Rosenthal, Harold 1914-1999

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ROSENTHAL, Harold 1914-1999

PERSONAL: Born March 11, 1914, in New York, NY; died June 29, 1999; son of Jonas and Charlotte (Morris) Rosenthal; married Alice Stein, December 25, 1941; children: Jonas, Jane Ann. Religion: Jewish.

CAREER: New York Herald-Tribune, New York City, writer, reporter, 1931-66; public relations director of Continental Football League, 1966-67; American Football League, New York City, public relations director, 1968-70; National Football League, American Conference, New York City, director of information, 1970-74; New American Library (publishers), New York City, publicity director, 1974-75; managing editor of Weekend Sports (syndicated newspaper supplement), 1976-77. Military service: U.S. Army Air Forces, 1942-45.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Fresco Thompson and others, Baseball Is Their Business, Random House (New York, NY), 1952.

Baseball's Best Managers, Thomas Nelson (New York, NY), 1961.

The Big Play: Exciting and Dramatic Plays from the Big Games of the NFL That Made or Broke Champions, Random House (New York, NY), 1965.

(Editor) Sports All Stars 1966, Baseball, Maco Magazine (New York, NY), 1966.

(With John Unitas) Playing Pro Football to Win (juvenile), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968, revised edition, Signet (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor) American Football League Offıcial History, 1960-1969, Sporting News (St. Louis, MO), 1970.

(With Allan Levy and Allen Webb) Training the High School Athlete, Contemporary (Chicago, IL), 1979.

The Ten Best Years of Baseball: An Informal History of the Fifties, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL), 1979.

505 Baseball Questions Your Friends Can't Answer, Walker (New York, NY), 1979.

(With Dave Anderson, Bob Creamer, and Murray Chass) The Yankees: The Four Fabulous Eras of Baseball's Most Famous Team, Random House (New York, NY), 1979.

505 Football Questions Your Friends Can't Answer, Walker (New York, NY), 1980.

Fifty Faces of Football, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1981.

(Author of conclusion) William B. Mead, 10 Worst Years of Baseball: The Zany, True Story of Baseball in the Forties, Van Nostrand (New York, NY), 1982.

Sportsquiz: For Diehard Baseball and Football Fans, Van Nostrand (New York, NY), 1983.

Work appears in anthologies, including Best Sports Stories, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1964, 1965, and 1966; The Realm of Sport, edited by Herbert Warren Wind, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1966; and The Third Fireside Book of Baseball, by Charles Einstein, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1968. Contributor of articles to magazines and newspapers, including New York City Tribune, Elks, True, Pageant, Sport, Boxing Life, Variety, National Catholic Monthly, College and Pro Football Weekly, Editor and Publisher, Redbook, Saturday Evening Post, and Saturday Review. Contributing sports editor, American Way (in-flight magazine of American Airlines), 1979-84.

SIDELIGHTS: A long-time sports writer for the New York Herald-Tribune, Harold Rosenthal "was at the top of the sportswriting game during its . . . golden age in the period just after World War II," according to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Richard Orodenker.

Rosenthal began covering sports while still in high school, supplying local New York papers with the baseball scores of his Morris High School in the Bronx. By his senior year he was working as a freelance correspondent, covering tennis matches, swim meets, and other sporting events, for newspapers and wire services. After a three-year stint in the army during World War II, Rosenthal joined the Herald-Tribune as a sportswriter. By the late 1940s he was the paper's regular reporter covering the Brooklyn Dodgers, although he also covered football, boxing, handball, fencing, and other sports.

"Rosenthal believed in a sportswriter's ability to cover a variety of events by tailoring his presentation of them to fit their format," Orodenker wrote. Speaking to Timothy Quinlan in the New York City Tribune, Rosenthal explained: "The main thing in covering athletics," he told Quinlan, "is that you have to adjust to the philosophies of the different sports you are writing about. When a person plays golf, he's playing against himself. When you play baseball you're part of a unit trying to beat another unit. So, a writer has got to bring an understanding to all the different sports of the philosophies of each and how they are different." In addition to writing for the Herald-Tribune Rosenthal also wrote articles and sports profiles for the glossy magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. Orodenker reported that Rosenthal especially enjoyed writing "magazine pieces on the behind-the-scenes individuals who worked in major-league baseball."

"In April, 1966," Orodenker wrote, "the New York Herald-Tribune shut down after 150 years in the business. Rosenthal decided not to join the other veteran sportswriters who agreed to write for the doomed new newspaper that had merged with the Journal-American and World-Telegram. Instead he signed on as the public-relations director and assistant to the commissioner of the fledgling Continental Football League. The league floundered, however, and Rosenthal was out of a job in 1968. He worked for a short time on the public-relations staff of the New York Giants and then turned his attention to freelance writing."

Among Rosenthal's most popular books are Playing Pro Football to Win, cowritten with football legend Johnny Unitas, and The Ten Best Years of Baseball: An Informal History of the Fifties. Speaking of the latter book, Orodenker maintained that it was "an exhaustive retelling of familiar anecdotes and personal recollections of baseball and its stars in the mid twentieth century." Orodenker concluded that "throughout his career Rosenthal never lost his sense of humor or his light touch."