Red

Green Bay native Walter E. (Red) Smith shared a vicarious claim to fame: he was a high school classmate of Notre Dame Four Horseman Sleepy Jim Crowley. Red also owned a practical one: he bridged the sportswriting gap between old and present, and maintained Hall of Fame column standards into his eighties. Between friendship with Grantland Rice, who began in 1901, and his acquaintance of Joe Falls who's still hammering out columns, Red's associations covered quite a span.

If his friends were impressive, Red's size wasn't. In hornrims Smith resembled your class nerd, and the pappy guy he became would've made a perfect Charles Atlas 'before' picture. Red's face was ready to smile, and was not averse to a highball - or 7 - at 'the mother lodge', Toots Shor's. The proof of his columnist standing was his permanent seat at the best table in the house.

Starting in the hinterlands the early twenties, by 1929 Red reached major-marked status In St. Louis. Red warmed up for New York's big time by covering three of the worst baseball franchises in history - the St. Louis Browns and (after a move to The City of Brotherly Love) the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies. The Trib snatched him up in the mid forties, probably on the theory that anyone who could make those old fleabags sound interesting could turn a decent phrase. That he could - and then some.

When right - and his stuff always was - he built seamlessly, powerfully, flawlessly and brilliantly. However, describing Smith's style is difficult. With other scribes the writer could show a few sparkling witticisms and give the reader an idea of a man's sense of craft. It's so hard with Red because his columns focused on telling stories and threw up few 'look at me' stoplights.

Red's greatest talent, an innate ability to capture his subjects' essences, is brilliantly showcased in 'To Absent Friends'. Here may be found Society Kid Hogan's answer to a police request for Jake Lingle's murderer's description - stopping his hand at his neck - 'Only up to here.' Or Cas Adams poke at the society columnist who devoted weeks of space to her wardrobe for the Grace Kelly - Prince Ranier wedding by listing his ensemble for an ordinary fight in Washington: frayed collared white shirt, shoes with run down heels, etc. Even blind pugilist Sam Langford's valedictory quote: 'I got me a geetar, five dollars, and a bottle of gin. A rich man ain't got more, or leastways he can't use more, leastways not at one time.' The pieces are so good one almost wishes the celebrity and timely burial to have warranted a printed Smith eulogy.

Long before Red died in 1982, he was respected and loved by millions of readers - including one of sports' most famous illiterates, Sonny Liston. When asked about Smith over 40 years ago, Sonny said, "Oh yeah. He's the one write don't hardly no archbishops win the heavyweight title".

Dan Grey Taylor Jr.