Bisher's retirement at 90 still a shocker

Three weeks ago at the Tour Championship, I sat down to lunch with Furman Bisher. There are few things in life more interesting than sharing a meal and conversation with the longest living legend in sports journalism.

The conversation skipped briskly from one random topic to another -- golf, Ernie Harwell, cats, Ty Cobb, food, etc. The only subject that dimmed the glint in the eyes of the nearly 91-year-old sports writer was the deteriorating state of the newspaper business. Talking about the cavernous downtown building on Forsyth Street that his Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- his employer for the past 59 years -- will abandon altogether for the suburbs drew an inimitable Bisher grimace.

One thing that never even crossed mine, or anyone else's mind, was that even a quarter century past retirement age Furman Bisher would ever leave the newspaper business. He never mentioned to me what he told longtime friend Cot Campbell just a day later as they sat in the grass with their wives watching the golfers play by them at East Lake.

"This is my last event," Bisher said emphatically, even as his lovely wife, Lynda, rolled her eyes.

"I did not believe that," said Campbell, the Dogwood Stable president who shared a love for horses with Bisher.

Yet Bisher officially retired as a newspaper columnist on Sunday. He typed his farewell column on his trusty Royal typewriter.

"I'm on my last ribbon," he said of the relic he still uses for correspondence. "When I write my last sentence on my last ribbon, that's it. I guess I'll have to go modern somewhere."

For fans of his work, the lack of Bisher's weekly byline is incalculable. Even if he weren't considered one of the greatest sports writers of ours or any time, the wealth of his historical perspective is truly humbling. The man's interviewed Shoeless Joe Jackson and Ty Cobb. He's played golf with Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen. He's covered every manner of sports event around the globe, some of them from the very beginning.

How natural a gift is Bisher to sports writing? The very first golf tournament he ever attended was the inaugural Greater Greensboro Open in 1938. While still a student at North Carolina and in his very first golf story, he bestowed the nickname "Lord Byron" on Byron Nelson that will stick until people stop talking about golf.

Another Atlanta newspaper legend, Lewis Grizzard, wrote in a book of Bisher's inspiration.

"I made up my mind that when I became a sportswriter, I would write like Furman Bisher," Grizzard wrote.

"He overshot his goal considerably," surmised Bisher upon Grizzard's death.

To write like Bisher is a daunting goal for newspaper folks in an era of night games and dwindling budgets.

"There haven't been many who have been better," Campbell said. "I don't see how there could be any more Jimmy Cannons and Red Smiths and Jim Murrays and Bishers. I don't think there's a steady stream of them coming on."

Sadly, that's true. Too many of my peers don't have a clue of the value of the dwindling numbers of grizzled veterans in our midst. Too much of our industry today is filled with snarky sarcasm that someone somewhere decided passes for authoritative commentary.

Bisher never resorted to such cheap analysis.

His recall of names and events is encyclopedic. How can you possibly write about the Masters Tournament better than someone with the perspective of having covered 60 of them?

"Through his honest and entertaining prose, he became the iconic voice of the Masters throughout Georgia and a living legend to many, me included," said Billy Payne, the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club. "We're forever grateful for his contributions and hope he'll continue to find himself walking our rolling fairways each April in pursuit of his next great story."

Retirement, of course, is a relative thing for a career writer like Bisher. Sure, he's officially off the weekly newspaper grind. But he'll still make cameos at the Masters and has a blog (www.furmanbisher.com) to satisfy his writing urges more than his once-a-week offerings of recent years.

"You write one column a week and it doesn't give you a chance to recover and redeem your dignity two days later with a good one," he said on a break from responding to the thousands of e-mails he's received since his retirement was announced Sunday. "I miss that rhythm you get into writing a daily column."

The rhythm has carried Bisher further than perhaps any other columnist in history. After graduating college in 1938 it took him eight years, interrupted by a World War, before he finally got into the sports department at the Charlotte News . He's evolved ever since to the extent that fellow legend Dan Jenkins claims Bisher "has written better over a longer period of time than any other member of our lodge."

No arguments here.

"He's changed through the years," Campbell said. "He's always been kind of a curmudgeon but he's more of a benevolent curmudgeon now."

Campbell still likes to recall in 1996 when he ran a filly called Storm Song in the Breeders' Cup and into the barn at Woodbine in Toronto walked Bisher. He'd left the Braves-Yankees World Series to be there.

"He said to me later that Jim Murray told him you've got to be out of your mind to leave the World Series to go to a horse race in Canada," Campbell said. "But he was there and we got lucky and won it."

Bisher has been a dear friend (and currently a Facebook friend, if you can believe it) ever since I approached him as a total stranger at the Super Bowl in 1998, hoping to get a few anecdotes from the man who covered the beginning of the Atlanta Falcons. He was gracious with his time and insight and has been ever since.

Another typical Bisher moment came at a Players Championship about five years ago. At the PGA Tour's gala event on the eve of the tournament, he collapsed onto the floor and was being attended to by paramedics while his wife kneeled beside him. As he was taken out on a stretcher, he waved and spoke with everyone he recognized as if he were grand marshal in a parade.

A day later he was walking the course and covering the tournament like nothing had ever happened and he wasn't 85 years old.

Anyone who knows him still suspects that the marriage of Bisher and the written word will end like his vows to Lynda -- til death do they part. So while we'll all miss his regular presence in the press box and on the pages of the newspaper, I suspect we haven't heard the last of Furman Bisher.

Selah.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.