Spring 2004 Edition

Murray Chass Is Going to Cooperstown   Even though Murray Chass couldn't hit a major league curve ball or throw a slider, on July 24th, he will be joining Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio -- in the Baseball Hall of Fame.     The spot waiting for the Fair Lawn resident in Cooperstown is down the hall from most of the other baseball greats. The Baseball Writer’s Assocation of America recently voted to induct Chass into the Writers' Wing, because Chass was one of the first writers in the country to cover baseball organizations as a whole, not just report the games.   Sportswriter Dave Anderson called Chass one of the best reporters he has ever been around.  “I would hate to be the President of the United States, if Murray were covering the White House", Anderson said.    After the Yankees acquired A-Rod this year, the New York Times printed a picture of a baseball field that showed the Yankee players and their annual salaries.   Salaries weren't such big stories before Chass started writing about the business of baseball.  “People either blame me or credit me for changing that”, Chass told Fair Lawn News.   “I started writing about contracts and labor in the 1970’s", Chass said.  The Times allowed me to do that, because they often take a broader view of things.  The Times accepted the significance of the issue and they weren’t afraid to cover it.  Other papers might not have cared.”   Chass often sees a story from a different perspective than other sportswriters.  For example, the media has recently been demonizing the head of the major league baseball union, Don Fehr.  Rather than blaming Fehr and the baseball union for the players' use of performance enhancement drugs, Chass has written in his column that Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should be held responsible for allowing steroids and similar drugs to be legal, in the first place.   Chass covered the Yankees for the New York Times from 1970 through 1986.  Since then, he has been the newspaper's national baseball writer.  In that role, the Baseball Hall of Fame will always remember Chass for setting a new standard for writers -- as a pioneer in the coverage of business and labor issues within baseball.   Chass told Fair Lawn News “the job can be glamorous, but there’s a lot that is not glamorous.  It’s taken a lot of time.  I’ve missed dinner and opportunities to do things with my family.  I remember on New Year’s Eve in 1974, I had plans to see a Broadway show and dinner afterwards.  Instead, I got stuck covering the Yankee’s signing of Catfish Hunter.“   A member of the Ahavat Achim synagogue on Saddle River Road, Chass has helped raise money at local syngagogues in the past few years, by periodically speaking to Men’s Clubs.  But Chass spends most of his time working out of his 3 bedroom Fair Lawn ranch.  He said, “it’s been 30 years since I worked in an office.  I’ve been telecommuting since before the term existed.”  He went to Spring Training in Florida this year, and he will periodically stop by Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium, during the season.   Although it may sound like a dream job, Chass says today's baseball writers don’t want to do the job year-round, year after year.  "It can be a grind.  After a few years, they are ready to go onto something else."   He told Fair Lawn News “the biggest change since I’ve been covering baseball has been money."  He says both the owners and players are making a lot more of it.   “Players are basically the same, although money does change people.    "Although players may be a bit more difficult to deal with, baseball always gets a cross-section of people.  There’s always some players more difficult to deal with than others.  The players he has found most friendly and accessible, over the years,  include Tommy John, Mickey Rivers, Ron Guidry, and Willie Randolph.     Although he is known for writing about contracts and money he said “sometimes we get carried away with the money aspect of baseball and we lose sight of the game.”   He said about baseball, “after 40 years, there’s still a lot I can learn.”