Furman Bisher's final column

[Captain_Kirk]

Clearly, his age would show in the material he wrote on some subjects, and I've probably been as guilty as anyone on here of poking fun at Bisher for that.

But, he could always write about golf, and never lost his touch with that topic. If I opened the paper and it was Furman on golf, it was going to be well worth the read.

 

[Songbird]

It would be great if someone posts 15-20 of Bisher's columns from the 1960s to 80s, or even earlier. Might be hard to find links.

 

[Steak Snabler]

It would be great if someone posts 15-20 of Bisher's columns from the 1960s to 80s, or even earlier. Might be hard to find links.

Here you go:

http://www.ajc.com/news/furman-bisher-s-best-159110.html

Includes his 1951 column on the death of Shoeless Joe Jackson. I believe Bisher was the only person who ever got a post-career interview with Jackson, which was published in Sport magazine.

 

[Songbird]

It would be great if someone posts 15-20 of Bisher's columns from the 1960s to 80s, or even earlier. Might be hard to find links.

Here you go:

http://www.ajc.com/news/furman-bisher-s-best-159110.html

Includes his 1951 column on the death of Shoeless Joe Jackson. I believe Bisher was the only person who ever got a post-career interview with Jackson, which was published in Sport magazine.

Thanks much.

 

[Songbird]

Very good stuff.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/bisher-the-steady-drumbeat-159006.html

 

[Steak Snabler]

Here's the original Jackson article (from 1949), which is actually a first-person account "as told to" Bisher:

http://www.blackbetsy.com/jjtruth.htm

 

[buckweaver]

I believe Bisher was the only person who ever got a post-career interview with Jackson, which was published in Sport magazine.

Not the only one, just the most famous one.

The AJC reprinted Bisher's interview in 1998, when Williams/Feller were heavily involved in trying to clear Jackson's name, and subsequently on the Internet in this decade.

But Shirley Povich also got a pretty well-known interview in 1942, Scoop Latimer (who gave Joe his nickname) got one in the 1940s on Joe Jackson Night in Greenville and a few other local (Greenville, Savannah, Waycross) reporters talked to him throughout the 1920s-30s.

It's a common perception -- perpetuated by Eliot Asinof and many others -- that Jackson and the other Seven disappeared from the public eye or were shamed from ever showing their faces again, but that's not true in any way.

 

[cfinder]

Corky Ramirez: The Nicklaus incident involved not Furman but the late Tom McCollister. T-Mac, whom Nicklaus and many other golfers liked and respected, wrote a little negative ditty about Jack among his AJC pre-Masters evaluation of contenders and also-rans. So i heard, second-hand, Jack crossed paths with T-Mac afterward and called out the 5-foot-8, middle-aged golf writer as being a champion's motivation.

Now, about Furman. For the unfortunate folks who haven't read him for 20 years, or (not that i have) for his more than half-century of sports-writing service: The man writes elegantly. Almost effortlessly. He did in his youth. He did at a generation-past retirement age when most of his peers were long gone. Such consistency should be a modern-day writer's motivation.

To repeat a phrase I have told him for the quarter-century I've had the pleasure to know him: I just want to be able to stand and urinate past 70. The heck with trying to write regularly, . . . and consistently elegant.

 

[Mighty_Wingman]

Two pages into this thread and no one's repeated the (oft-told and possibly apocryphal) story about Furman punching a TV guy in the face at a post-Super Bowl press conference in the 80s?

 

[bigbadeagle]

Corky Ramirez: The Nicklaus incident involved not Furman but the late Tom McCollister. T-Mac, whom Nicklaus and many other golfers liked and respected, wrote a little negative ditty about Jack among his AJC pre-Masters evaluation of contenders and also-rans. So i heard, second-hand, Jack crossed paths with T-Mac afterward and called out the 5-foot-8, middle-aged golf writer as being a champion's motivation.

Called him Olden Bear in his preview.
Nicklaus cut that out and stuck it on the refrigerator in the house he rented for the week.

 

[bigbadeagle]

Two pages into this thread and no one's repeated the (oft-told and possibly apocryphal) story about Furman punching a TV guy in the face at a post-Super Bowl press conference in the 80s?

No, but on Cal Ripken's farewell tour, when he did his pre-series presser at every road trip stop, Furman did ask Cal how his dad was.
He also ate off Tony Stewart's plate at a Hooters during a pre-Atlanta race press event about 10 years ago.

 

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

As much as I respect the man for doing the job for so long and the institution that he is -- and believe me, I respect that -- count me among the non-fans of Bisher's writing.

I grew up in the Atlanta area and got to the point that I just couldn't read him anymore. I've recounted on other threads here that right before the Kentucky Derby, he invariably wrote a lame column in which he "interviewed" one of the horses (sometimes more than one, if I recall).

Actually, wasn't that Jesse Outlar who would "interview" the horses?

Even so, you still have a point about his writing, especially in his later years. But like you said, he is to be respected for his accomplishments.