Master sports writer
by Charles Francis
The story of how Shirley Povich came to be one of the nation’s most beloved, and more significantly, highly literate sportswriters is the stuff of legend. He caddied at Kebo Valley in Trenton as a teenager. One of the visiting golfers there was so impressed with the high school student’s general grasp of words, as well as his overall demeanor, that he offered to help Povich through his own alma mater, and provide him with a job at the same time. Povich took the golfer up on the offer. The story is in Povich’s book, All Those Mornings. It is there, along with the real story behind Babe Ruth pointing at the bleachers, signaling where he intended to place his fabled home run. According to Povich, who got the story from Bill Dickey, catcher for the Yankees, Ruth actually pointed at the pitcher who had quick-pitched him. The act was Ruth’s warning to the pitcher not to do it again. Ruth told the dugout that was what he had done when he returned from taking his trip around the bases.
As to the golfer who helped Povich through school, he was Edward McLean, publisher of The Washington Post. Povich had intended to go to the University of Maine. Instead, he went to Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. Povich’s lifelong association with the Post began at that time.
Shirley Povich was an American institution — at least in the sports world. Not every American is sports-minded, though. Proof of that lies in Povich’s selection to Who’s Who In American Women. You have to know that Shirley Povich was a man to appreciate just how much of a faux pas that was. When news of Povich’s selection got out, his long-time friend, Walter Cronkite, made a very public proposal of marriage to Miss Povich.
As a sports writer, Shirley Povich’s name stands at the top of a list of columnists and feature writers that includes the likes of Grantland Rice, Red Smith and Ring Lardner. This is not due to the fact that he loved sports more, or was more erudite on the subject than they, but because he was the more practiced wordsmith. Simply put, Shirley Povich could tell a story in a manner that made people buy the Post for no other reason than to read him. Richard Nixon actually said something to that fact. That was in the days of Watergate, when the Post’s Woodward and Bernstein were citing the infamous “Deep Throat.”
The following is a short example of Povich’s ability to reach the heart of his readers. It is a snippet of his description of Lou Gehrig’s 1939 Yankee Stadium farewell.
I saw strong men weep this afternoon, expressionless umpires swallow hard, and emotions pump the hearts of, and glaze the eyes of 60,000 baseball fans in Yankee Stadium. Yes, and hard-boiled news photographers clicked their shutters with fingers that trembled a bit.
Just how important was Shirley Povich to the Post? Ben Bradlee, the Post’s editor, once said Povich saved the paper from going under more than once, that he carried the paper for years.
Shirley Lewis Povich was born in Bar Harbor in 1905, and his first Post byline appeared in 1924. Although retired almost twenty-five years when he died in 1998, his work was still a Post staple. He once said he worked harder during retirement than before. He did between 500 and 600 Post columns after he retired. The paper kept a desk especially for him.
He grew up attending Bar Harbor schools, and graduated from Bar Harbor High School, where a brother was a star football and baseball player. His parents, Lithuanian immigrants, and the community’s only Jewish family, ran a furniture store. The jump from little Bar Harbor to Washington was, then, a big one. Made bigger, perhaps, by the fact that within a few days of being in the nation’s capitol, Povich was caddying for none other than President Warren G. Harding, Edward McLean’s frequent golf partner.
Shirley Povich was much more than a sportswriter. He was an ardent champion of equal rights. He had an ongoing campaign to integrate the Washington Redskins. When running back Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns ran for three touchdowns against the Redskins, Povich alluded to the fact that Brown had integrated the Washington backfield.
Povich’s only hiatus from the world of sports came during World War II, when he was a war correspondent in the Pacific. He was there when the Marines landed on Iwo Jima, and when Okinawa was invaded.
Shirley Povich was an authority on sports. As evidence of this he attended sixty World Series contests, and had a ringside seat for contests like the Dempsey-Tunney long-count fight. He was a friend of the likes of Rocky Marciano, Muhammed Ali, and Ted Williams. His authority was based on first-hand observation and hardcore journalistic investigation. The two led to his teaching journalism at American University, and being looked to by such compilers of sports history as Ken Burns. Povich was also a frequent guest on television talk shows, including several hosted by his son, the talk show host Maury Povich.
Shirley Povich’s contributions to the world of sports are legion. Some would say, however, that his greatest contribution was raising sports writing to a higher level of literacy. He was one of the first college-educated writers to devote his considerable skills to writing about sports. This, in turn, lifted the world of sports to an appreciatively higher level.
