Dick Young (sportswriter) - Abrasive Style and Personality

Abrasive Style and 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. Fellow sportswriter Marty Appel recalled "cringing" at Young's "boorish" habit of upbraiding workers in other cities' stadiums for not meeting his "New York standards." Appel continued:

"But you had to love Young. He was the best in his field, including the best at getting his way. The Commissioner's Office put up a rope barricade to keep the press 20 feet from the batting cage during the World Series? There was Young, undoing it. TV cameras suddenly appeared at press conferences? There was Young standing in front of the lens."

Though he was an advocate of certain rights and causes, he was skeptical of others. Despite his own candid clubhouse reporting, Young blasted Jim Bouton as a "social leper" after the publication of the pitcher's tell-all book Ball Four. The head of the players' union, Marvin Miller, was negatively characterized as a "Svengali". And when an arbitrator ruled in favor of the union, thus ending baseball's reserve clause, Young's first reaction was to write: "Peter Seitz reminds me of a terrorist, a little man to whom nothing very important has happened in his lifetime, who suddenly decides to create some excitement by tossing a bomb into things."

Young took to invoking "My America", which was more a state of mind than a location. From Young's America, the writer decried the majority of contemporary athletes and events. Certain athletes won Young over with their soft-spokenness or work ethic, like boxers Joe Frazier and Ken Norton. He had no tolerance for the brash new style of sports stars such as Muhammad Ali or Joe Namath, who became his targets. But Young's deference to authority could lead him to oppose modest athletes also, as in 1974 when he took commissioner Bowie Kuhn's side over Hank Aaron's. Sitting on 713 home runs, Aaron wanted to tie and break Babe Ruth's all-time record at home, but Kuhn decreed that Aaron would have to play a set amount of road games before getting that chance. Young wrote that the Braves were destroying the integrity of the sport by holding Aaron out of the lineup.

Having no interest in the "foreign" game of soccer, Young heckled Pelé and the owners of the New York Cosmos at the press conference announcing the star's arrival in the NASL. Reportedly, Young subsequently brought Pelé to a Mets game and was shocked to see him besieged by fans. While covering the 1980 World Series, he wrote admiringly of the way the Philadelphia police had ringed the field with mounted officers, adding "If a few dogs on leashes and a few policemen on horses can command respect, think of what an electric chair might do."

In 1986, boxer Larry Holmes had Young ejected from one of his workouts. In 1987, he urged fans to boo Dwight Gooden following his suspension for cocaine use. According to Marty Appel, "he wrote a note about why Johnny Bench's first marriage ended that made even Young's best defenders wonder if he had gone too far."

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, whom he called "Howie the Shill" in his columns when he wasn't using pejoratives like "fraud" or "an ass." Cosell described Young as "a right wing cultural illiterate." On some occasions, Young would stand near Cosell while he was taping locker room interviews, and shout out profanities so that the tape would not be usable. In 1967, Young told Sports Illustrated, "You've got to treat Howard the way he treats you. You've got to throw his flamboyant junk back in his face."

However, Young was also 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. But he also continued to call Muhammad Ali "Cassius Clay" for many years after his conversion, and accused the boxer of racism and draft-dodging. Young did not reconcile with Ali until after the latter was retired.