George Washington High School, New York City, New York, United States
Dick attended George Washington High School, New York City.
College/University
Career
Gallery of Dick Young
1968
New York, United States
News sportswriter Dick Young holds artist Bill Gallo's family tree drawing while accepting congratulations of ex-Jet president David Sonny Werblin (left) and Mr. Met, lawyer Bill Shea.
News sportswriter Dick Young holds artist Bill Gallo's family tree drawing while accepting congratulations of ex-Jet president David Sonny Werblin (left) and Mr. Met, lawyer Bill Shea.
Dick Young was an American sportswriter, who worked with the New York Daily News for 45 years. He was best known for his direct and abrasive style.
Background
Ethnicity:
Dick Young's mother was an American Jewish of German descent, his father a Russian Jewish.
Dick was born on October 17, 1917 (some sources say 1918) in New York, United States. He was farmed out to an Italian Catholic family in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan from the ages of six to twelve. Poor but ambitious, he went with his father to California after high school.
Education
Dick attended George Washington High School, New York City.
Dick worked for thirty dollars a month at Civilian Conservation Corps projects in upstate New York during the Great Depression. He hitchhiked to New York City, landing a job at the Daily News as a messenger boy. There he stayed, working as a tabulator, a beat reporter, a columnist, and finally sports editor, until he moved to the Post. He worked as a sports writer and sports editor at New York Daily News during 1936-81, then at New York Post during 1982-87. He was also a columnist at The Sporting News from late 1950s to 1985.
By 1944 Young was already approaching legendary status in the sportswriting field. With what Ziegler called his “superb sense of narration,” he riveted readers with his stories of subjects like illegal betting in the sports arena, Jackie Robinson’s entry into the major leagues, and Happy Chandler’s suspension of Dodger manager Leo Durocher in 1947.
According to Jack Ziegler in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Young was a “key transitional figure” between the “gentlemanly” sports reporting of old-time writers like Grantland Rice and Arthur Daley. Young had a longtime feud with Red Smith of the New York Times, whom Young considered an old-fashioned sentimentalist. Young’s style was streetwise, often abrasive, and direct. Ziegler said that “he wrote authentic, accurate accounts of games and players.”
In the end, Young succeeded in becoming the kind of sportswriter he dreamed of being. As he told Ross Wetzsteon in an article published in Best Sports Stories: 1986, “I wanted to be a stop-the-presses guy, competing with the other paper for the scoop and for the girl.”
Young was an early advocate of allowing female sportswriters to have full access in locker rooms, and many new writers had stories to tell about how Young had generously helped and advised them.
Young was an outspoken opponent of baseball's segregation policy and wrote about the racial abuse faced by such players as Jackie Robinson and Don Newcombe.
Quotations:
"Tell people what's going on, and what you think is going on. Bread-and-butter stuff, meat-and-potato stuff."
Personality
Young was also known for his conservative views and his mercurial temperament. He physically brawled with technicians who he felt crowded the clubhouse when the age of television arrived. He could be prickly with his colleagues. He was dismissive of The New York Times' star columnist Red Smith, whom he considered sentimental and old-fashioned. Never comfortable with the broadcast media, Young had a long and loud mutual hostility with Howard Cosell.
Quotes from others about the person
In his 1987 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn called Young “spiky, self-educated, and New York.”
Ross Wetzsteon wrote that Young had "singlehandedly replaced the pompous poetry of the press box with the cynical poetry of the streets."
Upon his death, The New York Times described Young's prose style: "With all the subtlety of a knee in the groin, Dick Young made people gasp... He could be vicious, ignorant, trivial and callous, but for many years he was the epitome of the brash, unyielding yet sentimental Damon Runyon sportswriter."
Connections
Dick Young was married. His wife’s name was Jay. They had children: seven daughters, one son.