Happy 85th anniversary Newsday! A look at how we've covered sports over the years
The was the first back page of Newsday, published on Sept. 3, 1940. Modest beginnings evolved into a modern major newspaper. Credit: Newsday
It was autumn, 1982. Bob Waters, a famously curmudgeonly old boxing writer younger then than I am now, still was displeased with Newsday’s nice, relatively new digs in Melville.
He explained why to a part-timer just happy to be there, surrounded by childhood sportswriting heroes: “Only newspaper office I’ve ever heard of without a bar down the block.”
Ha! If this was the sort of character you get to work with in this job, sign me up!
There still isn’t a bar down the block — sorry, Bob — but we still are at it.
Newsday turns 85 on Wednesday, and that means 85 years of sports coverage about, by and for a diverse, intelligent and quirky collection of athletes, journalists and readers.
The modern history of Long Island sports is all there, complete with the early histories of future superstars, an easy library search away.
April 28, 1950: A Manhasset lacrosse player named Jim Brown, age 16, debuts in our pages after he “whipped through a goal” in a 6-2 loss at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.
Aug. 2, 1955: “Fastballing Carl Yastrzemski,” age 15, prepares for the Babe Ruth League regionals after his 1-0 pitching triumph over Mattydale in the state final.
His East End All-Stars had recently been feted with a parade from Shinnecock Canal to Sag Harbor.
“Every village through which they passed had special ceremonies honoring the champs,” Newsday reported.
Dec. 23, 1966: Julius Erving, age 16, scores 12 points for Roosevelt in a 96-68 rout of Carey in the Carey Tournament consolation game in Franklin Square.
And then there are the writers, far too many to name here lest some be unfairly omitted.
OK, maybe just one.
July 22, 1970: Lynbrook’s Tony Kornheiser, a week after turning 22, debuts with a poetic preview of a boxing match between Jimmy Elder and Charley Harris at Freeport Stadium.
“Charley Harris’ face is paying its dues,” he wrote, in a piece even Waters probably liked.
Newsday covers sports a little differently these days than it did on Sept. 3, 1940. But the commitment to local events remains. That has been a fixture since Day 1.
The first edition mostly ignored the existence of big-league pro sports, other than running the baseball standings.
The first back page headline? “TROTTING RACES DRAW 8,500” at Roosevelt, which opened for nighttime harness racing the day before Newsday’s first issue.
Newsday’s first sports editor, Ed Gebhard, covered the big event.
Mildred Stewart of Hempstead was the first athlete to appear in Newsday, eight pages into that first edition, in a pictorial feature entitled, “Let’s Go Calling On — a Fencing Champ.”
She had been the national junior champion and would have been a member of the 1940 U.S. Olympic team had those Games not been cancelled because of World War II.
Below a picture of Stewart in action was another of her in a kitchen.
Then she was shown at her desk as secretary to Hofstra’s first president, John Truesdel Peck Calkins.
That same day, Newsday was at Hofstra’s first football workout of the season. The team had lost most of its starters from 1939 and coach Jack MacDonald was less than optimistic.
In the first quote in Newsday sports section history, he told a reporter at practice that he had with him “my three lightest men and a headache.” (Hofstra went 4-3 that season.)
Elsewhere in that first paper, Newsday reported that members of the Freeport Yacht Club had stopped at the Oak Inn during the Labor Day Cruise and “sang on the deck until 4 a.m.”
And, finally, there was news of 7-year-old Arthur Klemmer, winner of two events at the Long Beach Playground Championships.
Then and now, Newsday dominated Long Island high school sports coverage, but as the paper matured it started to compete with city dailies on pro teams.
Newsday began by covering only home games. By the early 1960s it was beginning to be taken seriously nationally.
In 1959, Jack Mann and Stan Isaacs of Newsday got the paper some attention by taking part in one of the greatest protest pranks in sports journalism history.
During the White Sox-Dodgers World Series in Los Angeles, they saw the Dodgers’ 1955 world championship pennant on display in the media hospitality room.
They stole it and repatriated it to Brooklyn.
You could look it up. Or take my word for it. But most of all, just keep reading, and thanks for doing so to this point.
Eighty-five years! What could be better, other than another 85?
It’s been a great ride, bar none.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
