Welcome, readers. Today, we’re venturing into a different realm that may pique your interest—sportswriting. While I might not consider myself a typical sports enthusiast, I recognize the significant role that sports and its coverage play in our society. This article delves into how sportswriters have served as silent activists, bearing witness to pivotal social changes, much like Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and Muhammad Ali’s journey from a convicted draft evader to a celebrated figure after his Supreme Court victory.
By Robert Lipsyte. Originally published at TomDispatch
Whenever Chinese leaders assert that the American empire is waning, I suspect their analysts are closely following updates from ESPN, The Athletic, and columnist Shams Charania. In my view, sportswriting serves as the canary in the American coal mine, spotlighting societal issues with startling clarity. If our games reflect our history and culture, then their coverage may illuminate our future as well.
Since the early twentieth century, American sportswriters have acted as cheerleaders for the empire. Take, for instance, Bat Masterson, who, having grown weary of shooting in Dodge City, transitioned to become a boxing columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph, thereby creating a new role in what I term SportsWorld.
Masterson was an outspoken advocate for Jock Culture, a phenomenon that has shaped American life for over a century. Although the language may have evolved, the melody remains the same. The billionaires who manage sports today echo the robber barons of Masterson’s era, and the betting culture that thrived in his time is now institutionalized, closely entwined with major professional leagues across various sports.
Reflecting on my own sportswriting career, I can easily trace a line from early sports oligarchs to the modern-day billionaires, navigating through the early sports bettors implicated in the 1919 World Series scandal and up to contemporary betting platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings, which are reshaping the very fabric of our games, and possibly even influencing critical global events.
In Masterson’s time, mainstream sports were largely segregated, a reflection of the Jim Crow laws resisting a new era. Consider baseball, once marked as a Whites Only sport until Jackie Robinson’s groundbreaking entry into the major leagues in 1947. Many white sportswriters of that era chose silence, thereby supporting the racist ideologies of club owners and fellow players, who were reluctant to face competition from Negro Leaguers.
Contrastingly, Black newspaper sportswriters like Lester “Red” Rodney, who contributed to the Communist Daily Worker and lived to be 98, stood as essential voices advocating for racial equality in baseball. Their early focus was on desegregating boxing, a sport that historically denied Black fighters the title of world heavyweight champion—a symbol of American masculinity. Jack Johnson’s triumph in 1908 drew ire from sportswriters, including the renowned novelist Jack London, who clamored for “white hopes” to reclaim the title, revealing a stark reflection of the time’s pervasive racism.
White (and Black) Positions
The NFL’s color barrier was officially breached in 1946, though it was succeeded by “positional segregation,” where roles like quarterback were exclusively reserved for white players. It wasn’t until 1968 that the first Black quarterback began as a starter. While Black athletes filled roles typically labeled as “natural” or “athletic” like running backs and defensive backs, coaching positions remained overwhelmingly white, despite Black players now making up around 70% of the league’s rosters.
Sportswriters occasionally touch upon these issues, but rarely in a sustained manner that promotes meaningful change. There has generally been a disconnect between sportswriters and athletes, both often preferring to follow their own paths, especially during tumultuous times. Sports journalists typically work with corporate media, often tied to the very networks that cover the events they report on. Highlighting discrimination has historically proven detrimental to careers because owners in the sports industry are part of the same exclusive social club, quick to ostracize those who challenge the status quo. Athletes, whose career spans are often limited, tread carefully to avoid offending those who control their future job prospects.
Many of these dynamics were established in the early years. Masterson’s peers were rewarded for glorifying athletes as commercial icons in the burgeoning sports markets of college football and the Olympics. The most illustrious mythmaker was Grantland Rice, who, across various media, polished the images of sports legends like Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey (the “Manassa Mauler”), Bobby Jones, and Notre Dame’s coach Knute Rockne, who tragically died in a 1931 plane crash en route to consider a Hollywood project.
While this narrative primarily celebrated a white male pantheon, these sportswriters insisted on portraying their subject matter as a bastion of meritocracy, character building, and righteousness. Even those skeptics who derided the heroes maintained their roles as signifiers of excellence within society.
The post-World War II era saw two irrepressible tabloid journalists rise to prominence: Jimmy Cannon and Dick Young. Cannon famously described Black heavyweight champion Joe Louis as “a credit to his race, the human race,” in a time when such remarks had profound implications. He was also candid in his disdain for fellow sportswriters, dubbing them “the vaudevillians of journalism.”
Dick Young took his caustic wit from the press box to the locker rooms, where he began grilling athletes and coaches for quotes. He pioneered gossip on jock antics in his New York Daily News columns, hinting at off-field escapades.
This shift to more accessible, engaging sports reporting heralded a 1950s and 1960s transformation within Jock Culture, inspiring a new generation of journalists—often still men—who viewed themselves as fair, humorous, and honest. Among this crew were Leonard Shecter and Larry Merchant from the New York Post, alongside Stan Isaacs of Newsday.
Business Models
I entered this scene in 1957, during what would be labeled the Great Betrayal. The relocations of New York baseball teams, the Giants and the Dodgers, to California were economically astute, finally making the national pastime genuinely national, yet it shocked fans into realizing that for owners, sports were merely a business.
While some sportswriters in New York reacted with discontent, most understood that the realm of sports was business first, even if it remained an unspoken truth among them. Despite working for the New York Times, which covered my expenses, many writers relied on travel and meal allowances from teams or event promoters—a compromising dynamic that could lead to punitive backlash for reporting honestly.
In those days, players and reporters typically shared accommodations on the road, traveling by trains or chartered planes. While there was camaraderie, it came at a cost—reporters were expected to maintain loyalty. Arthur Daley, a columnist for the Times, accurately noted this brotherhood of male, white colleagues, who often found themselves in the same financial bracket. Fans were but outsiders at this carnival.
When I began covering the Yankees in the 1960s, Manager Ralph Houk pulled me aside, inquiring whether I intended to be “a booster or a ripper.” His dissatisfaction with my commitment to “fair-mindedness” was palpable; his response was, “We’re all in this together.”
However, the entrenchment of reporters in this comfortable space was already evolving. In 1958, reports surfaced that Houk had scuffled with pitcher Ryne Duren on a train ride back from winning the American League pennant—an internal conflict that previously would have been ignored. Initially, even Leonard Shecter from the Post overlooked it. Yet as whispers about the incident emerged, Shecter ultimately revealed the details—Houck, while restraining a rowdy Duren, accidentally injured him. This incident made its way into sensational headlines, shattering an age-old code of silence that had governed sports coverage.
Years later, Shecter would further defy this norm, championing hard-scrutiny journalism that painted an unvarnished picture of the world of sports. He urged teammate Jim Bouton to share his experiences candidly in his controversial memoir, which portrayed unglamorous moments in the life of baseball, including stories of notorious escapades.
Bouton’s Ball Four, published in 1970, became a love letter to baseball. While it infuriated fellow sportswriters for exposing their complicit silence and surprised baseball officials with its unabashed candor, it ignited a new era of adversarial relationships between scribes and athletes, leading to a schism between those who reported honestly and those who did not.
Enter Ali
During this time, television began connecting athletes directly with their audiences, diminishing their reliance on the press for representation. No athlete maximized this opportunity more than boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who became a master of his narrative.
Senior sportswriters of the 1960s often clashed with Ali, criticizing his disregard for their authority, his unconventional fighting style, and his vocal political activism—particularly his conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War. While younger journalists like myself celebrated him, more seasoned writers like Cannon and “Red” Smith unfairly labeled him as ungrateful and unpatriotic for challenging the norms that elevated him.
This narrative of pushback from establishment sportswriters continued, notably against athletes who dared to express dissent—like Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, Curt Flood advocating against the reserve clause, or Colin Kaepernick‘s protests against police violence.
The apathy from sportswriters regarding the activism of athletes was particularly evident when female sportswriters began to seek equal access to locker rooms post-game. It took a 1978 lawsuit from Sports Illustrated‘s Melissa Ludtke to genuinely challenge the barriers that kept women from the same access already afforded to men.
In truth, many sportswriters were too occupied with crafting narratives around performance-enhancing drugs and the dangerous concussion issues in football, or busy redefining their craft in an internet era. They leaned heavily into the persona of personalities like Bill Simmons, who taught that sportswriting was as much about personal reactions to the games as it was reporting scores.
My suspicion is that if those Chinese analysts are astute, they’ve already moved beyond all this to focus on the fundamentals that have driven establishment sportswriters (and the establishment itself): money. The surging influx of cash into college sports and the major scandals arising from burgeoning gambling platforms may be just the tip of the iceberg. Today, a new class of “transactional” sportswriters—such as Shams Charania—navigate the intricate financial landscapes of sports, further blurring the lines between competition and commerce.
Shams has earned a reputation as one of the highest-paid sports journalists, thanks to his ability to provide timely updates on trades, salary negotiations, and coaching changes—especially in the NBA. His role exemplifies the evolving landscape of sports journalism, now driven by gambling interests and an insatiable appetite for immediacy among fans and bettors.
In conclusion, over a century after Bat Masterson’s contributions to boxing journalism, the insights gleaned from sportswriting provide a unique lens through which to examine not only sports but also the broader sociopolitical dynamics at play in our world. The true indicators of change now rest not just in the arenas or among the athletes, but rather within the corridors of power where decisions are made. As we navigate this complex landscape, one guiding principle remains clear: it all comes down to the deal.
Copyright 2026 Robert Lipsyte
