Foul Bawl
A salty-tongued newspaperman says good-bye his own way
Story and illustrations by Don Armstrong
When I worked at the New York Daily News, not so many years ago, the sports copydesk was often notified of errors in a bracing fashion. First there was a high-decibel shriek — “God-dam-mit!” — followed by a humbling question: “Who worked on…?” The offending copy editor would then fess up and Tom McDevitt, now more subdued, would point out some subtle yet crippling flaw, usually in the logic, that had slipped by his less-experienced colleague. McDevitt retired in 1999 after 33 years at the paper, and if newspapering as a business seems extraordinarily imperiled these days, it is tempting to attribute the situation, at least in some small degree, to the departure of a generation of blunt, knowledgeable newsmen embodied by Tom McDevitt.
McDevitt’s temper was volcanic and his choice of expletives unencumbered. Not surprisingly, his methods didn’t always endear him to the uninitiated. One of the few women in the sports department once bristled at the mention of McDevitt’s name, and that, too, was no surprise, for he was perhaps the psychic leader of a copydesk scornful of almost anything that seemed phony or new: inflated baseball statistics; fancy computers; soccer; women’s sports, with the possible exception of tennis.
Those who worked in close proximity to McDevitt learned to recognize an underlying sweetness, most visible in the twinkle of his eyes as jokes flew back and forth across the east end of the newsroom. In a workplace where emotions often ran high, McDevitt was as quick to share his laughter as his exasperation.
The News is a classic — many would say the classic — rough-and-tumble newspaper: it was the first U.S. tabloid, and its headquarters served as those of the Daily Planet in several of the Superman movies. As at many large papers, the sports section is the real breadwinner, or was during McDevitt’s day. It was also the refuge of a number of characters who seemed more suited to entertainment media than to print journalism. McDevitt, though, was not one to seek attention: he didn’t write, he rarely told jokes. He was the straight man, and in a remarkably close-knit department in which age seemed not to figure in the camaraderie, he was one of the most well-liked and most enduring members, exceeded only by Bill Gallo, the indomitable cartoonist and boxing writer (70 years on staff!).
After joining the paper as a copyboy in 1953, leaving early on for stints at smaller papers in New Jersey and Massachusetts, McDevitt saw the News go from the highest circulation of any daily in America to near extinction toward the end of his career. He learned to laugh at it all, even as the world changed just a bit faster than he or the Daily News were sometimes ready to accept. He wore his hair closely cropped and neatly parted at the side. He favored wide ties and, when the spirit moved him, Hawaiian shirts. That spirit infused McDevitt often in his final months at the News, when he eagerly counted down the days till his departure. His wife had persuaded him to put in one more year, a decision McDevitt openly lamented. Yet he never seemed to be having quite as poor a time as his salty tirades suggested.
At a glance, McDevitt seemed to be a trove of contradictions: a proudly liberal Democrat known to let slip awkward comments about race; a diminutive man who had played high school basketball; an outspoken, highly opinionated person with such a low profile that even some of the Daily News sportswriters didn’t know who he was. But McDevitt’s rants were legendary on the copydesk, and nothing removed the twinkle from his eye faster than references of even a mildly sexual nature that made it all the way to his electronic queue, where final approval of sports stories was given. Such references were most often attempted by Mark Kriegel, then a News sports columnist and more recently a best-selling author, who delighted in tweaking McDevitt’s sensibilities. In honor of the retirement, Kriegel prepared a special interoffice column listing the many others who made McDevitt’s blood boil: John Franco, the tightrope-walking Mets relief pitcher; cocky outfielder Rickey Henderson; former Dodgers reliever Ralph Branca, who gave up one of the most storied home runs in history; most any Republican; and others.
McDevitt could be counted on, more than anything, to provide an astute, unvarnished view of the past. To the vexing question of who was the superior NBA center — Bill Russell, who won all the championships, or Wilt Chamberlain, who owned all the records — McDevitt would answer without hesitation: Russell. “He could do it all,” Tommy explained, reducing the question from the ethereal to the purely strategic. McDevitt easily recounted double-headers at the old Madison Square Garden, on the site of One Worldwide Plaza, or nine innings at Ebbets Field, where his once-beloved Dodgers played. (He eventually switched allegiance to the Mets, perhaps the only team at that time to inspire much open loyalty on the sports copydesk, where the quantity of work is inversely affected by how well the local teams are doing.)
McDevitt once labeled Jackie Robinson the best baseball player of the latter half of the 20th century, an unusual choice for a serious fan but perhaps the only comment made about Robinson in half a century that was devoid of racial consideration. McDevitt was similarly plainspoken about the layabouts, scalawags and one murderer with whom he worked over the years.
After spending nearly his entire life in northern New Jersey, McDevitt retired not to Florida but to Las Vegas, where he died a decade later. Why Vegas? Because it was clean, uncrowded and “not New York,” he explained. An unashamedly hard-drinking Irishman, Tom McDevitt never hesitated to speak his mind.
