Putnam
and Pope
A
Tale of Two
Sports
Writers
by
Jamie Jobb
Miami 'round midnight: no moon, no rain, no breeze, no street lights. Out
here on the west edge of town, Flagler Street is one very long flat
dark road as everything fades into The Glades ... Suddenly out of
nowhere, a cop pulls me over for speeding.
He’d
followed me four miles in the dark with his lights off. It was only
after I pulled off Flagler that he ignited his red flasher,
headlights and siren simultaneously. It was more than obvious he
wanted to shock the living hoodlum out of me.
I
had just graduated high school and the police officer couldn’t have
been much older himself. But I was well aware of this kind of young
Miami machismo bullcrap from my short experience in a “fraternity”
at Southwest High School. Like our college counterparts, we were
party-boy “brothers” who hazed new initiates – our “pledges”
– while we took a lot of verbal grief from guys who’d graduated – our “alumni”-- who were still too young to leave town and get on with their adult
lives.
This
was during the Vietnam War – a tough time for boys turning into
young men. Many of our classmates had been drafted into the military
and quickly disappeared overseas. A few had recently returned from
basic training at Parris Island South Carolina, now Young Marines.
They wanted to exhibit their new-found military discipline and
hard-ass chain-of-command tomfoolery on us. The cop was also full of
that bully-boy bravado.
But
he had clocked me at 90 mph in a 45 mph zone, so I was in no position
to argue. Plus I was very tired and needed sleep. I’d been at
school all day and at work all night. My decade-old 1955 Chevrolet,
which my dad found for a hundred bucks, was my trusty steed to a
commuter junior college known as Miami-Dade. After school, the Chevy
was my chariot to work down on Biscayne Bay at The Miami Herald.
An
official “commuter” now, I also needed that car to get around
town to ball games, track meets, tennis tournaments and interviews.
Miami always was a hyperactive athletic scene for budding sports
writers like me, always on the go.
“Where’s
the fire?” asked the cop who
exploded out-of-nowhere
in the
dark.
“I
didn’t see you.” It’s
true, and
I thought: Don’t you guys have safety rules about driving
with all your lights out like that? It
would not have been polite for me to have
said
that. The facts were all on
the cop’s side. And nobody
else was on the road to dispute or verify them.
“You
were going 90 miles-an-hour!” he
said as he started writing the ticket.
“I
just got off work … at The Herald.”
He
said: “Tell that to the Judge.”
*
* *
At
the hearing for my speeding ticket in open court, the Judge asked me
a question I assumed he asked everybody my age who appeared before
his bench – the very same question I’d already answered
for the cop who didn’t ask: “Where do you work?”
I
told His Honor “The Herald”. I assumed he was wise enough
to know the morning newspaper gets put together very late at night.
The
Judge said: “Where at The Herald?”
I
said “Sports Desk”.
His
Honor was intrigued. “Oh, you work for Ed Pope?”
Fabled
Miami Herald sports editor Edwin Pope (1928-2017)
There
were many other names His Honor could have dropped at that moment.
Jimmy
Burns was The Herald’s sports editor at that time, not Pope. Luther Evans
probably was more famous as our radio sports talk show guy. So was
his brother Dick. Ken Small and Neil Amdur were known throughout
Florida for their comprehensive high school athletics coverage. Bill
Braucher had come to town to cover the new Miami Dolphin franchise.
Lots of sharp pencils boxed there on that storied staff!
I
was certainly lucky to sit among all the talent on that Sports Desk.
But the Judge had narrowed everything all down to just one writer.
“Yes,
I know Edwin Pope.” I felt much too young to
call the man “Ed” in open court.
“I
read Pope every day.” the
Judge said. “I’m converting your ticket to traffic
school.”
So,
I dropped
a name in court and escaped
a horrendous
hundred-dollar fine
– the
equivalent of the Blue
Book
value of my car – which
would have knocked me out of school and work. Instead, the
Judge
ordered me
to
attend only four
nights of traffic school at the college
where
I already had
classes. I didn’t need
to go anywhere for punishment! That experience alone helped me know
that Edwin Pope was much
more than "the
sportswriter’s sportswriter,”
as Georgia Trend Magazine called him.
*
* *
Pope
certainly was an inspiration for me. We both began writing for
publication before we were twelve. We both were sports editors of
our school newspapers. His dad gave him a typewriter as a gift –
just like my dad had done. We both also wore thick glasses. But
that’s where the comparisons end.
While
I went on to pursue a variety of other writing choices on the West
Coast, Edwin Pope
became
a sportswriting
legend
in
American
press
boxes
where
he was
credited with covering forty-seven consecutive
Super
Bowls, starting
with the first.
Everyone knew he was a great writer, in that fine
southern
gentleman
tradition.
His prime achievement was his induction into the College Football
Hall of Fame in 2000, although
he also received the
Professional Football Writers of America’s
Dick McCann Memorial Award in 2002.
Florida
broadcast legend Buddy Martin
certainly captured
the essence of the
Miami
sports editor in one
punchy quote:
“Pope
played typewriter keys like Ray Charles played piano.”
I
witnessed
first-hand
the music Pope tapped
out
on his
keyboard.
As
a college student working on The
Herald Sports
Desk, I
covered
youth sports and college games – baseball,
football, basketball, track, soccer,
tennis.
In
those days, the mid-1960s, Pope
covered
all the sports I did, plus the
Adult Sports – horse
racing and boxing.
He’d
started
writing professionally at age
11 and was named
sports
editor of
The
Athens
Georgia Banner-Herald when he was only 15! Pope
would listen intently to University of Georgia football games on the
radio, taking notes and compiling stats. Then after the game, he’d
rush down to the paper with his story complete with statistical and
scoring details in “agate” (the small print).
By
30, Pope
was The Herald’s sports editor. New
York Post’s Jimmy
Cannon called him
“the
best writer of sports in America.”
Atlanta Constitution’s Jesse Outlar said: “Day
in and day out, no one was better than Edwin Pope.”
Miami
Dolphin Hall-of-Fame
quarterback
Bob Griese likewise
held Pope in high esteem. "He
wrote the truth. Unlike some sports writers who had their stories
written before they interviewed me, Pope never did. He never
fabricated. He listened to what I had to say. What he wrote was what
I said, nothing more."
Pope
certainly inspired me as a young
writer, and helped me understand the importance of intently
listening -- for
accuracy
and
speed when
getting something published on
time under
my byline.
Once
he
pointed
to my name in print: “That’s
your reputation
right
there
– on the line.”
His implication was clear – when
it’s your name, you’ve
got
to get
it right!
Edwin
Pope never did retire but he
took his last byline in
The Herald on June 5, 2016.
You can tell that he didn’t
think it would be his last when
he wrote:
“I
have a lot more to say about Muhammad Ali, and I will, in time.”
*
* *.
Pat
Putnam (1930-2005) in his element at Fifth Street Gym Miami Beach
The
first sports writer to report that Cassius Clay changed his name to
Muhammad Ali was Pat Putnam, who worked on that same Herald Sports
Desk and spend most of his time at the Fifth Street Gym on South
Beach, just a couple miles due east of The Herald building. Both
Pope and Putnam were renowned as boxing writers, and everyone knew
Putnam scooped Pope on Clay’s name change. But Putnam’s
reputation was trashed over a silly boast after he passed away in
2005 (more on that later).
Pat Putnam started at The Herald as a copy boy in 1954 and worked his way up to the Sports Desk where he was a fixture when I got there ten years later. Although
renowned as a great sporting reporter, Putnam probably was better
known for his pranks. Here's one he pulled in Nevada:
At a 1991 fight in Reno, the ring announcer was introducing celebrities to the crowd when Putnam yelled out that the announcer had better not forget New York Yankee Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio.
The announcer obliged, encouraging the crowd to give a big Reno welcome to the Yankee Clipper. They did so, while swiveling their necks to spot the baseball legend.
The only problem was, DiMaggio wasn't there. Except in Putnam's mischievous mind.
My
most vivid personal memory of Pat Putnam is sitting next to him on
The Herald Sports Desk and hearing him answer the phone ... “Harold
Schwartz” – a terrific pun for our newsroom that overlooked
South Beach, home of more than a few folks named Schwartz.
We
were constantly bombarded with questions from bars around town where
sporting men wanted to settle bets, there and then. So they called
us for The Truth.
Putnam’s
best trick was his answer to this twice daily question we got from
any bar in town: "Who won the Dempsey-Tunney
fight?"
When
a caller rang in with that question, Pat The Boxing Writer would
answer "Dempsey" . Then, after the bar patron said
“hang on” and passed the phone over to his buddy, Pat
would say "Tunney" to the other guy and hang up.
Everyone
in the Herald newsroom knew Putnam was personally responsible for
many sudden bar fights erupting around town on any given night.
He
also had a way of imitating the sports editor, Jimmy Burns, who had a
very gruff voice. He'd call into The Desk from outside and disguise
his voice and then "dictate" Burns' column! The first
couple times he tried this with me, I was well into typing the second
take before I realized Putnam had set me up.
*
* *
Pat
was one great reporter who didn't shy away from offering tips to
young writers. One of Putnam’s best reporting tips to me was to
avoid taking interview notes in front of anybody who stutters. He
said just turn on your memory, let the subject relax and after you’ve
left the interview, immediately run around the corner and write
everything down.
Putnam
knew I was getting set that fall to cover a local football hero who
happened to stutter. We were both headed off upstate to the same
college, him to play football and me to write for The Paper. It
turns out that Putnam’s old reporter’s clue was a better tip than
anything I’d ever learn in journalism school.
Given
Putnam’s urging, I hung out in that stuttering player’s room in
the athletic dorm. It turned out everybody on the team wanted to be
his pal, since he was the top athlete in the state! And he seemed to
have trouble speaking for himself in public, so his teammates
gathered there for moral support.
And all significant team news filtered through that player’s room.
And all significant team news filtered through that player’s room.
By
the time I’d finished college, Putnam had moved on from The Herald
to what was then The Prime Job for any sports writer – on the staff
Sports Illustrated. And that’s where he remained until he retired.
*
* *
We
know what happens when things that go around tend to come back around
… In Putnam's case, that boomerang was quite cruel. After he died
in 2005, a dust-up developed over a boxing award that he’d received
in 1982, the Nat Fleisher Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism.
The award was stripped away after the Boxing Writers Association of
America learned that Putnam had falsely represented himself as a
Marine Corps prisoner of the Korean War – a yarn he often told in
bars, but not under oath. The story also sometimes seemed to involve
a tattoo … and when the fake POW story ended up in Putnam’s
obituary, many fellow boxing writers considered it a “disgrace”
for Pat’s name to remain on the award. So he was stripped of the
honor.
As
noted below, Putnam didn't deserve this cruel irony. Here’s George
Kimball writing on “Boxing Talk” three years after Pat passed
away:
There is no doubt that Pat made the claims he stands accused of making. He recounted them in my presence at the Galleria Bar at Caesars and the lounge at the Flame in Las Vegas, and like many others who were taken in, I had little reason to doubt them, but there is an important distinction to be made here.
Pat’s wartime adventures might have been tall tales, but he never attempted to make them part of his official resume. They were never a consideration in helping get him a job. They weren’t included in his official biographies at The Miami Herald, at Sports Illustrated, or at TheSweetScience.com, for which he wrote following his retirement from SI.
He never publicly represented himself as either a veteran or a POW. He never attempted to join groups representing either. He never applied for veterans’ benefits, he didn’t ask to be buried with military honors, and he certainly didn’t ask the BWAA to label him a war hero or to name an award after him. He didn’t even attempt to tell these tall tales to his children.
“Never, ever, ever,” said his daughter Collen Putnam, who was herself surprised by the accounts of his Korean experience that emerged at the time of her father’s death.
In short, if Putnam is going to be posthumously convicted of anything, it should be of slinging bullshit in a bar. If that were a hanging offense, we’d all be in trouble.
*
* *
A
budding young
writer in the South in
the mid Twentieth Century had
many
sporting scribes to read for
inspiration:
A.J.
Liebling, Grantland Rice and Ring
Lardner, of course, set an early tone for sports writing style.
Southern sports editors Furman Bisher of The Atlanta Journal and
Benny
Marshall of
The
Birmingham News developed
large readerships with
their dramatic detailed
tales
of local teams and
athletes.
I
was among their loyal readers.
But
both Pope and Putnam were inspired writers I knew personally. Two
men whose words in print and in person helped mold me into the man I
am today. I was blessed to know each of them and to count them among
my many writing mentors. But, it’s a cryin’ shame, that even
after they quit The Herald and left “This Daily Planet”, they did
not land back “on the same page”.
Pope
made his presence widely known particularly among the press box set.
Although rather short, he was extremely focused through those thick
dark tinted-glasses. Pope was so good at interrogation, he could
have been a dang judge himself! If he’d wanted to. The
“sportswriter’s sportswriter” indeed! Pope never left The
Herald, once he got there. Even when the paper began to crumble
around him. He lived to be 88.
Putnam
was a fly-on-the-wall, a where’d-he-go kinda guy. He loved to hang
out in bars, and was probably the closest things Miami had at the
time to measure up to Jimmy Breslin in that writers heyday of New
Journalism. He lived to be 75.
Both
Pope and Putnam insisted on going to the source’s mouth, persisting
on phone and on foot. They also practiced the advice they preached …
“Get good quotes.”
Even
if you have to keep your notebook in your back pocket and run around
the corner to scribble them down.
FURTHERMORE:
http://www.boxingtalk.com/pag/article.php?aid=15626
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/02/local/me-putnam2
https://www.sbnation.com/2015/10/7/9450259/two-words-not-sportswriting
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/175521692/edwin-pope
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/article127609364.html#storylink=cpy
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