Legendary Sports Writers of the Fort Worth Press — ca. 1948
by Paula Bosse
Blackie and crew…
by Paula Bosse
The legendary sport writers of The Fort Worth Press, circa 1948: (standing, l to r) Jerre Todd, Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins; (sitting) Andy Anderson and Edwin “Bud” Shrake. Missing: Gary Cartwright.
This is what sports writers should look like!
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Sources & Notes
Photo — titled “[Staff of Fort Worth Press]” — is from the Blackie Sherrod papers, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; more info can be found here.
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.”
Read a great, lengthy piece about these guys and their time as the greatest sportswriting staff in Texas in the article “Mourning Dark: The Fort Worth Press’ Legendary Sportswriters Are a Dying Breed” by Kathy Cruz (Fort Worth Weekly, Jan. 3, 2018).
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Copyright © 2020 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
Hi Paula,
One of my closest friends in life, Bill Mercer (best man at 2 of my weddings) is still alive and kicking and teaching sports play by play. I wrote this story for a Dallas historical blog that was writing about another famous group of Dallas and Ft. Worth famous sports journalist and it didn’t mention Bill Mercer. Today, Bill, in his 90s is teaching play by play (after having taught it for 50 years at UNT) is now teaching play by play at a university in North Carolina and he is now in his ’90s. After teaching play by play sports announcing for over 70 years and during that time he spent about 10 years as the voice of the Cowboys (until he pissed off Landry one day) and was also the voice of the Texas Rangers for about 10 years. He spent several years as the color man for Harry Caray. He loved the comedy and “drama” of wrestling and the 2 of us created the first wrestling show to go National and international. We were #2 to Soul Train in terms of syndication. I first met Bill when I was in high school at Sunset and in the summer I went to Elkins Radio Institute(on Inwood Rd) back in the summer of ’66, then got my film degree at SMU In ’71.
Soon, I became part of Ron Chapman’s morning show and later Bill did as well.( Then, after Bill quit working with the infamous Harry Caray, he arrived in Dallas to replace the infamous Wes Wise (the Dallas mayor at the time) along with his reposed Volkswagen (Wes was also a sports announcer for years at KRLD TV). Bill Mercer was also the first person to report JFK’s death live with Walter Cronkite.
I have several Blackie stories. We aired Blackie twice every morning for about 3 minutes just before the top of the hour. One of my jobs, besides being Chapman’s servant, was to immediate edit any long pauses on the tape that Blackie called in late every night. This particular morning Blackie called in drunk from the Montreal Olympics. He was slurring his words very badly and told a story about his hotel room that had been recently painted and his newly painted door wouldn’t open. Blackie ended up climbing out the window and managed to precariously move himself to a window a short distance from his room which was in the hallway. He managed to open the window and escaped eventually to the lobby. I transferred his drunken report to a cart for airplay and just walked into the control room and told Chapman that is was really funny and to just air it. it was about 1 minute to Blackie’s air time. Yes, it was very funny and Ron didn’t fire me. In fact he played it again about 7:58. At 9, when we all got off the air, Blackie called Ron extremely mad and threatened to quit as Blackie had gotten many calls from Dallas people he knew who called him because they were dying of laughter.
You could find Blackie holding court at Joe’s Bar on Lemon near Oak Lawn which is now a despicable yuppie place. I have so many other Blackie stories. Bill Mercer should never be left from this article. He was absolutely an amazing man and journalist. He was the voice of NTSU (UNT) sports, and actually, the entire university. I went up there one day after returning from living in LA with my friend Michael Parks to have lunch with Bill at UNT. Bill was busy so went over to the film department to see one of my old professors (Ed Glick) who was the department head and a teacher of mine at SMU in ’67. Well, my professor wasn’t in but I got to meet Don Staples, the new department head and within 15 minutes was given a job as an adjunct professor (I wish I had that job again) and enrolled in the graduate film department (I got my master’s 5 years later basically in film criticism). All of that was because Bill was late. When I got back to Bill, he was really happy what had happened to me. I believe Bill was best man at 2 of my weddings, I think. Well, that describes my marriages! Hail to both Bill and Blackie!!
Mickey Grant
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Haha! Great stories! Thanks, Micky! I grew up watching wrestling with my father, so whenever I hear Bill Mercer’s voice, it’s very nostalgic.
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Hi Mickey,
Can you recount how Bill pissed Landry off?
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What a list of legends. I hung on every word they wrote and said when I was a kid. I know it was part of the act but when Bill Mercer was doing the “Rasslin” thing sometimes I feared for his life when he would interview a wrestler. Thanks for the Flashback Paula. I call you my Paulapedia.
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Thanks, Randy!
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Blackie Sherrod was the best. Even in his later years when he wrote that column for the DMN….Scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to Pete Best…. stuff like that.
His old sports columns were fantastic. I have a book, The Blackie Sherrod Collection that I bought in the late 80’s. I still pull it out from time to time. I think I’ll get it now!
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[…] See an early photo of Blackie with his famed co-workers in the Flashback Dallas post “Legendary Sports Writers of the Fort Worth Press — ca, 1948.” […]
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Wow, I wish I’d read this post earlier. Bill Mercer was my faculty advisor at North Texas from 1967 to 1969. I was in the Radio-TV club that whole time and was involved in the opening operation of KNTU. I was working at Border’s on Arapaho in 2006 when I looked up from the register one morning and saw his smiling face across the counter. He sweetly pretended to remember me and always checked in every time he came back to the store. Oddly enough, another regular of that store was Troy Dungan.
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I worked at the Preston-Royal Borders! Bill Mercer did an event at our store — I chatted with him briefly, and I remember thinking it was weird hearing his voice in person.
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[…] I don’t know why the 1940s call to me so strongly, but I regret that I didn’t live in a time when sportswriters looked like this. Sports staff of the Fort Worth Press, ca. 1948: (left to right) Jerre Todd, Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins; (and sitting) Andy Anderson and Edwin “Bud” Shrake. Missing: Gary Cartwright. From the October post “Legendary Sports Writers of the Fort Worth Press — ca. 1948.” […]
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