Dick Young (sportswriter)
Encyclopedia
Dick Young was a sportswriter best known for his direct and abrasive style, and his 45-year association with the New York Daily News
. He was elected to the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978, and was a former president of the Baseball Writers Association of America
.
Young was the first sportswriter to treat the clubhouse as a central and necessary part of the sports "beat", and his success at ferreting out scoops and insights from within the previously private sanctum of the team was widely influential and much imitated. The Boston Globes Bob Ryan
said of Young, "He's the guy that broke ground, the guy who went into the locker room, and that changed everything."
In 2000, Ira Berkow
chose Young as one of the seven sportswriters who'd made the greatest impact on their profession, along with Red Smith
, Grantland Rice
, Ring Lardner
, Damon Runyon
, Jimmy Cannon
, and Jim Murray
. According to Jack Ziegler in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Young was a "key transitional figure" between the "gentlemanly" sports reporting of old-time writers like Grantland Rice and Arthur Daley.
Upon his death, The New York Times
described Young's prose style: "With all the subtlety of a knee in the groin, Dick Young made people gasp... He could be vicious, ignorant, trivial and callous, but for many years he was the epitome of the brash, unyielding yet sentimental Damon Runyon sportswriter." Esquire Magazine called Young's writing "coarse and simpleminded, like a cave painting. But it is superbly crafted." Ross Wetzsteon wrote that Young had "singlehandedly replaced the pompous poetry of the press box with the cynical poetry of the streets." In his book The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn called Young "spiky, self-educated, and New York." Characteristically, Young described his approach to sportswriting simply: "Tell people what's going on, and what you think is going on. Bread-and-butter stuff, meat-and-potato stuff."
, one of Young's columns began, "The tree that grows in Brooklyn is an apple tree." This remark referred to the colloquialism "taking the apple", which was then used to describe an athlete choking
. Previously, Young had agitated for the dismissal of Dodgers manager Burt Shotton
, or "KOBS" in Youngspeak. Daily News readers knew that "KOBS" was Young's acronym for "Kindly Old Burt Shotton", and was not intended as a term of endearment.
Referring to the 30,000 attendance figure announced by New York Titans
owner Harry Wismer
, Young quipped, "He must have been counting the eyes." Describing a lopsided loss by the Brooklyn Dodgers, Young began his column, "This story belongs on page three with the other axe murders."
What would become Young's most famous sentence as a sportswriter did not appear under his own byline. While covering journeyman Don Larsen
's perfect game
in the 1956 World Series, the Daily News' writer Joe Trimble struggled to find appropriate words to begin his article. Young reached over and typed seven words into Trimble's typewriter: "The imperfect man pitched a perfect game."
A 1957 column by Young revealed to fans that Dodger teammates Jackie Robinson
and Don Newcombe
were no longer on the best of terms. The article contained several negative quotes from Roy Campanella
(i.e. ""When it's my turn to bow out of baseball, I certainly don't want to go out like he did", and "Instead of being grateful to baseball, he's criticizing it. Everything he has he owes to baseball"), which were obtained during a conversation in Campanella's liquor store that Campanella had mistakenly assumed was off the record.
In 1959 and 1960, Young was a vigorous advocate of the Continental League
, the proposed third major professional baseball league that was announced in the wake of the Dodgers and Giants leaving New York for California. The Continental League never came to fruition, but was instrumental in spurring Major League Baseball to add four new expansion franchises. This included a replacement National League
team in New York: the Mets
.
In 1961, it was Young who first suggested the idea of putting an asterisk on Roger Maris
' home run total, should the Yankee right fielder fail to catch or surpass Babe Ruth
in the first 154 games of the season, saying "Everyone does that when there's a difference of opinion." Though no asterisk was ever used, the concept stuck in the public's imagination.
Willie Mays
, widely considered baseball's best-ever player at the time, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979, with 94% of the vote. Young angrily denounced the 23 sportswriters who had omitted Mays from their ballots, writing, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with His old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for Him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't He?"
Young was a tireless worker, writing as many as seven of his "Young Ideas" columns per week, in addition to covering one of the New York baseball teams six out of seven days, for up to three daily editions of the News. He also had a regular column in The Sporting News
from the late 1950s until 1985. At his peak, he was probably the highest-paid sportswriter in the United States.
The Sporting News described his career arc: "Though Young's best work was on the baseball beat, his most controversial and memorable writing came later, as a general columnist. He became the Archie Bunker
of the keyboard, voicing populist rage." For several years after his 1987 death, the Village Voice ran a parody of a late-period Young column in its sports section, angrily railing at all comers underneath the tag "Dateline: Hell."
recalled "cringing" at Young's "boorish" habit of upbraiding workers in other cities' stadiums for not meeting his "New York standards." Appel continued:
Though he was an advocate of certain rights and causes, he was skeptical of others. Despite his own candid clubhouse reporting, Young blasted Jim Bouton
as a "social leper" after the publication of the pitcher's tell-all book Ball Four
. The head of the players' union, Marvin Miller
, was negatively characterized as a "Svengali". And when an arbitrator ruled in favor of the union, thus ending baseball's reserve clause
, Young's first reaction was to write: "Peter Seitz
reminds me of a terrorist, a little man to whom nothing very important has happened in his lifetime, who suddenly decides to create some excitement by tossing a bomb into things."
Young took to invoking "My America", which was more a state of mind than a location. From Young's America, the writer decried the majority of contemporary athletes and events. Certain athletes won Young over with their soft-spokenness or work ethic, like boxers Joe Frazier
and Ken Norton
. He had no tolerance for the brash new style of sports stars such as Muhammad Ali
or Joe Namath
, who became his targets. But Young's deference to authority could lead him to oppose modest athletes also, as in 1974 when he took commissioner Bowie Kuhn
's side over Hank Aaron's. Sitting on 713 home runs, Aaron wanted to tie and break Babe Ruth
's all-time record at home, but Kuhn decreed that Aaron would have to play a set amount of road games before getting that chance. Young wrote that the Braves were destroying the integrity of the sport by holding Aaron out of the lineup.
Having no interest in the "foreign" game of soccer, Young heckled Pelé
and the owners of the New York Cosmos
at the press conference announcing the star's arrival in the NASL
. Reportedly, Young subsequently brought Pelé to a Mets game and was shocked to see him besieged by fans. While covering the 1980 World Series, he wrote admiringly of the way the Philadelphia police had ringed the field with mounted officers, adding "If a few dogs on leashes and a few policemen on horses can command respect, think of what an electric chair might do."
In 1986, boxer Larry Holmes
had Young ejected from one of his workouts. In 1987, he urged fans to boo Dwight Gooden
following his suspension for cocaine
use. According to Marty Appel, "he wrote a note about why Johnny Bench
's first marriage ended that made even Young's best defenders wonder if he had gone too far."
He could be prickly with his colleagues. He was dismissive of the New York Times star columnist Red Smith
, whom he considered sentimental and old-fashioned. Never comfortable with the broadcast media, Young had a long and loud mutual hostility with Howard Cosell
, whom he called "Howie the Shill" in his columns when he wasn't using pejorative
s like "fraud" or "an ass." Cosell described Young as "a right wing cultural illiterate." On some occasions, Young would stand near Cosell while he was taping locker room interviews, and shout out profanities so that the tape would not be usable. In 1967, Young told Sports Illustrated
, "You've got to treat Howard the way he treats you. You've got to throw his flamboyant junk back in his face."
However, Young was also an early advocate of allowing female sportswriters to have full access in locker rooms. And many new writers had stories to tell about how Young had generously helped and advised them.
Young was an outspoken opponent of baseball's segregation policy, and wrote about the racial abuse faced by such players as Jackie Robinson
and Don Newcombe
. But he also continued to call Muhammad Ali
"Cassius Clay" for many years after his conversion, and accused the boxer of racism and draft-dodging. Young did not reconcile with Ali until after the latter was retired.
pitcher Tom Seaver
, which contributed to one of the turning points in Mets history. After free agency
came to baseball, Seaver publicly complained that Mets owner M. Donald Grant
made no effort to sign any of the available players. Seaver was also renegotiating his own contract, and Grant portrayed his star pitcher as being motivated by money. Grant's most enthusiastic supporter in the press was Young, who wrote a series of blistering columns about Seaver, culminating on June 15, 1977. "In a way", Young wrote, "Tom Seaver is like Walter O'Malley. Both are very good at what they do. Both are very deceptive in what they say. Both are very greedy."
But it was a paragraph later in the piece that genuinely enraged Seaver:
Seaver and the Mets had only just agreed on a contract extension the previous night, but following the column, Seaver informed the Mets that the deal was off and that he was insistent on being traded out of New York.
"That Young column was the straw that broke the back", Seaver said in 2007. "Bringing your family into it, with no truth whatsoever to what he wrote. I could not abide that. I had to go." Seaver was traded to the Cincinnati Reds
later the same day. When Young was subsequently introduced for his Hall of Fame induction in Cooperstown, New York
, he was heavily booed by the fans.
In 1981, four years after vilifying Seaver for renegotiating his existing contract with the Mets, Young broke his own contract with the Daily News and jumped to the crosstown Post
, where he remained until his death six years later. The News filed a breach of contract suit against Young, which was eventually dismissed.
, Young interviewed Ray Poitevint, the Baltimore Orioles
scout who had signed Eddie Murray
six years earlier, and wrote about his protracted negotiations with Murray's family:
The column further claimed that one of Murray's brothers tried to hit Poitevint with his car, and that Poitevint's associates was called an "Uncle Tom
" (in fact, the associate was white).
In the wake of the column, Murray adopted a general policy of not speaking to any sportswriters, a career-long stance which provoked a considerable amount of criticism from the sports media.
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
. He was elected to the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978, and was a former president of the Baseball Writers Association of America
Baseball Writers Association of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America is a professional association for baseball journalists writing for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying Web sites. The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century...
.
Young was the first sportswriter to treat the clubhouse as a central and necessary part of the sports "beat", and his success at ferreting out scoops and insights from within the previously private sanctum of the team was widely influential and much imitated. The Boston Globes Bob Ryan
Bob Ryan
Bob Ryan is an American sportswriter for The Boston Globe. He has been described as "the quintessential American sportswriter" and a basketball guru and is well known for his coverage of the sport including his famous stories covering the Boston Celtics in the 1970s. After graduating from Boston...
said of Young, "He's the guy that broke ground, the guy who went into the locker room, and that changed everything."
In 2000, Ira Berkow
Ira Berkow
Ira Berkow is an American Pulitzer Prize winning sports reporter, columnist and writer.-Life:Berkow earned his BA in English Literature at Miami University, and his MA from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University...
chose Young as one of the seven sportswriters who'd made the greatest impact on their profession, along with Red Smith
Red Smith (sportswriter)
For other uses, see: Red Smith Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith was an American sportswriter who rose to become one of America's most widely read sports columnists.-Career:After graduating from Green Bay East High School, site of Packers home games until 1957, Smith moved on to...
, Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice was an early 20th century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.-Biography:...
, Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
, Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
, Jimmy Cannon
Jimmy Cannon
Jimmy Cannon was a sports journalist inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his coverage of the sport.-Early career:...
, and Jim Murray
Jim Murray (sportswriter)
James Patrick Murray was an American sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times from 1961 to 1998.Many of his achievements include winning the NSSA's Sportswriter of the Year award an astounding fourteen times...
. According to Jack Ziegler in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Young was a "key transitional figure" between the "gentlemanly" sports reporting of old-time writers like Grantland Rice and Arthur Daley.
Upon his death, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described Young's prose style: "With all the subtlety of a knee in the groin, Dick Young made people gasp... He could be vicious, ignorant, trivial and callous, but for many years he was the epitome of the brash, unyielding yet sentimental Damon Runyon sportswriter." Esquire Magazine called Young's writing "coarse and simpleminded, like a cave painting. But it is superbly crafted." Ross Wetzsteon wrote that Young had "singlehandedly replaced the pompous poetry of the press box with the cynical poetry of the streets." In his book The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn called Young "spiky, self-educated, and New York." Characteristically, Young described his approach to sportswriting simply: "Tell people what's going on, and what you think is going on. Bread-and-butter stuff, meat-and-potato stuff."
Writing career
Young joined the News as a teenaged messenger boy in 1937, and broke into the sports pages five years later. He eventually became the newspaper's signature columnist, known to readers for his insider coverage and acerbic wit. During the 1951 season, when the Brooklyn Dodgers were in the process of losing a 13½-game lead and the pennant to the crosstown rival New York GiantsNew York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey, representing the New York City metropolitan area. The Giants are currently members of the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League...
, one of Young's columns began, "The tree that grows in Brooklyn is an apple tree." This remark referred to the colloquialism "taking the apple", which was then used to describe an athlete choking
Choke (sports)
In sports, a "choke" is the failure of an athlete or an athletic team to win a game or tournament when the player or team had been strongly favored to win or had squandered a large lead in the late stages of the event...
. Previously, Young had agitated for the dismissal of Dodgers manager Burt Shotton
Burt Shotton
Burton Edwin Shotton was an American player, manager, coach and scout in Major League Baseball. As manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers , he won two National League pennants and served as Jackie Robinson's first permanent major league manager.-Playing career: Fleet-of-foot outfielder:Shotton was born...
, or "KOBS" in Youngspeak. Daily News readers knew that "KOBS" was Young's acronym for "Kindly Old Burt Shotton", and was not intended as a term of endearment.
Referring to the 30,000 attendance figure announced by New York Titans
New York Jets
The New York Jets are a professional football team headquartered in Florham Park, New Jersey, representing the New York metropolitan area. The team is a member of the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
owner Harry Wismer
Harry Wismer
Harry Wismer was a sports broadcaster and charter owner of the New York Titans franchise in the American Football League.-Early years:...
, Young quipped, "He must have been counting the eyes." Describing a lopsided loss by the Brooklyn Dodgers, Young began his column, "This story belongs on page three with the other axe murders."
What would become Young's most famous sentence as a sportswriter did not appear under his own byline. While covering journeyman Don Larsen
Don Larsen
Donald James Larsen is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. During a 15-year baseball career, he pitched from 1953-67 for seven different teams. Larsen is best known for pitching the sixth perfect game in baseball history, doing so in game 5 of the 1956 World Series...
's perfect game
Perfect game
A perfect game is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a pitcher pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. Thus, the pitcher cannot allow any hits, walks, hit batsmen, or any opposing player to reach base safely for any...
in the 1956 World Series, the Daily News' writer Joe Trimble struggled to find appropriate words to begin his article. Young reached over and typed seven words into Trimble's typewriter: "The imperfect man pitched a perfect game."
A 1957 column by Young revealed to fans that Dodger teammates Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
and Don Newcombe
Don Newcombe
Donald Newcombe , nicknamed "Newk", is an American former Major League Baseball right-handed starting pitcher who played for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers , Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians .Until 2011 when Detroit Tigers Pitcher Justin Verlander did it, Newcombe was the only baseball...
were no longer on the best of terms. The article contained several negative quotes from Roy Campanella
Roy Campanella
Roy Campanella , nicknamed "Campy", was an American baseball player, primarily at the position of catcher, in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball...
(i.e. ""When it's my turn to bow out of baseball, I certainly don't want to go out like he did", and "Instead of being grateful to baseball, he's criticizing it. Everything he has he owes to baseball"), which were obtained during a conversation in Campanella's liquor store that Campanella had mistakenly assumed was off the record.
In 1959 and 1960, Young was a vigorous advocate of the Continental League
Continental League
The Continental League was a proposed third major league for baseball, announced in 1959 and scheduled to begin play in the 1961 season...
, the proposed third major professional baseball league that was announced in the wake of the Dodgers and Giants leaving New York for California. The Continental League never came to fruition, but was instrumental in spurring Major League Baseball to add four new expansion franchises. This included a replacement National League
National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League , is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional...
team in New York: the Mets
New York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
.
In 1961, it was Young who first suggested the idea of putting an asterisk on Roger Maris
Roger Maris
Roger Eugene Maris was an American Major League Baseball right fielder. During the 1961 season, he hit a record 61 home runs for the New York Yankees, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs...
' home run total, should the Yankee right fielder fail to catch or surpass Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
in the first 154 games of the season, saying "Everyone does that when there's a difference of opinion." Though no asterisk was ever used, the concept stuck in the public's imagination.
Willie Mays
Willie Mays
Willie Howard Mays, Jr. is a retired American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his...
, widely considered baseball's best-ever player at the time, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979, with 94% of the vote. Young angrily denounced the 23 sportswriters who had omitted Mays from their ballots, writing, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with His old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for Him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't He?"
Young was a tireless worker, writing as many as seven of his "Young Ideas" columns per week, in addition to covering one of the New York baseball teams six out of seven days, for up to three daily editions of the News. He also had a regular column in The Sporting News
The Sporting News
Sporting News is an American-based sports magazine. It was established in 1886, and it became the dominant American publication covering baseball — so much so that it acquired the nickname "The Bible of Baseball"...
from the late 1950s until 1985. At his peak, he was probably the highest-paid sportswriter in the United States.
The Sporting News described his career arc: "Though Young's best work was on the baseball beat, his most controversial and memorable writing came later, as a general columnist. He became the Archie Bunker
Archie Bunker
Archibald "Archie" Bunker is a fictional New Yorker in the 1970s top-rated American television sitcom All in the Family and its spin-off Archie Bunker's Place, played to acclaim by Carroll O'Connor. Bunker is a veteran of World War II, reactionary, bigoted, conservative, blue-collar worker, and...
of the keyboard, voicing populist rage." For several years after his 1987 death, the Village Voice ran a parody of a late-period Young column in its sports section, angrily railing at all comers underneath the tag "Dateline: Hell."
Abrasive style and personality
Young was also known for his conservative views and his mercurial temperament. He physically brawled with technicians who he felt crowded the clubhouse, when the age of television arrived. Fellow sportswriter Marty AppelMarty Appel
Martin E. Appel , is an American public relations executive and author.Appel graduated from SUNY Oneonta in 1970 with a degree in political science. He began his career in baseball while a student after writing to then-Yankee public relations chief Bob Fishel.Appel began his tenure with the New...
recalled "cringing" at Young's "boorish" habit of upbraiding workers in other cities' stadiums for not meeting his "New York standards." Appel continued:
- "But you had to love Young. He was the best in his field, including the best at getting his way. The Commissioner's Office put up a rope barricade to keep the press 20 feet from the batting cage during the World Series? There was Young, undoing it. TV cameras suddenly appeared at press conferences? There was Young standing in front of the lens."
Though he was an advocate of certain rights and causes, he was skeptical of others. Despite his own candid clubhouse reporting, Young blasted Jim Bouton
Jim Bouton
James Alan "Jim" Bouton is a former American Major League Baseball pitcher. He is also the author of the controversial baseball book Ball Four, which was a combination diary of his season and memoir of his years with the New York Yankees, Seattle Pilots, and Houston Astros.-Amateur and college...
as a "social leper" after the publication of the pitcher's tell-all book Ball Four
Ball Four
Ball Four is a book written by former Major League Baseball pitcher Jim Bouton in . The book is a diary of Bouton's 1969 season, spent with the Seattle Pilots and then the Houston Astros following a late-season trade. In it Bouton also recounts much of his baseball career, spent mainly with the...
. The head of the players' union, Marvin Miller
Marvin Miller
Marvin Julian Miller is a former executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association , from 1966 to 1982. Under Miller's direction, the players' union was transformed into one of the strongest unions in the United States...
, was negatively characterized as a "Svengali". And when an arbitrator ruled in favor of the union, thus ending baseball's reserve clause
Reserve clause
The reserve clause is a term formerly employed in North American professional sports contracts. The reserve clause, contained in all standard player contracts, stated that, upon the contract's expiration the rights to the player were to be retained by the team to which he had been signed...
, Young's first reaction was to write: "Peter Seitz
Seitz decision
The Seitz decision was a ruling by arbitrator Peter Seitz on December 23, 1975 which declared that Major League Baseball players became free agents upon playing one year for their team without a contract, effectively nullifying baseball's reserve clause...
reminds me of a terrorist, a little man to whom nothing very important has happened in his lifetime, who suddenly decides to create some excitement by tossing a bomb into things."
Young took to invoking "My America", which was more a state of mind than a location. From Young's America, the writer decried the majority of contemporary athletes and events. Certain athletes won Young over with their soft-spokenness or work ethic, like boxers Joe Frazier
Joe Frazier
Joseph William "Joe" Frazier , also known as Smokin' Joe, was an Olympic and Undisputed World Heavyweight boxing champion, whose professional career lasted from 1965 to 1976, with a one-fight comeback in 1981....
and Ken Norton
Ken Norton
Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. is a former heavyweight boxer. He is best known for his 12-round victory over a peak Muhammad Ali where he famously broke Ali's jaw, on March 31, 1973, becoming only the second man to defeat Ali as a professional .He and Ali...
. He had no tolerance for the brash new style of sports stars such as Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
or Joe Namath
Joe Namath
Joseph William "Joe" Namath , nicknamed "Broadway Joe" or "Joe Willie", is a former American football quarterback. He played college football for the University of Alabama under coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and his assistant, Howard Schnellenberger, from 1962–1964, and professional football in the...
, who became his targets. But Young's deference to authority could lead him to oppose modest athletes also, as in 1974 when he took commissioner Bowie Kuhn
Bowie Kuhn
Bowie Kent Kuhn was an American lawyer and sports administrator who served as the fifth Commissioner of Major League Baseball from February 4, , to September 30,...
's side over Hank Aaron's. Sitting on 713 home runs, Aaron wanted to tie and break Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
's all-time record at home, but Kuhn decreed that Aaron would have to play a set amount of road games before getting that chance. Young wrote that the Braves were destroying the integrity of the sport by holding Aaron out of the lineup.
Having no interest in the "foreign" game of soccer, Young heckled Pelé
Pelé
However, Pelé has always maintained that those are mistakes, that he was actually named Edson and that he was born on 23 October 1940.), best known by his nickname Pelé , is a retired Brazilian footballer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time...
and the owners of the New York Cosmos
New York Cosmos
The New York Cosmos were an American soccer club based in New York City, New York and its suburbs. The team played home games in three stadiums around New York before moving in 1977 to Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey, where it remained for the rest of its history...
at the press conference announcing the star's arrival in the NASL
North American Soccer League
North American Soccer League was a professional soccer league with teams in the United States and Canada that operated from 1968 to 1984.-History:...
. Reportedly, Young subsequently brought Pelé to a Mets game and was shocked to see him besieged by fans. While covering the 1980 World Series, he wrote admiringly of the way the Philadelphia police had ringed the field with mounted officers, adding "If a few dogs on leashes and a few policemen on horses can command respect, think of what an electric chair might do."
In 1986, boxer Larry Holmes
Larry Holmes
Larry Holmes is a former professional boxer. He grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, which gave birth to his boxing nickname, The Easton Assassin....
had Young ejected from one of his workouts. In 1987, he urged fans to boo Dwight Gooden
Dwight Gooden
Dwight Eugene Gooden , nicknamed "Doc Gooden" or "Dr. K", is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He was one of the most dominant and feared pitchers in the National League in the middle and late 1980s.-Career:...
following his suspension for cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
use. According to Marty Appel, "he wrote a note about why Johnny Bench
Johnny Bench
Johnny Lee Bench is a former professional baseball catcher who played in the Major Leagues for the Cincinnati Reds from 1967 to 1983 and is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame...
's first marriage ended that made even Young's best defenders wonder if he had gone too far."
He could be prickly with his colleagues. He was dismissive of the New York Times star columnist Red Smith
Red Smith (sportswriter)
For other uses, see: Red Smith Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith was an American sportswriter who rose to become one of America's most widely read sports columnists.-Career:After graduating from Green Bay East High School, site of Packers home games until 1957, Smith moved on to...
, whom he considered sentimental and old-fashioned. Never comfortable with the broadcast media, Young had a long and loud mutual hostility with Howard Cosell
Howard Cosell
Howard William Cosell was an American sports journalist who was widely known for his blustery, cocksure personality. Cosell said of himself, "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these...
, whom he called "Howie the Shill" in his columns when he wasn't using pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
s like "fraud" or "an ass." Cosell described Young as "a right wing cultural illiterate." On some occasions, Young would stand near Cosell while he was taping locker room interviews, and shout out profanities so that the tape would not be usable. In 1967, Young told Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, "You've got to treat Howard the way he treats you. You've got to throw his flamboyant junk back in his face."
However, Young was also an early advocate of allowing female sportswriters to have full access in locker rooms. And many new writers had stories to tell about how Young had generously helped and advised them.
Young was an outspoken opponent of baseball's segregation policy, and wrote about the racial abuse faced by such players as Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
and Don Newcombe
Don Newcombe
Donald Newcombe , nicknamed "Newk", is an American former Major League Baseball right-handed starting pitcher who played for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers , Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians .Until 2011 when Detroit Tigers Pitcher Justin Verlander did it, Newcombe was the only baseball...
. But he also continued to call Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
"Cassius Clay" for many years after his conversion, and accused the boxer of racism and draft-dodging. Young did not reconcile with Ali until after the latter was retired.
Tom Seaver feud
Most notoriously, Young engaged in a public feud with New York MetsNew York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
pitcher Tom Seaver
Tom Seaver
George Thomas "Tom" Seaver , nicknamed "Tom Terrific" and "The Franchise", is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He pitched from 1967-1986 for four different teams in his career, but is noted primarily for his time with the New York Mets...
, which contributed to one of the turning points in Mets history. After free agency
Free agent
In professional sports, a free agent is a player whose contract with a team has expired and who is thus eligible to sign with another club or franchise....
came to baseball, Seaver publicly complained that Mets owner M. Donald Grant
M. Donald Grant
Michael Donald Grant was the chairman and a minority owner of the New York Mets baseball club from its beginnings in 1962 to 1978.Grant was born in Montreal in 1904, the son of Hockey Hall of Fame goalie Mike Grant...
made no effort to sign any of the available players. Seaver was also renegotiating his own contract, and Grant portrayed his star pitcher as being motivated by money. Grant's most enthusiastic supporter in the press was Young, who wrote a series of blistering columns about Seaver, culminating on June 15, 1977. "In a way", Young wrote, "Tom Seaver is like Walter O'Malley. Both are very good at what they do. Both are very deceptive in what they say. Both are very greedy."
But it was a paragraph later in the piece that genuinely enraged Seaver:
- "Nolan RyanNolan RyanLynn Nolan Ryan, Jr. , nicknamed "The Ryan Express", is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He is currently principal owner, president and CEO of the Texas Rangers....
is getting more [salary] now than Seaver, and that galls Tom because Nancy Seaver and Ruth Ryan are very friendly and Tom Seaver long has treated Nolan Ryan like a little brother."
Seaver and the Mets had only just agreed on a contract extension the previous night, but following the column, Seaver informed the Mets that the deal was off and that he was insistent on being traded out of New York.
"That Young column was the straw that broke the back", Seaver said in 2007. "Bringing your family into it, with no truth whatsoever to what he wrote. I could not abide that. I had to go." Seaver was traded to the Cincinnati Reds
Cincinnati Reds
The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are members of the National League Central Division. The club was established in 1882 as a charter member of the American Association and joined the National League in 1890....
later the same day. When Young was subsequently introduced for his Hall of Fame induction in Cooperstown, New York
Cooperstown, New York
Cooperstown is a village in Otsego County, New York, USA. It is located in the Town of Otsego. The population was estimated to be 1,852 at the 2010 census.The Village of Cooperstown is the county seat of Otsego County, New York...
, he was heavily booed by the fans.
In 1981, four years after vilifying Seaver for renegotiating his existing contract with the Mets, Young broke his own contract with the Daily News and jumped to the crosstown Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, where he remained until his death six years later. The News filed a breach of contract suit against Young, which was eventually dismissed.
Eddie Murray column
Seaver was not the only baseball star to react angrily and conspicuously to Young's style of writing. During the 1979 World Series1979 World Series
The 1979 World Series matched the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates against the American League's Baltimore Orioles , with the Pirates coming back from a three games to one deficit to win the Series in seven games...
, Young interviewed Ray Poitevint, the Baltimore Orioles
Baltimore Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...
scout who had signed Eddie Murray
Eddie Murray
Eddie Clarence Murray , nicknamed "Steady Eddie", is a former Major League Baseball first baseman and designated hitter. He was known as one of the most reliable and productive hitters of his era. Murray is regarded as one of the best switch hitters ever to play the game...
six years earlier, and wrote about his protracted negotiations with Murray's family:
- "He [Poitevint] offers $20,000. He gets cursed at. He leaves. He goes back. He is called a thief, kicked out. This was by Ed Murray's older brothers. They and Ed Murray's mother do all the talking. Ed Murray, 17, just sits there, listening, not saying a word. In the space of five weeks, Ray Poitevint pays 16 visits to the Murray household, and goes away empty."
The column further claimed that one of Murray's brothers tried to hit Poitevint with his car, and that Poitevint's associates was called an "Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
" (in fact, the associate was white).
In the wake of the column, Murray adopted a general policy of not speaking to any sportswriters, a career-long stance which provoked a considerable amount of criticism from the sports media.