Claire Smith part 2: “Reporters in the Basement of Yankee Stadium were Shaking.”

Press Box Access: A Sports History Podcast

This is the second of our two-part conversation with Claire Smith, who broke down barriers for women and journalists of color during her esteemed four decades of covering Major League Baseball. We talked a lot about the pioneering aspect of her career in the first episode, including the time she was thrown out of a team clubhouse. This second episode focuses on some of Claire’s favorite baseball stories and people. She takes us to Cuba with President Obama, as well as to London with the Yankees and Red Sox. Claire tells us about her special connection with the great Sandy Koufax. She recounts tales of the Niekro brothers, Joe and Phil. Claire also shares heartfelt memories of Don Baylor, the much-respected player and manager she co-authored two books with.

You can listen to part one of my conversation with Smith here: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/press-box-access/claire-smith-part-1-how-you-used-those-barrels-of-ink-mattered#episodeContent

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.

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