The Power of Words. GERRY GOLDSTEIN: Before Barnicle, Liebling

9.1.98
GERRY GOLDSTEIN: Before Barnicle, Liebling

       Mark down these names, all of which relate to newspapering in America: Liebling, Barnicle, Ignoto.
       Ignoto? Yes — a basketball referee whose name appeared in The New York Times day after day in the 1920s. Ignoto was irrepressible. He worked high school games everywhere, sometimes several of them simultaneously. Resolutely, the Times identified him in its game summaries.
       How did Ignoto do it? Actually, he didn't. There was no Ignoto. He was invented from scratch by A.J. Liebling, later to become a noted writer for The New Yorker and an outspoken critic of the American press. So it's exquisite irony that allegations against Mike Barnicle, late of The Boston Globe, are that he indulged in fabrications, and cribbed material from the work of none other than: A.J. Liebling.
       Liebling heard a different drummer from the start; Dartmouth expelled him for refusing to attend chapel. He countered by enrolling in Columbia University's School of Journalism, which he later characterized as having "all the intellectual status of a training school for future employees of the A & P."
       According to his 1963 obits in both the Times and The Providence Journal, where Liebling worked in the late '20s, here's how our man breathed life into referee Ignoto:
       Liebling's first job was in the sports department of the Times, where one of his tasks was to compile basketball box scores. The Times, punctillious as ever, insisted that each of these carry the name of the referee.
       One night, Liebling was caught short. A high school correspondent failed to identify the referee. What to do? Liebling had the answer — he inserted the name Ignoto — Italian for "unknown."
       According to the Times: "Deciding he was on to a good thing, Mr. Liebling stopped asking for the referee's name. Ignoto appeared at games all over the East Coast, sometimes several in a night."
       When the sports editor finally caught on, said the Times, he was not amused, and handed Liebling his hat. The charge: "frivolity." Soon afterward, Liebling showed up seeking work at the Journal. One can only marvel at whatever creativity he employed to finesse the Ignoto affair.
       Liebling in person could be an intimidating presence, says Faith McNulty of Wakefield, a New Yorker staff writer in the 1950s. "I found him pretty scary — he could be very silent and broody. He was not easy to talk to," she recalls.
       But she considers his writing "absolutely glorious. He was funny, incisive, cutting to the heart of matters." Indeed, Liebling wasn't much for pulling punches, especially when he was savaging the American press for its drift toward corporate gray: He attributed the demise of the old New York World, for instance, to "a particularly pusillanimous ownership."
       Anyway, we can point to the redoubtable A.J. Liebling as proof that the fallen can rise; all a beleaguered writer needs is solid material. So if you see Barnicle around, slip him an idea for a great column:
       See, there's this guy, Ignoto's the name, and he . . .

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