Claire Smith: R. I. P. Dave Anderson

Legendary New York Times columnist Dave Anderson, left, and former Montreal Expo and New York Met Rusty Staub. Anderson was a gentleman and a gentle man.

By Claire Smith

Coordinating Editor, ESPN

“What about the writing?”

Dave Anderson could bring the most discombobulated conference call to attention by just by being, well, Dave Anderson. And that is just what my friend, the Pulitzer Prize winner, did on a day long ago when the New York Times sports department members gathered to game-plan coverage for an approaching Olympics extravaganza. Editor after editor spoke, about graphics, photo arrays, layouts, special sections, and, alas, statistics. The look, the formulaic use of numbers, odds, etc., was laid out. Most of the concepts are new; with each event, a new approach always seemed to be a newspaper’s version of a “girl with a curl,” so we writers listened quietly as yet another attempt to reinvent the wheel was presented.

Then Dave Anderson spoke, asking a question that would become an internal mantra of sorts for me: “What about the writing?”

I remember the brief silence that followed. I could sense that an important course correction was about to unfold, because the writer of all writers once again reminded the Sports Section he graced, of both its foundation and mission.

Writing, to Dave was an art as well as a living organism. It had to be practiced. It had to be nurtured. It had to be dissected whenever two or more journalists gathered. And if Dave Anderson was at the other end of such a conversation, like Merrill Lynch, he spoke volumes worth their weight in gold.

I had the privilege of participating in many such conversations, not only when I had the privilege of working with Dave at The Times, but from the moment this one-time in-awe unknown first stepped foot into a press box in New York. No one was more welcoming, encouraging and generous with his time, than Dave Anderson. No one of that media center’s legends was more devoid of ego. And, because he invited everyone to join him on a plain designated for anyone striving to be a good journalist, Dave Anderson was cherished as much as he was revered. Young journalists like me would converse with Dave at every opportunity, always grateful, always a bit in awe, always, always impressed that such a lion of the industry was so welcoming and collegial.

When he spoke, you listened, often leaning in to try to soak in every bit of wisdom coming from that soft-spoken man. For the spoken word of Dave Anderson, like those he tapped out on typewriters and computers for print, were important.

Dave spoke like he wrote, not with thunder, but with care, not with hyperbole, but with learned observations. I don’t think I ever heard an angry word spill from his lips and more than I ever read vitriol flow from any Anderson column. It was not his nature to be a screamer, but rather an analytic observer. Dave was painter of pictures. He masterfully used words like brush strokes, lovingly but with discipline and care, selecting nuance and reason instead of rushes to judgement, innuendo or sensationalism.

Dave lived through so many eras and iterations of journalism. He endured, without bitterness, as newspapers lost their footing, and, some believe, their way. He’d laugh along at the absurdity of our profession’s rush to embrace press-box celebrity, If it bothered him that the ‘Vinny from Queens’ phenomenon that drove talk radio and later social media, was often considered an equal to journalists such as he, Dave never let on.

I never heard him disparage the industry as it either was or is. I never heard him disrespect a fellow journalist for perhaps following a path other media that Dave like would not have chosen. He had smiles for the screamers, the big egos, the youngsters who’d also reinvent the wheel if only given a chance. And through it all, over all the decades, in era after era, Dave Anderson set an example. He simply refused to forget about writing, or why that writing, beautiful and majestic, counted the most.

Claire Smith was honoured July 29, 2017 in ceremonies at Doubleday Field at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. The former New York Yankees beat writer for the Hartford Courant and national baseball columnist for The New York Times, became the first woman ever presented the Hall of Fame’s J.G. Taylor Spink award.