Gordon Beard got away from us the other day, after a long career here covering big-time ballgames and translating basic Bawlamorese from its original English roots. At each, he was a delight.
About a hundred old friends and family members gathered Saturday, at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, on Frankford Avenue off Belair Road, to pay respects. The mourners included Jim Henneman and Phil Jackman, Alan Goldstein and Seymour Smith, Chuck McGeehan and Joe Nawrozki, Ted Patterson and Jack Dawson, Kent Baker and John Stewart, Bill Stetka and Mike Ricigliano, bylines and broadcast voices familiar to a few generations of sports fans around here.
“A real Murderer’s Row of old sports guys,” one parishioner said.
“More like Murder Inc.,” one of the old sports guy winked back.
Anyway, Beard was always right there at the heart of it. He was 82 when Parkinson’s finally got the best of him. But, from 1951 to 1988, he was the Associated Press sports writer covering the Orioles, the old Colts and Bullets, and Maryland and Navy collegiate sports.
That meant his words about the local clubs were sent all over the country, to every newspaper and broadcast station leaning on AP because they didn’t have their own people at the game. It meant that Beard’s words were the first national alert on such figures as John Unitas and Lenny Moore, Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer, Earl Monroe and Gus Johnson, Roger Staubach and Len Bias.
He was also faster and funnier with a quip than almost anybody in the business – and understood what resonated best with local audiences since he was a hometown guy who grew up in South Baltimore and graduated Southern High.
The best Beard line of all? It’s been recalled often enough that Bartlett’s ought to include it – but it’s great because it’s more than a line, it’s a reflection of a community spirit. When Reggie Jackson played here, he complained that Baltimore wasn’t big enough for him. If he played in New York, he said, they’d name a candy bar after him.
A year later, as Brooks Robinson hung up his spikes for the last time, the Orioles staged a Thanks, Brooks Day at Memorial Stadium. Gordon was the master of ceremonies.
“Around here,” he told the big stadium crowd, “nobody’s ever named a candy bar after Brooks Robinson. We name our children after him.”
What made the line so great wasn’t just the play on words but the sense of timing, and the sense of Baltimore getting a chance to laugh at a moment it felt overwhelmed. Major league baseball had entered the age of free agency, where the biggest names in the game were just beginning to bolt small-market teams for the big cities where the dollars were stacked the highest.
How could Baltimore compete in such an atmosphere? Jackson, here for only a year, jumped to New York. The Orioles, still one of the most competitive teams, were priding themselves as “the best team money can’t buy.”
Brooks Robinson, here for 22 summers, epitomized the modest hometown guy with the heart of decency; Jackson, stiffing us as soon as he could, seemed the very picture of the modern, uncaring athlete.
Beard’s line, delivered before a full house that sunny afternoon at Memorial Stadium, summed it all up perfectly.
He understood Baltimore, and reveled in that dialect sometimes referred to as Upper Chesapeake adenoidal. Pixture, for picture. Paramour, for power mower. Zinc for sink, and payment for pavement.
He and his brother, illustrator Armand Beard, and cartoonist Mike Ricigliano, put together three books about the local jargon, the best glossaries since John Goodspeed’s old Mister Peep’s Diary back in the 1950s.
“Basic Baltimorese: An Illustrated Guide for Getting Around Balamer, Merlin,” he called the first one. He also ghost-wrote Chuck Thompson’s autobiography, “Ain’t the Beer Cold,” and penned an account of the 1966 baseball season, “Birds on the Wing: the Story of the Baltimore Orioles,” when the O’s swept the Los Angeles Dodgers for their first world championship.
Beard was there for all of it. He was a Baltimore lifer, and a sports-writing lifer, and that’s a vanishing combination. And it’s an important one.
The daily news can get pretty grim. The wars go on, and the economy’s a bummer. But, hey, how about that kid Flacco? Sports takes us out of glum reality for a few ticks of the clock, feeds us a few synthetic heroes, reminds us of our own dreams on long-ago playgrounds. The sports writers help give us our identity as a community.
For nearly four decades, Gordon Beard was a solid pro and a sparkling wit, and he gave us a terrific combination of the two. And that’s a pretty good record for anybody.
