Wendell Smith (March 23, 1914 – November 26, 1972) was a noted African American sportswriter was influential in the choice of Jackie Robinson to become the first African American player in Major League Baseball in the 20th century.
A Detroit native, Smith graduated from West Virginia State College where he played on the baseball team. He also became the sports editor for the college's newspaper his junior year. He began his professional writing career in 1937 with the Pittsburgh Courier, then the most popular paper within the black community in the country. He started as a sports writer and then a sports editor the year after. He covered the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Pittsburgh Pirates of baseball's Negro Leagues for the Courier. Smith also petitioned the Baseball Writers Association of America for membership but was turned down because he was with the Courier and not one of the white-owned papers.
Smith is credited with recommending Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey who was searching for the individual with strong character to successfully execute the integration of baseball. The Courier offered to pay for Smith to travel with Robinson, who had to stay in separate hotels from his teammates due to segregation policies pervasive at the time. Smith traveled with Robinson in the minors in 1946 and with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Later Smith moved on to Chicago and joined the white-owned Chicago Herald-American. Smith left his baseball beat and covered mostly boxing for the American. In 1948, his application to join the BBWAA was approved, and he became the first African American member of the organization.
Smith moved to television in 1964 when he joined Chicago television station WGN as a sports anchor, though he continued to write a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Smith died of cancer at age 58 in 1972, just a month after Robinson.
In 1993, he was a posthumous recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for excellence in journalism. In 1994 Smith was inducted into The Baseball Hall of Fame. His widow Wyonella Smith donated his papers to the Hall of Fame's archives in 1996, providing invaluable research material on the subject of baseball's integration. DePaul University and the University of Notre Dame have presented the Wendell Smith Award to the outstanding player of each match between the schools' men's basketball teams since the 1972–73 season.
Famous quotes containing the words wendell and/or smith:
“Speak clearly, if you speak at all;
Carve every word before you let it fall.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“For men tied fast to the absolute, bled of their differences, drained of their dreams by authoritarian leeches until nothing but pulp is left, become a massive, sick Thing whose sheer weight is used ruthlessly by ambitious men. Here is the real enemy of the people: our own selves dehumanized into “the masses.” And where is the David who can slay this giant?”
—Lillian Smith (1897–1966)