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Gary Cartwright Loses His Best Friend

Posted by srr50 on May 8th, 2009 under Basketball, Football

And we lost one of the best damn sportswriters Texas ever knew.

Bud Shrake was one of the last of the dying breed that Scipio writes about in this post

Bud Shrake, Gary Cartwright, Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins, Dan Cook, Mickey Herskowitz, Jack Gallagher, Dave Cambell and Lou Maysel.

These were my childhood heroes. These were wordsmiths who made you want to head down to the newstand on Sunday and buy every out-of-town paper they had — even if your team lost, because you knew they would tell you everything about the game you wanted to know, and would do so in a way that made the words jump off the pages.

I went into radio-tv reporting, partly because it was the new “hip” medium, partly because I grew up in the Driskill Hotel where KTBC Radio/TV had its studios, and partly because I knew there was no way I could ever come close to the poetry and depth I saw from these gentlemen.

The sportswriting talent pool in Texas at that time rivaled the 1927 Yankees.

The Ft. Worth Press had this lineup in the sports department in the 1950’s: (bottom row) Andy Anderson, Bud Shrake (top row) Jerre Todd, Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins.

Cartwright was working for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram at this time and he and Shrake became fast friends.

When I got out of school and went to work for KVUE-TV in Austin, the SWC still had its pre-season tour of all the football teams. Ten days of hitting every way station in the conference, listening to every cliche every coach would deliver, getting interviews from players — and then getting the best education a reporter could ever get every night from the “old guard” writers who would stay up all night long having adult beverages and telling tales, some tall, some ribald.

I don’t have the willpower right now to going into any of those lessons, but I will pass along one story concerning Gary Cartwright and Dandy Don Meredith.


Don Meredith once took credit for a writing award that Gary Cartwright won.

In November of 1965, the Dallas Cowboys lost a heartbreaker of a game to the World Champion Cleveland Browns in the Cotton Bowl. The Browns won 24-17 when Meredith, who engineered a couple of late touchdown drives — also threw two interceptions in the final two minutes of the game — one from the Cleveland one yard line.

The next day in the Dallas Morning News, Cartwright began his gameday story thusly:

Outlined against a grey November sky, the Four Horsemen rode again Sunday.

You know them: Pestilence, Death, Famine and Meredith.

He then proceeded to eviscerate Meredith over about 10 paragraphs.

It was about this time that Dandy Don began to prepare for life after football by working for WFAA-TV in the off-season. That summer he anchored their Sunday newscasts. One Sunday Meredith reads a story about Cartwright winning a statewide award for his article on the Cleveland win. He added that the honor also included $200 in prize money.

Meredith paused, smiled and added:

“Now I think that ole’ Gary owes me at least half of that money, Because if I don’t throw that interception from the one-yard line, he doesn’t write that story.”

In terms of the print media, it really was the Good Old Days.

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16 Responses

  1. Thanks, man. Great tribute.

  2. Black Scholes said:

    May 8th, 2009 at 6:39 pm

    Lou Maysel, nice.

    That lineup from the Ft. Worth Press is ridiculous.

    Nice writeup, srr.

  3. Bob in Houston said:

    May 8th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    srr speaks the truth.

  4. SlickStreet said:

    May 8th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

    very nice, brother

  5. Longhorn in Canada said:

    May 8th, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    Dandy Don learned something from Gary and the rest of the old print sportswriters: telling it like you saw it. Long before most of you young whippersnappers were born, I used to love hearing him sing “Turn out the lights, the party’s over” when a turnover or other big play made it obvious that the final outcome was decided. You could tell how much it pissed off Cosell and Gifford, who had the task of trying to convince the viewers to stay tuned, because the outcome of the game was really still in doubt. Meredith was never wrong, as far as I remember. Then again, I’m old and semi-senile, so what the hell do I know?

  6. Good stuff, srr50.

    The trend of sports writing and literature in general is not a good one.

    Nothing against blogs, twitter, et al, but the medium of the internet discourages the process of sharpening the knife.

    Rapid-fire observations work for stand up comedy, slam poetry, or twittering, but not so much for securing indelible memories. Truly creative writers can elevate their topic into mythic proportions.

    My uncle, Dave Marr, worked in broadcast (golf) and was friends with that motley Ft. Worth bunch, especially Dan Jenkins. As a youngster during the 70s I spent a lot of time hanging out with my uncle and I was fortunate enough to hear some wickedly clever discussions he had with Dan. It’s been a long time, but I think Bud was there a few times as well. If your wit wasn’t sharp, you were in deep shit with that group.

    Back in 1997 my uncle passed away. I can imagine him now at the pearly gates greeting Bud with a stiff drink and his typical sarcasm, “Bud, what took you so long?”

  7. Facebook User said:

    May 8th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Any native Texan should read The Borderland. Any Longhorn fan should read Bootlegger’s Boy.

  8. Shrake and Cartwright wrote about Vince Young for Texas Monthly after Texas won the national championship. You have to register on TM’s site to read it, but it’s worth it.

  9. Nobis60 said:

    May 9th, 2009 at 9:40 am

    That issue of TM still sits on my coffee table, as much for the richness of that article as for the cover photo.

  10. Phil Stroud said:

    May 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am

    SR, I second the endorsement of The Borderland. It should not be missed.

    Steve, great stuff. Thanks. Thanks also for the find on the old SI Lemons article. That brought back some great memories.

  11. It comes in threes and we just got the third in Austin: Stephen Bruton passed.

    Poodie Locke
    Bud Shrake
    Stephen Bruton

    wow.

  12. A movie needs to be made about these guys.

  13. Three great memorials from a Texas writer who had experiences with all 3 of the men mentioned by ponderos here.

    Joe Nick Patoski

  14. Thanks for that link, TX.

    I was driving past Poodie’s last night just as Willie’s tour bus was trying to navigate the small parking lot that was already overflowing. Traffic was blocked from going westbound, but I don’t think anybody cared.

  15. Facebook User said:

    May 14th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

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