Furman Bisher

There's something about the South and sports. The greatest radio men of the first generation, Red Barber and Mel Allen, were sons of Mississippi and Alabama, respectively. Red's family moved to the newly infamous Sanford, FL, when he was ten. Mel went to Alabama, while Barber became a Gator. Barber and Allen were competitors, working for the Dodgers and Yankees, before eventually becoming partners in the Yankees' booth. Ernie Harwell of Georgia followed along shortly, joining Barber with the Dodgers. Ernie had been the voice of the Atlanta Crackers minor league team, and when the Dodgers sought his contract, the price was catcher Cliff Dapper. Harwell was the only broadcaster ever traded for a player. Ernie's career with the Tigers, beginning in 1960, took him to the Hall of Fame, but it was his departure from the Dodgers for the Giants in 1950 that left open a seat for another redhead, a youngster named Vin Scully.
These southerners and their many brethren had a gift for storytelling, the language, vivid and beautiful, alive in their minds and voices. When things were going well in Flatbush, then the Dodgers were "tearing up the peapatch," or "sitting in the catbird seat." When a performance was too good for words, in the Bronx Allen would ask "How 'bout that?" while Barber was declarative: "Oh, Doctor!" Harwell would build on both. He would recite from the Song of Solomon to announce the arrival of Spring, proclaim "Two for the price of one" for a double play, and criticize a batter taking a called third strike: "He stood there like the house by the side of the road!"
Maybe those broadcasters were really writers at heart. But they were fortunate that they chose the microphone. The typewriter was taken. The South had its sportswriter. His name was Furman Bisher.
Bisher came from North Carolina, but he conquered the world from Atlanta. Early on, in Charlotte, Bisher got the only interview Shoeless Joe Jackson ever gave after his banishment from baseball. He trusted Bisher, as did the drivers who banded together in what would become NASCAR; he wrote their story, too. Beginning in 1950, Bisher became the biggest proponent of sports that Atlanta has ever known. How'd he do? Hank Aaron trusted him to write The Hammer's first autobiography. Bisher also wrote a book for kids, Strange but True Baseball Stories. That book was the first one I ever bought with my own money. Its influence on my love of reading and my love of baseball cannot be overstated. I trusted Furman Bisher, too.
Bisher wrote The Masters every year in the Journal, the Constitution, and then the Journal-Constitution, and in a half-dozen books. He wrote NASCAR. He wrote University of Georgia sports, providing the silky counter-point to Larry Munson's sandpaper voice. Furman Bisher wrote Southern sports. He wrote Southern Sports for 59 years in Atlanta. He couldn't quit when he retired from the AJC in 2009. He started a periodic column in the Gwinnett Daily Post.
Furman Bisher died a week ago. He was 93. He personified that special tie that we Southerners have to sports. He taught six generations of us what mattered about sports, and why. He told the truth, and he told it in our language.
Thank you, Sir!