and he was subsequently diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome. He died three months after the operation, never having left the hospital. Among other claims, the plaintiffs contended that Schaap's surgery should have been postponed, that he should have been taken off the amiodarone, and that his lungs should have been given time to heal before the performance of the surgery. The court dismissed the claim against the hospital on the ground that the physicians were not employees of the hospital. The plaintiffs' claims against the three physicians went to trial in 2005 in Manhattan. On July 1, 2005, after nine days of deliberations, a jury found that all three physicians had been negligent, but also found that the negligence of only one of the physicians had caused Schaap's death. That physician was a cardiologist who the plaintiffs had contended was negligent by not looking at the pre-operative chest X-ray. The jury awarded the plaintiffs a total of $1.95 million in damages. Personal life Schaap was married twice. His first wife was Madeline Gottlieb; their divorce was finalized in March 1981. Schaap remarried to Trish McLeod shortly thereafter. He was the father of six children—Renee, Michelle, Jeremy, Joanna, Kari and David—and had five grandchildren. Schaap's younger brother was lawyer William Schaap. The jazz historian Phil Schaap was his cousin. Around 1955, Schaap befriended Bobby Fischer, who was at the time a 12-year-old chess prodigy, and would later become a world chess champion. In 2005, prompted by questions posed by Schaap's son Jeremy, Fischer acknowledged that the relationship was significant and that the elder Schaap had been a "father figure" to him. Fischer was still resentful that Dick Schaap had later written, among many other comments, that Fischer "did not have a sane bone left in his body". Honors The Sports Emmy division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences renamed their writing category "The Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award." The 2005 Emmy Awards in this category was won by Jeremy for a SportsCenter piece called "Finding Bobby Fischer." In 2002, Schaap was honored posthumously by the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) with the Red Smith Award. In the same year, he was also inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame, which created a Dick Schaap Award for Outstanding Journalism. On June 8, 2015, Schaap was inducted posthumously in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association's Hall of