POVICH, Shirley Lewis

(b. 15 July 1905 in Bar Harbor, Maine; d. 4 June 1998 in Washington), longtime sportswriter and editor for the Washington Post.

Povich was one of ten children born to Nathan Povich and Rosa Orlovich Povich, the only Orthodox Jewish family in Bar Harbor. The family moved to Bath, Maine, in 1920, and Povich graduated from Morse High School in 1922. A summer job as a teenager caddying for the newspaper mogul Edward McLean at the Kebo Valley Club, a Bar Harbor reserve for the wealthy and privileged, led Povich to employment at the Washington Post in 1922, when he was seventeen. McLean persuaded Povich to move to Washington, D.C., offering him $20 per week to caddy and another $12 per week to work as a copyboy. For the next seventy-five years, Povich drew a paycheck "every week, as caddy, copyboy, [war] correspondent, and columnist, finding joy in every category."

On his first morning in Washington, D.C., Povich found himself at the first tee of a private golf club with McLean and President Warren G. Harding. He heard McLean say, "Mr. President, this is Shirley Povich, the best caddy in the United States, and he's going to caddy for you today." Povich's life back in Bar Harbor had not been like that. At 74 Main Street, he had lived above the store where his father sold porch furniture to well-heeled summer visitors, like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. "We were never mistaken for either of those families," he later wrote. On his second day in Washington, Povich began his job as a copyboy at the Washington Post. McLean invited him to enroll in Georgetown University's law school and told the dean to send the tuition bills to him. Povich attended Georgetown from 1922 until 1924, when he left without earning a degree. In August 1924 Povich registered his first byline with a description of the Washington Senators taking over the American League by defeating the New York Yankees. After posting the story, Povich sneaked into the composing room and stole a galley proof of the column. Not until he ran his fingers across the metal and "fondled my name in type was I certain of this dream come true." Fittingly, his last column, published on the day he died, was on baseball, a game he loved.

In 1926 McLean made Povich a sports editor. At age twenty Povich was the youngest sports editor of any major U.S. newspaper. In August 1926 he began his long-running column, "This Morning with Shirley Povich," which was a standard in the Washington Post until his retirement in 1974. Povich met Ethyl Friedman on a blind date in 1930. They were married on 21 February 1932 and later had three children. One son, Maury, became a popular television talk show host.

Through the years Povich's column was one of the great chronicles of sports. He wrote about the baseball greats Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, and Lou Gehrig; the golfers Bobby Jones and Sam Snead; the tennis star Bill Tilden; the fighter Rocky Marciano; and the jockey Earl Sande. He covered many uplifting moments in sports history, ranging from the first World Series win for the Washington Senators in 1924 to Cassius Clay's upset of Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title in 1964, and on to the 2,131st consecutive game played by Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles in 1995, which broke Lou Gehrig's record. Povich also took up controversial subjects, such as Gene Tunney's defeat of Jack Dempsey in a 1927 heavyweight bout, which was said to be the result of a "long count" that gave Tunney extra time to get up from the floor. Povich also reported on the terrifying events of the 1972 Munich Olympics, when eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by terrorists.

When asked what time of day he wrote his column, Povich responded, "When my head comes off the pillow." In 1969, after having written his column for more than forty years, he admitted that he still wrote "scared." He took that as a sign of maturity, not cowardice. "The easy writer is either the lazy one or the conceited one." By his own admission he was never an easy writer. Povich's son Maury said in an interview, "Long after the game had ended, long after the lights were out and everyone went home and the locker rooms were empty, my father and Red Smith were still in the press box writing and rewriting their stories." Povich once counseled a young reporter always to remember, "The story has never been written that couldn't be written better."

In addition to writing his daily column, Povich became a prolific freelance writer. In 1946, after the Brooklyn Dodgers signed a contract with Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in the major leagues, Povich wrote an award-winning fifteen-part series called "No More Shutouts" on the impact of the color line in baseball. The first paragraph of the first installment set the tone for the rest of the series: "Four hundred and fifty-five years after Columbus eagerly discovered America, major league baseball reluctantly discovered the American Negro." Likewise, because the Washington Redskins football team had a long history of racial exclusion, Povich wrote, "The Redskins' colors are burgundy, gold and caucasian." After a game when the Redskins were clobbered by the Cleveland Browns in 1960, Povich wrote, "Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday." Much of his writing was memorable. When Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in 1956, Povich had this to say: "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-reaches-first game in a World Series."

Povich did not care for basketball. Writing in Sports Illustrated in 1958, he argued that basketball "is for the birds." He went on to say, "The game lost this particular patron years ago … when it went vertical and put the accent on carnival freaks who achieved upper space by growing into it. They don't shoot baskets anymore, they stuff them, like taxidermists." Povich was proud that this column later was anthologized and widely used as an example of excellent writing.

After his formal retirement from the Washington Post in 1974, Povich continued writing for the newspaper, taught journalism and sportswriting at leading colleges and universities, and appeared as a guest speaker on television and on Ken Burns's award-winning history of baseball on the Public Broadcasting Service in 1994. Povich was awarded many honors; among the earliest was the Grantland Rice Award for sportswriting in 1964. He garnered the J. G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976, and was thereby inducted to the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was a recipient of the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors in 1983 and was elected to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 1984. In 1995 he was given Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Press Club and the Anti-Defamation League. Povich was the first sportswriter to receive the Fourth Estate Award presented by the National Press Club in 1997.

Povich was included in the 1962 edition of Who ' s Who of American Women. "I made it, right between Louise Pound and Hortense Powdermaker," he joked. When the publisher apologized for the mistake, Povich confessed that he enjoyed the experience. As he put it, "For years I've been hearing this is no longer a man's world and I am glad to be listed officially on the winning side." Povich died of a heart attack at age ninety-two and is buried in a simple wood coffin in Elevesgrad Cemetery in southeast Washington, D.C.

In his tribute to Povich, Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, stated, "Shirley Povich was why people bought the paper.… He was the sports section. For a lot of years, he carried the paper, and that's no exaggeration."

Povich's autobiography is All These Mornings (1969). His reminiscences and reflections on the golden age of sports—the time between the two world wars—are included in Jerome Holtzman, No Cheering in the Press Box (1995). Brief biographical sketches are in James C. Kaufman, "Shirley Povich," Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 171: Twentieth-Century American Sportswriters (1997), and Who ' s Who in America (1997). See also Mike Schatzkin, Ballplayers: Baseball ' s Ultimate Biographical Reference (1990). The Washington Post compiled an extensive biographical essay (15 Oct. 1997), and published many tributes to Povich, including those by Leonard Shapiro (5 June 1998), Doug Struck and Thomas Heath (8 June 1998), and Bill Gilbert (12 June 1998). An obituary is in the New York Times (7 June 1998).

John Kares Smith