Lou Niss
Longtime Mets fans who religiously bought the team yearbook each season will remember Niss as the older gentleman donning eyeglasses and a business suit in team photos amid the pinstripe-wearing Metropolitans. What I didn’t know about Niss, the Mets’ traveling secretary for 19 years, was that he’s a former Brooklyn Eagle sports editor who spent his newspaper career working for dailies in the borough.
According to the Bill Shannon Biographical Dictionary of New York Sports, found on the New York Historical Society Museum and Library site, Niss was born in 1903 in Minsk, Russia, and began his newspaper career in 1923 with the Brooklyn Times. A series of mergers eventually reduced Brooklyn’s four dailies to zero, but in 1941, Niss became the Eagle sports editor.
“When the Eagle folded in 1955 during a strike, Niss did publicity for Yonkers Raceway for three years (1955-58) and then joined Branch Rickey’s projected third major league, the Continental League,” according to the Biographical Dictionary article. “When the league forced expansion in the A.L. and N.L., Niss was hired by the Mets, initially as a publicist.”
But Niss in 1962 became the Mets’ traveling secretary, a position described by former Met outfielder Art Shamsky as “the person taking the blame for just about everything.” Shamsky, in his book “The Magnificent Seasons,” said Niss took the wrath of players on the ’69 squad upset about being stranded in a Montreal airport just before the All-Star break.
“The perfect traveling secretary is a person who can handle the pressure, doesn’t care and is a little little hard of hearing,” Shamsky wrote. “Lou Niss fit all those criteria.”
Niss was making sure his players were at ease right from the start.
During his first spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., Niss walked up to rookies Al Jackson and Choo-Choo Coleman, who according to independent columnist Milton Gross were the first former Negro League players to be living and eating at the same hotel as their white teammates at a permanent training facility in Florida.
Jackson and Coleman decided to go for a walk instead of hanging out in the lobby of the swank beachfront Colonial Inn. Niss, wanting to make sure they knew they were welcome, told them “we’re all here together.”
“If anything bothers you, tell me,” Niss told them. “That’s my job. I’m getting paid to see that all the players are comfortable.”
Niss spent 19 seasons with the club before retiring. He died in 1987.
Thanks Dirk!
Are you a relative by any chance?
Dirk – thanks so much for recognizing our grandfather. Greg is my brother and this story has made its way around the family. He passed away 25 years ago right about this time of the year before getting a chance to write the book on the Mets that he threatened for years – Mets the team that didn’t cost a nickel and never spent a dime. Some of the stories out there also say that he hired Judy Wilpon early on after Fred Wilpon made a sales call on the Mets for some office equipment.
Wow, would have loved to have read his book. He could have offered a perspective that no one else could. You guys must have heard some incredible stories from him.
Lou Niss was my great-uncle (our grandfathers were brothers), and he was an amazing man. The circumstances surrounding his name change from Nisonoff to Niss merit at least one fascinating chapter in that oh so tantalizing book. My Uncle told me a couple of stories about some housekeeping/dirty laundry with those Mets teams of the 1960’s and 1970’s that would have made for a great read. Truly an amazing man who was simply perfect for The Amazin’s!