Sam Lacy

Attempting to keep players out of lineups, the kind police departments hold for identifying suspects, has become a desperate concern of the National Football League, which up to now has been thrown for a disturbing loss in trying to legislate good conduct. Owners with enormous investments in franchises are vulnerable to what their highly paid employees (the players) do off the field. But are those same owners as interested in rehabilitating the conduct of the performers as individuals or are they more concerned that their teams' financial futures could be jeopardized if they don't take action?

"IT SOUNDS like you came this close to announcing," a television reporter said to Kweisi Mfume Wednesday afternoon as he walked to the rear of Westminster Hall in downtown Baltimore, where he had just received the University System of Maryland's Frederick Douglass Award."That only counts in horseshoes," a smiling Mfume answered, the Douglass medal hanging from a black and yellow ribbon still dangling from his neck.The television crews weren't there to cover the ceremony. (Did they show up for the ones honoring former Congressman Parren Mitchell, historian Benjamin Quarles and Baltimore Afro-American sportswriter Sam Lacy?

"Fighting for Fairness: The Life Story of Hall of Fame Sportswriter Sam Lacy," by Sam Lacy with Moses J. Newson. Tidewater. 240 pages. $29.95.Energized by a sense of fair play and a typewriter that could spit fire, Sam Lacy stands as a freedom fighter, a sentinel at-the-ready, as he has fought the last 60-plus years to make the sports world a better place for humanity -- demolishing barriers and hoping to make the spirit of fun and games reflect the true ideals of life. His only objective was to press on.The specific cause of the black man, along with a desire to gain a level field for women athletes, has constantly drawn his attention.

It is spring training 1948, and Jackie Robinson is dogging it. The Brooklyn Dodgers' Rookie of the Year arrives four days late and 15 pounds overweight, and spends much of practice joking with reporters.Sam Lacy is not among them. To the sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American Robinson appears blase, indifferent. And fat. Disgraceful, writes Lacy, the lone scribe - black or white - to rebuke the Dodgers star for his "lackadaisical attitude" and for "laying down" on the job.Within a week, Robinson is his old self - lean, focused and bent on proving Lacy wrong.

Ninety-four years of swimming upstream, and you'd think it would be enough for Sam Lacy just to tread water.Not a chance.Lacy is still working, still writing, still making waves.Check out this week's edition of the Afro-American. Lacy's column calls for the end of the designated hitter, arguing that the only way to stop pitchers like Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens from throwing at hitters is to force them to bat.Another story with his byline states that the Orioles built their 10-2 record by feasting on weaker opponents, and suggests that Texas manager Johnny Oates and pitching coach Dick Bosman were stealing signs last weekend.

Sam Lacy stretches the slim, tapered fingers of his left hand and ticks off the "best remembered" stories of his 60-year writing career.There's track star Wilma Rudolph winning three Olympic gold medals in Rome. Joe Louis defeating Max Schmeling. Tennis great Althea Gibson winning titles at Forest Hills and Wimbledon, and Arthur Ashe doing the same 20 years later.And, oh yes, enough Jackie Robinson stories to fill a book."People often ask me what was the biggest story I've covered," says Lacy, at 93 still a columnist with the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper.

In late February 1946, Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American was in Daytona Beach, Florida, to report on the spring training of the Montreal Royals of the International League, the Brooklyn Dodgers' top minor league team. For the first time in the 20th century, a black man would take the field in a game in so-called organized professional baseball.The story of baseball's first integrated spring training was largely neglected by the country's mainstream press, which failed to give it the social or cultural context it deserved.

Sam Lacy, now entering the springtime of his 91st year, is rushing out the door to play golf when the phone call arrives: Does he remember Leon Day? Does he remember? He remembers and remembers and remembers.Lacy is our link with the vanishing past. Leon Day departs, six days after election to baseball's Hall of Fame, and everyone must describe him with secondhand language and meager scraps of fact from a distinguished career: the 18 strikeouts over at old Bugle Field, the wins over the legendary Satchel Paige, the no-hitter he pitched after his return from World War II, but so little beyond that to flesh out the story.

When Sam Lacy walked into his surprise party Tuesday morning and everybody started singing "Happy Birthday," he sang along for a moment, grandly and on-key, and then threw in a postscript."

These 90 years of Sam Lacy, perhaps the oldest practicing sportswriter in the world, have been filled with love of wife and family, unrelenting crusades to knock down the walls of prejudice and a newspaperman's professional satisfaction that comes with finding the appropriate word for the right situation.He often felt the racial hurt of being turned away at hotels, restaurants and other places that should have offered equal accommodations, including press boxes. It was because of the color of his skin and these personal indignities that caused him and other black Americans to feel the deep pain of segregation and rejection.