CHICAGO — I always look forward to this time of the summer because, for just one night, I get to spend a portion of it with greatness.
The 2024 Sam Lacy Pioneer Award, given annually by the NABJ Sports Task Force, in which I am a rank-and-file member, selected eight well-deserving individuals and one college tennis team to receive the award.
The award is named after Lacy, the first Black member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in 1948 and inducted into the writer and broadcaster wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1998.
For over nine decades, Lacy was a pioneer as a Black newspaper sportswriter, reporter, columnist, editor, and television/radio commentator.
Each of this year’s nominees hailed or spent time in Chicago: Bill McKinney, Candace Parker, Dorothy Gaters, Ferguson Jenkins, Isiah Thomas, Kenny McReynolds, Ken Williams, Walter Payton (Posthumous) and the 1991-92 National Championship Chicago State University Women’s Tennis Team.
Each Lacy winner shared a story—either in person or, in the cases of Thomas, Parker, and Williams, via video remarks or by son Jarrett Payton, who accepted for his late father, who died in 1999. Some came with tears, but all came with gratitude and humility.
“This one is personal to me because I know where it came from,” said Williams. He’s a former Chicago White Sox player and executive who built the 2006 World Series-winning club, its first since 1917, as the first Black general manager to win a World Series.
“He was more than Sweetness,” noted Jarrett of his father’s nickname as an NFL legend. “He was my hero and my dad.”
McReynolds, a five-time Emmy award-winning broadcaster whose career spans several decades, beginning in Chicago Black radio and then moving to local television, owed the award to its namesake: “Without Sam Lacy, there wouldn’t be any of us,” he said.
Parker, the former college and WNBA star and future hall of famer, told the audience of Black journalists, family, and friends at the Hilton Chicago ballroom that being honored in the city where her legendary hooping career first began was “totally humbling.”
The MSR spoke with three Lacy winners after they got their awards.
“The years that I played here, I was the first Cub to win a Cy Young and the first Canadian in the Hall of Fame,” said Jenkins, who spent most of his MLB career with the Chicago Cubs (1966-1973, 1982-83).
Jenkins strung together six consecutive seasons of 20 or more wins (1967-1972)—only Warren Spahn achieved something similar. His 284 career wins are the most by a Black pitcher in MLB history; he led the National League in complete games three times and once in the American League. Jenkins also played basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters (1967-69).
When asked about the very few Black pitchers in the majors today, Jenkins observed, “I think you have to nurture [the player] to become a position player. In my case, the scout who ended up signing me told me I was a better pitcher than I was a first baseman.”
Gaters was one of the country’s most successful high school basketball coaches. She coached girls’ basketball at her alma mater, Chicago Marshall, for 45 years. “It’s a tremendous honor to be with this class of great athletes and great people. I enjoyed my coaching career working with young people. We sent over 90% of our athletes to college,” she said proudly.
“When we finally realized that we were going to be undefeated, there was nothing that was going to stop us,” said Tiffany M. Brown, a member of the 1991-92 Chicago State women’s tennis team, the first all-Black Division I women’s tennis team to go undefeated (20-0) in a single season.
Coach Lonnie Wooden added, “We faced a lot of adversity because we were an all-Black team. It really refocused us on doing the things we set out to do.”
Now mayor of Zion, Illinois, McKinney spent more than 30 years in various front-office leadership roles, including leading the then-expansion Minnesota Timberwolves, which was among the winningest first-year expansion franchises in NBA history.
“I’m proud of my entire career—33 years in management positions and seven as a [NBA] player,” he told the MSR after accepting his Lacy. “For me to do it and not be a superstar … to have a 40-year NBA career when it was projected that I would not have one at all—I’m proud of what I’ve done.”