Gwen Knapp, Sportswriter Who Looked at the Big Picture, Dies at 61

Her columns on Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds came not from a place of moral absolutism about drugs but from that sense of fairness, said Nancy Cooney, a colleague from The Inquirer. The two men’s comments and behavior “offended her sense of right and wrong,” Ms. Cooney said.

In her final column for The Chronicle, in 2012, Ms. Knapp took stock of the many years she had written about drugs in sports and explained why it mattered.

“Without the belief that sports have some higher value than entertainment, they forfeit their special place in our culture,” she wrote. “For all the flaws of the sports, they represent the purest meritocracy we have. They advanced desegregation in this country ahead of the general population, and for the same reason, they should get over homophobia immediately.”

In addition to her sisters Susan and Rebecca, Ms. Knapp, who lived in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, is survived by her father and another sister, Nancy Knapp Piccione.

While she was best known for her treatment of serious topics. Ms. Knapp appreciated sports for all they had to offer. The article of hers that colleagues remember most was written on July 4, 1993, after the Phillies completed a doubleheader at 4:40 in the morning. To fully capture the delirium of the game, the latest-ending one in baseball history, she quoted not just players and managers but also umpires, grounds crew, announcers and fans.

“Mickey Morandini, dragging himself through the clubhouse and past his weary teammates, seemed to understand the continuum,” she wrote. “‘See you today,’ he said. And he was right.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/21/sports/gwen-knapp-sports-editor.html