How JBM even got Tramp hot under the collar

A few weeks ago, this column had a chat with Robert Lipsyte, an American sportswriter of such eminence that ringing his house was like ringing 1-800-OLYMPUS and asking for Zeus himself.

In all the excitement, though we forgot to ask him about an incident in a baseball press box which just predated Lipsyte’s arrival in journalism, when the New York Yankees of Joe DiMaggio played the Detroit Tigers. A Tiger chased down one of the balls struck by DiMaggio and made a spectacular catch, to loud applause.

Later DiMaggio blasted the ball a hundred feet over his opponent’s head and out of the stadium, and one of the New York sportswriters leaned out of the press box and roared down: “Let’s see you catch that, you idiot,” with the word idiot standing in as a kind of low-alcohol substitute for something stronger.

The late 50s and early 60s was the time when sportswriters in America finally stopped “godding up” the athletes they covered.

There was an end to the reverent hyperbole and a style of writing which was franker and sharper came into play.

(This sharpness reached an early apotheosis when a baseball player, fresh from victory, was taking questions in the locker room from journalists and was called away to the phone.

One of the new writers asked him who it was when he returned.

“My wife,” said the player.

“What’s she up to?” asked the writer.

“Feeding our baby,” responded the player.

There was a pause.

“Breast or bottle?”

Anyhow, you may be asking about the relevance of all this, but events last Saturday evening in Páirc Uí Rinn should probably enlighten you.

Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s return as manager of the Cork senior hurling team is a couple of things at the same time. On the one hand, by taking the bainisteoir’s bib, Barry-Murphy has engendered a warm glow in the breasts of Cork men between the ages of 35 and 50 all over the country.

Children remain unscolded and dogs unkicked. Wives detect mellowness where before there was a certain thorny edge to the outlook. Jimmy is back, so all is right with the world.

On the other hand, for sportswriters of a certain generation, the impulse to do some “godding up” — some serious “godding up” — is a live risk.

A good many fit the age profile mentioned above, and while not all are from Cork, most get a little dreamy at the prospect of shoving a dictaphone under Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s nose after a game.

The last time Barry-Murphy was Cork boss he was on the sideline in Parnell Park for a league game around 1996, and in our mind’s eye we can see a scoreboard heralding two first-half points in total for Cork.

It was all too much for one exile from Leeside, who may or may not have had a child in Dublin’s sky blue on his lap: “Jimmy, put yourself on!”

It’s only through an immense physical effort that GAA writers will be able to put away comparisons when Cork miss goal chances: “If the manager had been on the 14-metre line rather than one of his players...” That kind of thing.

In fact, even when Cork get goals, many journalists will have to put a euro in the cliche jar if they trot out some variant of: “Finishing with a flourish that his manager would have been proud of in his own storied playing days, X billowed the net etc, etc.”

They could do worse than rely on a contrasting memory to trigger absolute evenhandedness, which is what this column plans to do.

When Cork won the All-Ireland title in 1978, my family went into town for the homecoming, but I didn’t. I stayed at home.

I’d been there the previous two years and the novelty had worn off. I had books and a few chocolate biscuits so I was happy, and I waved them off with my father’s words ringing in my ears: “Don’t open the garage door. The bitch is in heat in there and Tramp (our male dog) isn’t to go near her. Whatever you do, don’t open the garage door.”

I’ll remove any suspense from your life. I opened the garage door.

The bitch took off like a rocket. Tramp took off and the words “hot pursuit” were moot. When they reappeared hours later each of them might as well have been smoking a cigarette.

Punishment was swift and appropriate, no doubt (though it hasn’t lingered in the memory like my mother’s innocent query: “But aren’t they brother and sister?” to which my father’s retort was equally swift, if a little less appropriate).

In 1978 the man who scored “the goal that can win an All-Ireland”, in Micheál Ó hEithir’s words, was Jimmy Barry-Murphy. So in a roundabout way it was all his fault.

He needn’t worry about any “godding up” while the memory of a litter of unexpected Wheaten Terrier pups is still fresh.

* [e-mail] Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx