ANDERSON, David (Poole) 1929-(Dave Anderson)

PERSONAL: Born May 6, 1929, in Troy, NY; son of Robert P. (an advertising executive) and Josephine (an insurance broker; maiden name, David); married Maureen Ann Young, October 24, 1953; children: Stephen, Mark, Mary Jo, Jean Marie. Education: Holy Cross College, B.A., 1951. Hobbies and other interests: Golf.

ADDRESSES: Home—8 Inness Rd., Tenafly, NJ 07670. Office—New York Times, 229 West 43rd St., New York, NY 10036.

CAREER: Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn, NY, sports writer, 1951-55; New York Journal-American, New York, NY, sports writer, 1955-66; New York Times, New York, NY, sports writer, 1966—, author of column "Sports of The Times," 1971—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Best Sports Stories Award, Dutton Press, 1965, for "The Longest Day of Sugar Ray," and 1972, for "Beaufort, SC Loves Joe Frazier . . . Now"; Page One Award from New York Newspaper Guild, 1972, for "Beaufort, SC Loves Joe Frazier . . . Now"; Best Sports News-Feature Prize, Dutton Press, 1972, for "I'll Forgive but I'll Never Forget"; Pro Football Writers Story of the Year Award, 1972; Nat Fleischer Award, 1974, for distinguished boxing journalism; Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, 1981; Red Smith Award, 1994; Lifetime Achievement Award, Professional Golfers Association, 1988; McCann Memorial Award for distinguished football reporting, 1998; inducted into National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, 1990; inducted into New York Sports Museum and Hall of Fame, 1991.

WRITINGS:

UNDER NAME DAVE ANDERSON

Great Quarterbacks of the NFL (juvenile), Random House (New York, NY), 1965.

Great Pass Receivers of the NFL (juvenile), Random House (New York, NY), 1966.

Great Defensive Players of the NFL (juvenile), Random House (New York, NY), 1967.

Countdown to Super Bowl, Random House (New York, NY), 1969.

(With Sugar Ray Robinson) Sugar Ray, Viking (New York, NY), 1970.

(With Larry Csonka and Jim Kiich) Always on the Run, Random House (New York, NY), 1973.

Pancho Gonzalez: The Golden Year, Prentice Hall (Tappan, NJ), 1974.

(With Frank Robinson) Frank: The First Year, Holt (New York, NY), 1976.

The Yankees, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

Sports of Our Times, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

(Editor and contributor) The Red Smith Reader, Random House (New York, NY), 1982.

(With John Madden) Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, Villard (New York, NY), 1984.

The Cubs, Random House (New York, NY), 1985.

The Story of Football, foreword by O. J. Simpson, Morrow (New York, NY), 1985, revised edition published with a foreword by Troy Aikman, 1997.

(With John Madden) One Knee Equals Two Feet: And Everything Else You Need to Know about Football, Villard (New York, NY), 1986.

The Story of Basketball, foreword by Julius Erving, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988, revised edition published with a foreword by Grant Hill, 1997.

(With John Madden) One Size Doesn't Fit All: And Other Thoughts from the Road, Villard (New York, NY), 1988.

In This Corner: Great Boxing Trainers Talk about Their Art, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991, published in England as Ringmasters: Great Boxing Trainers Talk about Their Art.

Pennant Races: Baseball at Its Best, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Sugar Ray Robinson) Sugar Ray: The Sugar Ray Robinson Story, Da Capo (New York, NY), 1994.

The Story of the Olympics, foreword by Carl Lewis, Morrow (New York, NY), 1996.

(Essayist) The Hogan Mystique: Classic Photographs of the Great Ben Hogan, American Golfer (Greenwich, CT), 1996.

(Essayist) The Greatest of Them All: The Legend of Bobby Jones, American Golfer (Greenwich, CT), 1996.

(With John Madden) Hey, I'm Talking Pro Football!, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

The Story of Golf, foreword by Jack Nicklaus, Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

The New York Yankees: An Illustrated History, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

(Author of text) Classic Baseball: The Photographs of Walter Iooss, Jr., Abrams (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of more than two hundred articles to magazines, including Reader's Digest, Sports Illustrated, Saturday Evening Post, and New York Times Magazine.

Contributor to numerous anthologies, including Best Sports Stories 1959, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978, The Armchair Quarterback, and The Fireside Book of Baseball.

SIDELIGHTS: David Anderson "covers a multitude of sports and covers them well," according to Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Jack Ziegler. A longtime sports reporter for New York-based newspapers, Anderson foregoes the statistical or sensational aspects of an athlete's life and "shows more concern for the content of his character," as Ziegler wrote.

Born in Troy, New York, Anderson grew up in Brooklyn, then the home of the beloved Dodgers baseball team. Though not particularly skilled in athletics, Anderson played street versions of baseball, football, and basketball; but there was another side to the young boy. Anderson's father used to bring home a half dozen newspapers daily, which the boy "would spread out and read on the living room floor," wrote Ziegler. "He was thus introduced to writings of Arthur Daley of the New York Times, Frank Graham of the New York Journal-American," and other journalistic luminaries of the day.

As a teenager Anderson set his sights on sports writing and got his start in newspapers as a copyboy for the New York Sun. After graduation from Holy Cross College, Anderson found his career derailed slightly when the Sun folded. In 1951 he went to work for the Brooklyn Eagle, working on the racing charts. His "professional break," as Ziegler put it, "came in 1953 when the Dodgers beat reporter . . . broke his hip in Cincinnati. Anderson became a permanent fill-in, covering the 'boys of summer' until 1955," the year the Eagle folded. From there Anderson moved to the New York Journal-American. Eleven years later he was hired as a sports columnist for the New York Times.

Anderson quickly made his reputation. In 1964 he won an award from Dutton Press for his article "The Longest Day of Sugar Ray," a story about the life of boxer Sugar Ray Robinson after he left the ring. Robinson, a former champ, had no other skills to sustain him in retirement; "at age forty-four," noted Ziegler's article, "Robinson is reduced to filling halls in places such as Pittsfield, Massachusetts, against unknowns for small purses." Anderson's full-length biography of Robinson, written with the boxer, was published in 1994.

After the New York Jets' 1969 victory over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, quarterback Joe Namath announced that he would be interviewed only by New York reporters—among them, Dave Anderson. The columnist had covered the Jets when they were first known as the Titans and was an admirer of Namath's skill, in addition to harboring the idea that the Jets could beat Baltimore. Countdown to Super Bowl, Anderson's chronicle of the days prior to football's most prestigious event, was praised for its clear, concise, and unbiased sports presentation. Arthur Cooper of Newsweek noted that Anderson "has written a dayby-day account in an understated style that is mercifully free of sport clichés."

Anderson teamed up with the ebullient ex-football coach and television personality John Madden for a series of books, including Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book and One Knee Equals Two Feet: And Everything Else You Need to Know about Football. In the latter work, Madden relates his life in coaching the Oakland Raiders, offering expert views that include the revelation of how "quarterbacks often tip off where they are planning to throw a pass by the way they hold their shoulders as they drop back," as Ralph Novak noted in People.

The author produced something of an oral history with In This Corner: Great Boxing Trainers Talk about Their Art. Indeed, noted Sports Illustrated reviewer Ron Fimrite, Anderson "merely sets the stage for his subjects with a few paragraphs. . .and then lets the subjects, on tape, take over the narrative." Among the interviews is former Mike Tyson cornerman Kevin Rooney, who "has a grand time taking potshots at Don King, Robin Givens (the former Mrs. Tyson) and Givens's mother," as Fimrite wrote.

In an interview with Editor & Publisher, Anderson was asked about sports writing. "I'd say it's generally good and sometimes excellent in the major cities and in many of the smaller cities," he said. "There are more realists than romantics now. The best way to improve sports writing is to hire the best writers and reporters available. Don't let them dismiss journalism as a profession because of its comparatively low pay scale. The better the pay, the better writers and reporters it will attract."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 241: American Sportswriters and Writers on Sport, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1996, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Story of the Olympics, p. 1820; January 1, 1998, Phelan, review of The Story of Football, p. 796; May 15, 1998, Bill Ott, review of The Story of Golf, p. 1622.

Book Report, March-April, 1989, Alice Wittig, review of One Size Doesn't Fit All: And Other Thoughts from the Road, p. 50; November-December, 1996, Michael Cabaya, review of The Story of the Olympics, p. 58; January-February, 1998, Ron Marinucci, review of The Story of Football, p. 55.

Business Week, August 16, 1982, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 9.

Child Life, July-August, 1996, review of The Story of the Olympics, p. 34.

Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 1994, Larry Eldridge, review of Pennant Races: Baseball at Its Best, p. 14.

Editor & Publisher, April 6, 1974.

Horn Book, September-October, 1998, Elizabeth Watson, review of The Story of Golf, p. 618.

Library Journal, September 1, 1984, review of Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, p. 1683; March 15, 1991, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of In This Corner: Great Boxing Trainers Talk about Their Art, p. 51.

Newsweek, August 4, 1969, Arthur Cooper, review of Countdown to Super Bowl; August 9, 1982, William Plummer, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 63; January 28, 1985, Jim Miller, review of Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, p. 70.

New York, September 29, 1969.

New Yorker, August 16, 1982, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 92.

New York Review of Books, September 23, 1982, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 45.

New York Times, February 25, 1970; July 15, 1982, John Leonard, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 23; July 18, 1982, Donald Hall, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 3; September 25, 1986, Edwin McDowell, review of One Knee Equals Two Feet, p. C23.

New York Times Book Review, April 15, 1979; July 18, 1982, Donald Hall, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 3; December 5, 1982, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 34; November 9, 1986, David Whitford, review of One Knee Equals Two Feet, p. 33; September 4, 1988, Diane Cole, review of One Size Doesn't Fit All, p. 17; May 12, 1991, Allen Barra, review of In This Corner, p. 25; April 10, 1994, Susan Jacoby, review of Pennant Races, p. 26; June 11, 1995, Gordon Thompson, review of The Hogan Mystique: Classic Photographs of the Great Ben Hogan, p. 63; October 20, 1996, Carolyn Hughes, review of Hey, I'm Talking Pro Football!, p. 23;

Parents, November, 1985, review of The Story of Football, p. 64.

People, November 26, 1984, review of Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, p. 21; September 22, 1986, Ralph Novak, review of One Knee Equals Two Feet, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, June 3, 1988, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of One Size Doesn't Fit All, p. 78; March 21, 1994, Stuttaford, review of Pennant Races, p. 62.

School Library Journal, February, 1985, review of Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, p. 92; December, 1986, review of One Knee Equals Two Feet, p. 127; February, 1989, Elaine Fort Weischedel, review of The Story of Basketball, p. 83; April, 1996, Renee Steinberg, review of The Story of the Olympics, p. 144; July, 1998, Janice Hayes, review of The Story of Golf, p. 102; June, 2000, Michael McCullough, review of The Story of the Olympics, p. 157.

Sporting News, November 17, 1986, review of One Knee Equals Two Feet, p. 11.

Sports Illustrated, July 29, 1991, Ron Fimrite, review of In This Corner, p. 8; December 12, 1994, Fimrite, review of The Hogan Mystique, p. 7A.

Time, July 26, 1982, Stephen Smith, review of The Red Smith Reader, p. 61; September 24, 1984, John Leo, review of Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book, p. 78.

Times Literary Supplement, December 20, 1991, Mike Phillips, review of Ringmaster: Great Boxing Trainers Talk about Their Art, p. 26.

Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1994, Frederick Klein, review of review of The Hogan Mystique, p. A11.*