Fred Russell made his last request 45 years ago. Characteristically, it was in jest, or at least half in jest. It was the title of his now incomplete autobiography, Bury Me in an Old Pressbox.
Russell, who died Sunday at 96, knew his whimsical wish couldn’t be granted. But he often said that his seven-decade career as one of the nation’s most eminent sportswriters—large chunks of it spent in dingy old pressboxes—was like a wonderful waking dream.
Russell grew up in Middle Tennessee and stayed. His reputation as the Nashville Banner’s sports editor traveled far and wide. You could find him in the pressbox at Kentucky Derbies (he covered 52 straight), World Series and Super Bowls, in Florida for baseball’s spring training, in Augusta for the Masters, among New York’s journalistic elite, or anywhere there was a big game to see or a practical joke to play.
More than anything else, though, Russell spent 70 years making friends. In the sporting world, at least, he knew everybody. And you never met anybody, not even George Steinbrenner, whose face failed to brighten when they heard his name.
He knew Bear Bryant better than almost anyone. He was friends with Vince Lombardi, General Bob Neyland and Casey Stengel. He jounced around spring training camps with his old pal, Red Smith.
On the occasion of Russell’s 25th anniversary with the Banner, Red Grange, Bobby Jones and Jack Dempsey all came to town to help their friend celebrate. Neither before nor since have living legends in three different sports shared a single dais in Nashville. All three said they committed as soon as they heard who the guest of honor would be.
During the past several years, following Russell’s declining health was like watching the last surviving member of a species and sadly knowing it would be extinct when he was gone. All of his contemporaries from the golden age of sports journalism—Smith and Shirley Povich and Jim Murray and all the others—went before him. There are no more of his kind.
Russell, who pecked out his columns on a manual typewriter, was the last living link to a world that no longer exists. He interviewed Ty Cobb. He could tell you who, between Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, was better at cards. He had played with them both.
He could recount in detail the first game at Dudley Field, in 1922, when Vanderbilt tied mighty Michigan 0-0. He was there. And he could tell you all about the grandfather of American sportswriting, Grantland Rice, because “Granny,” a fellow Vanderbilt man, not only was Russell’s role model but one of his closest friends.
Mr. Russell—as he was called by those who worked for him, not because he insisted on it but out of respect—won practically every sports journalism award worth writing home about. He was never reluctant to share the secret of his success. He’d always been lucky, he claimed.
There was probably a little more to it than that.
