David van Dyck dies at 76; former Sun-Times journalist was 'gold standard' of sportswriters

Sun-Times (left)/Provided

David van Dyck, a Chicago sportswriter and former Sun-Times journalist, died in Fort Myers, Florida, his family said. He was 76.

Mr. van Dyck died Nov. 22, but his death was only recently reported on social media. No services were held.

Sun-Times sports editor Chris De Luca first met Mr. Van Dyck while covering baseball in the 1980s.

“As a competitor and a colleague, he was one of the most respected sportswriters in Chicago,” De Luca said. “The copy desk loved him because his copy was clean and always early. Dave always had a great story to tell.”

Mr. Van Dyck was born in 1947 in Washington, Illinois, where he started in sports writing after his high school basketball coach felt bad about cutting him from the team and found him a job at a local paper. He went on to earn a degree in English literature from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he became sports editor of the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette.

It was at the Sun-Times that Mr. Van Dyck left his mark on sports journalism, teaming with Joe Goddard on the baseball beat.

In addition to his baseball coverage, Mr. Van Dyck also covered auto racing, specifically the Indy 500, where he was at the center of a “fraternity of writers,” Sun-Times colleague Herb Gould said. Mr. Van Dyck was always the first to grab a coffee and Danish in the morning while covering the race.

Gould, initially a news and features writer, was assigned to cover the race not knowing anything about the sport, but Mr. Van Dyck became a mentor as he did to many through the years.

“I really was not at all versed in auto racing, and as time went on, I came to really like it, in part because of the way Dave introduced me to it,” Gould said. “I’ve never been a gearhead. … But I know why Dave loved that sport.”

Gould said Mr. Van Dyck’s strong suit was his connections on his beat, connections he made simply by taking the time to talk to people. He recalled walking down “gasoline alley,” the garage area where race cars are stored, repaired and prepared, on his first day, stopping with Mr. Van Dyck to talk to racers and team bosses about tires and cars that had recently debuted.

“He slid so easily from the conversation to being a reporter, getting some information that was valuable,” Gould said. “He was always just there to talk to people.”

Mr. Van Dyck covered more than two dozen Indy 500s and a number of Daytona 500s, along with the Chicago Bears' only Super Bowl victory in 1986 and the home run derby between the Cubs' Sammy Sosa and Cardinals' Mark McGwire in 1998. His work later made him a two-time finalist for the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest award presented by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and earned him the Washington Roots Award — an honor given to those from his hometown who made "significant contributions."

In 1992, Mr. van Dyck was named the Sun-Times national baseball beat writer before moving to Fox Sports on TV around the turn of the century. He later covered baseball for the Tribune.

Former Sun-Times reporter Toni Ginnetti said he was a “colleague, not a competitor,” though that didn’t stop him from getting scoops — including when Bo Jackson made the switch from football to baseball.

One that stood out to her was his scoop on who replaced Cleveland left fielder Albert Belle’s alleged corked bat. She said she didn’t know how he got the scoop, but suspected it was his habit of talking to the “little guys”: security guards, secretaries and groundskeepers, among others, who had entrusted him with stories through the years.

“He was just adept and never lost his touch at being able to write, convey and get the scoops,” Ginnetti said. “He was the gold standard of what you’d want to be in that job.”

Mr. Van Dyck went on to work with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he was one of a handful of people on the Veterans Committee, which would reevaluate older players who had been passed over for nomination.

“I wish I could tell him again how much we all respected him and how much he always meant to us in the profession,” Ginnetti said. “It was an honor to be on his team.”

He moved to Florida when he retired. He is survived by his wife, Connie van Dyck; three children, Laura Silvestri, Geoffrey van Dyck and Amy Muscolino; brother, Peter van Dyck, and sister, Susan van Dyck; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.