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Society of the Silurians EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM AWARDS BANQUET The Players Club 16 Gramercy Park South Thursday, May 17th In Honor of ROBERT LIPSYTE Drinks: 6 p.m. Dinner: 7:15 p.m. Meet old friends Merriment e-mail: [email protected] Reservations: Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc. an organization of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924 (212) 532-0887 by Charles Edward Russell, William O. Inglis, Perry Walton, and David G. Baillie. Members and One Guest $100 Each Non-Members $120 THE OLDEST PRESS CLUB IN THE UNITED STATES MAY 2012 Crème de la Crème of NY Journalism Top Silurians 2012 Honors Sports Columnist/Author Robert Lipsyte Winner of Prestigious Peter Kihss Award By Eve Berliner In a season of fierce competition, The Society of the Silurians 2012 Ex- cellence in Journalism Awards Com- petition, was once again distin- guished by the highest caliber of journalistic work. Now in its 88th year, the contenders fought it out with distinction and commit- Robert Lipsyte ment to truth and the human condition. Among a few of the greats: The Record’s stunning revelation of chromium contamination under- ground in the small city of Garfield, New Jersey, a toxic landscape where the poison flowed for de- cades, an exposé of life and death implications; Bloomberg Markets’ gut- wrenching probe into “Crime and Human Organs,” the market in or- gan trafficking run by murderous multinational criminal gangs who capture their prey over four conti- nents, desperate victims who struggle in life-threatening poverty Marcus Santos/Daily News and are willing [or not willing] to sell Winner in Breaking News Photography, the Daily News’ Marcus Santos, for a photograph of gripping power, “We’re Going Down,” the pilot’s their organs for survival; last words as his chopper plunged into the East River. Santos was able to capture the frantic rescue effort by police, fire vessels and The Daily News’ sports investi- emergency workers, as the dive team pulled victim Helen Tamaki, 43, from the waters. Tragically, she passed away later that evening. There gative team’s exhaustive and com- were three survivors. plex, year-long financial investiga- tion of the officially sealed – and Bernard L. Madoff Ponzi Scheme case against the Mets and Madoff. deeply personal reflections on the tenth then leaked – $1 billion lawsuit filed the owners of the New York Mets. A relent- And finally, the Reporters of 1010 anniversary of 9/11, an extraordinary, by the Bankruptcy Trustee in the less probe of the entanglement of the Wilpons, WINS Radio who offered their own Continued on Page 3 ‘Pinstripe Empire’ while the expected owner, one James Kennedy, was found dead in a subway car. By Marty Appel (Devery mapped out the ticker tape pa- rade route still employed in New York). Three years ago, I was offered To be complete, the book needed things an opportunity to write a history of like the Broadway musical Damn Yankees the Yankees. The book, Pinstripe (based on a book); the breakthrough book Empire comes out this spring, and Ball Four, (by Jim Bouton with Leonard hard as it is to believe, it’s the first Shechter), the shocking departure of broad- narrative history of the Yanks in al- caster Mel Allen, just 51, the Tammany most 70 years. Hall politics of subway construction and To take on the task while keep- ballpark location, the creation of the YES ing it to a manageable length (well, television network, the building of a new 640 pages), I knew it needed to in- stadium and the team’s slow path to inte- clude not only the big moments, but gration. also the backstage stories of why And there was the slim legacy of the things happened and who all of CBS ownership, which includes the dark these larger-than life personalities blue seats, the “Here Come the Yankees” really were. theme (as recorded by the Mitch Miller Who, for instance, was Winnie singers), the presence of an organ in the Weyant, who inherited a third of the park (Eddie Layton played organ on CBS Yankees when the bachelor owner soaps), and well, not much else. Col. Jacob Ruppert died in 1939? It was during the CBS years that I first Ah, she was his “friend.” began working in the PR department, even- And who were the scoundrels tually succeeding Bob Fishel as PR Di- who first owned the team (the High- rector. And it was in 1975 that I wrote my landers), one of whom, Bill Devery, The Star-Ledger first book, biographies of all the Hall of was considered “the most corrupt The formidable George Steinbrenner, principal owner of the New York Yankees, in a love-hate Famers. For that, I relied heavily on a set police chief in New York history,” embrace with his contentious manager, Billy Martin, at the Baseball Writer’s Dinner, 1982. Continued on Page 5 PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS MAY 2012 Robert Lipsyte: A Reporter’s Destiny By Gary Paul Gates Early on in his splendid memoir, An Accidental Sportswriter, Robert Lipsyte deals with the question implied in the book’s title. So what’s with the adjec- tive? Why accidental? Lipsyte begins his story in the summer of 1957 when, having just graduated from Columbia, he landed a job as a copyboy in the sports department of The New York Times. He viewed that gig as a tempo- rary lark, a mere way station where he hoped to earn the cash he needed to fi- nance his big career plan to migrate to California. “Once out there,” he confi- dently wrote, “I would fulfill my destiny as a novelist, either starving on the beach because my fiction was too avant-garde or luxuriating by the side of my pool be- cause I had sold out. Both scenarios involved dangerous women.” Then, by way of explaining that romantic reverie, he added: “I was an English major.” Barton Silverman/“An Accidental Sportswriter” Well, he certainly came by that hon- Robert Lipsyte at an Emile Griffith-Nino Benvenuti title fight at Shea Stadium, 1967. estly. Lipsyte grew up in a bookish home in the Rego Park section of Queens. Both Lipsyte kept putting terpiece of that long journey, the experi- of his parents were educators who shared off his quest to mingle ence that shaped his career and height- a strong commitment to the public school with dangerous women ened his sensibility, was his coverage of system. His mother was a teacher and in California. His stint Muhammad Ali. It began with Ali’s first guidance counselor, and his father was a as a copyboy at the championship fight in 1964 (when he was principal. They were, in short, serious Times extended beyond still known by what he later described as people with serious intellectual concerns, the summer of ‘57, and his “slave name” – Cassius Clay) and it and as such, they had no interest in sports into the following year, extended through the rest of that turbu- and similar frivolities. Sidney Lipsyte was and into the year after lent decade and beyond, well into the sev- far more likely to take his son to a library that. He chose to stay enties. than to some ball game. not because of the “Ali was my first Big Story,” Lipsyte As for Bob, he discovered at an early copyboy job – which he wrote in his memoir. “He put my name age that he had no aptitude for athletics, hated – but because he on page one. He made me a columnist. and – like father, like son – little or no loved working at the He was also the single most important interest in watching others show off their Times, loved being a sporting lens through which I learned skills on various fields of play. Also, dur- part of that high-minded about politics, religion, race and hero wor- ing most of his childhood, he suffered from institution. And his re- ship.” obesity and, even worse, from the inevi- ward for sticking around The learning process began in Miami table taunts that schoolmates hurl at fat came in the fall of 1959 Beach, the site of that 1964 heavyweight kids. “Lippo the Hippo” was just one of when he was promoted title bout. No one expected it to be much the verbal indignities he had to endure. to reporter. That move of a fight. The reigning champion, Sonny His early literary endeavors mainly con- put Bob squarely on a Liston, was deemed to be invincible, and sisted of lurid stories in which thin kids career track in sports with good reason. A ferocious slugger, were tortured to death. But he was a journalism, and except he had won the title by knocking out Floyd whiz in the classroom and that enabled for a few detours here Patterson in the first round and then, just him to leapfrog through the system, skip- and there, that’s the yel- to prove that was no fluke, he hammered ping several grades along the way. As a NYWTS low brick road he would the hapless Patterson to the canvas for result, he was only 19 when he gradu- The great Muhammad Ali, idolized and vilified, in an era in- follow over the next another first-round kayo in the rematch. ated from Columbia in June of 1957. flamed by war and racial struggle, 1967. half-century. The cen- Continued on Page 5 some days begin at 10 am, while others – England Journal of Medicine, People Spotlight: Good Morning America those which require me to be in the studio Magazine and scores of websites – ev- to oversee a segment – get under way at erything from TMZ to the Huffington Post.

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