A Nod to Shirley
Shirley Povich was 75 years old and still writing the best sports columns in The Washington Post when I told him so.
No hockey goalie ever deflected a slap shot more deftly than Shirley deflected compliments. He did it that time, too. He laughed and said, “I’ve learned to eliminate my mistakes.”
Like the best laugh lines, his came with a hidden truth. In this case, it was the truth of what made Shirley so remarkable as a person and as a sports columnist. Only a man who cares about his craft recognizes his mistakes. Only a confident man admits them. Only the wisest works to eliminate them. Shirley did all that.
I don’t think of Shirley’s line every time I write – only when I make another of the mistakes that a sports columnist should eliminate. Nor do I think of Shirley every time I work up a rant that will make a fiery column – but I think of him often enough to walk away from the keyboard before doing something so silly as to provoke his gentle remonstrance in my ear, “David, David, David.”
Such a moment came a month ago. I decided to write a column about how the NFL team in Washington should change its nickname from an epithet offensive to many groups of people, including but not limited to Native Americans. As I typed along, a certain fury settled on my delicate brow. I hammered at the keys, resolved to leave no man standing who ever approved of the nickname.
I was emboldened by memories of Shirley’s antipathy for the original team owner, George Preston Marshall. If Shirley didn’t like you, you weren’t worth liking. As insulting as Marshall’s nickname for his team had been, I screamed into my typing machine that the owner’s successors were accomplices after the fact and should be condemned by all right-thinking people. I was about to shout that those guilty parties should be “tarred, feathered, and paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue” when I thought, “Hmm, maybe over the top?”
I started over. I didn’t change my opinion on the nickname. But I came as near to reasoned argument as the unreasonable nickname allows.
For that, and for all such moments, I thank Shirley Povich.
David Kindred is a columnist for Sports on Earth and Golf Digest, an author and visiting professor of journalism at Bradley University. Previously he was a columnist for The Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The National and Louisville Courier-Journal.
