Claire Smith part 1: “How You Used Those Barrels of Ink Mattered.”

Press Box Access: A Sports History Podcast

This is the first of a two-part conversation with Claire Smith, a pioneer for women and journalists of color. She discusses breaking barriers while covering baseball for 39 years, including her worst day: When the San Diego Padres physically removed her from their clubhouse during the 1984 National League playoffs. Hear how Steve Garvey helped her in that moment, and how Claire’s love of baseball powered her through a career that led to her being honored at Cooperstown in 2017. Claire shares tales of George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson from her time covering the Bronx Zoo Yankees. Claire also recalls her years of working with Joe Morgan, and how Jackie Robinson influenced her career, which has impacted so many others.

Smith spent 32 years in the newspaper industry, starting in Pennsylvania at the Bucks County Courier Times. In 1979, she moved to The Philadelphia Bulletin, where she mostly covered college basketball and football. When that paper folded in 1982, she was hired by The Hartford Courant. By mid-season that year, she was put on the New York Yankees beat, making her the first woman to cover a Major League Baseball team, full-time. Claire covered the Yankees for five years before serving as the Courant’s national baseball columnist for three years. She became the New York Times’ first national baseball columnist in 1990 and held that role for eight years. In 1998, she moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she was a columnist and assistant sports editor until 2007. Claire left newspapers in July 2007 to become a coordinator editor and baseball remote news editor at ESPN. She worked for the “Sunday Night Baseball” crew and the production team on MLB game broadcasts until November 2021.

In December 2016, Smith was named the 68th recipient of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s Career Excellence Award (formerly known as the J.G. Taylor Spink Award) – the highest honor a baseball writer can receive. She was the first woman to win the award, and the fourth African American, joining Sam Lacy, Wendell Smith and Larry Whiteside. Claire was honored at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual induction in July 2017. She was also presented the 2017 “Robie Award” for Lifetime Achievement by the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Smith was named the inaugural winner of the Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith Award for the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland in 2013. Other milestones: Sports Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists (1997); the Mary Garber Pioneer Award from the Association for Women in Sports Media (2000); the Sam Lacy Award at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (2010); and SAbR’s 2021 Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award. Smith was a member of the NABJ Hall of Fame’s Class of 2021.

Claire was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was winner of three New York Times Publishers’ Awards.

A 1979 graduate of Temple University, Smith returned to her alma mater in July 2021 as an assistant professor with Klein School of Media and Communications. With the assistance of the Black Women in Sports Foundation, Smith has long awarded Temple students The Bernice A. Smith scholarship, named after her mother, a Jamaican immigrant and Temple alum. In 2014, Temple honored Claire with a Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award and inducted her into the School of Media and Communication Hall of Fame.

In October 2021, Temple announced the creation of The Claire Smith Center For Sports Media. Claire co-directs the center with John DiCarlo, managing director of student media at Temple.

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