New York Baseball

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Claire Smith, a Pioneer in Sports Writing, Is Honored at Cooperstown
By FILIP BONDYJULY 29, 2017

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Claire Smith was at the forefront of a velvet revolution in sports writing, a soft-spoken woman who did not knock down clubhouse doors so much as righteously persist and stand until they opened.

During a Hall of Fame presentation at Doubleday Field on Saturday, Smith was rewarded for that steady resolve when she received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award, given to her for meritorious contributions to baseball writing. She is the 68th recipient of the award from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and the first female honoree — a formal acknowledgment that men do not own exclusive rights to the most powerful written words.

“I humbly stand on stage for those who were stung by racism or sexism or any other insidious bias and persevered,” Smith said. “You are unbreakable. You make me proud.”

Smith, 64, spent more than three decades as a newspaper reporter and columnist, including a significant stint as a national baseball writer and columnist for The New York Times from 1991 to 1998. During that period, she wrote about the near death and rebirth of the sport — from the destructive strike that wiped out the 1994 season to the dawning of a new Yankees dynasty at the end of the decade. She later moved home to work for The Philadelphia Inquirer and became a news editor for ESPN in 2007.

It was before that, during her years with The Hartford Courant as a pioneering, full-time female baseball beat writer covering the Yankees, that Smith met the most resistance from players and officials. But not from that era’s tumultuous Yanks, she said with a laugh. “They hardly noticed me,” she said, “because they were holding on for dear life.”

Instead, her greatest challenge came from the San Diego Padres during their 1984 playoff series against the Chicago Cubs. She was ejected from the clubhouse, then rescued by an empathetic Padres player, Steve Garvey, who fed her quotes from his teammates.

But Smith was no damsel in distress; she had an unbending professionalism about her that wore down even the most stubborn resistance.

“I had a game story to write,” she said in 1984, after she had been pushed out the Padres’ door.

Other pioneers in the sport — including Sandy Koufax, the Jewish Dodgers pitcher who refused to play on Yom Kippur during the World Series; Frank Robinson, the first black manager in the major leagues; and Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson — gave her a standing ovation Saturday.

The most heartfelt moment at the ceremony arrived when Smith introduced Garvey in the audience, thanking him for his help all those years ago.

“I knew it was a very important moment,” Garvey said after the ceremony. “And I knew she was a very deep soul.”

Smith’s brother, Hawthorne, called the award — bestowed a day before the Hall welcomes five new members: Ivan Rodriguez, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, the former commissioner Bud Selig and the Kansas City Royals and Atlanta Braves executive John Schuerholz — “a validation” of what her family already knew.

“Claire was always able to marry sport and societal issues,” he said. “It’s important that she is a woman and a person of color, but that’s not why she’s here. She’s here for her excellence.”

In her speech, which she directed to her son Joshua, Smith cited previous winners of the Spink award, including Ring Lardner, Damon Runyon and Grantland Rice.

“Those are wordsmiths,” she insisted, humbly. “Me, I’m just named Smith.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/29/sports/baseball/claire-smith-becomes-first-female-recipient-of-sports-writing-award.html?