COBBLEDICK, GORDON (31 Dec. 1898-2 Oct. 1969), sports writer for the PLAIN DEALER, was born in Cleveland and studied mining engineering at Case School of Applied Science before joining the Plain Dealer in 1923, covering the police beat and city hall. He worked for the CLEVELAND TIMES in 1926, but shortly returned to the Plain Dealer, succeeding Henry P. Edwards as the baseball writer. His coverage of the Cleveland Indians throughout the 1930s culminated in exposure of the "players' rebellion" in 1940 against manager Oscar Vitt. As a war correspondent in the Pacific Theater during WORLD WAR II, Cobbledick's V-E Day dispatch from Okinawa, contrasting the news from Europe with the costly campaign still continuing against Japan, was widely reprinted and eventually canonized in Richard Morris and Louis Snyder's A Treasury of Great Reporting.
Although Cobbledick was rewarded with a general column upon returning to the Plain Dealer, he was called back to athletics in 1946 upon the death of sports editor Sam D. Otis. "Cobby" edited the sports section, and his "Plain Dealing" column was a popular feature, despite (or because of) such whimsical conceits as his insistence that GOLF was not a "sport" but merely a "game." Retiring in 1964, Cobbledick conducted a sports program on WEWS-TV for a time and authored a 1966 biography of Indians slugger Rocky Colavito, entitled Don't Knock the Rock. He married Doris V. Mathews and had 2 sons, William and Raymond. He died shortly after moving to Tuscon, Ariz., in 1969.