David Poole Anderson was born in Troy, New York on May 6, 1929. At the age of 16, he was hired as a messenger by The New York Sun. He received a degree in English literature from Holy Cross College in 1951. After college, he covered the Dodgers for The Brooklyn Eagle in 1953 and 1954 and then went to The Journal-American. He became a general-assignment sportswriter for The New York Times in 1966. He began writing the Sports of The Times column five years later. He received a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1981 and the Associated Press Sports Editors' Red Smith Award in 1994 for major contributions to sports journalism. He retired from full-time column writing in 2007 but continued to contribute columns to The Times after that on a part-time basis.
He wrote several books including In the Corner: Great Boxing Trainers Talk About Their Art, Muhammad Ali, and Pennant Races: Baseball at Its Best. He died on October 4, 2018 at the age of 89.
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