Maury, left, Lynn, and David Povich attended the ceremony naming the Washington Nationals press box in honor of their father, Shirley Povich.
Photo by Mitchell Layton/Washington Nationals
July 3, 2008
All Those Mornings…At The Post, an annotated collection of columns by the late sportswriter Shirley Povich, begins with his recollections of growing up in an Orthodox household in Bar Harbor, Maine.
He did not begin with the fact that he wrote between 15,000 and 20,000 columns over seven decades with The Washington Post. Or with his being enshrined in the writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975. Or with any of the myriad other accolades he received during a career in which he elevated sports writing from an afterthought to thought-provoking literature.
He probably would have been embarrassed by all the fuss made when members of the Washington Nationals team formally cut the ceremonial ribbon to the Shirley Povich Media Center prior to their June 22 game against the Texas Rangers, ne the Washington Senators. The two-story press box features a mini-museum displaying Povich memorabilia, including his signature fedora, his typewriter, and a medal from the 1924 World Series, the Senators’ only championship. The ball club moved to Texas after the 1971 season, leaving the nation’s capital without professional baseball until the Montreal Expos moved there in 2005.
Povich’s children — Maury, David, and Lynn — were on hand for the festivities. On their father’s 10th yahrzeit (Povich died June 4, 1998), Maury and Lynn shared their thoughts with NJ Jewish News.
“There was no doubt who we were in terms of our background and our heritage, our culture and our religion,” said Maury, the veteran television broadcaster and talk-show host. “We were very proud to be Jews because he was proud to be a Jew.”
Maury said he understood at a young age the stature his father held among his contemporaries and the athletes he covered. “I watched him interview baseball players, managers, and owners. Later on when I first went into sports broadcasting, we would attend the same events; I witnessed his preparation and the way he went about exploring every story.” (Maury also appreciated some of the perks that came with the territory: He and David served as batboys for the Senators during spring training games.)
Shirley Povich refused to work on Yom Kippur, a practice his children still follow. If he happened to be out of town covering a story, he would seek a synagogue where he could attend services. Lynn Povich recalled a column her father had written about Hank Greenberg, who, as a member of the Detroit Tigers, made a decision to stay away from the ballpark when a crucial game fell on the Day of Atonement. “Even though [Greenberg] wasn’t observant, he felt he had to honor the Jewish holy days,” she said.
Shirley Povich with the sportswriter’s classic accoutrements: typewriter, cigarette, and fedora.
Photo courtesy Lynn Povich
Her parents, she said, “were truly dedicated and genuine in their commitment to Judaism.”
Shirley Povich — born July 15, 1905 —often said he had never experienced anti-Semitism growing up in Bar Harbor, a town with a small sprinkling of Orthodox-Jewish families. “Sometimes when they couldn’t find a minyan, he would run down to the boat from Boston and…try to hook in anybody who looked like he might be Jewish,” said Lynn.
She appreciated her father’s ability “to write about the same kinds of events over and over again but with his style and his language and his pacing, really raise it to literature, in terms of his insights and particularly his moral attitude about what was going on within the sports field. He asked penetrating questions and brought up relevant issues that are still going on today.”
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