Sidney Hartman (March 15, 1920October 18, 2020) was an American sports journalist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the WCCO 830 AM radio station. For 20 years, he was also a panelist on the weekly television program Sports Show with Mike Max, which aired Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. on WUCW 23 in the Twin Cities metro area. He continued writing for the Star Tribune until his death in 2020.
Early life
Hartman was born at Maternity Hospital on Glenwood Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on March 15, 1920. He grew up in a Jewish family in north Minneapolis. His father, Jack Hechtman, was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States at age 16, changing his name to Hartman after he arrived. Sid Hartman's mother, Celia Weinberg, immigrated to the United States from Latvia at age nine. Both his parents died in 1972.
Jack Hartman could neither read nor write and suffered from alcoholism. He made his living by driving a delivery truck, primarily making furniture deliveries. Celia Hartman owned an apparel store on the north side of Minneapolis and also did the bookkeeping for Jack Hartman's delivery business. The family moved frequently, living first at a home on Aldrich Avenue, then at a home on Humboldt Avenue, and later at homes in the 700 block of Irving Avenue.
Hartman attended Talmud Torah Jewish School from age 10 to 14, before enrolling at Minneapolis North High School. He began selling newspapers at age nine. As a teenager, he developed the use of newspaper boxes, where customers would pay for newspapers on the honor system by leaving coins in a change box.
Hartman attended Minneapolis North High School but dropped out his junior year when he received a lucrative news run for delivering the Minneapolis Tribune. In 1941, he lost his Tribune news run when the Des Moines newspaper magnate John Cowles Sr. bought the Tribune Company. For a brief time, Hartman became a vacuum salesman, but the occupation did not suit him. In his autobiography, Hartman conceded that he was "the world's worst vacuum cleaner salesman." After Pearl Harbor, Hartman attempted to enlist in the United States military during World War II but was rejected because of his asthma.
In the early 1940s, Hartman got a key break from Louie Mohs, the circulation manager of the Minneapolis Times. Mohs gave him the Times news run for downtown Minneapolis, which paid well and got Hartman out of the vacuum business. In 1944 Hartman got an even bigger break when Mohs recommended him to Times sports editor and columnist Dick Cullum, who was looking for a sports desk intern. Cullum hired Hartman, the beginning of a sports writing career that would last over 75 years.
Minneapolis Lakers
As a 27-year-old in 1947, Hartman became the acting general manager of the Minneapolis Lakers. Hartman helped build what would become the first dynasty in the NBA.
Sports columnist
Hartman was a popular, widely read and widely heard sports columnist throughout his career. For seven decades, Hartman served as the "radio and print voice of Minnesota sports." The columns he wrote were strong on reporting, while the writing was less admired. Dick Cullum, Hartman's first editor, explained it this way: "Writers are a dime a dozen, but reporters are impossible to find." Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated observed that "English sometimes appears to be his second language." On September 11, 1945, Hartman wrote his first column for Minneapolis' Star Tribune newspaper and would continue writing columns with the newspaper until his death in 2020.
From 1955 until his death, Hartman also appeared as a radio sportscaster and commentator on Minneapolis' WCCO Radio. One of the elements of his style – often caricatured by local comics and other radio personalities – was his habit while interviewing a sports figure of referring to him or her as "my close personal friend". Over the years, his "close personal friends" have included George Steinbrenner, Bob Knight, Lou Holtz, and Carl Yastrzemski.