Great Quarterbacks of the NFL: The Punt Pass and Kick Library

Great Quarterbacks of the NFL (The Punt Pass and Kick Library)


Author is Dave AndersonPublisher: Random House, 1965
Hardcover5.7 x 8.5 inches, 182 pages

David Poole Anderson (May 6, 1929 – October 4, 2018) was an American sportswriter based in New York City. In 1981 he won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary on sporting events. He was the author of 21 books and more than 350 magazine articles.

Anderson moved to The New York Times in 1966 and was given a regular column there in 1971. In 1972, he won the E.P. Dutton Award for the best sports feature story of the year, the return of the heavyweight champion Joe Frazier to his Beaufort, South Carolina hometown (he won a Page One Award for the same story). He collaborated on a book, Always on the Run, with Miami Dolphin football players Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick that was published in 1973. It would be one of 21 books he wrote or co-wrote in his career. In 1974, Anderson won the Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism.

In 1981, he became the second sportswriter to win the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. His Pulitzer citation particularly noted his work on six columns he wrote in 1980, especially one entitled The Food On a Table At the Execution describing the sacking of New York Yankees manager Dick Howser by owner George Steinbrenner. He was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1990, joining three other past "Sports of The Times," columnists — Red Smith, Arthur Daley and John Kieran. Anderson was the 1994 winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) Red Smith Award for distinguished sports column writing. In 2005, he received the Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism. Anderson was inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2006. Anderson retired from The Times in 2007, though he continued to contribute occasional columns, his last being an August 2017 article on the US Tennis Open.

In 2014, he was honored with the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing.