George Kiseda dies

He was a bit of a legend:

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. (AP) -George Kiseda, a journalist who championed civil rights issues in sports in the 1950s and 1960s, has died. He was 80.
Kiseda died early Sunday of a form of dementia at an Alzheimer's care facility in Orange County, brother Jim Kiseda said Monday from Hopewell Junction, N.Y. Kiseda had been at the San Juan Capistrano facility since November.
"He got into a lot of trouble for standing up for minorities," Jim Kiseda said. "He jeopardized his career in many ways."
George Kiseda wrote for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Bulletin in the 1950s and '60s before finishing his career in 1984 as a sports copy editor at the Los Angeles Times.
In 1957, he wrote a column for the Sun-Telegraph about an upcoming football game between Army and Tulane in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, where seating was segregated. It was the same year President. Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas to enforce integration of Little Rock's Central High School.
U.S. Rep. James Fulton of Pennsylvania read Kiseda's column on the floor of the House of Representatives. Army moved the game to West Point's smaller Michie Stadium.
Kiseda was nicknamed the "Silver Quill" by Philadelphia 76ers guard Wally Jones.
The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan, who received the basketball Hall of Fame's Curt Gowdy Award, once said: "The greatest NBA writer of all time was George Kiseda - the 'Silver Quill' - my favorite writer."
Another admirer is Sandy Padwe, a former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who became a senior editor at Sports Illustrated and later acting dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
"I teach George Kiseda," Padwe told the Los Angeles Times. "He's the model of what every sports writer should be."
A funeral is Saturday in Kiseda's hometown of Monessen, Pa., with burial to follow.

 

George Kiseda

latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-kiseda14may14,0,318636.story?coll=la-home-obituaries

Mark Heisler writes a nice ode to one of the best who wasn't afraid to ignite change. Alan Richman and Bob Ryan call him the greatest basketball beat writer of all time.

 

Re: George Kiseda

The late Mal Florence once told me that George Kiseda was the best newsman he had ever known. That's good enough for me.

 

Two threads on this now, hopefully EF or somebody can merge 'em.

 

Yeah, I deleted that post. I'm not sure how it worked out. I know Kiseda was an important guy for Dwyre.

 

RIP.

 

Nice obit by Mark Heisler. The youngsters here should know that Kiseda's contributions to the business were not insignificant. Merchant's staff at the Philadelphia Daily News, as Mark pointed out, changed the way we do our jobs.

It was a time of change for sports sections previously devoted to poetic myth-making. Larry Merchant, the young Daily News sports editor who helped launch a new wave by hiring Kiseda, Stan Hochman, Sandy Grady and Joe McGinnis, once said that if anyone had bothered to go downstairs and ask, Babe Ruth might have actually said if he really called his shot in the 1932 World Series.

The young writers were independent — as Kiseda said, "I root for my story" — and, as former Philadelphia 76ers General Manager Pat Williams later told Richman, "scared everyone in sports to death."

I was a little disappointed that the Daily News didn't have more about Kiseda. Maybe Conlin or Hochman will write something later. I'll post it if I see it.

 

Tulane Stadium.

 

Kiseda never would have let this get past the desk: Anthony Davis scored six touchdowns in the 1972 game against Notre Dame, but the dramatic comeback game was the 1974 game. He had only four touchdowns in that one.