Through It All, He Made Them Laugh

The greater Los Angeles metroplex may have laughed itself silly over Jim Murray’s sports column every morning, but I never knew a man who had to write comedy through more sorrow.

His son, Ricky, died of a drug overdose and Murray partly blamed himself. The love of his youth, Gerry Brown, died of cancer 14 years ago and it so flattened him that, until he met the radiant Linda McCoy, I never thought he was going to turn the lights up in his house again. And for a man with more vision than anybody I’ve ever met, his eyes had this annoying habit of walking off on him. He once dictated his column for six months completely blind. And yet, through it all, he kept on making people laugh. He was the finest man I ever knew.

He never did complain. He never had the time, what with asking how you were doing. 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.

I asked him once if he ever thought about retiring and hoped like hell the answer was no.

“Columns are like riding a tiger,” he said. “You’d like to get off, but you have no idea how.”

I cried Monday when he found a way.