Blackie Sherrod, longtime Texas sports writer, dead at 96

DALLAS – The East Coast had Red Smith. The West Coast had Jim Murray. Texas had Blackie Sherrod.

Sherrod, the longtime Texas sports writer revered for his dry wit, died Thursday afternoon at his Dallas home after a week in hospice care, wife Joyce Sherrod told The Dallas Morning News. He was 96.

A mentor to some of the nation’s top writers, Sherrod was Texas Sportswriter of the Year a record 16 times and a Red Smith Award winner for lifetime achievement in sports writing.

His trademark was the use of a country-fied Texas vernacular – sort of Damon Runyon or Ring Lardner by way of Jett Rink. His flagship fixture was his weekly “Scattershooting” column of brief nuggets of news, commentary and witticisms that ran in Sunday editions.

Sherrod took his popular column in 1958 to the now-defunct Dallas Times-Herald in 1958, where he also helped cover the 1960 Democratic National Convention, the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, for which he won a Texas Headliners Club award for science writing.

The Dallas Morning News hired away Sherrod from the Times-Herald in 1985, and he continued his column until retiring in 2003, a move he regarded with mixed emotions.

“Retirement is like a steam bath,” he said in his last “Scattershooting” column. “Once you get used to it, it’s not so hot.”