Genteel New York sportswriter won Pulitzer Prize
NEW YORK — Dave Anderson, a genteel sportswriter whose elegant, descriptive prose won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary as a columnist for The New York Times, died Thursday. He was 89.
He died at an assisted living facility in Cresskill, New Jersey, the Times said. He worked at the newspaper from 1966 to 2007.
An expert on baseball, the NFL, boxing and golf, Mr. Anderson wrote 21 books, received the 1994 Red Smith Award for outstanding contributions to sports journalism from the Associated Press Sports Editors and was inducted into the National Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 1990. He was known for his warmth to friends and strangers alike and unflagging politeness.
His Pulitzer cited six columns from 1980. The most memorable was “The Food On a Table At the Execution,” portraying the scene at the Yankee Stadium office of George Steinbrenner when the New York owner forced out rookie manager Dick Howser with two years remaining on his contract.
Mr. Anderson was born in Troy, New York, on May 6, 1929, attended Xavier High School and received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Holy Cross.
A few months after his graduation in 1951, he became a clerk for the Brooklyn Eagle and started covering baseball the following year, when he was assigned card No. 457 by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He would rise to No. 1 in 2001.
When Harold C. Burr, the Eagles’ beat writer for the Dodgers, broke a hip in a fall at a Cincinnati hotel during a road trip in 1953, sports editor Lou Niss assigned Mr. Anderson to replace him.
Mr. Anderson was about to leave for spring training in 1955 when Newspaper Guild members of the Eagle struck and the paper folded. He was hired by the New York Journal-American to write a Brooklyn sports column. He switched to the Times a decade later and became a sports columnist in 1971 alongside Red Smith.