An Honor Bestowed Upon a Legendary Writer

By George Solomon
Sunday, June 22, 2008

If there was a perfect day in the storied career of the late Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich, it likely would have been Oct. 8, 1956. Of the day, Povich would later write: "I shifted my stare to the empty white sheet of paper in my typewriter until snow-blindness threatened to set in. Then my fingers began moving across the keyboard of my portable and I was writing scared as the words began to come out."

And what came out were these words:

"The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series.

"On the mound at Yankee Stadium, the same guy who was knocked out in two innings by the Dodgers on Friday came up today with one for the record books, posting it there in solo grandeur as the only Perfect Game in World Series history."

And on Sept. 22, 1971, one of the worst days in the 76-year career at The Washington Post of Shirley Povich, he wrote:

"They won't hear it in Washington next spring when the cry throughout the rest of the land is the joy sound of 'Play Ball,' the command that remobilizes a million dreams of pennant, however fanciful. After 71 years, the vacuum and the stillness, the Washington Senators are no more."

Povich, who will be honored today at Nationals Park when the team dedicates its media center to him, was 65 years old when he wrote the Senators' epitaph. The American League owners had just voted to permit the Senators to move to Arlington, Tex., leaving Washington -- one of the original eight AL clubs dating from 1901 -- without a major league team.

For the next 27 years, Povich doggedly lobbied and wrote columns in hopes of helping to return baseball to the city he moved to in 1922 and lived in until his death in 1998. If any ballclub had attendance or financial problems, Povich was quick to nudge this editor to have a reporter make a call to see if Washington was a viable alternative. The call usually resulted in the city in question getting a new stadium, or a financial break from its own threatened government. If expansion loomed, Povich confidently predicted D.C. would be first in line.

"How can the national pastime ignore the national capital?" he asked repeatedly, an edge in his clipped New England cadence.

But they did. The owners had bad memories of Washington. And many poobahs believed Washington already had a team: the Baltimore Orioles. To which Povich scoffed: "We're not an occupied city. We're not Chattanooga; a [barnstorming] stop on the way home from spring training.

"You're not a big league city without a big league baseball team."

Shirley Povich died 10 years ago without seeing MLB move the Expos from Montreal to Washington for the 2005 season; without seeing the opening of the impressive, 41,888-seat Nationals Park this spring; without exchanging baseball stories with Frank Robinson; meeting Manny Acta; writing about Alfonso Soriano, Dmitri Young and the potential of Ryan Zimmerman; or lecturing Chad Cordero and Jon Rauch about how the first "relief pitcher" ever in the majors was his friend, a Senator from 1923 to 1932 named Firpo Marberry.

But this afternoon at Nationals Park, before the Nats host the Texas Rangers (of course, the ex-Senators), the Nationals will dedicate their "Media Center" to Shirley Povich. The honor was the brainchild of Theodore N. Lerner, the majority owner of the Nationals who, like many Washingtonians, grew up reading Povich's "This Morning" column in The Post every day.

"It was an automatic thing to do," Lerner said. "It's how you started each day. Shirley was a talented writer and terrific person. We're delighted to do this in his memory."

A Love for Press Boxes

A decade ago, when FedEx Field opened as Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, Cooke's son, John Kent Cooke, named the press box for Shirley Povich, also a favorite of the Cooke family.

Nowadays, some press boxes are called "media centers" -- at which Povich, according to his son Maury, would have scoffed: "Oy, it sounds something out of Best Buy. Where's the joy?"

But Povich loved press boxes, although he might have observed that the one named for him at Nationals Park might be too high above the field, too far from the action. But he wouldn't have complained too much; his town was back in the big leagues, in a new stadium, and he would have been pleased.

Povich grew up in press boxes, starting in 1924 when, as a 19-year-old reporter for The Post, he wrote "sidebars" from Griffith Stadium during Washington's only World Series Championship season.

He loved baseball history and knew that the first press box was constructed at Brooklyn's Union Ground in 1867 "for legitimate members of the press whose duty it is to report the contests." This, according to the "Ball Player's Chronicle," as reported by Peter Morris in the book "Game of Inches."

By 1870, the Olympic Club of Washington had a press box at its home field that hosted scribes in a "fine pagoda over the backstop, secluded from the crowd for scorers and reporters of the press." By 1884, the press box was so close to the field that mischievous players began throwing baseballs at reporters. Two years later, the first recorded complaint by sportswriters occurred when Boston Globe staffers grew angry about the Boston club owners occupying press box seats. It took another 100 years before the art of sportswriter whining was perfected to its current state, led by Anthony I. Kornheiser.

Maury Povich remembers how his father, on occasion, would permit him to accompany him into the press box at Griffith Stadium. "It was like entering hallowed ground, with rules," Povich remembered. " I was told by my father 'do not under any circumstances clap, stand up or utter anything like a cheer, if the Senators do something good. There is no cheering in the press box.'

"Later, I realized there was a pecking order in the press box. My father [The Post], Francis Stann of the Star and Bob Addie, then of the Times Herald, held the premier seats. And there was the realization when I wanted to go home at the end of the game, my father was the last to leave, struggling to finish his column, his game story and his sidebar."

So now we know Shirley Povich was the last writer out of the press box, "with his telegrapher," recalled Martie Zad, Povich's editor in the 1960s. Povich handing his work to the Western Union telegrapher, page by page, to dispatch the copy, often in Morse Code, to The Post newsroom so readers could enjoy Their Morning with "This Morning."

Have a comment or question? Reach me at talkback@washpost.com.