William Blythe Hanna (January 5, 1866 – November 20, 1930) was an American

sportswriter Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1800s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the n ...

. Hanna was an accomplished sports journalist for more than 30 years. Although familiar with virtually all sport activities, he was an acknowledged expert on

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

and

billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . There are three major subdivisions ...

, while working for several

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

newspapers. Born in

Plattsmouth, Nebraska Plattsmouth is a city and county seat of Cass County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 6,502 at the 2010 census. History The Lewis and Clark Expedition passed the mouth of the Platte River, just north of what is now Main Street Pla ...

, he was the sixth child of Thomas King Hanna, a dry goods store owner, and Judith Joyce Venable, a housewife. At the age of four, he relocated with his family to Kansas City, Missouri. In 1878 Hanna was graduated from

Lafayette College Lafayette College is a private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the college first held classes in 1832. The founders voted to name the college after General Laf ...

Easton, Pennsylvania Easton is a city in, and the county seat of, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a river that joins the Delaware R ...

, and immediately started to work at ''

The Kansas City Star ''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...

''. He then moved to New York in 1892, and started a long relationship with the city and its citizens. Hanna joined the staff of the '' New York Herald'' in 1892 and moved to the ''

New York Press ''New York Press'' was a free alternative weekly in New York City, which was published from 1988 to 2011. The ''Press'' strove to create a rivalry with the ''Village Voice''. ''Press'' editors claimed to have tried to hire away writer Nat Hent ...

'' in 1893. He also wrote for '' The Sun'' from 1900 through 1916 before he returned to the ''Herald'' from 1916 to 1924. After that, he worked in the '' New York Herald Tribune'' when it bought the ''Herald'' in 1924, and remained working there through the rest of his life. His spare writing style was marked by a specific use of language means, as well as his selection of words were those less chosen, terse, precise, kind, and greatly influenced by the lexical environment. In May 1930, Hanna suffered a stroke (

apoplexy Apoplexy () is rupture of an internal organ and the accompanying symptoms. The term formerly referred to what is now called a stroke. Nowadays, health care professionals do not use the term, but instead specify the anatomic location of the bleedi ...

) while reporting an Army Black Knights baseball#baseball, Army–Dartmouth Big Green baseball, Dartmouth baseball game in West Point, New York. He was confined to West Point Hospital for three weeks and then, at his request, was transferred to Idylease Inn, Idylease sanitarium, at his wishes to be near to the home of his brother, Thomas K. Hanna. He died on November 20 in Newfoundland, New Jersey at the age of 64. Shortly after his death in 1930, William B. Hanna became the first recipient of the Baseball Writers' Association of America#New York chapter, Slocum Award, which is presented annually by the New York Baseball Writers Association to a person judged to have a long and meritorious service to baseball.Slocum Award on Baseball Almanac
/ref> In 1946 he was named to the Honor Rolls of Baseball of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanna, William B 1866 births 1930 deaths Baseball writers Lafayette College alumni People from Plattsmouth, Nebraska Journalists from New York City Sportswriters from New York (state)