
PublicAffairs. 404 pp. $27.50
Shirley Povich wrote his first sports column for this newspaper in1924 and his last in 1998, and in the intervening years he watchedGene Tunney defeat Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight championship in1927; Seabiscuit beat War Admiral in their 1938 match race; DonLarsen pitch his perfect game in the 1956 World Series; the Green BayPackers win the first Super Bowl in 1967; Joe Frazier defeat MuhammadAli for the heavyweight championship in 1971; and Cal Ripken play his2,131st consecutive game in 1995, breaking the record held for 56years by Lou Gehrig, whom Povich knew and liked very much.
It would be an injustice, however, to think of Povich's careerprimarily for its longevity. By any measure, he ranks with theheavyweights of his trade. Sports columnists develop -- some mightsay, cultivate -- a persona, be it the relentless champion ofnobility on the playing field (Grantland Rice, a Povich mentor) orthe guy on the adjoining barstool with a story to tell and a spleento vent (New York's Dick Young, most famously). Povich, like his goodfriend Red Smith, drew on a keen eye, a storyteller's gift fornarrative and, when he felt it necessary, a sense of moral outrage tocreate a voice that was urbane and engaging. It is impossible toenvision him sitting in the press box without a coat and tie.
Now, his children and former Post sports editor George Solomonhave assembled a volume of his best columns, All Those Mornings . . .at The Post. It contains just over 400 pages, a reasonable figureconsidering that little of consequence in the world of sportsoccurred over the last century without Povich in attendance.
Shirley Povich -- yes, his given name; he was inadvertentlyincluded in the 1959 Who's Who of American Women -- came to TheWashington Post in 1922, after attending Georgetown University, byvirtue of the good impression he made as a caddy for the paper's long-ago owner, Edward B. McClean. He started as a $12-a-week copy-boy andwithin two years was covering the Washington Senators. He wrote hisfirst column about baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw MountainLandis. The prose was clear and muscular and, over the decades, wouldchange little stylistically. The man came to his work knowing how tosay what he wanted to say.
Povich did not write for lines, a curse of cleverness suffered bytoo many sports columnists, whose works suggests an experience akinto fording a stream by skipping from rock to rock. He saw the piecewhole, or rather built his columns around the essential narrative ofthe event he was covering. He also resisted the temptation to favorstyle over substance, an affliction that leaves too many otherwisetalented columnists saying the same thing repeatedly, each timereaching desperately for another flourish. As a result, Povich's workholds up remarkably well; the great joy in reading this collection isthe feeling of freshness and intimacy that comes with being at somany familiar events. Consider this view of the Dempsey-Tunney fight:'Getting up, Tunney ran. The champion ran, but it was no disgrace torun. It was the sensible thing to do under the circumstances, and inrunning Tunney acted the part of the champion who knew what to dowhen there was no logical alternative.'
Povich had his causes. He was, for instance, an early andoutspoken champion of integrating baseball -- a belief that set himapart from many of his contemporaries, who assumed that they werebeing reasonable when arguing that the safest place for a black manto play baseball was in the Jim Crow world of the Negro Leagues.Povich took the fight to football, as well, hammering at one-timeRedskins owner George Marshall's resistance to signing a black man.He had his favorite athletes (Walter Johnson, especially) and games(baseball, above all). In this regard he was a product of a time whensports meant baseball, horse-racing and boxing. He liked football; hecared little for basketball.
Povich was at his best, however, when he played the role of hisreaders' surrogate, helping them see what he was seeing. He did thisat games and, in wartime, at Iwo Jima and, perhaps most poignantly,at a sports event that became something else entirely: the massacreof 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. He was at his best inMunich, a reporter so enterprising that he slipped into the OlympicVillage by changing into a Puerto Rican Olympic team sweatsuit so hecould get closer to the action than anyone else. He was 66 years oldand not content to wait out the crisis in the press center.
One cannot read this collection, then, without wishing that thosewho loved him best might have let the columns speak for themselves.Their interstitial material clogs the collection, leaving the readerto wonder where the introductions end and Povich begins.
But that is a small matter. What emerges in these pages is aportrait of a man who, even in his last years, retained his grace,his voice, his excitement at being able to spend a lifetimechronicling so many marvelous games.
Michael Shapiro is the author of 'The Last Good Season: Brooklyn,the Dodgers and Their Final Pennant Race Together.'
