Taylor, Dan

Dan Taylor – (1977)

 

Dan Taylor has been involved in sports his entire life, both as a participant and a newspaper sports reporter.

Taylor lettered in both track and football at Lorain High in 1918-1919 as a five – foot – eight, 125 – pounder. Upon graduating from Lorain High in 1919 he became sports editor of the Lorain Times – Herald, the predecessor to The Journal.

As sports editor he organized a semi – pro football team made up of former Lorain High athletes (Lorain Metropoles, 1920-21) and a semi – pro basketball team.

Taylor left Lorain in 1922 to become sports editor of the Cleveland Times, a brand new newspaper. At 21, he was the youngest sports editor of a daily newspaper in a major league city.

The Times went out of business five years later and Taylor went to work for the old Cleveland News. He then joined the Cleveland Press in 1944 and has been there ever since.

Three times during his career, Taylor left the newspaper business, first in 1928-30 and again in 1941 he promoted professional boxing in Cleveland. The other time, 1941-43, he served as publicity director for the Cleveland Indians.

As a sports writer he specialized mostly in baseball and boxing. He spent ten years traveling with the Indians as a baseball writer. In boxing he covered heavyweight championship fights involving every champion from Jack Dempsey to Muhammad Ali.