"Go West, Young Staten Islander!"  

John Drebinger

Legendary Sportswriter began career on Staten Island; helped turn a newspaper around with compelling writing and unique publicity stunt.

Born March 23, 1891 in New York City, the son of a violinist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In 1906, John and his parents moved to Staten Island, in a house at 340 Tompkins Ave. [no longer exists, naturally]. He was an accomplished pianist, and demonstrated great potential for a promising career, but ice skating on the Island unraveled his plans. He tried to adjust the fit on his skate by making a new hole with a knife through the strap; the knife slipped, slicing his thumb open, causing enough damage (and residual pain many years later) that he abandoned his first calling.

While attending Curtis H.S., he joined the track team and was able to run 100 yards in 10 seconds flat – earning the nickname “10 Flat”. With his track accomplishments, he was offered scholarships to NYU & Columbia, but turned them down in favor of something he found “more appealing”: working for the then weekly Richmond County Advance (which would eventually become known as the Staten Island Advance).

The editor-in-chief at that time was Edward Johnson, a friend of Drebinger. "10 Flat" was made sports editor, but he also covered political & crime stories. One day in 1915, Drebinger and Johnson were “sales-pitched” by a flamboyant figure named Billy Stephens, who proposed that the Advance sponsor him to drive a horse-drawn Prairie Schooner across the country to San Francisco, where they were having a World’s Fair (the Panama-Pacific Exposition). Stephens’ scheme included taking a writer from the Advance, who would document the journey.

Johnson found the proposal intriguing; he arranged for the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce to finance the operation (that was the plan, at least), told Stephens the Advance would pay for the wagon and horses and that if he made it all the way to San Francisco he was free to sell them and keep the money, and he had the perfect reporter to cover the journey: John Drebinger.

Under the blessings of Advance Publisher William G. Wilcox, and loaded with pamphlets published by the Chamber of Commerce extoling the benefits of living and doing business on Staten Island, the horse-drawn Prairie Schooner with Drebinger, Stephens, and “roughneck” Edward Smith departed Staten Island’s Borough Hall, cheered on by Borough President Charles McCormack on Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1915. Stopping at City Hall in Manhattan, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel of New York gave the team a letter of greeting to be delivered to San Francisco Mayor James Rolph upon reaching their destination. Drebinger would write one article every week for the Advance documenting the journey.

When the team stopped to rest in small towns or wherever they took their breaks, people would scrawl their names and / or the town they lived in on the wagon; on both the canvas and the wood; they made no distinction. The “graffiti wagon” rolled into Washington D.C., the team met briefly with President Woodrow Wilson, who introduced them to his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, who enquired if Drebinger was undertaking this journey “for his health”. “Partly” was his response…

By time the team arrived in Kentucky, things started to fall apart. The man who came up this this scheme, Billy Stephens, became ill and died. His body was sent back to Staten Island. Drebinger and Smith continued as far west as St. Louis, where they ran out of money – and they weren’t getting any more from the Chamber.

They waited in St. Louis for nearly a month for their financial savior to arrive in the person of Christian Storberg, another Staten Islander who owned a chain of grocery stores. Storberg “took command” of the wagon and they continued on, for a while at least. The roads in Missouri were mostly mud, which made traveling exceedingly difficult and the extreme July heat was oppressive.

Storberg became ill along the way. Drebinger had a fight with the roughneck Smith in Kansas City. Both men abruptly departed, leaving Drebinger to fend for himself. To his credit, he made it all the way to Denver, but it was October and the snow falling in the Rockies put an end to the lone (and once again, broke) reporter traveling any further by a horse-drawn wagon.

Informing the Advance of his predicament, it was decided that the mission be abandoned. Drebinger sold the wagon and horses for $500 and got to San Francisco by more conventional means. His arrival was celebrated by many Staten Islanders who were attending the Fair – granted, they were expecting a horse-drawn wagon, but they were happy that Drebinger, who wrote about 40 colorful stories over the course of 10 months, had finally made it.

“Drebby”, upon his return home to Staten Island, learned that his weekly stories were wildly popular and helped to increase circulation of the Advance to such a degree that within the year, it became a daily paper (renamed the Daily Advance).

Advance Publisher Wilcox made it known to his editors that he intended on selling the paper once it showed profitability. Drebinger and Ed Johnson were under the impression that they would get “first dibs” on purchasing the paper from Wilcox. Apparently, Wilcox “forgot” about this arrangement, and sold the Advance in 1922 to politically connected partners, Judge Hyman Lazarus and one Samuel I. Newhouse (when Lazarus died two years later, Newhouse bought the shares from the heirs making him sole owner, and a budding publishing tycoon). While the new owners invited Drebinger to stay on, he felt somewhat slighted and decided if he was going to continue to be a salaried writer, he would do it in New York.

He signed on with the New York Times in 1923 as a sportswriter, traveling with the New York Baseball teams. His career lasted a staggering 41 years. From 1929 to 1963, he wrote the lead story of every World Series game played, totaling 203 consecutive games. He was the oldest sportswriter to travel the baseball circuit. He and his family lived on Richmond Turnpike (now Victory Blvd.) in New Brighton.

In 1964, “Drebby”, now 73 years young, departed the Times and was promptly hired by the New York Yankees as a public relations writer, which lasted until his “retirement” at age 80.

In speaking of his life on the road covering the games, John Drebinger recalled in an interview “…meeting people to me was everything. It was the main thing. I traveled everywhere, but I never cared much about scenery. I've seen it all…it was the people I met. That’s what made it such a great job.”

Recognized for his lifetime contributions to the sport of baseball, he recieved the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973.

John Drebinger died in October 1979 from his retirement home in Greensboro, North Carolina, bringing to a close a long, vibrant and colorful life of a man who “got his start” on Staten Island.

[Click HERE for a FULL-SIZED photograph of the Prairie Schooner and the crew at Washington D.C.]