Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego is a monument, if no longer a memorial, to Jack Murphy, for twenty-eight years columnist and sports editor of the San Diego Union. As San Diego Stadium, the structure rose in Mission Valley in the 1960s in great part through Murphy's leadership of campaigns to attract major football and baseball franchises, then to win voter approval for construction bonds. In 1980, shortly after his death, the city moved to rename the field Jack Murphy Stadium, making him the only sportswriter ever to be so honored anywhere. The designation remained for almost two decades, until crucial financial support by a local telecommunications firm led to "the Murph" becoming "the Q" in 1997.

The tribute, however ephemeral it proved to be, came about because Murphy had perceived one of the rarest opportunities ever to come by a man of his calling. When he began work at the...