'All Those Mornings...At The Post'

Shirley Povich was a columnist for more than 75 years at The Washington Post, writing about some of the most memorable moments in American sports.

So to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, Maury Povich helped compile his father's writings in "All Those Mornings...At The Post." Click here to read an excerpt.

Shirley Povich died in June of 1998 at the age of 92. Along with his brother David, sister Lynn and former Post sports editor George Solomon, Maury Povich pulled together this personal collection and recollection of his father. They sorted through some 17,000 columns to choose the best for the book.

"I wanted the public throughout the country to get a taste of him," Maury Povich tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "Those of us in Washington, who grew up with him, knew all about him. He wrote for 13 presidents, for crying out loud."

People read his column seven days a week. Shirley Povich started when Calvin Coolidge was in office and ended with Bill Clinton.

Driven by a strong sense of social justice, Shirley Povich called for the integration of major league baseball in 1939, and 20 years later he was still at it, attacking Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall for having an all-white team.

"His leads would be: The Redskins came on the field in their colors, burgundy, gold and Caucasian," explains Maury Povich. "Or Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns integrated the Redskins end zone three times. That's how he would do it."

When it came to writing, Maury Povich notes his father took the craft very seriously.

Maury Povich recalls, "Tom Shales, the Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic of The Washington Post wrote a terrible article on me. Used every S word in the world: smarmy, slimy. I said, 'Dad, don't you read this! Don't let mom read it. This is really bad.' He said: 'Tom Shales is a fine writer. I helped to hire Tom Shales here at the Post.' 'But Dad, I'm your son.' 'Yeah, but good writers are hard to find.'"

Conversing with his dad is what he misses most, Povich says.

He says, "The day after he died, the Belmont was held. One of the horses won by, like, a nose. And it was a mile-and-a-half around the track and nose-to-nose. And I wanted to pick up the phone and talk to him.

"We used to talk every day about sports. And I couldn't. I think it rang a bell with people about their dad, or your mom. You want to talk to them and you can't."