The Press: No Time for Sentiment

In his 41 years with the Associated Press. Charles Willis Dunkley has probably covered more sporting events and been read by more newspaper readers than any other U.S. sportswriter. He has scored some notable beats, and between times turned out stories that have become part of the folklore of the sports world. One day in 1920, Charlie Dunkley got a call to drop around and see Ban Johnson, president of the American League. Dunkley was one of the few reporters Johnson tolerated, and for the A.P.'s man he had the biggest sports story in years. Dunkley left Johnson with the story of how the Chicago White Sox had sold out to gamblers and thrown the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. In his beat, Dunkley dubbed the team the Black Sox—and the name stuck. A few days later he also reported the memorable remark of a boy so stunned by the news that he ran up to the Black Sox's "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, crying: "Say it ain't so. Joe."

Charlie Dunkley was the first to dub Red Grange the Galloping Ghost. And when Fighter King Levinsky was knocked out by Jack Dempsey, Dunkley was on hand to report Levinsky's famed explanation, "I was in a transom."

In 1940 Dunkley got an example of how many people read his copy, which ran in many U.S. papers with no byline. Day after the World Series ended, Baseball Commissioner Landis called in Dunkley and showed him a desk piled high with wires and letters. Because Dunkley had correctly predicted that the Series would go seven games, readers were complaining that the Series must have been fixed. Reporter Dunkley. who quit school at 14 to cub on the Kalamazoo Gazette, joined the Chicago bureau of the A.P. in 1911, soon moved into a hotel room only one block away so he could be near his work. He has lived there ever since.

Last week in his Chicago hotel, Charlie Dunkley, ruddy-cheeked and hale, sat down to dinner with 300 sportswriters and friends to celebrate his mandatory retirement from the A.P. at 65. While speaker after speaker told stories about him. Dunkley sat glumly in his place. When the time came for his speech, he rose, said quietly: "Let's get drunk and beat up on each other. This is no time for sentiment." Then he sat down to follow his own advice.