Milton Richman, UPI Sports Columnist, Dies at Age of 64

Milton Richman, award-winning sports columnist and the former sports editor of United Press International, died Monday, apparently of a heart attack. He was 64.

Richman died in his Manhattan apartment, only hours after having been honored as sports journalist of 1986 by B’nai B’rith.

He had complained of chest pains to friends at the dinner and had gone home to change his clothes. His body was found by his longtime friend, Carmela Pisanti, after repeated efforts to reach him by telephone had failed.

“This entire department is stunned,” said David Tucker, UPI sports editor. “Milton was one of the greatest baseball columnists of his era. He led this department for many years. He taught so many young journalists his craft, but more than anything else his greatest contribution was that so many youngsters learned how to feel passionately about their profession from watching on a daily basis the wonderful example that was Milton Richman.”

Said Max McCrohon, UPI’s editor in chief: “Milton Richman had a rare combination of reporting and writing ability plus a total devotion to his craft that made him a tremendously effective sportswriter. He was one of the very best in the field.

“His connections in the world of sports were astonishingly wide with the result that Milton broke more stories in a year than many sportswriters do in a lifetime. He was also a most engaging man with a great sense of humor. We will miss him very much.”

Although baseball was his specialty, Richman covered championship fights, the Masters and U.S. Open golf tournaments, the U.S. Open tennis tournament, the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes, the NBA and Stanley Cup championship series and the Indianapolis 500.

He was voted into the writers’ wing of Baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1981. In addition, he won the national headliners’ award in 1957 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize that same year, and in 1981.

He was named UPI’s sports columnist in 1964, sports editor in 1972 and senior editor in 1985.

Said Dick Young, nationally syndicated sports columnist of the New York Post: “He had the curse of writing in New York for a wire service where his true newspaper abilities were not appreciated by the reading public. Nobody had better contacts. He would get scoops and the next day you’d read in the paper ‘by UPI.’ He would say, ‘Oh, what the heck, I know who I am.’

A life-long bachelor, Richman’s only survivor is a brother, Arthur, an executive with the New York Mets.

Services are scheduled for Wednesday at the Riverside Funeral Chapel in New York.