
September 11, 1945 is an important date. That is when Sid Hartman’s first official article ran in the Minneapolis Daily Times. It was Sid’s first byline, called “The Roundup”. Just like that sounds, it was a roundup of sports stories shared on page two of the sports page. In the column, Sid talked about Gopher Football selling tickets at a rate better “than any of the war years”, along with nuggets on Gopher war veterans.
Since that date almost 75 years ago, Sid Hartman has written about every significant sports event in Minnesota. Take a moment to let that sink in. 75 years of sports history from one writer’s eyes and viewpoint. I’ve always joked that somehow he’s still going despite all those press box hot dogs. It’s a big number.
It started long before 1945 though. Sid was a corner newspaper boy. He would bike to the paper, pick up his stack and sell them in downtown Minneapolis.
Sid shares: “We didn’t have too much in our house. I was pretty ambitious, and I was about 8-years old when I got my first used bike. Bought it for about 10 bucks, and started going downtown. There was a guy at the old Tribune called Joe Katzman who took a real liking to me. Next thing I know, I had some of the best corners in town. 5th, 6th, 7th and Nicollet at one time. When I was 13-years old, I was delivering about 700-800 papers a day.”
This was the early 1930’s and Minneapolis at that time was home to bootleggers. Some would call them gangsters. Sid called them customers. They would hang at a place called Jack Doyle’s between 4th and 5th and Hennepin. Upstairs was a betting parlor. As Sid describes it, this is “before Hubert Humphrey cleaned the town up, it was wide-open.”
“The papers would come off the press about 4:00. This was the late edition. I’d go up there, guys like Chickie Berman, Barney Berman, Isadore Blumenfeld (aka Kid Cann), Tommy Banks, I remember all these names. I’d sell ten papers, and I’d get 50 cents to a buck from those guys for those papers and they were two cents in those days.”
Sid, to this day, defends many of those people we look back on as gangsters. “I think Kid Cann gets a lot of bad raps for things he never did. They were bootleggers and got caught. There were a lot of people out in Wayzata who were bootleggers and had connections so nobody bothered them.”
No matter if we describe them as gangsters, bootleggers, criminals or whatever label you prefer, it’s certain that Sid’s early newspaper route took him to colorful places.
Sid then began running circulation, or news runs, for the paper while he was in high school. Then in 1941, Sid was befriended by Louie Mohs who was the circulation manager at the Times. There was only one news run downtown, and Mohs gave it to Sid.
“Mohs was a very sports-minded guy, and said to me one day that Cullum (Dick Cullum, the Times’ sports director) is looking for some young kid to work in sports. Why don’t you do them both? He hired me, $23 every two weeks so I was doing great. I was there four weeks, and the most important job on the desk is the slot. All of sudden I was in the slot. Well, I knew nothing. But what helped me is the old-time guys on the copy desk who I befriended when I was 8,9, 10-years old. They were putting out the paper, I was getting credit for it.”
To wish Sid a happy birthday, or make a donation in Sid's name on behalf of his grandson, Quintin, click here.