Murtaugh

Murtaugh ran 13 issues (from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s), edited by Spike Vrusho as an amalgam of punk rock and baseball angst based on the resilient career of former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh. It began in Columbus, Ohio, but boredom forced it to move to Brooklyn, NY and enjoy Red Hook and Williamsburg in the late 1980s. The unproduced Issue 14 was to feature the truck Billy Martin died in as presented by the voluptious Queen Itchie in an eerie upstate New York setting. Vrusho produced a limited edition color All-Star version of Murtaugh which he sold outside Three Rivers Stadium at the 1994 MLB All-Star game, completely financing his Greyhound bus trip to Pittsburgh. Joe Garagiola was personally presented with an issue. Other celebrity ambushed readers included Jim Jarmusch outside Max Fish, Matrina Navratilova at Sugar Reef, a New York Yankees lawyer and former Bucco skipper Bill Virdon. Murtaugh and Vrusho were also featured in the pages of Pittsburgh magazine. Bands such as Cell, The Trick Babys, Mark Mothersbaugh, Idaho, Crawlpappy, The Hangdogs, the Astro Zombies and others were interviewed in the pages of Murtaugh. Cartoonist Tony Millionaire contributed a legendary strip called "Batty" centered on a boozy geriatric player/manager. Other contributors included the graphic artist Shawn Wolfe, Selwyn Harris, author Bart Plantenga, artists Jim Gibbs and Zeet Peabody, D.R. Stewart, Marc Blubaugh, printmaker Daisy DeCapite, visionary Jon Sarkin, Stewart Verrilli, Ray Ecke, David Lowe, Brian Krall, Eric Shank, Helena Harvilicz, Nina Ascoly, Kevin Baier, Bonnie Pfister, the Bronx-based poet Prologue.

Spike Vrusho, who wrote for New York Press back in the William Monahan days and later edited a raucous one-year run of the New York Sports Express weekly that was criminally exterminated by complete idiots at Avalon Equity Partners, can be reached at spikevrusho@earthlink.net