Selah

We have lost another legend.

It was just a couple of months ago we bid adieu to Larry Munson. He was the gravel voice of The University of Georgia Bulldogs. Munson was the ultimate homer. He used the word “We” when discussing the Bulldogs, like the man with a mouse in his pocket. Munson had a way of making every play sound like it was life or death. He is one of the impressions I still do. I love saying “Sugar is falling from the sky”.

Back last summer we lost Ernie Johnson, the old broadcaster for The Atlanta Braves. The man had the best voice ever for baseball. As comfortable as an old house shoe, he was the polar opposite of Munson. Johnson seemed to understand that, after all, it was just a game.

Has it really been almost four years since we heard Skip Caray say, “Hello again everybody”? If Ernie Johnson was everyone’s wise old uncle, Caray was everyone’s wise acre cousin. They stuck with The Braves through thick and thin, mainly the thin. I wonder how many bad baseball games they announced. When The Braves finally won the World Series, it was Skip behind the mike. He said what he always said when something important happened: “Listen to this crowd”. He realized that baseball is something for the crowd.

Furman Bisher died March 18, 2012. He was 93 years old. He was once the editor of sports page of The Atlanta Journal and later became a columnist for the Journal which somehow morphed into what it is now: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Someone mentioned Bisher wrote a book called Strange But True Baseball Stories. I am confident that every boy in East Marietta in 1969 read that book. I don’t remember all of the strange but true stories, but I’m sure there was chapter on Eddie Gaedel, the 3ft 7in player for The St.Louis Browns (Number: 1/8). There had to be a chapter on the one armed outfielder Pete Gray of...(you guess it) The St. Louis Browns. If I’m wrong, I don’t mind you telling me. It was a great introduction to baseball

Bisher was always around. He knew Ty Cobb. He interviewed “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Bisher was very instrumental in getting the Milwaukee Braves to move to Atlanta. (He tried to get Charlie Finley to move the Kansas City Athletics here. Can you imagine Charlie Finley in Atlanta? We would have loved those awful pollen yellow uniforms and a player named Catfish. I’m not sure Reggie Jackson would have been popular.)

He was the mentor to almost a ton of great sportswriters. Walburn. Kay. Minter. Hudspeth. Bradley. Schultz. Arey. Grizzard. Lewis Grizzard, his pet, once said, “I made up my mind that when I became a sportswriter, I would write like Furman Bisher.”

Back in the 70’s, the newspaper would have a weekly contest called “Beat Bisher”. The idea was to have Bisher select who he thought would win the important football games of the weekend and you picked who you thought would win. If you guessed more winners than Bisher, the newspaper would send you a bumper sticker that read “I beat Bisher”.

Looking back on it, nobody ever beat Bisher, because nobody could. Nobody every will.