Larry Whiteside, 69; pioneering black sports journalist

Larry Whiteside, 69, a longtime baseball writer in Boston, Kansas City and Milwaukee who was a pioneer for blacks in journalism and a mentor for reporters, died Friday after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, the Boston Globe reported.

Whiteside, who retired from the Globe in 2004, was a member of the panel that selected baseball’s all-century team and an expert on the Negro Leagues.

He was born in Chicago in 1937 and graduated from Drake University in Iowa in 1959. He began his career that year with the Kansas City Kansan, then worked at the Milwaukee Journal from 1963 to 1973.

In 1971, he created “The Black List” to aid sports editors in helping to hire qualified black journalists. Only nine names were on the list when he started, but by 1983 it had grown to more than 90.

When the Globe hired him in 1973, he was the only black reporter in America covering major league baseball on a daily basis for a major newspaper.