Ken Berger, a nationally recognized sportswriter for The Columbia (S.C.) Record now retired, will speak about his career during what many consider to be the heyday of sports journalism on Sunday, May 17, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Wake Forest Historical Museum. The museum on North Main Street is currently hosting a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit, Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America. The exhibit and the Ken Berger program are both free.
Berger called himself an “accidental sports writer” because, as a new college graduate, he hardly knew which baseball teams were in the National League or the American League. But he was a natural storyteller with a down home vocabulary and a knack for listening. He gave his readers what he describes as “literature in a hurry.”
He was honored as South Carolina’s Journalist of the Year in 1996 and was named three times by the Associated Press as one of the best sports columnists in the country.
The most recent of his five books is “A Sporting Life” filled with some of his favorite columns. As he did in his other books, he ends his biography thusly: “Born and raised in the town of Allendale, S.C., Burger graduated dead last in his class at the University of Georgia, has been married five times, is a gratefully recovering alcoholic, a cancer survivor and a happy man.”
