Reusse: Gutted New York Times sports staff once was home of the giants

Ira Berkow had received a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern when he was hired in 1965 to fill an opening in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune sports department.

Wally Allen was a force in the newsroom at the time and was said to have pushed strongly for the hiring of a young wordsmith such as Berkow.

Sid Hartman was the sports editor and also a news-breaking columnist in a section that had minimal "space'' for excess articles, other than on Sundays.

Sid wasn't much for wordsmiths, as proven in his earlier battles with Vikings reporter Jim Klobuchar, who by 1967 was starring along with Barbara Flanagan as columnists at the afternoon Minneapolis Star.

"I had written for papers while in college at Miami in Ohio, and wrote some pieces while at Northwestern,'' Berkow said this week. "I came to the Tribune and Sid put me on the copy desk. I had never done that. I made a lot of mistakes.''

Ira was only a few weeks into his time in Minneapolis when Sid called him into an office and said: "You're a bright young man, but I think you have picked the wrong profession.''

Finally, Berkow was given some writing assignments. I was a copy boy at the Tribune that summer and there were some chuckles at Sid's reaction to Ira's literate writing.

I wasn't working on this night, so only heard about this one:

The Twins made several comeback efforts at Met Stadium but fell short. Ira wrote a postgame sidebar, comparing the Twins' efforts to Sisyphus trying to push a boulder up a hill.

And Sid was said to ask: "Sisyphus? Who does he play for?''

As it turned out, our legend Sid made a rare miscalculation on Berkow's future as a sports writer.

He left the Tribune in 1967 for an offer to write columns and features for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, located in New York and with its content syndicated in over more than 300 newspapers nationally.

Following that, he worked 26 years at the New York Times, which is also the number of books he has written in a prolific career.

Berkow was hired at the New York Times in 1981, and then replaced his hero Red Smith a few months later — a part of the stable of exceptional "Sports of the Times'' columnists.

None greater than Dave Anderson, low ego in his excellence. Berkow credits Anderson's subtle use of a few words for getting him the job at the Times.

Two giants of the Times, executive editor Abe Rosenthal and managing editor Arthur Gelb, were having dinner one night. Anderson was walking out of the same restaurant.

He stopped for a moment and was told by Rosenthal and Gelb: "We're thinking about hiring Ira Berkow.''

Anderson calmly said, "That would be great, if you can get him.''

Four decades later, Berkow said: "I think Dave's 'if you can get him' was what sealed it for me.''

The Times commitment to reporting, dollars be damned, was so complete that in 2000, Berkow was assigned to one of the dozen pieces that would make up the Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "How Race Is Lived in America.''

The chosen subject for a sports opus was on Marcus Jacoby, a white quarterback starting for Southern University, the famed, historically Black college in Baton Rouge, La.

"I was down there reporting it for quite some time,'' Berkow said. "Interviewed everybody. Worked every angle, I thought. I came back, told the editors what I had, and they said, "Not enough. Get back down there.' "

That Berkow piece — "The Minority Quarterback'' — was reported and written over nine months, start to finish.

That was the Times in 2000. This was the Times on Monday: Announcing that it was shutting down its sports desk.

Left unsaid was that the Times appeared to have blundered immensely by buying the online sports outlet, The Athletic, for $550 million in January 2022, and now the copy being produced there would become its primary sports coverage.

On the same day, Northwestern fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald, so valued recently that the school built him a $260 million football practice facility on the beach at Lake Michigan.

This shocking event was based on the reporting of the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper, confirming with full details the past hazing occurrences in Fitzgerald's program.

"I'm amazed that this hazing happened at Northwestern, of all places, and also at the work done by the student reporters,'' Berkow said. "I only had a couple of contributions as a grad assistant, but actual journalism was the goal there way back then — and obviously now.''

And the reaction to the Times giving up its sports desk?

"They stopped running box scores and standings a few years ago,'' Berkow said. "That was a sign they were losing interest in the daily subscriber here in New York who is a sports fan.

"We had four columnists. Bill Rhoden was the last I knew well. He took a buyout a while back. They have had one recently, a young guy named Kurt Streeter, who is very good.

"What happens to him? What happens to Tyler Kepner, the latest in a long line of outstanding baseball reporters?

"I don't know. I guess the Times wants us to go online for sports. Or, New Yorkers can pick up the Post, which is half sports.''