Always Right and Always Funny

As a kid sports columnist in Louisville 30 years ago, I first met Jim before a Kentucky Derby.

I wanted to talk to him about that day’s column, which was a rip of our beloved Ohio River paradise.

“At night, it smells like a wet bar rag,” he wrote. He said of our entrepreneurs, “The cab drivers on Derby Day should wear masks.” He said My Old Kentucky Home was a rooming house with a bath down the hall. He called us “Lousyville.”

Chamber of Commerce types were apoplectic, so I asked Jim, “But aren’t we better than Cincinnati?”

He laughed. “Big deal. That’s like asking if Betty Grable’s got better legs than Ma Kettle. Everybody’s better than Cincinnati.”

That night I went out on Broadway, downwind from the whiskey distilleries on the edge of town.

Smelled like a wet bar rag.

Only Jim, of all the great sportswriters, always got it right and always got it funny.