American sports journalist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the WCCO 830 AM radio station. For 20 years, he was also a panelist on the weekly television program Sports Show with Mike Max which aired Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. on WUCW 23 in the Twin Cities metro area. He wrot for the Star Tribune for 75 years until his death in 2020.
After an unsuccessful stint as a vacuum cleaner salesman, 27-year-old Hartman became the acting general manager of the Minneapolis Lakers in 1947. Hartman helped build what would become the first dynasty in the NBA.
Hartman was a popular, widely read and widely heard sports columnist throughout his career. For seven decades, Hartman served as the “radio and print voice of Minnesota sports.” On 11 September 1945, Hartman wrote his first column for the Star Tribune newspaper and would continue writing columns with the newspaper until his death in 2020. From 1955 until his death, Hartman also appeared as a radio sportscaster and commentator on Minneapolis’s WCCO Radio.
One of the elements of his style – often caricatured by local comics and other radio personalities – was his habit while interviewing a sports figure of referring to him or her as “my close personal friend”.
Hartman published two books, Sid!: The Sports Legends, the Inside Scoops, and the Close Personal Friends, an autobiography, and Sid Hartman’s Great Minnesota Sports Moments.
Hartman married Barbara Balfour in 1964. They divorced in 1972. Hartman’s son Chad Hartman also has a radio show on WCCO. He also had an adopted daughter Chris Schmitt.
In December 2016, Hartman was hospitalized in Minneapolis after falling and breaking his right hip. He underwent surgery to repair his hip the following day.
Hartman turned 100 in March 2020. He had 21,149 bylines by that time. He died later that year on 18 October. His final column was published by the Star Tribune that same day.
Link to Wikipedia biography