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Sports of The Times

Dave Anderson: Colleague, Friend, Role Model

Dave Anderson, who died on Thursday, being interviewed for television by Sal Marciano in 2005.Credit...Uli Seit for The New York Times

Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who died on Thursday, worked in a time when sports columnists wrote four times a week, when their opinion and knowledge and initiative was pretty much on duty 168 hours a week.

In all of my years working with him, I never saw him antsy about what to cover, or what to say, or how to say it. He knew.

He was also a great reporter, pitching in during the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 or the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996. Harvey Araton, a former sports columnist, praised Dave’s reporting in an email on Thursday:

“My favorite Dave story will always be how he sidled up to me at halftime of Game 2, Knicks/Bulls, ‘93 conference finals, and said, ‘Guy behind me is screaming at Jordan for being out late in Atlantic City the night before.’ ” Harvey, who knows his way around the Garden, located a man who “told me he’d seen Jordan at Bally’s Grand past midnight.

“I told Dave, who said he’d look into it,” he said.

“By the next afternoon,” Harvey continued, Dave “had the time Jordan checked in, checked out and how much he’d lost playing blackjack.

“His column was largely blamed by Knicks fans for infuriating and inspiring Jordan and the Knicks losing four straight after winning the first two.

“The other thing is,” Harvey added, “that’s the only time I ever heard people say anything bad about Dave Anderson.”

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Anderson in 2002 talking about the 10th hole at Bethpage Black, where the United States Open was taking place.Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Dave no doubt responded to criticism with a shrug and one of his stock phrases, “Hey, what can I tell you?”

[Read The Times’s obituary for Dave Anderson.]

I remember Dave from the old Journal-American. He covered every sport, it seemed, but carried the aura of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The legend is, he was the last reporter out of Ebbets Field on that terrible day in 1957 when the Dodgers played their last home game. (He let his colleague go first through the revolving gate, making for a better story down the line, probably.)

I always thought Dave learned from being around Pee Wee Reese, the captain of the Dodgers, who was the core of that clubhouse.

Captains set examples. When I came to work for The Times in 1968, Dave had a desk next to me. He would sharpen half a dozen pencils, lay out some paper and start making phone calls. He was chatty but direct, knew what he wanted, didn’t waste anybody’s time. People talked to him because he was self-assured and polite.

His antennas were better than mine. During the 1986 World Series, there was not enough room in the old press box at Fenway Park in Boston, so even Dave Anderson had to sit outside in the dank October air, in the auxiliary press area, with fans all around us. The fans saw our laptops and starting talking to us.

Here is the difference between me and Dave. I whined about it. Oh, geez, are we going to have to put up with this for the whole game? Between innings, Dave chatted them up. One of the men was 88, and gregarious. After an inning or two, Dave turned to me and said, with a serene smile on his ruddy face, “He saw Babe Ruth play for the Red Sox.” Dave patted his notepad. He had his.

“I guess that’s why you have a Pulitzer,” I said.

The Pulitzer was for a collection of columns written in 1980, including one on George Steinbrenner’s news conference explaining he had let Dick Howser go as manager because Howser had an “unbelievable” opportunity in real estate in Florida. Dave observed the catered refreshments went uneaten (a rarity at news conferences) and wrote that nobody had much stomach for what Steinbrenner was dishing out that day. Dave saw the killer detail that told the story he knew he had to tell.

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Anderson and his wife, Maureen, traveled together to Miami in 1969 for the Super Bowl.Credit...Barton Silverman

Dave knew what he knew. I always whined about schlepping over from Long Island to New Jersey for Sunday football games, which Dave loved. The roads were confusing. The signs were misleading. The fans were drunk — on their way to the game! And traffic back home Sunday evening was inhuman.

Dave told his petulant colleague: Didn’t you know enough to get off at Route 46 and take the local road through Fort Lee to the bridge?

Dave was a rock; colleagues like Araton, Ira Berkow, Bill Rhoden and Selena Roberts could depend on him — the linebacker who diagnosed every play, the rebounder who played both ends of the court, Musial and Jeter, with consistency and power, whatever was needed. He was familiar for his Thanksgiving homilies, his year-end odes to the good people in sport.

He was consistent and he was on target with his one-liners. When the home office was dithering about something, he would sigh and say, “What a business.”

He wrote books on the side, one a best-seller with John Madden, supporting his family. Maureen, his wife, was usually home, taking care of the four children. She passed before he did; when I drove over for her wake, he needled me at the funeral parlor: Wow, I cared enough to brave New Jersey traffic. In a sad hour, we all laughed.

When my wife heard the sad news on Thursday, she told his son, Steve Anderson, an ESPN stalwart for many years, that she always pictures Dave at the Mexican restaurant in the hills behind Oakland — “Madden’s place” — ordering the specials and sipping from pitchers of margaritas.

“I’ve never seen him happier,” she told Steve. “He was so charming.”

Dave Anderson was happy and charming a lot; mostly he was busy, for decades, writing informed and timely columns — the ultimate pro.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: A Captain of the Press Box Who Led by Example. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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