The American Spectator

Povich really proved his brass when the Washington Redskins arrive in 1937 from Boston with owner George Preston Marshall, who would become Povich’s bete noire. Marshall was a bigot — he refused to sign black players until he was forced to by the Kennedy administration in 1961 — and a miser. “Marshall was easy to dislike,” Povich wrote. “He bullied many people. He bragged about being big-league, but he deprived his players of travel comforts to save expenses while reaping huge profits. He refused to let Negroes play or the Redskins and thus watched other teams pass him by while he presented the fans of later years with all-white losers.” When in later years the Cleveland Brown decimated the Redskins, Povich made this observation: “Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday.” Marshall soon barred Povich from the locker room, a step the writer found “flattering and ineffective.” In 1942, Povich was sued by Marshall for libel. Marshall had arranged a charity game for the orphans and widows fund of Army Relief, but Povich uncovered evidence that the Redskins owner was pocketing the money, $13,000. Marshall hit him with a $100,000 libel suit. Povich won a 12-0 jury verdict, which came in 20 minutes. Still, Povich would dog Marshall for years. “I used to wake up,” he once remembered, “every morning of my life, with two questions immediately on my mind: What day is it, and what am I going to write about Marshall?”

More than anything else Povich was a baseball fan, and it broke his heart when his beloved Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1971. On September 30 of that year, the Senators played their last professional baseball game in the city. As the game was about to begin to the sounds of a prerecorded national anthem, Povich captured the mood: “To those among the crowd who had come in sorrow, the Star Spangled Banner never before sounded so much like a dirge. Francis Scott Key, if he had taken another peek by the dawn’s early light, would have seen that the flag ain’t still there, and lyricized accordingly. It was captured and in transit to Arlington, Tex., which, to embittered Washington fans, is some jerk town with the single boast it is equidistant from Dallas and Fort Worth.”

If only Maury had his courage and class.