Background
William O'Connell McGeehan was the eldest of six children of Hugh and Theresa (O'Connell) McGeehan. He was born on November 22, 1879 in San Francisco, California.
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William O'Connell McGeehan
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also known as
"Sheriff"
Education
William attended the local public schools.
Career
When the Spanish-American War began in the spring of 1898, he at once enlisted in the 1st California Volunteers and served in the Philippine Islands in 1898-99. Returning to San Francisco, he began his journalistic career in 1900 as a reporter on the San Francisco Call. Writing on sports became his specialty, and he "covered" boxing matches as far away as the booming gold camps of Nevada. During his fourteen years in San Francisco journalism, he worked not only on the Call, but also on the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bulletin, and the San Francisco Examiner and was successively city editor and managing editor of the Evening Post. Removing to New York in 1914, he found a place on the New York Evening Journal, where he wrote a daily column on sports which he signed "Right Cross. " In 1915 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune, where he wrote on major-league baseball, tennis, football, golf, and track athletics. He never liked wrestling or pugilism; to characterize the latter he coined phrases "the cauliflower industry" and "the manly art of modified murder" which became famous. When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, McGeehan obtained a commission as captain of infantry. Later he was commissioned major in the United States Infantry Reserve Corps. Returning to New York, he resumed his sports column in the New York Tribune and became sports editor. In 1921-22 he was managing editor. He then went over to the New York Herald, where he became sports editor but wrote a column, "Down the Line. " After the merger of the Herald with the Tribune in 1924, he continued in the same capacity. His columns were notable for their insistence upon clean sport and for their literary quality being vivacious without any considerable use of slang or the vernacular common to professional sports. It was said of him that he gave the sporting page a higher tone of literacy than it had known before.
Achievements
Works
Views
McGeehan was a steady supporter of amateur athletics, deplored the commercialization of sports in general, and was especially inimical toward the promoters of boxing, wrestling, and racing. He wrote numerous magazine articles in which his views were vigorously set forth. Boxing, he said, is not a sport but a business. His mind covered a wide range of subjects.
Personality
McGeehan could write equally well on the history and customs of European countries where he traveled widely with his wife on the folklore of French Canada, his favorite fishing ground, on the ancient civilization of Mexico, or on other widely divergent topics, and this might be done either in magazine articles or in his unpredictable newspaper column at some time when sporting gossip was scarce. At times his column drifted into gentle satire, perhaps cast in a dramatic sketch of burlesque Shakespearean mold, or pure fancy, as in the various adventures of Alphide, the leaping salmon of the Miramichi River in New Brunswick. McGeehan was present as a special writer at the widely publicized Scopes trial at Dayton, Tenn. , in 1925, where the teaching of evolution in the schools was questioned, and his descriptions of the scene and of local characters revealed the possibilities of a genius that might have done more notable work. His only published book was Trouble in the Balkans, issued in 1931.
Connections
On January 27, 1910, McGeehan was married to Sophie Treadwell, journalist and playwright, who survived him. They had no children.
