Blackie Sherrod: “The Most Plagiarized Man in Texas” — 1919-2016
by Paula Bosse
by Paula Bosse
Legendary sportswriter Blackie Sherrod died yesterday at the age of 96. My father was not a follower of sports, but I remember he read Blackie Sherrod’s columns because, along with other great, larger-than-life, and exceptionally talented DFW sportswriters such as Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins, and Gary Cartwright, Blackie was — for want of a better word — a “literary” journalist whose style transcended his subject matter. His writing appealed to everyone who enjoyed and appreciated well-written and caustically funny forays into, around, over, and under the world of sports. Sports fans — and other sportswriters — loved the guy. And so did everyone else.
In the December 1975 issue of Texas Monthly, Larry L. King (forever known as the man who made more money from the best little whorehouse in Texas than any of the girls who plied their trade there) wrote a fantastic profile of Blackie (“The Best Sportswriter in Texas”), in which he described Blackie Sherrod as being “the most plagiarized man in Texas.” Sportswriters around the state routinely stole all of Blackie’s best lines and inserted them, unattributed, into their own columns. King himself admits he was one of the worst offenders. The lengthy profile is great. Great. Read it here.
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UPDATE: Also, this is a great 9-minute film produced by KERA in the 1970s in which Blackie talks about his career, past and present.
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Sources & Notes
Video is from the KERA Collection, G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, Southern Methodist University; the permanent link on YouTube is here.
Watch a Dallas Morning News-produced video tribute to Blackie Sherrod from 2013.
The Dallas Morning News obituary — “Legendary News Sportswriter Blackie Sherrod Dies at 96” — written by Kevin Sherrington, is here.
Several of Blackie’s Sherrod’s books can be purchased online, here.
Moments after I posted yesterday’s photo of the Dallas Times Herald lobby, I read that Blackie had died. He must have walked through that lobby thousands of times. That was an odd bit of synchronicity.
See an early photo of Blackie with his famed co-workers in the post “Legendary Sports Writers of the Fort Worth Press — ca, 1948.”
Thanks, Blackie.
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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
I remember the fierce competition between the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald in the early 80s, hiring each other’s writers away, and the DMN “stealing” Ann Landers from the DTH. There was an amusing tv commercial in which Blackie was working away at his desk, typing incredibly fast on some deadline, I’m sure, as he and his desk rolled out of the DTH offices, moving down the street to the DMN, where he and his desk landed happily, just as he pulled his copy triumphantly out of the typewriter.
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Wow! I don’t remember that. I would LOVE to see that!
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Don’t know if the video still exists, but it got a D Magazine best of in 1986:
http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1986/january/best-worst
page down to “locally produced commercial”
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And from the 12/24/84 Sports Illlustrated: TRAFFIC STOPPER
The Dallas Morning News won a major battle in its escalating war with the Dallas Times Herald by hiring away the latter’s longtime sports columnist, Blackie Sherrod. Sherrod’s first column for his new paper will appear on Jan. 2, and the News is heralding its coup with a commercial on local TV. It begins in front of the Times Herald Building with Sherrod working at his desk as it’s being towed through the streets by an unseen truck. As traffic cops clear the way, Sherrod taps away at his word processor, oblivious to distractions, until, at last, he arrives at the News’ offices.
Among pedestrians who watch Sherrod pass by are Ranger manager Doug Rader, Maverick coach Dick Motta and former Cowboy Drew Pearson. In a rather glaring oversight for so accomplished a scribe, the absorbed Sherrod utterly fails to notice any of them.
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I desperately want to see this!
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I’d love to see it again too!
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I’ll always remember his classic intro, which went something like “scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to…”
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[…] More on Blackie Sherrod, who became the dean of Dallas sportswriters, can be found in the Flashback Dallas post “Blackie Sherrod: The Most Plagiarized Man in Texas: 1919-2016.” […]
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