George Vecsey (Sportswriter.  Born, Jamaica, NY, July 4, 1939.)  Starting as a part-timer handling high school sports at Newsday in 1956, George Spencer Vecsey progressed to a columnist for The New York Times.  Shortly before graduating from Hofstra (where he majored in English), Vecsey became a full-time sportswriter at Newsday in February 1960.  He rapidly progressed to college sports and by 1962 covered the fledgling Mets.  In 1968, Vecsey moved to The Times, handling mainly college basketball and major league baseball.  Over the next 14 years, he wrote about many subjects for The Times besides sports, but, in 1982, joined the roster of regular “Sports of The Times” columnists.  Vecsey’s father, George, sports editor of the old Long Island Press in the 1930s, was dismissed for trying to organize editorial employees for the then-new Newspaper Guild, and subsequently worked at the Daily News and The Associated Press.  Vecsey’s brother, Peter, is the noted N.B.A. columnist for the New York Post.  Vecsey was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters by Hofstra in 1990.