SPORTSWRITER WON PULITZER PRIZE
Dave Anderson, a sports columnist for The New York Times for more than three decades and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for commentary, an award rarely bestowed on a sports writer, died Oct. 4 in Cresskill, N.J. He was 89.
Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Dodger ballplayers were idolized, Anderson channelled his love for sports in a different direction.
“My heroes were sports writers: Frank Graham, Jimmy Cannon, Red Smith, Arthur Daley, W.C. Heinz,” he told the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism in 2014. (Povich was an awardwinning sports writer for The Washington Post.)
Anderson got his first newsroom job at 16, in the mid-1940s, when he was hired as a messenger by The New York Sun, where his father worked in advertising sales. After college he covered the Dodgers for The Brooklyn Eagle in 1953 and 1954. When that newspaper went out of business in 1955, he went to The Journal-American. He moved to The Times in 1966.
Anderson began writing the Sports of The Times column five years later. He was among three sports writers who have received a Pulitzer for commentary, a category dating to 1970. Red Smith, Anderson’s fellow Times columnist, was the first recipient, in 1976. Anderson won his Pulitzer in 1981.
Anderson also received The Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award in 1994 for major contributions to sports journalism.
On winning his Pulitzer, Anderson remarked that sportswriting was “part of American culture, just as much as music, art or anything else.”
David Poole Anderson was born on May 6, 1929, in Troy, N.Y., the only child of Robert and Josephine (David) Anderson. One of his grandfathers was publisher of The Troy Times, and his father was the advertising director. Anderson wrote for the newspaper at Xavier High in Manhattan and became the sports editor of the paper at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. He graduated from there in 1951.
He was especially remembered for covering golf (he was an avid golfer), boxing, pro football and baseball.
In November 2002, Anderson and his fellow columnist Harvey Araton submitted columns in connection with a campaign urging Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, to admit women, something The Times had covered heavily. Both columns were rejected by senior editors.
Anderson’s column argued that Tiger Woods had no obligation to get involved in the debate by boycotting the Masters tournament, and it took issue in passing with a Times editorial that suggested Woods do so. (Araton’s column, which concerned the future of women’s softball as an Olympic sport, questioned the importance of the Augusta debate as it related to women’s sports.)
When word got out that the columns had been rejected, there was “critical commentary in the news media and resentment in the Times newsroom,” as The Times reported. The columns were published soon afterward, with revisions agreed to by Anderson and Araton.
In addition to his newspaper work, Anderson wrote books and hundreds of magazine articles. His books include In the Corner: Great Boxing Trainers Talk About Their Art; Muhammad Ali, a visual biography with Magnum Photographers; Pennant Races: Baseball at Its Best; and collaborations with Frank Robinson, John Madden and Sugar Ray Robinson on their memoirs.
He retired from full-time column writing in 2007 and contributed columns to The Times after that on a parttime basis.
The thrill of newspaper work never left Anderson, as he made clear in 2014 when he recalled a night in 1956 when he had covered a New York Rangers game in Montreal for The Journal-American. Anderson was on a train heading back to New York City when, as the train slowed at the border at Rouse’s Point, N.Y., he had the task of tossing game stories by the New York sports writers to a Western Union telegraphist standing by the tracks.
“It’s in the middle of the night, it’s snowing and I’m standing between cars in the dark and toss the package of stories to him and hope somehow he teletypes the copy and it all gets in the newspapers,” Anderson recalled.
In the morning, he picked up a copy of The Journal-American at Grand Central Terminal. “There was the story,” he said. “It was exciting. Even now, when I’m writing, I wake up on a Sunday and still get excited if I’m in the paper.”
Anderson is survived by sons Stephen and Mark; daughters, Jo and Jean-Marie Anderson; three grandchildren; and one great-grandson. His wife of 60 years, Maureen (Young) Anderson, died in 2014.
IT’S IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, IT’S SNOWING AND I’M STANDING BETWEEN CARS IN THE DARK AND TOSS THE PACKAGE OF STORIES TO HIM AND HOPE SOMEHOW HE TELETYPES THE COPY AND IT ALL GETS IN THE NEWSPAPERS.
— DAVE ANDERSON ON FILING FROM A TRAIN IN 1956