Inducted on November 12, 2009
Dave Anderson (born May 6, 1929 in Troy, New York) is an American sportswriter based in New York City. After graduating in 1947 from Xavier High School – an elite Jesuit preparatory school in New York City – Anderson attended the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, graduating in 1951.
Anderson has written for a number of New York papers. He covered the Brooklyn Dodgers for the Brooklyn Eagle, before moving to the New York Journal-American in 1955, and later to The New York Times in 1966.
In 1965, he won the E.P. Dutton Award for the best magazine sports story for “The Longest Day of Sugar Ray,” which appeared in True magazine. He has also received the Dick McCann Memorial Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame for career excellence covering football. In 1972, he won the E.P. Dutton Award for the best sports feature story of the year, the return of the heavyweight champion Joe Frazier to his Beaufort, South Carolina hometown. (He won a Page One Award for the same story.) In 1974, he won the Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism.
Anderson was given a column at the Times in 1971. In 1973, he collaborated with Miami Dolphin football players, Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick in publishing a book, Always on the Run.
In 1981, he became the second sportswriter to win the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Anderson was the 1994 winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) Red Smith Award for distinguished sports column writing. He was inducted into the National Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1990, joining three other former “Sports of the Times” columnists – Red Smith, Arthur Daley and John Kieran.
In 2005, he received the Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism.
In addition, Mr. Anderson has written 22 books, including “Sugar Ray,” the autobiography of Sugar Ray Robinson, and “In the Corner,” an oral history of great boxing trainers. A member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observers category, he has covered boxing since 1964. He covered 32 of Muhammad Ali’s fights, including those in Kinshasa, Zaire and Manila, The Philippines, as well as dozens of other title fights.
Mr. Anderson now resides in Tenafly, New Jersey, with his wife Maureen. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.