RIP Dave Anderson

Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer sits at the intersection of my adult occupation (newspapering) and preoccupation (baseball). While it has been years since I last re-read it, it literally took me less than a minute to find this story about Dave Anderson, the great sportwriter whose death was announced Thursday. This is from 1953, long before Anderson acceived fame as a New York Times columnist:

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Through the hot months, the Dodgers played phenomonal .800 baseball. They clinched the pennant in Milwaukee on Saturday, September 13, when (Carl) Erskine defeated the Braves 8 to 3, in a game punctuated by three Milwaukee errors. Dave Anderson, a young reporter who had succeeded Harold Burr on the Brooklyn Eagle, wrote the best lead. "The Milwaukee Braves," he began, "died with their boots."

"Two-to-one they change it on you," (Dick) Young said.

"If not the deskman, then the printer," I said. "I've tried to get 'cerebration' into the Tribune four times this season and it's always come up 'celebration.'"

Anderson grinned, but turned less cheerful when he saw a copy of the Eagle. Someone had indeed murdered his pleasant pun. His published story read, "The Milwaukee Braves died with their boots on." On. Not even Dante conceived an inferno for sodden copyreaders.

***

I am, and have been for more than three decades, the modern equivalent of what Kahn calls here a "deskman" or a "copyreader," although the adjective "sodden" probably doesn't fit. That ancedote has been a cautionary tale down the years, but making that kind of mindless editing blunder would first require a writer with Anderson's skill and inventiveness. It's not an insult to my Free Press colleague to say few of them qualify.