Roy Exum
Pardon me if it seems I’ve been gloating a little too much in recent days. Two of “my boys” – Mark Weidmer and George Starr – were rightfully inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame Thursday night and that is a bigger thrill for me than it is for them. I reckon I’m in about a dozen ‘halls’ and some claim that’s because I am more ‘infamous’ than not, but when guys I have hired get glamorized … man, that makes my world brighter. I can’t dwell on it much because I get emotional but, golly, I love all the guys and girls who worked with me down through the years. Trust me, my brood is an all-star list.
Earlier this week I got a delicious letter from an old Florida sportswriter and lifelong chum who is so worried about “The Disappearance and Decline of the Great American Sportswriter” and, I’ll declare, I know what Buddy Martin means. Anybody can go to a game and write what happens. But storytelling is an art that a lot of people can’t do. A good sportswriter can turn an ordinary game into a symphonic melody where the readers cling to each sentence. Believe me, both Weidmer and Starr are still dandies at it.
From what I read I find there are fewer and fewer story tellers, whether ruined by liberal journalism schools or the sickening slant of “faux news” reporting that violates the craft. Today there are certain bylines I won’t read but, back in the day, especially before the Internet, I subscribed to a lot of Southern newspapers who had dazzling wordsmiths.
Now my chum Buddy could evermore weave a yarn. He writes, “Sportswriters are a magnificent repository of remarkably unblemished narratives, colorful rhetoric, beautiful irony and cynicism, fascinating hyperbole, truthful insight and falling-down funny anecdotes. Most of that, however, is bound to be washed out to sea with the next wave,” he fears.
As a rule, the best writers were also the biggest characters. Oh, they were masterful in front of a manual typewriter alright but get them away from their ‘missus’ and, man, the swashbuckler would come out every night. What’s worse it would affect others in their midst. Florida’s Buddy Martin wants to do a book on the best of these and I told him I will gladly help. Heck, I’d be thrilled as long as he leaves me out, along with the pranks and merriment and funny incidents that ain’t true.
You see, I was around long enough to know the top national writers and … well, I kinda’ watched some stuff that nobody knows about these swashbuckler types. Gosh, at times I’d even fall in amongst ‘em and, brother, let me tell some of those back-page stories and we’ve got a Caddy Shack of a motion picture. What was unbelievable is swashbuckling happened a lot and I sometimes got blame/credit for stuff I didn’t do.
Yes, I was elbows deep in the “witch doctor” legend and may have been “on hand” during some other memorable moments but “creative mischief” ain’t all bad. Live large – you write large. It was that kind of thing. Plus, I was a “Skywriter” for many years and there is “guilt by association.” That’s what happened one afternoon in Starkville, Miss.
The TV guys on the Skywriters would sit patiently while we scribes did interviews and gathered notebook information but watching practice, where they had to get tapes, B-roll, and live shots, was really boring. Starkville in August is as hot as blazes so “somebody” coerced the sports information department into loading a van with several other writers, making a quick stop at Jimmy’s Esso for some beer. Behold! Very quickly, we had three vans off to Jimmy’s, and then took refuge under a grove of trees at some vacant recreation softball fields.
Soon all these grown men out of nowhere are sipping suds under the trees. They had taken the vans back and so about 20 of us begin telling jokes, stories, and such. And suddenly “Bama Bill,” an Alabama sports editor just “plumb give out,” slumping unconscious due to the broiling heat mixed suddenly with an eager intake of ice cold beer. This was way before cell phones so one of our youngest was dispatched to the athletic department for help.
We dragged lifeless Bill into this small building, laid him out of a folding table and began searching for any aid or possible comfort for the man. So help me, he looked like a corpse and thank goodness we had enough beer to keep our heads rather than panic. The refrigerator was bare except for – miraculously, a big aluminum bowl of sliced cucumbers. “Somebody” suggested we place some cold slices of cucumbers on Bill’s pale face. “Cool as a cucumber,” right?
Next thing you know we’ve wrestled his shirt off and are placing cucumber slices all over him – his chest, his arms, his neck – and a groggy Bama Bill begins to respond favorable. He got his eyes open and didn’t mind in the least the cool cucumbers were working their magic.
Right about then you could hear ambulances and the police car came roaring right down the middle of the ball field. The team doctor and two trainers jumped from the car as other rescue teams arrived. The doc stopped with dropped jaw at the door. The patrolman looked over his shoulder and blurted “What the h…” before the doctor hushed him by 10 decibels, “What! Which witchdoctor has been treating this man!!”
Ol’ Bill spent four days in the hospital, but the popular rumor is we saved his life. The doctor also got mad when he caught Bama Bill guzzling a golden lager in the back of the ambulance but, hey, “No blood, no foul.” And the doc’s one-liner has been told repeatedly for darn near 50 years wherever sports scribes gather.
That’s the decline I worry about. The great characters, the true swashbucklers, are now few and far between. Buddy swears he is doing a book, an insightful tribute to the greatness of Red Smith, Jim Murray, Blackie Sherrod, and a gaggle of the greats I once knew. I’ve got some personal favorites like Freddie Russell, my mentor in Nashville, and Jim Foster from Greenville, S.C. The late Bill Millsaps from Richmond … lordy, my personal Hall of Fame is bursting with such giants.
Did I ever write about the “Dance of Seven Veils” one night in Baton Rouge or “Toga Toga” in Lexington? Oh, my mercy.
The sportswriters need more swashbucklers. As Al Browning of Tuscaloosa and later Knoxville told me just before he died, “Ex, I only wish I could hear the crowd at Legion Field roar just one more time.”
Yessir … I once ran with the best of the best. And I’ll never forget it.
Selah.
royexum@aol.com