RIP Sid Hartman

On a side note: I know them folks at the New Yorker are Certified Smart People, but I'm glad we didn't write like this in newspapers. Do they get paid by elaborate use of punctuation marks?

Anyway, 100 billion Internet dollars if you can wade though this billet-doux without backing up ...

Angell began coming to Brooklin in 1933, the summer before he turned thirteen. That was the year his mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, and his stepfather, E. B. (Andy) White, each a foundational source of The New Yorker’s DNA—Katharine primarily as a fiction editor and nurturer of writers, Andy as progenitor of the magazine’s editorial voice—bought an eighteenth-century farmhouse, with an attached barn, in North Brooklin, situated above a large pasture, pond, and woods that sloped down to a gravelly beach on Allen Cove, on Blue Hill Bay.

When Angell returned to Brooklin this year, he anticipated observing certain seasonal and quotidian routines: admiring the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta of wooden sailboats; morning round trips with his walker to the Center Harbor Yacht Club (“a porch surrounding a Ping-Pong table,” in his description); a 6:30 p.m. Scotch-and-water (plenty of ice and a side of cheese, crackers, and olives), in time for the news (usually NBC, always PBS); postprandial Yanks/Mets/Bosox broadcasts; and periodic visits to the Brooklin Cemetery, where, in the shade of an expansive oak, six headstones mark the graves of Katharine and Andy White, Roger’s brother Joel White, his daughters Callie and Alice Angell, and his wife of forty-eight years, Carol Rogge Angell (1938-2012).

 

At least my wife still loves me. And the dog, sometimes.

 

Angell's story of him spending the day with Horace Stoneham, talking about the old New York Giants during a SF Giants game, is an absolute classic.

 

Bobby Bell was on 'CCO and talked about Sid being a father figure to him but the relationship didn't start off real well. Sid was mad at Murray Warmath for giving Bell a scholarship from a school he'd never heard of and Bell's freshman year he asked Sid why he wouldn't interview him. Sid told him he had to earn the right to be interviewed by him. When Bell became a Gophers legend and dominant player Sid came up to him and asked for an interview and Bell told Sid he had to earn the right to talk to him. They also had some great interviews with Dave Winfield and Tom Kelly, who mentioned about three years ago Sid, without calling or telling TK he was coming, barging into his home one day (without knocking, just opened the door) with his giant recorder and mic out with his assistant in tow and was mid-question right away. TK was stunned, a bit annoyed....but like everyone else answered Sid's questions.

 

Reusse, who started working for Sid when he was 18, on a reporter who never rested.

Resting was not an option for Sid Hartman, and that's what made him great

And think I've put this here before on another Sid thread, but this was always a classic story involving him and Ira Berkow from Reusse's column on his 75th birthday.

 

He moved up when Seymour Siwoff passed away.

I would imagine Gammons or Chass would be No. 1 next season? EDIT: It's probably Chass, he joined in 1962.

 

Ross Newhan (a Hall of Famer) and Mike Waldner in L.A. are both in the low single digits.

 

It was very difficult to adequately explain Sid to someone from another city who was unfamiliar with him: "see, he's a high school dropout who can barely write who has been a sportswriter for over half a century. And he's a multi-millionaire on the side due to wise real estate investments with a childhood friend. And he basically knows everyone on the planet and they will all return his calls. Oh, and he actually was an NBA GM at the same time he was a reporter."

I spent six months as a Star Tribune copy aide in the sports department, and learned just how vast his reach was when I transcribed a recording of his phone call with Jack Morris, in which Morris told him he was signing with the Twins, before he had actually told the Twins (Morris said that would be his next call).