National Sports Journalism Center

After some fisticuffs in The Washington Post newsroom the other day, the man landing the bout’s only punch said, "Aw, it was nothing. In the old days in the sports department at the New York Daily News, we had so many fights that we didn’t even look up."

I’m not sure sportswriters have more fights than, say, foreign correspondents in smoky Marrakech bars or political pundits at odds over whose bow-tie is the coolest. But when Henry Allen invoked the cantankerous Dick Young days of the Daily News as a benchmark for bare-knuckle journalism, it made me wonder: Are sportswriters the most competitive, contentious, combative characters in the business?

Allen is not a sports guy. He is one of those fearsomely talented feature writers who once upon a golden age filled the Style section of The Post with stuff that made the hairs on the back of your neck quiver in applause. He’d done an early ‘60s tour of duty as a Marine in Vietnam before winning a Pulitzer Prize. Now an editor in Style, 68 years old, sturdy, full-throated, and decorated with a Hemingwayesque beard, Henry was three weeks from retirement when he’d heard enough from one of his writers.

Twice that week, reaching for a certain level of quality, Allen had raised questions about a piece of Manuel Roig-Franzia’s work. First time, the writer responded by referring to the editor with a four-letter epithet. Second time, he moved up to 10 letters. Immediately on hearing the enhanced version, Allen shoved Roig-Franzia and followed with a right to the cheek. The Washington City Paper reported that the writer didn’t return fire, "instead opting for more of a civil-rights-movementy kind of stance."

The confrontation occurred within steps of the new executive editor’s office and added peacemaking to Marcus Brauchli’s challenges in these devolutionary/revolutionary times. Whatever wisdom was involved in the editor’s decision to send Allen home for the remaining days of his service – Pulitzer winner barred from newsroom! – it’s certainly true that any ban of bellicose sportswriters would put many of us on the disabled list.

At my first job, the scissors necessary to cut up wire copy were tethered to the desk with a chain. I asked, "Is that so we don’t lose them?"

"Chain’s so you can’t stab the guy across the desk," a geezer said. "Happened."

Tom Callahan trashed a hotel room wrestling a former heavyweight champion. Will McDonough decked an NFL cornerback. Norm Clarke, who’d lost an eye busting a bronco, busted up a fellow scribbler who repeated once too often a line he thought terribly clever, "Hey, Norm, you spend a third of a season in the Three-I league?" Inflicting more damage than any of those worthies, the petite Jenny Kellner, then working for the Daily News, stared at an NFL defensive end who wiggled his waggle at her and asked, "Know what this is?"

"Looks like a penis," she said, "only smaller."

Wait, you say, Callahan did what with whom?

Occasionally, the IRA in my great buddy Callahan is noticeable, as on an occasion when Sonny Liston spent three hours grunting non-answers to questions from the Baltimore Sun’s newest sports scribe. They were in the bedroom of a hotel suite when Tom, by now working on auto-pilot, read from a bio sheet that Liston was 36 years old. "Can this be right?" he said. "Are you only 36?" Causing the ex-champ and ex-mob leg-breaker to leap from astraddle a desk, press his nose against Callahan’s, and growl, "Anyone who says I’m not 36 is calling my mother a liar."

Callahan grabbed two handsful of Liston’s shirt. Buttons flew off. They ker-lumphed around the room, knocking down pictures, scattering lamps. They fell between two beds and bounced upright, Liston lifting the kid with him. No punches were thrown, but the racket brought a hanger-on into the room asking, "What are you fellows doing in here, dancin’?"

"Yeah, yeah," Liston said. "Dancin’."

Red Smith taught us that everything fits sooner or later. So in Callahan’s little memoir, "The Bases Were Loaded (And So Was I)," there is a chapter entitled "Dancin’ With Sonny Liston."

And who clocked a cornerback?

The late Will McDonough of the Boston Globe was in the New England Patriots locker room taking notes of an interview with the day’s hero when there came a noise from the locker next door. The noise was created by Raymond Clayborn, a cornerback. "I’m gonna bury you, mother," he said to McDonough, who wasn’t even his father. What led up to that was never quite determined, but what happened next was witnessed by reporters who felt blessed to have been there. Shaking a finger at the sportswriter, Clayborn made the mistake of scratching McDonough’s face. In response, McDonough, a Southie who knew about these things, threw two quick right hands. Clayborn went down in sections.

One World Series, I was at work in the Yankee Stadium press room when a friend came by and said, "Thurman Munson’s looking for you, and he’s got a bat." I had offended the Yankee catcher three months earlier by naming him captain of my All-Crybaby team. We later exchanged unpleasantries without bloodshed. My favorite sportswriters-gone-wild Series happened in 1975. The first fight began at 12:45 a.m. when Henry Hecht of the New York Post whipped off his glasses and dared Wells Twombly of the San Francisco Examiner to say that again.

"I’ve had nothing but trouble with you all night, you (12-letter word)," said Twombly, beefy and pugnacious, who never typed without a double Scotch of inspiration by his machine.

"Put your (adjectival) hands on me, you’re meat," said Hecht, who looked so much like Woody Allen he should’ve paid royalties.

They shut up. They went back to typing. Just the two of them in a press-box row 100 feet long, they sat so near each other, refusing to give an inch, that Hecht’s typewriter banged into Twombly’s on each carriage return.

Next night, for the heavyweight championship of Chicago, Jerome Holtzman of the Sun-Times shoved Dave Nightingale of the Daily News against a wall and drew back his pitching hand to deliver a high, hard one, only to be interrupted in mid-pitch by Maury Allen of the New York Post.

Maybe it’s the crushing deadline pressure. Maybe it’s the testosterone-drunk environment. Or maybe it’s boys being boys, as when John Feinstein stopped by the hospitality (read: hostility) room after a basketball tournament.

One of our Washington Post colleagues, Ken Denlinger, had gone to bed; another, Mike Wilbon, went bowling. That left Feinstein to trade repartee with a Baltimore Sun writer who, enraged by said repartee, hurled himself at Feinstein. They went down in a clump from which Feinstein emerged unscathed. The drama was best summed up by Dave Pritchett, once a basketball coach, always a cockeyed observer of his ink-stained friends.

"It was the lowest moment in the history of The Washington Post," Pritchett declared. "One reporter is doing a sleep-a-thon. One is bowling. And one is rolling on the floor with a Baltimore dockworker in an Al Capone hat and a peacoat."

Reminded of all this by Henry Allen, I asked him about the line on Daily News sports department fights. "What," I said, "was Dick Young pissed again?"

Hammerin’ Hank said, "Dick Young was always pissed again!"

Hooray, I say, for sportswriterly passion.