It is award season for APSE. Judging for this year’s contest is taking place at the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana in Indianapolis.

The finalists for APSE’s biggest honor, the Red Smith Award, have been announced. They include some big writing names and some editors who have contributed to APSE, including my former boss at the Chicago Tribune, Dan McGrath.

It is interesting to note Wendell Smith is on this list. Given the history he made in pushing for the first African-American player in the baseball; covering Jackie Robinson’s historical first year; and becoming the first African-American to join the Baseball Writer’s Association of America, it seems like a special award should be named in his honor.

In fact, I’m sure Red Smith wouldn’t mind if the APSE renamed it the Red Smith-Wendell Smith Award. Just a thought.

Here are the bios of the nominees. Balloting for APSE members runs through the end of March.

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Nominees Bios

Richard Kyle Fox
He was the first great sports editor in the United States. Under his aegis, his magazine, The Police Gazette, virtually created championship boxing in the late 19th century. Fox’ magazine also featured crime and sex, but because his sports coverage was so successful, he encouraged newspapers to devote space to sports, to have whole sports pages. Every sports editor in America is, essentially, descended from Fox.

Henry Freeman
Freeman spent 47 years in newspapers as a top newsroom editor and publisher, and is renowned for his strong imprint on sports journalism as a pioneering Managing Editor/Sports at USA TODAY. He was a master innovator and motivator, passionate about journalism and sports. He drove the development of sports staples that were revolutionary. Freeman became APSE president in 1987, with the treasury almost empty after the organization had twice teetered toward insolvency. Through his leadership, APSE bylaws were changed to require presidents to live within a budget – putting APSE on solid ground.

Dan McGrath
McGrath made his mark as reporter, columnist and sports editor (along with some news posts) through the country, from the Sacramento Bee to the Chicago Tribune and myriad posts in between. He was an industry leader and mentor to countless journalists.

Leigh Montville
Montville spent almost 20 years as an award-winning sports columnist at The Boston Globe, was in a group of three that became the first back-of-the-book columnists for Sports Illustrated and has gone on to write best-sellers on Ted Williams, Dale Earnhardt, and Babe Ruth, among others. In 2013, he was inducted into the National Sportswriters and Sports Broadcasters Assn. Hall of Fame. In a brief stint with the now-departed CNN/SI sports network, he won a Cable ACE award for commentary. He’s figured out how to translate a unique voice over a variety of different platforms.

Sandy Rosenbush
Sandy is currently the college football news editor for remote production crews at ESPN but she’s been in newspapers and magazines most of her career at the New York Times, Washington Post and Sports Illustrated. She’s a former president of APSE and was honored by AWSM with the Mary Garber Pioneer Award. She is a founder and year-in, year-out supporter of the Sports Journalism Institute, which has been adding diversity to our industry for 20 years.

Bob Ryan
Ryan wrote for The Boston Globe for 44 years, 23 of those years as a columnist, before his retirement in 2012. He still is an occasional contributor. As a general columnist he has a style that connects with the Boston audience in a way that few have. His exposure on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters has raised his profile nationally. Because his Boston experience goes back so far, he brings a perspective to Boston stories that is rare. Yet, his style has never gotten tired, and he maintains an enthusiasm for the games that is unusual for someone who is doing what he has been doing for so long.

Glenn Schwarz
Schwarz began his career as an outstanding and longtime baseball reporter, then made seamless mid-career transition to sports editor where he led San Francisco Examiner, and later the San Francisco Chronicle, to a number of APSE Top 10 section and writing awards.

Wendell Smith
Smith was instrumental in pushing Major League Baseball to integrate and pushing the Brooklyn Dodgers to sign Jackie Robinson in 1946. He did this while experiencing horrible slights, including not being allowed in many press boxes in spring training in Florida while covering Robinson. With Sam Lacy, a previous Red Smith Award winner, he would cover Major League Baseball meetings, working hotel lobbies trying to convinced MLB owners to consider allowing African-Americans to participate and be included in the majors. He was a columnist and baseball writer for the Pittsburgh Courier and later the Chicago American. Smith was portrayed in the recent movie “42” He died in 1972.

Terry Taylor
The recently retired Sports Editor of the Associated Press was a smart aggressive editor who did a first-rate job supervising the coverage of sports for AP for more than 25 years. She was a true pioneer for women in sports journalism and a star in any league.

Fred Turner
Turner began at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., as a co-op student from Northeastern University in Boston, worked the city desk and then sports, eventually becoming sports editor. He left the paper in 1980 to become the sports editor of the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. In his 25 years as the boss, he turned the small-town newspaper into one of the country’s best, winning numerous APSE awards, sending many editors across the country to become sports editors, molding writers who also went on to bigger markets. Fred passed away in 2011.

George Vecsey
Vecsey, a long-time New York Times sports columnist, has written about the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics and a wide variety of sports including tennis, football, basketball, hockey, soccer and boxing. But he considers baseball, the sport he’s covered since 1960, his favorite sport and has written more books about baseball than any other sport. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Stan Musial: An American Life, Baseball: A History of America’s Favorite Game and Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter, which was made into an Academy Award-winning film.

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Here is the link to APSE for all the contest winners.

Congratulations to my current sports editors Mike Kellams and Tim Bannon at the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune was a Triple Crown winner in the large newspaper category (175,000 circulation and above) for placing in the top 10 in daily, Sunday and special sections. The other papers to sweep the three major categories were the LA Times, NY Times, NY Daily News, and Kansas City Star.