Marin to them was a hidden place, a place for people
with summer houses. When they went to visit, they agreed,
‘This is it.’ I owe it all to that conversation.
Valley Middle School and Tam High, where he
played varsity baseball and basketball.
Are the Mill Valley schools different now?
“That’s a cultural question,” he says. “We were
smaller [as a community], there were fewer
kids.” Now he finds a “significant increase in
parental involvement.” Also, “the biggest deal
now is money. When I went to school here, we
didn’t have to fundraise and rely on KIDDO!
to have music and PE classes.
“But the essence is the same,” he says. “Nice
neighborhoods, schools, safety, all the same.”
Both sons, Declan and Rory, now 10 and 6,
play basketball and, thanks to their mother’s
influence, they swim, but baseball is their
number-one sport. In fact, Murphy says one
of the greatest things about being back in
town is coaching his sons’ Little League teams
at Boyle Park, “the most unchanged thing
about the Mill Valley experience, wonderfully
unchanged. Boyle Park on a spring evening.”
That experience is exactly how he lived it, how
he remembers living it.
“The field never moved. It’s been kept the
same, like a museum exhibit. The air and light
remind me of that spring evening outside
D’Angelo’s,” he adds. “Coaching Little League
is a major-league flashback to childhood.”
And yet even kids’ athletics have changed.
“Sports are more competitive now,” Murphy
concedes. “Families spend time and effort to
produce athletes.” On a recent radio show,
“free-form play.”
So not everything has stayed the same in
Mill Valley, he admits. “But you can say that
about every where in the Bay Area. Burlingame,
Orinda, Petaluma, they are all affected by the
growing disparity of income in American soci-
ety. When I was a kid, I knew a kid whose father
was a baker at Safeway. Now the dads are fund
managers. Mill Valley used to be able to sustain
both [types of] families. Now just one.”
Sports wasn’t the only thing on Murphy’s
mind while he was growing up. His journal-
ism career began at Tam High. “I was news
editor of the Tam News my senior year, in
1985, under Dick Fregulia, renowned local
jazz pianist — my first journalism gig.” From
there, he wrote sports for the Mill Valley
Record in the spring of 1985, his first sports
bylines, typed up on his dad’s old 1949 typewriter and slid under the door of the Record
office on Miller Avenue.
“My ambition was to be a features writer
at Sports Illustrated,” he says. “It never came
true, but I married a girl who worked at SI, so
that might be half way. Prior to that, I thought
I’d be a White House reporter for Time magazine. I loved and adored the great SI writers
like Frank Deford and Curry Kirkpatrick.
Thursdays, when SI came in the mailbox,
were magical days.”
At UCLA, after high school, hoping to
take the next step toward the White House,
he went to a Daily Bruin orientation meet-
ing. “They said they were understaffed in the
sports department and that there were t wo
assignments available that night,” Murphy
recalls. On the spot, a lottery was held and his
name was picked out of a hat. “I turned in the
story, and the editor gave me another assign-
ment. I never looked back.”
After college, Murphy wrote for the San
Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times,
San Francisco Examiner, Santa Rosa Press
Democrat, ESPN.com and Yahoo! sports. He
was covering golf for the Chronicle in the
Tiger Woods era and writing feature stories
when KNBR came calling. He started there
in February 2004, and general manager Tony
Salvadore immediately teamed him up with
Paul McCaffrey.
Who listens now? “Families, people getting
ready for the day, parents driving kids to school,
commuters stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge,
truck drivers who are on the road all the time
looking for something to take their minds off
the drive.” KNBR’s program director won’t give
actual listener numbers for the popular show
but says they’re “astonishingly high.” In 2017
Radio Ink magazine named it one of the country’s top 10 best sports radio shows.
Their most talked-about interview is
with 49ers owner Jed York after he fired Jim
Harbaugh. “It’s gotten the most traction of
anything I’ve done,” Murphy says. “I asked
uncomfortable questions, resulting in an
uncomfortable interview. Nobody had asked
those questions, but that was what the fans
wanted to know.” m
Murph’s favorite Giants games
No. 3 Game 6, 2010 pennant race:
Giants 3, Phillies 2
No. 2 Game 4, 2010 World Series:
Giants 4, Rangers 0
No. 1 Game 7, World Series: Giants 3, Kansas
City 2. “I was there, in Kansas City, in person. I
can still see the gate to the bull pen swing open
and Madison Bumgarner walk out. I still relive
that historic and evocative day.”
Radio, Radio
The ease of Brian Murphy’s Monday-to-Friday commute is one of the practical pluses of living in Mill Valley.
“Everyone should be so lucky. There are six other cars on the road when I leave home at 4: 50 a.m.” What
does he listen to on the drive? “I start with ESPN radio 4: 50 a.m. to 4: 55, NPR 4: 55 to the top of the hour,
Adam Copeland on KNBR until I get to work.”
And on the way home: “KNBR, to see if Gary and Larry have something we didn’t cover, then Howard
Stern on Sirius — he is the master, the greatest revolutionary in radio. He created a family, a neighborhood,
he brings his life to the air. And I listen to music, all kinds.”
