Amazing Grace

Why the story of baseball writer Claire Smith belongs in Cooperstown

The Baseball Hall of Fame is welcoming quite the induction class this weekend.

Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Pudge Rodriguez from the onfield ranks.

John Schuerholz and Bud Selig from the frontoffice types.

Even though there are big names and grand resumes in that group, there’s a person going to Cooperstown who has me way more excited. Someone who never played or managed or scouted or worked even a day for a big-league team.

Still, Claire Smith is big time in every way.

You might never have seen or heard Smith’s name; she’s better known to sports fans on the East Coast. But as she readies to accept the Spink Award — the highest honor that a baseball writer can receive — you won’t find anyone else going to Cooperstown with a story as inspirational as hers.

She’s the kind of person you want to tell your children about and say, “Be like Claire.”

She’s the kind of person you want to be like, too.

Claire Smith came by her love of baseball from her mother. An immigrant from Jamaica, Bernice Smith grew up hearing about sports

stars on the radio. Boxing. Golf. Track. But it was baseball that she loved most. And in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, Bernice’s love of baseball in general and the Brooklyn Dodgers in specific was solidified.

Claire later said that her mom was a Dodgers fan because they represented what could be — inclusiveness for all.

That sentiment was significant for Bernice Smith because she was a rocket scientist. She worked for General Electric in its space and missile defense program, and while there, she helped build the fuel cell that sent John Glenn into outer space.

The movie “Hidden Figures” was about women like her.

Claire didn’t know it at the time because her mom always put on a confident face, but her mom didn’t always have it easy. She was a woman in a profession controlled by men. She was a black woman in a world dominated by whites. She felt isolated sometimes.

Claire knew the feeling. In the early days of desegregation, she was the only black child in her elementary school class. She was shy by nature, and many of her experiences only hardened that outer shell.

But they also made her mindful of others. Compassionate. Considerate. Caring.

That didn’t change when she became a sports writer or when she became one of the first women to cover professional sports.

After making her way from the Bucks County Courier Times in Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia Bulletin to the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, she became the New York Yankees beat writer in 1983. For five years, she chronicled arguably the most storied franchise in all of American sport, and she covered arguably its wildest era. Don Baylor. Billy Martin. Dave Winfield. Don Mattingly. Goose Gossage. Yogi Berra.

All liked Claire. Smith broke all sorts of news and told all kinds of stories even though she was working for one of the smaller papers covering the team. Players, coaches and managers trusted her.

That is no small thing. Consider that when Smith broke into the business, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America included a warning on tickets to its annual dinner — “Stag. No women allowed.”

A little over three decades later, that same baseball writers’ group voted Smith the Spink Award winner.

Her work speaks for itself. She eventually went on to work for The New York Times, the Philadelphia Enquirer and ESPN where Smith is now a coordinating editor of the universal news group, with an emphasis on baseball.

But it’s not just what she did. It’s how she did it.

Much like her mother, say nothing of her baseball hero Jackie Robinson, Smith handled everything with such grace and aplomb. She remained friendly and humble and unassuming. One of her longtime friends from the Hartford Courant called her “the least confrontational person in America.”

The story that most often gets told about Claire Smith dates back to the 1984 National League Championship Series between the Cubs and the Padres.

While the American League had decided its locker rooms were open to any and all credentialed reporters, the National League had ceded control of the issue to individual teams during the regular season. In the playoffs, though, the National League assured the media that locker rooms would be open to all.

But after Game 1, Smith was pushed out of the Padres’ locker room.

I don’t say “pushed out” as some sort of code. Smith was actually shoved, someone’s forearm in her back, out of the locker room.

So, so disgraceful.

And she handled it with such grace.

As she was being tossed out of the clubhouse, she asked another reporter to ask Padres infielder Steve Garvey to come outside. She still needed some quotes. She still had to do her job.

Smith and Garvey had gotten to know each other over the years, and he was more than happy to help.

But the next day after news got around about what had happened to Smith, Goose Gossage approached her. He was yelling, “Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you come to me?”

They, too, had gotten to know each other over the years, and Gossage wanted to help. But Smith knew that the anger she saw the next day would’ve been magnified in the moment. He might’ve gone off on teammates. He might’ve gotten himself in trouble.

So, in the worst moments of her professional life, she had not only the wherewithal but also the compassion to think of others.

Those of us who are blessed to know her marvel at her, and all of us who joined her in this profession would consider ourselves lucky to maintain suchclass and character. Frankly, her example goes way beyond journalism or sport.

While some great baseball types will be honored in Cooperstown this weekend, there’ll be no better person than Claire Smith.