Red Smith (sportswriter)

Walter Wellesley Smith (September 25, 1905 – January 15, 1982), was an American sportswriter who rose to become one of America's most widely read sports columnists. Smith’s journalistic career spans over five decades and his work influenced an entire generation of writers. Smith became the second sports columnist ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1976. Writing in 1989, sportswriter David Halberstam called Smith "the greatest sportswriter of the two eras."

Walter Wellesley Smith (he began calling himself "Red" Smith as he loathed his birth name) was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin on September 25, 1905. Smith attended Green Bay East High School, which was site of Packers home games until 1957. Throughout his childhood, Smith enjoyed hiking, hunting, and fishing. After high school, Smith moved on to the University of Notre Dame and graduated in 1927.

After graduation, he wrote letters to at least 100 newspapers asking for a job. Finally he was picked up by the Milwaukee Sentinel. Smith then worked for the St. Louis Journal as a sportswriter. This is where Smith developed his humorous and literate style that made his writing so beloved and respected. After his stint at the St. Louis Journal, Smith worked at the Philadelphia Record for nine years, from 1936 to 1945.

After 18 years, Smith joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1945. He cemented his reputation with the Herald-Tribune, as his column, “Views of Sports”, was widely read and often syndicated. Smith wrote three or four columns a week that were printed by 275 newspapers in the United States and 225 in about 30 foreign nations.

When the paper folded, he became a freelance writer. In 1971, at the age of 66, he was hired by the New York Times and wrote four columns a week for the next decade, sometimes devoting 18 hours a day to them.

Smith mainly wrote about the sports that interested him such as baseball, football, boxing, and horse racing. He had a distaste for basketball (which he called "whistleball") and hockey, and often wrote about one of his passions, fly-fishing, for trout. Many of Smith's fishing stories were written in a self-deprecating manner and he often spoke of how embarrassingly bad he was at it. In 1956, one of Smith’s columns earned him the second Grantland Rice Memorial for outstanding sportswriting. He wrote in a journalistic style and avoided the flowery language and cliches of many sportswriters.

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