My roll call has been Red Smith, Arthur Daly, Dave Anderson, Ira Berkow, Joe Nichols, Steve Cady, Robert Lipsyte, Gerald Eskenazi, Steve Crist, Leonard Koppett and even George Vecsey, if only to get mad at.
Today's obituary for Dave is not on the front page, is not at the bottom of the front page with a teaser, but on the sports page, where he belongs. Forever.
The last time Dave wrote for the NYT on a regular basis was 2007. I have missed him every day since. Only occasionally did a column appear, but retirement is justly earned, especially for a journalist who wrote for The Journal-American. I remember JFK and I remember The Journal-American, The World-Telegram and Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Star Journal, The Long Island Press and The Herald Tribune. Dave's colleague Red Smith came to the NYT from The Herald Tribune. All gone. You don't write for a newspaper for 50 years and not see some changes.
A glance at the pages of today's sports section shows us all what we've been missing. A fair-minded man who had a way with words, and who was liked by all for his class and wit. Grace with a keyboard. We're missing those who earned the right to have their words appear in the 'Sports of the Times' column, first sports page, lower left,
Just read the reprinted column on Reggie Jackson when he was with the New York Yankees. Anyone who remembers the era of George, Reggie and Billy can appreciate the words, "Some people, notably George Steinbrenner, the only ship builder who enjoys storms..." is absolute poetry set to type.
The column is about Reggie Jackson and the burden of being called Mr. October and not producing enough firepower in the current series against the Kansas City Royals. Dave closes by calling George Steinbrenner Mr. Obnoxious. It is a gorgeous piece, worth reading not only for who wrote it but to also be reminded we always thought ballplayers were making too much money, when in the late 1970s, early 1980s, Reggie was making $600,000 a year. There wouldn't be fan alive then who didn't think someone was being overpaid. Not Dave. In Dave's opinion, Mr. October deserved to get a new contract for $1 million a year. There are some people who could put those numbers on their charge card these days.
Boxing, hockey and baseball were Dave's forte. Anyone who grew up in Brooklyn, despite coming from Troy, NY, had to experience a seasonal onslaught of opinionated people who followed baseball. I met Dave Anderson once, sometime in the latter part of the 1990s. Brooks Brothers, of all places, sent me a promo notice that Dave Anderson was going to be speaking there on a certain weeknight. RSVP. Of course I dd.
At the podium, Dave told the few in attendance on folding chairs set up in men's suits, that growing up in New York in the 50s you had to appreciate how baseball ruled the town. The Dodgers, the Giants, the Yankees; three teams in three boroughs. It was a golden age, Everyone was a fan of one team, and a naysayer against the others. Sports talk radio before talk radio.
Dave's passion for golf was revealed when he told of getting any golf assignment there was at the paper. He was headed for the upcoming Masters. He described the atmosphere at Augusta as being just a bit "too plantation" for him. He also described how during the practice sessions the pros would have their caddies stand out on the course and they would then try and direct a golf shot into their baseball mitt. Accuracy counts in a tournament.
Another of the takeaways (literally) from Dave's talk after I introduced myself was a copy of either a column he wrote, or the text of the Abbot and Costello routine "Who's on First?" To me, it is still one of the funniest routines I've ever heard. I heard them do it on their WPIX show when I was a kid. Dave told me it is in the Baseball of Fame, a place I still have yet to journey to. Time is fleeting. I better get there.
I didn't know Dave's autobiographical background, but now knowing his grandfather was the publisher of the Troy Times and his father was the advertising director, it was understandable that Dave was going to get a Social Security card and a press pass in his life.
I remember one of Dave's columns in the early 80s when he wrote about Gerry Cooney, a large white, heavyweight from Huntington, NY who was being groomed with over-matched opponents so he could soon challenge Larry Holmes for the title and be the next 'Great White Hope.'
Dave of course didn't call Gerry that, but there were enough people who did. Gerry's early fights didn't go the distance. His opponents were fairly quickly rendered unconscious and laying on the canvas before all the scheduled rounds were fought. Leatherbacks.
In fact, Gerry Cooney's accumulated ring experience was such a low number that Dave wrote that while in the elevator going up in the World Trade Center that the blinking lights for the floors quickly passed Gerry's total number of rounds fought. And you didn't need all of the Trade Center's 110 floors to pass Gerry's accumulated total. In fact, a rather short, undistinguished building's top floor could do just as well.
When I abandoned college twice and was just 19 looking for work, I went to see a high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Bittkower. It wasn't even the high school I graduated from, Suyvesant, but Seward Park, where it turned out later a colleague graduated from, who knew Mrs. Bittkower. He got his job from her as well.
If Mrs. Bittkower had sent me the a newspaper I probably would have stayed there, but she sent me to a health insurance company, where I worked for 36 years, then left to work seven years more doing the same thing for a consulting company. But writing was an avocation, and one day feeling thoroughly depressed about the concurrent strikes in baseball (no 1994 World Series) and hockey I composed a letter to Dave Anderson.
The letter was dated December 2, typed on a nice piece of paper—one page. I basically predicted attendance was going to lag in future years (it did, for a while) and that fathers were not going to be taking their kids to games, the generational continuity would be broken. I recounted some of the connection with my father that being taken to games had for me.
My phone ran on December 24 and it was Dave Anderson. He said he wanted to use the letter in his next column and was just fact checking a few things. He said it was one of the best things he's read about the strikes.
Christmas Day, a Sunday, my letter in its near entirety, along with my name and the town I lived in were part of his 'Sports of the Times' column titled 'It's Not Going to Be A Baseball Christmas.'
At the end of today's obituary Richard Goldstein does what good obituary writers do: they close with a quote from the departed, something that can reveal their life's philosophy.
The anecdote from Dave's life comes from Dave himself, when he describes how his newspaper account of a 1956 Montreal-New York Ranger game made it into the morning paper.
The story is not even called in, but typed by Dave. He tells of standing between the cars on the train headed back from Montreal that night, and tossing the copy onto a train platform at the New York border at Rouses Point as the trained slowed so it can be teletyped into the morning edition of The Journal-American.
On arriving at Grand Central Terminal Dave picks up a fresh copy of the paper and finds his bylined story. "It was exciting. Even now when I'm writing, I wake up on a Sunday morning and still get excited if I'm in the paper."
And for one Sunday in 1994, Christmas Day, I got the same feeling.
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