Bud Shrake dies.

Texas Writer-Journalist Bud Shrake Has Died

Posted on May 8th, 2009 by Jerome Weeks
The Fort Worth native began in sports journalism. Along with Dan Jenkins (they went to Paschal High School together), he eventually shaped American sports magazine writing with colorful yarns for Sports Illustrated — after having worked for the Dallas Times Herald and then the Dallas Morning News.
Edwin Shrake, Jr, returned to Texas in 1969 and continued to work for Sports Illustrated until 1979. But he also got into writing novels and screenplays, befriending literary, Hollywood and sports celebs, including Willie Nelson and George Plimpton . Critic and scholar Don Graham considers Strange Peaches, Shrake’s oddball comedy from 1972 of Dallas life in the early ’60s, something of a neglected classic of Lone Star literature.
Shrake’s best film work came in the early ’80s with Songwriter, basically an easy-going Willie Nelson road picture directed by Alan Rudolph, and Tom Horn, Steve McQueen’s last Western, which Shrake co-wrote with novelist Thomas McGuane.
But Shrake’s most unexpected commercial success came from his sideline of ‘as-told-to’ biographies. Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf compiled the golf pro’s homespun wisdom and remained a national bestseller for weeks after its release in 1992, ultimately becoming the bestselling sports book ever.
Shrake died in Austin, where he’d been living for years. The cause was cancer. He was 77.
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Bud Shrake one of the members of Mad Dog Inc.

A small group of writers who specialized in writing about life and especially sports in the state of Texas that included Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins (wrote Semi Tough and Dead Solid Perfect among a lot of other stuff) Pete Gent (wrote North Dallas 40) Gary Cartwright, legenday Texas columnist who would go on to write for Texas Monthly, novelist Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place), Larry L. King ("The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas") were the members of Mad Dog Inc.

Shrake's best works Strange Peaches and The Blessed McGill still remain probably two of the most enjoyable books ever written about life in Texas during two different eras.

Strange Peaches was influenced by the Kennedy Assination to some extent and even contained passages abou the real Jack Ruby. Bud Shrake actually dated a girl who performed in Ruby's Dallas nightclub The Carousel. Bud was also the longtime companion of former Texas Govenor Ann Richards until her death in 2006 but they never married.

The Blessed McGill recounts the life story of Peter Hermano McGill, whose dauntless antics across the frontier ends in Brother McGill becoming the first Roman Catholic saint in North America.

Both books are great. A notch below is "limo" co-written with fellow Mad Dogger and Texan sportwriter Dan Jenkins. Limo written in the mid 70s was a prediction of what television would turn into by the time the new century came around. A crazy look behind the scenes at a major network.


All great reading.


Bud Shrake RIP.



wil.

Pouring one out for the great sports journalist Bud Shrake.

By Don DeFord..

Bud Shrake started working at The Fort Worth Press in 1951, when newspapers ruled -- especially what is called the sports world. The Press has long since gone, unmourned. Ah, but when Shrake worked there, he and his sports-page pals, like Dan Jenkins, imagined they were the last live remnants of The Front Page, the Hecht-MacArthur play that celebrated manic newspaper life. It was Fort Worth, but they called it "their Chicago days."

Sadly, Bud died Friday at this sad time when even the nation's best newspapers seem to be holding on by a thread. So, I suppose Bud Shrake's as good a representative as anyone of a whole era in sports print journalism.

After all, he worked for the man, Blackie Sherrod, who is generally held to be the best sportspage editor, and then at Sports Illustrated for the man, Andre Laguerre, who's the greatest magazine sports editor ever. With an old golf pro, Bud wrote Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, which is the largest-selling sports book in history. That's some trifecta.

Of course, Shrake had one of those lives that couldn't be restricted to the friendly confines of the sports world. He wrote movies and novels, the last of which was entitled Custer's Brother's Horse, and let me tell you, it's a terrific yarn. Like a cagey, good old Texas quarterback, old Bud could still find his receivers after he lost something off his arm. And, like most of his novels, this last one takes place in Texas.

Bud was tall and laconic and carried something of Texas wherever he went. He was very good indeed with the ladies. He was going out with a stripper at Jack Ruby's club when Ruby gunned down Oswald, and in the last years of their lives, Bud and Governor Ann Richards were soulmates. He was buried next to her in Austin.

As Texas as Shrake was, he and Jenkins longed for the big-time, New York. Laguerre brought Jenkins in first, Shrake later, 1965. They fit right in, largely because Sports Illustrated under Laguerre was something of a last throwback to The Front Page. Trust me, I was there. Laguerre was a Frenchman who was plucked out of the Channel off Dunkirk, near bleeding to death, and then became DeGaulle's press secretary. He was a beguiling continental who liked American sportswriters with jagged edges.

Laguerre conducted a lot of business at the bar, and when his favorite closed he chose Shrake for the magazine's most crucial assignment: find a proper new watering hole. Among other things, the chosen joint couldn't have a juke box, and had to give every drinker the fourth one on the house. It took Shrake a couple weeks and a careful testing of about a hundred bars, but, ace reporter that he was, he found the saloon that pleased the boss.
Laguerre always called the last drink of the evening the ABF. That, you see, followed one for the road. It meant: the Absolute Bloody Final. I learned of Bud's death, reading a newspaper on an airplane. I called the flight attendant over and asked for another drink. "But we'll be landing soon," she said.

"I know," I said, "but I have to have an ABF for Bud Shrake."

SI.com
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He met with some aspiring writers before he died and said that if they followed these words from a Johnnie Mercer song that they could not go far astray.

"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between"

If I could do that I would be a popular poster here.

To do so I would have to stay outta the fucking poli fourm.

A great journalist....RIP

Loved his writing..