I found a picture of Carl in the Georgia baseball files and ran it next to his obituary, which I wrote. The pretty coed pasted down the last headline on my sports pages.
I walked back upstairs to my desk. I picked up the box I had loaded with various possessions. The newsroom was empty. There was nobody to say good-bye to. I put the box in the front seat next to me in the VW and drove home by way of the old Daily News building, which the new management was turning into some sort of storage area. I pulled in front of the building and sat there for maybe fifteen minutes. I looked over at the Open House across the street. The same old faces sat there drinking coffee and listening to a country song by Jack Green that made its way out of the open door onto the street.
I just sat there and stared at the place where I had spent nearly three years involved in what I still believe to be high on the list of noble human endeavors—putting out a good newspaper.
The place had once been so alive. Now, it sat dark and orphaned.
I cranked the VW, put it in reverse, and backed out into the street.
Then the schoolboy journalist drove away.
Chapter 12
NEWSPAPER HOURS are strange. If you work for an afternoon newspaper, you report at the very crack of dawn and you get off when everybody else is having lunch. If you work for a morning newspaper, you report in the afternoon and get off when everybody else is asleep. There are some good points to these hours.
Okay, so I can think of only one: You never have to sit in traffic.
Monday morning I walked out of my apartment exactly at six. Of course I remember what time it was. One doesn’t meet his destiny without recording each detail.
It was June and it was hot and it was my first day as a paid em-by-God-ployee of the Atlanta Journal sports department. Almost four years to the day since I had stood alone in that small office, hallowed be its name, and had vowed to return. Well, not only was I back, I was wearing a new sports jacket.
I had decided I needed one. My old jacket, which I bought to go through fraternity rush at Georgia, hardly seemed right for such a historic moment in my life. It was a tweed sort of thing. And the truth was, it didn’t really wow them that much when I went through fraternity rush.
I probably visited fifteen houses and only got invited back to two (I still think they probably got me mixed up with another guy). I wasn’t the biggest lizard who went through rush at the University of Georgia in 1964, but I did wear funny glasses, and I had a lot of freckles.
I went to Judson Smith’s cut-rate, factory-reject warehouse in my hometown of Moreland to buy my new sports jacket to wear my first day at the Journal. Judson dressed almost everybody in Moreland, including the town’s two preachers and the grammar-school principal. Judson had a motto: “If you want it, we got it. Let’s just hope we can find it.”
You had to drive down a dirt road to get to Judson’s place. People came from as far away as Hogansville, Grantville, and Primrose to shop there because of his bargain prices. Judson would sell you pillows and sheets, bundles of white socks, six pair for a dollar, shoes, sweaters, shirts, slacks, and if you needed a plumbing tool or a mousetrap, he’d probably have that too.
I selected a forty-long gray sports jacket from Mr. Judson’s spring collection. The only thing I could find to identify it as a factory reject was what appeared to be a faulty stitching just under the left side pocket. It was barely noticeable. For twenty-eight bucks, it was practically invisible.
I wore a pair of navy-blue slacks with my gray coat. I also wore a white shirt, a red striped tie, and a pair of brown wing-tip shoes I had shined the night before. I had slicked down my hair with Vitalis, dabbed on some English Leather cologne. And I was gorgeous. Okay, I was clean.
It had never occurred to me where I would park. Jim Minter hadn’t mentioned anything about an employee parking lot.
I drove downtown and turned up Forsyth Street, where the Journal-Constitution was located, next to Atlanta’s Union Station, still suffering from the disappearing railroad blues, as Steve Goodman put it in his brilliant “City of New Orleans,” which a lot of people recorded, but Willie Nelson did best.
I circled the block a couple of times—I still had twenty minutes before it was time to report—but I didn’t see any parking meters or parking lots. What I did see, however, was a great deal of room in the Union Station lot. Run one dilapidated passenger train a day, and there usually will be a lot of room in your parking lot. I didn’t see any sort of guard, so I figured what the hell and parked just above the entrance to the station, where I jumped into the exciting field of sales four years earlier.
Just after dawn, I walked past the station. It hadn’t opened yet. But even on the outside, it still smelled of urine, and there were newspapers and wine bottles near the entrance. The place looked like an aging contessa who had let herself go and danced in the darkness of her room alone.
Just past the entrance was some sort of little cubbyhole that looked as if it might have been a place to check baggage back when the contessa was still a fine-looking lady and the trains were spit-polished and were anxious to arrive “on the advertised”—at the precise hour and minute it had promised its passengers.
As I walked past that area, I heard a voice. It startled me. I sort of had the idea I was the only other person up in the world.
The voice said something like, “Hey, buddy.” I looked around. I was the only buddy on the premises. I looked inside the dark little hole. I could make out a human figure. It came out and said to me, “I just got off a freight train, and I haven’t eaten in two days. Can you help me?”
The man was as filthy and decrepit as the station. His hands shook. His eyes were hollow. He smelled. Urine and body odor were not my idea of a perfect start to the day. The man seemed more pitiable than menacing.
I pulled out my wallet and gave him two dollars. That left me five. The man seemed genuinely appreciative.
“Where did you come in from?” I asked him. Night trains were especially fascinating to me. I’d heard their distant horns so many nights in Moreland. I’d just lie there and wait for the train to get nearer and the horn to get louder, and then would come the clanking and rumbling as the train passed through town, highballing either south to Montgomery or north to Atlanta on the Atlanta and West Point roadway. Then the horn would grow distant again, and silence would be restored. There was always something peaceful and restful about hearing a train at night. I would lie there under my cover, and sleep was easier. One day I knew I would ride a night train out somewhere covering the Atlanta Crackers on the Southern Association circuit, maybe into New Orleans or Mobile or Little Rock. But as I stood there that morning, the Crackers had been gone from Atlanta for years, and what passenger trains were left were ghosts.
The man said he’d hopped a freight in Nashville. He seemed anxious to get on his way, which made sense. After all, he had said he hadn’t eaten in two days.
“Do you know,” he asked me then, “what time the liquor stores open?” Oh. I walked into the Journal-Constitution a much wiser individual, having learned that in desperation, hunger always comes in second to thirst.
As I rode up in the elevator, alone, to the fourth floor, I wondered, Would I ever leave this place again?
Not likely. I was there to practice the art of sports journalism, to be the best at it I could be.
I walked in. Tom McCollister, the slot man, pointed to a seat around the rim, and said for me to occupy it. He handed me a wire story that needed a headline. I wrote it. I was official. I had gathered with the eagles, like Bisher and Minter.
Bisher, as sports editor, had run the department for years until the creation of an executive-sports-editor position. Bisher had been a tyrant. There was still a large hole in the bulletin board behind the slot. Former slot man Greg Favre, currently executive editor of the Sacramento Bee, was said to have gone to Bisher’s office once for the morning ritual of being told what was wrong with his first edition. After this particul
ar session, he had stormed out and put his fist through the board.
Nobody ever set foot in Bisher’s tiny office without fear. And nobody ever emerged from Bisher’s office with a victory. It was often said, “In that office, Bisher is unbeaten, untied, and unscored upon.”
Bisher was a North Carolina man, a robust fellow with black curly hair. His family was in the hosiery business. Bisher grew up in Denton, and as he often mentioned in his column, grew up listening to the dulcet tones of Bill Stern and the early sportcasters on an Atwater-Kent radio. We had that much in common. I had grown up listening to the dulcet tones of Harry Caray and Buddy Blattner on KMOX in St. Louis and Waite Hoyt calling the Cincinnati Reds games on WCKY, which also featured The Wayne Rainey Show, where they played a lot of gospel music and sold baby chicks “guaranteed live on arrival.” My radio came from Sears.
Bisher originally was sports editor of the Constitution. Ed Danforth, who was always referred to as “Colonel,” retired as sports editor of the Journal in the fifties, and Bisher took his place on the afternoon paper.
Bisher’s tyrannical nature (he once walked into the office and said to a staff member he particularly disliked, “Watson, I’ve got a new assignment for you—find another job.”) and his frequent absences as he covered everything that moved in sports, finally led management to the decision to allow Bisher to keep his title and continue to write his brilliant column, but to name somebody else executive sports editor to see to the staff and the daily working of the paper.
Jim Minter got that job.
He had been born into the red clay of then-rural Fayette County to the south of Atlanta, a farm boy who learned the work ethic in his father’s fields. He graduated from the University of Georgia and went into the service post-Korea. If he had remained in the service, I am convinced we would have won in Vietnam. No man was ever so born-to-lead.
His father’s death took Minter out of the army. He had to return to Fayette County—to the land and to his mother. Both needed caring for.
His family affairs in order, he then followed his own notion to get into journalism. Ed Danforth gave him a job on the Journal sports staff, and he wound up running the show.
He was tough. And ornery. A hard man to know. But if you fell in battle, he would come back for you. In madness, he would remain calm.
I hate to jump ahead, but the following example of Minter’s toughness fits best here. He eventually left Journal sports to become managing editor of the Constitution. Reg Murphy, at the time, was editorial page editor.
Murphy, a few years later, was kidnapped by some guy with a mental problem. He stuffed Murphy into the trunk of his car, and then called the newspaper and demanded $800,000 in cash for his return.
He wanted somebody from the paper to meet him with the money. He wanted that person to come in an uncovered vehicle, and he demanded that person come alone.
Minter volunteered to take the money to the kidnapper. It was deep into winter. The Federal Reserve bank, located next door to the paper, came up with the $800,000 in cash.
Minter bundled himself up against the cold and drove to meet the kidnapper in an open jeep, not knowing what might eventually happen to Murphy or himself.
As it turned out, Minter was not harmed and the kidnapper, later captured, let Murphy go.
At a press conference later, a TV reporter asked Minter what he felt like, leaving the newspaper with $800,000 of Cox money.
He replied, “I felt like Furman Bisher on my way to spring training.”
Minter demanded good writing. He demanded good layout. There was a way he thought the Journal staff should write, and there was a way he thought the Journal sports section should look, and he would not allow anything that didn’t fit the mold.
And Minter was fiercely competitive.
He wanted news. He demanded news. The Constitution, despite the fact it was under the same roof and management umbrella as the Journal, was Minter’s, and thus Bisher’s, mortal enemy. Better to have died a small boy than to walk in one morning, pick up the Constitution, and find your adversary had broken a story on you.
We covered the Southeastern Conference with bright and shining light. Nothing escaped us. If the papers in Birmingham, where the conference offices were located, broke an SEC story first, Minter would take it as a personal offense.
The Journal and Constitution were combined on Sundays, but the Journal was responsible for producing the paper. During football season, we covered, with writers and photographers, everything in the South that put on a helmet.
Photographers would fly into, say, New Orleans for a Georgia Tech–Tulane game early. They would shoot the first quarter, then jump on a plane and get the photographs back by early evening. The next day, there would appear a small airplane in the corner of the photographs selected, informing the reader this wasn’t any nickel-and-dime operation.
Georgia Tech’s legendary head coach Bobby Dodd probably knew how to handle sportswriters and sports pages better than anybody else of his day. If a reporter covering Tech couldn’t think of an angle, Dodd would give him one. If Tech was on the road and the photo deadline was tight, Dodd had a unique way of making the photographer’s job easier. He would find out what side of the field the Journal-Constitution’s photographer was stationed, and run all the plays on Tech’s first offensive series toward that side.
The Braves had moved into Atlanta from Milwaukee in 1966. Atlanta was also granted an expansion National Football League franchise the same year, and the St. Louis Hawks of the National Basketball Association came to Atlanta in ’68. The city even got a franchise in the North American Soccer League. Atlanta was finally a major-league town.
Compared to today, however, we were woefully short on people and space. Today, most big-league sport departments have wide-open pages, a staff that works inside to produce the paper, and then a covey of writers to cover their various beats. Inside people don’t write. Outside people don’t edit, and appear only occasionally in the office.
At the Journal in 1968, you worked both inside and outside, and there was no such thing as overtime (Hold that thought. It becomes important later).
Wilt Browning covered the Braves, Hyland had the Hawks. Darrell Simmons covered the Falcons. Teague Jackson was the golf writer, Bill Robinson had auto racing and outdoors. Bill Clark and I covered the colleges, Bill Whitley had the high schools. Joe Litsch helped him.
Tom McCollister was assistant sports editor. He rein the slot four mornings a week, then worked Saturday nights producing the Sunday morning edition. He had the worst job on the staff. Basically, what he did was get up at four in the morning four days a week and then work from two in the afternoon until the next morning on Saturday, and if there was anything wrong in the sports section, it was his fault. He is still alive, incidentally.
Bisher wrote his column and still raised hell if there was anything he didn’t like in the section. He had accepted the fact he no longer oversaw the day-to-day operation, but did not accept the fact he wasn’t supposed to make everybody’s life miserable when he spotted what he considered an error in spelling, fact, style, layout, or judgment.
Minter battled Bisher’s tantrums and did the hiring and firing. He also gave out the assignments, made up the work schedule, signed expense accounts, reworked the design of the first edition if he didn’t like it, covered college football Saturdays, and broke news. He was the first to write that Norm Van Brocklin was coming to the Falcons as head coach.
He got that story when the wife of a Constitution reporter bragged to Minter’s wife, Anne, that her husband had confirmed Van Brocklin was coming to Atlanta, and was going to write the story in the Wednesday morning paper. Minter came out with it Tuesday afternoon.
Minter was not above any sort of treachery that would net him a scoop. When Georgia was trying to hire a new athletic director, he hid in a room next to where university officials were meeting and planned to listen to what was taking place through a heating and air conditioning
duct. Unfortunately, he was noticed by a latecomer to the meeting and his cover was blown. He was first with the story later anyway.
Minter had lost some horses in the late sixties. John Logue had covered baseball and college football and was a brilliant writer, a well-read man whose literary allusions on the sports pages were wonderful. But he had decided to leave and join the staff of Southern Living in Birmingham. He has since become a highly regarded editor and writer of mystery novels.
Lee Walburn was gone, too. Walburn had also covered the Crackers. When the Braves moved into town, Bisher called him into his office with instructions on how to cover a major-league spring training camp. Walburn announced his intention to take his young family with him to West Palm, where the Braves trained.
Bisher was incredulous. How could a man do a job on spring training when his wife and children were around? Walburn recalls Bisher saying, “Lee, you’ve just got to make a choice—it’s either your family or baseball.”
Luckily for Lee, before he had to give his final answer, the Braves hired him to run their public-relations department. Walburn later opened his own successful public-relations firm, sold out to J. Walter Thompson, and is currently editor of Atlanta Magazine. He is still married, as well.
So here we were that June morning of 1968. My history of falling in with an odd crowd was continuing:
—Frank Hyland, the basketball writer, was in his late twenties. He was originally from Minnesota. He smoked nonfiltered Camels. He had a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters. Frank enjoyed arguing abut any subject, and there were few subjects about which he didn’t have a strong opinion.
I think Frank was always happiest when he was leaning against a bar with a beer in his hand debating who was the better player, Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain. Frank and Bill Clark spent hours on the issue. Frank was a Bill Russell man. Clark defended Chamberlain. Once, I got into the argument and mentioned the fact I was a Bob Pettit man. Frank said, “You have the mind of an earthworm.”
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