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Glenn Dickey

Glenn Ernest Dickey Jr. dominated Bay Area sports journalism for over four decades with his fearless, unvarnished commentary that made him the region's most controversial and widely-read columnist. Born February 16, 1936 in Virginia, Minnesota, Dickey migrated to California with his parents—father Glenn Sr., a U.S. Forest Service employee, and mother Madlyn Emmert, a schoolteacher—when he was ten years old. After graduating from Sonora High School in 1954 where he wrote sports for the school paper, Dickey attended UC Santa Barbara before transferring to UC Berkeley, earning his bachelor's degree in 1958. As Sports Editor of The Daily Californian, he honed the direct writing style that would become his trademark. His journalism career began at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Watsonville Register-Pajaronian as Sports Editor (1958-1963), where he was famously hung in effigy for criticizing the local team—an early preview of his uncompromising approach. Dickey joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1963 as sportswriter before becoming columnist in 1971, retiring nearly twenty years ago after transforming Bay Area sports discourse. He pioneered coverage of women's sports locally and won "Best Sports Stories" awards in 1963, 1968, 1971, and 1977. A member of the Newspaper Guild, Baseball Writers Association of America, and SAG-AFTRA, Dickey authored more than fifteen books including definitive works on Bill Walsh, Al Davis's Raiders, and the Oakland A's dynasties.