Jim Murray : The Last of the Best

by Jim Murray

Jim Murray was to sports writing what Frank Sinatra, Pablo Picasso, and Mikail Baryshnikov were to their endeavors: Simply the best of their generation.

The syndicated columnist for The Los Angeles Times since 1961 was one of only four sportswriters to have won the Pulitzer Prize and was named national sportswriter of the year 14 times, 12 of them in succession.

But his colleagues say he didn't write about sports. Rather, he wrote about people and their efforts, achievements, passions, and failures. And he did it so well that it wasn't sportswriting; it was literature.

Here are 90 of Jim's last columns, all written in the 1990s. They truly are "The Last of the Best."

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Journalism

334 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

Reviews

[KennyO · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a realm where the air is thin, the population sparse and words are fine paintings. That is where you encounter the Red Smiths and Jim Murrays of the world. I've never been big on sports yet while I lived near L.A. I didn't often miss Murray's column. In Murray's world the sport was never bigger and the score never more important than the people unless the people were particularly small. You know that there were some of those over the years. Beneath and between his humor was the wisdom of the ages. The character of his subjects was never hidden from Jim Murray and through him never hidden from his readers. I'm glad to have a Jim Murray collection or two on the shelf. It refreshes my faith in humanity.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Murray was the best of sports columnists--a master of the language, insightful, and enjoyable; never mean. These are some of the last columns he wrote for the Los Angeles Times before his death in 1998.

[Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love; covers all his best. He truly is a master at sportswriting and even the non-sports fan would eat up this book!

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic writer. Fantastic stories. Living in LA, I read a few of his columns. Glad I found this at a book sale. Love his style.

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

The icon of sports writers that all others are measured by.

[Lonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent sports writer and a very entertaining collections of his columns. It was fun reading the columns a second time and relive those sports moments I grew up with.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sports takes of a white man of a certain age do not age well, but no one can deny Murray's gift with the language. You don't win a Pulitzer for commentary if you suck. A nice timepiece of sports commentary in an era.

[Dave Moyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad was a sportswriter. We forget how great a writer some some of these people were back in the day when this was some of the best writing around.

[David Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even in these late-period columns, heck, even in the column he wrote a day before he died, sportswriter Murray could turn a phrase. "Larry (Brown) has gone through more towns in his career than the Mississippi River." "He asked little of life. And got it." "Buster Douglas entered the ring looking like something that should be floating over a Thanksgiving Day parade."

[Avnish Anand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Murray is a legend and these are his pieces from the 90's. Easy to relate to the characters in these stories. The writing as usual is top class. I am a huge fan of Rick Reilly and Murray is Reilly's favourite writer. Must have.

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for journalism 357, really enjoyed his work.

[Michael Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun, nostalgic read by those of us who read his daily L.A. Times Sports columns for decades, after he picked up for Sid Ziff and Melvin Durslag. An outstanding writer.