Pioneering sportswriter Claire Smith, the first woman to cover a Major League Baseball beat extensively and an influential voice among African-American writers, is the 2017 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
The honor, announced Tuesday at the Winter Meetings in suburban Washington, D.C., is named for the longtime Sporting News publisher and has been presented annually since 1962 “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”
Congratulations to Claire Smith, the BBWAA’s 2017 J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner! #HOFW2017 https://t.co/QNmNPWDfYn pic.twitter.com/ornoOTB9rh
— Baseball Hall ⚾ (@baseballhall) December 6, 2016
Smith covered the Yankees for five years beginning in 1983 for the Hartford Courant and maintained a high profile as a columnist with The New York Times from 1991 to 1998 and as an editor and columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1998 to 2007. Her work also appeared in Sporting News magazine during the 1990s.
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A two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of three New York Times Publishers’ Awards, Smith, 62, is ESPN's news editor of remote productions, focusing on baseball.
In becoming the first woman to win the Spink Award, she outpolled fellow finalists Jim Reeves, an award-winning columnist and baseball writer during a 40-year career at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Juan Vene, who for more than 60 years both in print and on the airwaves has connected baseball with fans throughout Latin America.