Well Red

Next time you visit my office at Rodale, check out the corner of my desk. That folded program resting there. It has a few water stains, and its once snow-white stock has faded to a dingy pale. Doesn’t matter. Where I go, it goes with me. Been that way since January 20, 1982.

            That was the day my writing hero, Red Smith, was eulogized at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. I cut class that day; I was a freshman at Columbia. (Note: I only recommend cutting class on special occasions. And this was such.) You see, since I was 9 or 10 years old, I read Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith’s column in The New York Times as soon as I got up in the morning. Each day his “Sports of the Times” column appeared in the Times — usually on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, if I recall correctly — I got out my cereal bowel, filled it with Corn Flakes and milk, grabbed a seat at the kitchen table, and read Red. I loved how he could tell the story of a Notre Dame football game and make it come to life on the pages of the Times as if it were being played on my kitchen table. I loved how he could expose George Steinbrenner for his bombastic leadership of my favorite team, the New York Yankees. And I loved how he could make a simple sports story read like a Mark Twain short story. Every adjective and every verb dead-on; every sentence precise and to the point. He wasted no words, and each succeeding Red Smith paragraph was as essential as its predecessor.

            He may have been “just” a sports writer, and yet he was a writer in a special class. He made it look easy, even though he once admitted of the writing craft, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

            I read Red Smith, and I knew what I wanted to be: a sports writer working side-by-side with my writing hero.

            Before I could, though, Red passed away. The only chance I would have to get close to him was to attend his memorial service at St. Pat’s. So on that January morning I put on a crummy tie and jacket, and made my way to the Cathedral. It was filled that day with New York media celebs and average Joe’s, people, like me, who read Red every chance they could. And now those chances were over. I stepped into the vast Church and an usher handed me the program for the service. On its cover was Red, with a satisfied smile on his face, and the dates of his birth and death below it. I listened to his friends and colleagues extol Red’s life and his work. And when the service was over I went back to my dorm room and tacked the program to my bulletin board.

And then I tried to become a sports writer.

And the program came with me, wherever I tried.  —  Charlie Butler, January 26, 2011