Meet The Sports Writers

Bill Burgess · #1 02-14-2007, 07:43 AM

--------------------------------------------MEET THE SPORTS WRITERS

Since the 1980's I've conducted this project on sports writers. I presently have 754 of them, and have presented 473 of them here (62.8%).

I have endeavored to create this very specialized photo tribute to the sports writer. I have found photos for the vast, over-whelming majority of them. But I still lack photos for 9 of the older writers, including: Michael J. Kelly, Lewis E. Meacham, David Litton Reid, George Leonard Moreland, Henry L. Farrell, Alfred Wright, Charlie Van Loan, George Young and James Whitfield. I also lack photos for 4 modern sports writers. Al Thomy, Ed Linn, Moss Klein, and Jack O'Connell. It would be greatly appreciated if any photos could be found for any of these good men.

If you enjoy this photo gallery, you might also like our other ones, too.

Historical, Archival Photographs---Pre-1900---Negro L.---Vintage Panoramic Pictures---Brooklyn Dodgers---Members' Gallery---Runningshoes Presents: Photo Op---Meet The Sports Writers

Photos of the following individual players---Hank Aaron---Pete Alexander---Ty Cobb---Eddie Collins---Sam Crawford---Jimmy Foxx---Lou Gehrig---Rickey Henderson---Rogers Hornsby---Joe Jackson---Walter Johnson---Nap Lajoie---Connie Mack---John McGraw---Mickey Mantle---Christy Mathewson---Willie Mays---Babe Ruth---George Sisler---Tris Speaker---Pie Traynor---Rube Waddell--- Honus Wagner---Ted Williams---Zack Wheat---Rare Ty Cobb ---Rare Babe Ruth---Bill's Babe Ruth---Rare Ted Williams---Bill's Rare Finds ---Babefan's Fantastic Vintage Baseball photos
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Index to Meet The Sports Writers: Sequence of Photos:

Code:

Page 1.

2. Left: Henry Chadwick: Total Baseball, 8th. Edition, 2004, pp. 951. 
2. Right: Henry Chadwick: The Ballplayers, ed. by Mike Shatzkin, 1990, pp. 173.
2. Bottom, Right: Henry Chadwick: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, Introduction, pp. 28.
3. Top, Left: JG Taylor Spink: SABR's The National Pastime, 2003, #23, pp. 45.
3. Top, Right: JG Taylor Spink: SABR's The National Pastime, #7, 1987, pp. 33.
3. Bottom, Left: JG Taylor Spink: The Sporting News, December 22, 1962, pp. 15. 
3. Bottom, Middle: JG Taylor Spink: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 496.
3. Bottom, Right: JG Taylor Spink: The Baseball Story, by Fred Lieb, 1950, pp. 261.
4. Top, Left: Francis Richter: INTERNET
4. Top, Middle: Francis Richter: Richter's History and Records of Baseball, by Francis C. Richter, 1914, Introduction.
4. Top, Right: Francis Richter: Early Innings, compiled/edited by Dean A. Sullivan, 1995, pp. 157.
5. Top: John Foster: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
5. Bottom, Left: John Foster: The Sporting News, February 15, 1917, pp. 4, column 4.
5. Bottom, Middle: John Foster: 
5. Bottom, Right: John Foster: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.
. Left: Bill Phelon: Cincinnati Times-Star, August 19, 1925.
6. Middle: Bill Phelon: The Sporting News, August 27, 1925.
6. Right: Bill Phelon: Baseball Magazine, September, 1908, pp. 32.
6. Bottom: Bill Phelon: Cincinnati Times-Star, December 7, 1912.
7. Top: Grantland Rice: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
7. Middle, Middle: Grantland Rice: Internet:  Or one can use the less-clearly defined Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 286.  Or one may use the more cropped The Lively Ball, by James A. Cox, 1989, pp. 129.
7. Bottom, Right: Grantland Rice: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.
7. Far Bottom: Grantland Rice: The Tumult And The Shouting: My Life in Sport, by Grantland Rice, 1954, pp. 273.
8. Left: Tim Murnane: INTERNET
8. Middle: Tim Murnane: The Sporting News, February 15, 1917.
8. Tim Murnane: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
8. Right: Tim Murnane: Baseball Magazine, April, 1917, pp. 191.
9. Left: Sam Crane: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
9. Right: Sam Crane: INTERNET:
10. Top, Left: Fred Lieb: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
10. Top, Right: Fred Lieb: The Baseball Story, by Fred Lieb, 1950, pp. 35.
10. Bottom, Left: Fred Lieb: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.
10. Bottom, Right: Fred Lieb: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 297.
11. Left: Shirley Povich: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.
11. Middle: Shirley Povich: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 275.
11. Right: Shirley Povich: New York Times, June 7, 1998, pp. ?, Obituaries.
12. Left: Charles Dryden: INTERNET:
12. Right: Charles Dryden: Chicago Tribune, February 12, 1931, section 2, pp. 27. 
13. Top: Damon Runyon: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
13. Bottom, Left: Damon Runyon: INTERNET
13. Bottom, Middle: Damon Runyon: INTERNET:
13. Bottom, Right: Damon Runyon: INTERNET:
13. Bottom, Far Right: Damon Runyon: New York Times, December 11, 1946.
14. Top, Left: Westbrook Pegler: INTERNET:
14. Top, Right: Westbrook Pegler: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 264.
14. Bottom: Westbrook Pegler: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 267.
15. Top, Left: Heywood Broun: INTERNET:
15. Top, Middle: Heywood Broun: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171. Article on Heywood Broun by Bill Knight, of Western Illinois Univerisy, pp. 32.
15. Top, Right: Heywood Broun: New York Times, December 19, 1939, 
15. Bottom: Heywood Broun: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171. Article on Heywood Broun by Bill Knight, of Western Illinois Univerisy, pp. 35.
16. Ring Lardner: INTERNET:
17. Ferdinand Lane: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.
18. Left: Dan Daniel: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.
18. Middle: Dan Daniel: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/ed. by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 165.
18. Right: Dan Daniel: The Sporting News, July 18, 1981.
19. Top: Henry Edwards: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 320.  Or  the much more degraded SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
19. Bottom, Left: Henry Edwards: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.
19. Bottom, Middle: Henry Edwards: Baseball Magazine, March, 1942, pp. 447.
19. Bottom, Right: Henry Edwards: Sporting News, January 1, 1925
19. Bottom, Far Right: Henry Edwards: The Sporting News, August 11, 1948, pp. 14.
19. Bottom: Henry Edwards:  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993.
20. OC Caylor: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 79.  Or, SABR'S Baseball's First Stars, 1996, pp. 25.
21. Left: Red Smith: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 308.
21. Right: Red Smith: INTERNET:
21. Bottom: Red Smith: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 316.
22. Bottom, Left: Dick Young: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 356.
22. Bottom, Right: Dick Young: New York Times, Biographical Service, September 2, 1987.
22. Bottom, Right: Dick Young: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993. 
23. William B. Hanna:
24. Walter Barnes: America's National Game, by Albert G. Spalding, 1911, pp. 344.
25. John 'Jack' Kofoed: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.

Page 2. 

26. Mark Irving Vaughan: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 508.
26. Mark Irving Vaughan: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, 36.
27. Tom Meany: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 496.  Corbis. 
28. Ken Smith: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 497. Hall of Fame Website.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 133.
28. Ken Smith: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.
29. John Carmichael: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 506.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 185.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
30. John Drebinger: Corbis, Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 229.  New York Times, April 1, 1964.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.
31. James Crusinberry: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 449. Corbis.
31. Bottom: All: James Crusinberry: Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
32. Joe Cashman: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 405.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 30
33. John Hoffman: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 407.  Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
34. Charles Segar:  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 500.
35. Alan Gould:
36. Frank Graham: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505. Hall of Fame website.  The Tumult and The Shouting, by Grantland Rice, 1954, pp. 272.
37. Jimmy Powers:  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 494.
38. Ed Prell: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 501.  Street & Smith's Official Yearbook, 1966 Baseball, pp. 15.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
39. Harold Parrott:  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 495.  The Lords of Baseball, by Harold Parrott, 1976, pp. 154.
40. Harry Neily:  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 14.
40. Harry Neily: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 341.
41. Harold 'Speed' Johnson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 12-13.
41. Harold 'Speed' Johnson: Wheaton College Special Collections
42. Mel Webb: Sporting News, December 21, 1939, pp. 8.  Boston Globe, October 24, 1961.
43. George Munson: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, Introduction 34.
44. Jim Long: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 498.
45. Hugh 'Hek' Keough:
46. William Spink: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, Introduction pp. 14.  Or the much more degraded Sporting News, January 30, 1952, pp. 16. 
47. Al Spink: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, Introduction pp. 61.  Sporting News, January 30, 1952, pp. 16. 
48. Charles Spink:
49. John B. Sheridan: Baseball Magazine, October, 1908.

Page 3. 

51. Chilly Doyle: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 499.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 119.  Sporting News, February 2, 1939, pp. 10.
52. Harry Salsinger: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.  Hall of Fame website.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993.
52. Bottom: Left and Right: Harry Salsinger: Detroit News newspaper photo collection. (Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI)
53. Ed Bang:  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 494.  Corbis, Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 47.
54. J. Roy Stockton: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 508.  
55. Warren Brown: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 510.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
56. Francis J. Powers: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 496.  Corbis.
57. Left: Hal Lanigan: Baseball Magazine, October, 1908.  The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 335.
57. Right: Hal Lanigan: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 335.
58. Marion Francis Parker: Baseball Magazine, October, 1908.  
58. Right: Marion Parker: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 349.  Or the much more degraded SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
59. Sam Greene: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46.
60. Martin J. Haley: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.  St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 19, 1977, pp. 46
61. O. B. Keeler
62. Ed Danforth
63. Harry Grayson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 507.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.
64. Joe Vila: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505. Sporting News, February 7, 1929, pp. 8.
65. Sy Sanborn: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 506.
65. Sy Sanborn: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
65. Sy Sanborn: Baseball Magazine, September, 1908, pp. 29.
66. Edgar Munzel: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.  Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
67. Ed Balinger: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.  
68. Sid Keener: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 495.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.
69. Thomas Richter: Richter's History and Records of Baseball, by Francis C. Richter, 1914, pp. 298.
70. Hugh Fullerton: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 499. Baseball Magazine, September, 1908, pp. 29.
71. Harry Keck: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 105.
72. Tom Swope: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 504.  Sporting News, July 7, 1938, pp. 14.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 40.
73. Arch Ward: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 497.  Corbis.  
74. Ed Burns: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 508.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
75. Lyall Smith:  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46.

Page 4.

76. Harry Cross: New York, April 4, 1946, pp. 23.  Sporting News, April 11, 1946, pp. 16.
77. Sid Mercer: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 498.  Corbis.
78. Jack Malaney: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 498.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.
79. Denman Thompson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 247.
80. Garry Schumacher: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 504.
81. Top: Edgar G. Brands: Corbis, Baseball: 100 Years of the Modern Era: 1901-2000, From The Archives Of The Sporting News, edited by Joe Hoppel, 2001, pp. 100.
82. Howard Mann: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 506.
83. Burt Whitman: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 506. Sporting News, May 18, 1949, pp. 38.
84. Max Kase: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 507.  Corbis.  
85. Joe Williams: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 31.  The Joe Williams Baseball Reader, edited by Peter Williams, 1989, Introduction, 21, 23.  New York Times, February 16, 1972.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.
85. Joe Williams: Life Magazine photo archives
86. Joe Jackson: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
87. Walter Trumbull: Baseball: An Illustr4ated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward/Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
88. Boze Bulger: Baseball: An Illustr4ated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward/Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.
89. William Weart, Sr.: Sporting News, December 13, 1917, pp. 2.
89. William Weart, Sr.: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 347.
89. William Weart, Jr.:
90. Billy Murphy: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 21, 1925.  The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 339.
90. Billy Murphy: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 339.
92. J. Ed Wray: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 199.  Sporting News, July 20, 1939, 
93. Gordon Cobbledick: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 343. (From Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thursday morning, October 5, 1961, 1961, pp. 49.).  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 281.  Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 43. 
94. Stoney McLinn: Sporting News, October 20, 1938, pp. 7.  The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 337.
94. Stoney McLinn: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 337.
95. Len Wooster: Sporting News, June 12, 1941, pp. 6.
96. Frank G. Menke: New York Times, May 14, 1954.
97. Bart B. Howard: New York Times, February 13, 1941.
98. Gordon Mackay: Philadelphia Record, February 16, 1941.
100. Malcolm Bingay: New York Times, August 22, 1953.
100. Malcolm Bingay:  Detroit News newspaper photo collection. (Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI)

Page 5. 

101. George Young:
102. Jack Murphy:
103. Ward Morehouse:
104. Joe McHenry: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 30.
105. Charles A. Hughes: Baseball Magazine, September, 1908, pp. 29.
105. Charles A. Hughes: Detroit News newspaper photo collection. (Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI)
106. Tommy Holmes: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 304. (From Brooklyn Eagle, Wednesday, October 8, 1952.); Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 265. (From Brooklyn Eagle, wednesday, October 24, 1945, pp. 17.)
107. William J. Granger: Sporting News, June 12, 1941, pp. 6.
108. Thomas S. Rice: Sporting News, February, 1942.  
109. Sog Grauley: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 332.
110. Charles W. Dunkley: Sporting News, November 23, 1939, pp. 7.  Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1957.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
111. Willis Johnson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 42-43.
113. Stuart Bell: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 506.
115. Glen L. Wallar: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 500.
116. Jack Keller: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.
118. James Gould: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.  Baseball Magazine, 
119. Jack Ryder: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.  SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
120. Richards Vidmer: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.  Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 249. (From New York Herald Tribune, Monday, October 9, 1939, pp. 18.)
121. Gerald Sylvester: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.
122. Gunboat Hudson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.  Corbis.
123. Dick Farrington: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.
124. Davis J. Walsh: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 494.  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 26, 1966.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
125. Gus Rooney: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 494.

Page 6. 

126. Edgar J. Geiger: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 495.
127. Bill McCullough: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 496.
128. William Braucher: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 496.
129. Charles P. Ward: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 407.
130. Frank Young: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 497.
131. Wayne Otto: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 498.
131. Wayne Otto: Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
132. Ed McAuley
133. Edward T. Murphy: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 498.
134. George E. Phair: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 499.
135. Francis Wallace: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 499. 
136. James P. Dawson: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 500.  Corbis.
137. James Gallagher: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 500.  The Chicago Cubs, by Warren Brown, 1946, pp. 208.
138. Paul Shannon: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 500.  Sporting News, January 26, 1939, pp. 10.
139. James O'Leary: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.
140. Henry L. Farrell
141. Dr. William Brandt: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 501.
142. Rud Rennie: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 501.
143. Garrett Waters: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 501.
144. Charles E. Parker: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 501.
145. Roscoe McGowan: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.  Corbis.  Street & Smith's Official Yearbook, 1966 Baseball, pp. 54.  New York Times, November 6, 1966, pp. 88.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 33.
146. Bill Slocum: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.
147. Red Rodney:
148. Left: James Isaminger: 1938 Sporting News article.
148. Middle: James Isaminger: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.
148. Right: James Isaminger: Sporting News, May 22, 1941.
148. James Isaminger: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
149. Bert Gumpert: Baseball As I Have Known It, by Fred Lieb, 1980, pp. 253.
150. Clifford Bloodgood: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.

Page 7. 

151. Wilbur Wood: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.
152. Bill Henry: Sport Pages of the Los Angeles Times, 1990, 108-109. (From LA Times, June 23, 1937; June 16, 1938.)
153. Hy Turkin: New York Times, June 25, 1955, pp. 15.
154. Bud Shaver: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp.  504.
154. Bud Shaver:  Detroit News newspaper photo collection. (Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI)
155. Volney Walsh: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp.  504. 
156. Cy Peterman: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 504.  Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 1978, pp. 6-C.
157. Herbert Simons: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 507. 
158. Ralph Cannon: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 507.
159. Art Morrow: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.
160. Bill Corum: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 508.  Corbis.
161. John Fenton: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 508.
162. Bill Dooly: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 508.
163. William McCarthy: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.
164. Nathaniel Gerstenzang: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.
165. Jack Lait: Corbis
166. Left: Braven Dyer: Corbis
166: Right: Braver Dyer: Sport Pages of the Los angeles Times, edited and with text by Bill Shirley, 1990, pp. 162.
168. Harold Kaese
169. Frank Rostock: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 343.
171. Jack McDonald
172. Art McGinley
173. Lee Allen: Sporting News, April 15, 1967. 
174. Milton Gross: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 351. (From the New York Post, Friday, October 16, 1964, pp. 92)
175. Fran Stann: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 347. (The Washington Evening Star, Thursday, October 3, 1963)  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 73.

Page 8. 

176. Don Basenfelder: Sporting News, January 11, 1945. 
177. Les Biederman: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 64.
178. Stan Baumgartner: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 213.  Sporting News, January 4, 1945, pp. 3.
179. Ed Batchelor, Sr.: Ty Cobb: His Tumultuous Life and Times, by Richard Bak, 1994, pp. 124.  Sporting News, April 6, 1939, pp. 9.
180. Jimmy Corcoran: Sporting News, February 4, 1944. 
181. James Carolyn: Sporting News, November 26, 1943.
182. Bill Cunningham: Corbis
182. Bill Cunningham: Life magazine photo archives
183. Bob Considine: Corbis
184. Jimmy Cannon: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 58.
184. Jimmy Cannon: Life Magazine photo archives
186. Jim Leonard: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 89.
187. Ed Pollock: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 147.  Corbis.  Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, November 2, 1976.
188. Vincent X. Flaherty: Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, pp. 263.  Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 71.
189. Ralph Davis: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 329.
190. EV Durling
192. C. William Duncan: Camden Courier-Post, April 28, 1967, pp. 45.
194. Arthur Daley
195. Paul Gallico: Corbis.  Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 121.
196. Ben Epstein: New York Times, August 26, 1958.  Corbis  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.
197. Ford Frick: Games, Asterisks, and People, by Ford Frick, 1973, pp. 53.  Hall of Fame website.  Corbis.
198. Gene Fowler: The Life and Legend of Gene Fowler, by H. Allen Smith, 1977, pp. 116, 209.  The Young Man From Denver, by Will Fowler, 1962, pp. 97.
199. Nat Fleischer: Corbis
200. Bill Farnsworth: New York Times, July 11, 1945.

Page 9.

201. James T. Farrell: Corbis
202. Murry Tynan: New York Times, March 17, 1943, pp. 21.
203. Jack Miley: New York Times, June 18, 1945, pp. 18.
204. Frank Gibbons: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 333. (From the Cleveland Press, Thursday, June 11, 1959, pp. 59.)  Cleveland Press, September 2, 1964.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 43.
205. Matt Gallagher
206. Sparrow Robertson: Corbis
207. John Gallagher: Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1946, pp. A1.  Chicago Daily Tribune, April 26, 1946, pp. 18.
208. Al Horwits
209. Doc Holst
210. Top: John Kieran: Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon, by Neal McCabe/Constance McCabe, 1993, pp. 159.  Corbis.  Hall of Fame website.
211. Marshall Hunt:
212. Jim Kilgallen: New York Times, December 23, 1982.
213. Raymond Kelly: New York Times, January 9, 1967, pp. 39.
214. Albert Keane: Hartford Courant, July 12, 1939, pp. 1.
215. Sam Lacy: Hall of Fame website.  INTERNET.
216. Al Laney
219. Havey Boyle: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 65.
220. William J. Hennigan:
221. Arthur Mann: Sporting News, November 13, 1946.
222. Rich Westcott:
223. William J. O'Connor: New York Times, July 30, 1957, pp. 23.
224. Edward Cochrane: Corbis.  Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 517.
225. Daniel Parker: Corbis.

Page 10.

226. Dick Walsh
227. Gene Kessler: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
228. Ed Rumill: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 30.
229. Herman Masin: INTERNET:
230. Quentin Reynolds: New York Times, March 18, 1965.
231. Chet Smith: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 65.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 64.
232. Wendell Smith: Hall of Fame website.  INTERNET.
233. Prescott Sullivan:  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 67.
234. Jack Ryan:  Corbis
235. Hy Hurwitz: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 30.
236. Abe Kemp: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 67.
237. Brian Bell:
238. Stanley Woodward
239. John Wheeler: Baseball: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns, 1994, pp. 167.  
240. Christy Walsh: The Giants of the Polo Grounds, by Noel Hynd, 1988, 111.  Baseball's Greatest Lineup, compiled/edited by Christy Walsh, 1952, dust jacket.  Corbis.  The Joe Williams Baseball Reader, edited by Peter Williams, 1989, Introduction, 21.
241. Herman Wecke: Sporting News, September 29, 1962.
242. William Wedge: Sporting News, September, 1951.
243. John Kuenster: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
244. Fred Corcoran: Corbis
245. Gus Steiger:  Life magazine photo archives
246. Sam Muchnick
247. Bill McGoogan: Sports Illustrated, September 26, 1955.
248. Whitey Lewis: Sports Illustrated, September 26, 1955.
249. Bob Holbrook: Corbis.  Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.
250. Joe King: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 56.

Page 11. 

251. Howard Roberts: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
252. Lou Smith: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 46.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 40.
253. Frank Yeutter: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.
254. Hal Middlesworth: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46. 
255. Nick Flatley: Personal family photo.
256. Robert Burnes: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.
257. Tommy Devine: Complete Baseball, Summer, 1951.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46.
258. Lou Niss: Sporting News, January 11, 1945.  
259. Harold Burr: Sporting News, January 11, 1945.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 33.
260. Peter J. O'Donnell: Personal family photo.
261. Fred Russell: INTERNET:
262. Oscar Reichow: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 520.  Corbis.
263. Austen Lake: INTERNET: Bob Richardson's website.
264. Roundy Coughlin
265. Bob Addie: Hall of Fame website.  Street & Smith's Official Yearbook, 1966 Baseball, pp. 66.  Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 353.  (Washington Post, Friday, September 10, 1965, pp. D1.)  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 73.
266. Ralph McGill
267. Rodger Pippen: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 248. (Baltimore News-Post, Wednesday Evening, July 5, 1939.)  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 27.
268. Paul Rickart:
269. Lawton Carver: Top of a newspaper column, 'Fair or Foul', (Lebanon Daily New (Penn.), Friday, September 30, 1949, pp. 15.
270. Leo Macdonnell: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 53.
271. Bunk MacBeth:
272. William S. Hennigan:
273. Bottom: Mark Roth:
274. Paul Bruske:
275. Purves T. Knox: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992.

Page 12.

276. Carl Lundquist:
277. Leo Fischer:  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
278. John Gillooly: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 30.
279. Buck O'Neil: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.  Sports Illustrated, September 26, 1955.
280. Frank Grayson:
281. Wilfrid Smith: INTERNET  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
282. Edgar Hayes: INTERNET  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46.
283. Eddie Edgar: INTERNET
284. Tom Laird: personal family photo
285. Tim Cohane:
286. Bill Rafter: Sporting News, June 12, 1941, pp. 6.
287. Top: George M. Graham: Corbis.
288. Joe Krueger: Milwaukee Sentinel
289. William O. McGeehan: Corbis 
291. Ban Johnson: Corbis.  Library of Congress baseball photo collection.
292. Charles Webb Murphy: Library of Congress baseball photo collection.
293. Harry Pullian: INTERNET, The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, Introduction 29.
294. John Heydler
295. Ernest Barnard
296. William Veeck
297. Horace Fogel: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, Introduction 11.
298. William Locke
299. Joe Bihler
300. Ed Sullivan: Corbis

Page 13. 

301. George William Daley: Baseball as I Have Known It, by Fred Lieb, 1977, pp. 69.
302. George Herbert Daley:
303. Larry Woltz: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 100. (From the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville, Florida, Thursday, October 17, 1912.)
304. William Kennedy McKay: Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 24, 1944, pp. 8.
305. Abe Yager: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 348.  SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74. 
305. Abe Yager: Sporting News, June 12, 1941, pp. 6.
306. Guy McI. Smith
307. William Curley: New York Times, October 24, 1955, pp. 27.
308. Fred Mosebach: Sporting News, April 23, 1936.
309. Fred Van Ness: Baseball As I Have Known It, by Fred Lieb, 1980, pp. 35.
310. Jacob C. Morse: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 353.
311. Charles Zuber:
312. Robert W. Curtis: New York Times, February 22, 1939.
313. J. Ed Grillo
314. Elmer Bates: Painesville Telegraph, February 19, 1930, pp. 1/February 20, 1930, pp. 4.
315. Harry Simmons:
316. James Whitfield:
317. Ren J. Mulford: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.  INTERNET.  The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, Introduction 60.
318. Joe Flanner: Library of Congress Baseball Photo Collection.
319. Simon Goodfriend: New York Times, November 8, 1939, pp. 23.
320. Otto Floto
321. William Rankin: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, Introduction pp. 15.
322. A. B. 'June' Rankin:
323. Raymond M. Ziegler: Atlantic City Press-Union, February 24, 1953.
324. Richard Guy, Sr.: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 333.
325. Bill Lee:

Page 14. 

326. Charles Emmet Van Loan
327. Harvey T. Woodruff: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992.
328. Bernard Thompson
329. Jim Schlemmer: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, by Marc Okkonen, pp.
330. Herman Nickerson: Baseball Magazine, July, 1913.
330. Herman Nickerson: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 340.
331. Frank M. Smith: Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1933, pp. 27.
332. Ed W. Smith: Both Bottom: Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
333. John Sanburn Phillips: New York Times, March 2, 1949, pp. 25.
334. Joseph Murphy: Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
335. George Ade:  Corbis
336. Finley Peter Dunn: Corbis
337. Franklin Pierce Adams: Corbis
338. Paul Webster Eaton: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 330.
339. Dr. Alfred R. Cratty: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 328.
340. Lloyd Lewis: Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
341. Harry Weldon: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992
342. Gerhard Otto Tidden: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992.
343. Malcolm A. MacLean: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992.
344. Joseph S. Smith: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 344.  
344. Joseph S. Smith:  SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
346. Joseph Potts: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.
347. Edward D. Soden: Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.
348. T.P. Sullivan: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, Introduction 42.
349. James R. Price: The National Game, by Alfred H. Spink, 1911, pp. 352.
350. Will Grimsley: INTERNET

Page 15. 

352. Myron Townsend: Baseball Magazine, October, 1908.
353. David Davies: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 329.
354. J.J. Karpf: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 334.
356. Al Watts: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 347.
357. John Cremer: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 328.
358. Joseph Cummings:
359. George Rice: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 343.
361: Richard Collins: Baseball Magazine, October, 1908.
362. Ernie Lanigan:
363. Ed Westlake: Baseball Magazine, September, 1908, pp. 29.
363. Ed Westlake: Right:  Chicago Daily News Photos, 1902-1933 (Chicago History Museum)
364. Charles Power: SABR's The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History: Special Pictorial Issue: The Dead Ball Era, Spring, 1986, Volume 5, pp. 74.
366. William Kelsoe: The National Game, by Alfred Spink, 1911, pp. 213.
367. Frank Leonardo Hough: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992.
368. John Pollock - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide
369. William Wreford - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide
371. Frank Hard - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide
372. Brice Hoskins - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide
373. Robert Chilton - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide
374. Andrew Rowley - 1910 Spalding Base Ball Guide

Page 16.

376. W. B. McVickar
377. James McShane
378. Jay Thatcher
379. Joseph Estoclet
381. Richard Tobin
382. James Gilruth
383. Harry Niemeyer
384. George Firstbrook
385. George Moreland
386. Michael J. Kelly
387. Lewis Meacham
388. David Lytton Reid
389. John Gruber
390. Alfred Wright
391. They Built The Game
395. George Vecsey
396. Bob Newhall: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, A Complete Pictorial History of the "Hall of Fame" Decade, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 46.
397. Joe Nolan: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, A Complete Pictorial History of the "Hall of Fame" Decade, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 46.
398. Bob Saxton: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, A Complete Pictorial History of the "Hall of Fame" Decade, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 46.
399. Joe Tumelty: Baseball Memories, 1930-1939, A Comploete Pictorial History of the "Hall of Fame" Decade, by Marc Okkonen, 1994, pp. 61.

Page 17. 

401. Joe Reichler
402. Allison Danzig: Corbis.
402. Allison Danzig: Life magazine photo archives
403. Milton Richman
404. Ray Kelly: Hall of Fame website.
405. Bill Heinz: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 132.
406. Hal Lebovitz: Hall of Fame website.
407. Allen Lewis: Hall of Fame website.
408. Bob Stevens: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 67.
409. Furman Bisher: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 12, 19, 21.  Internet.
410. Jim Murray: Hall of Fame website.
411. Si Burick: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 40.
412. Bob Broeg: Hall of Fame website.  Corbis.  Super Stars of Baseball, by Bob Broeg, 1971, pp. Introduction.
413. Bus Saidt: Hall of Fame website.
414. Doug Wallop: 
415. Jack Lang: Corbis.  Hall of Fame website.  INTERNET.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 33.
416. Bob Hunter: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 51.
417. Ritter Collett: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 40.
418. Robert W. Creamer: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171, pp. 78.
419. Larry Ritter: 
420. Ed Linn
421. Ed Fitzgerald
422. Leonard Koppett: Hall of Fame website.  San Jose Mercury, June 24, 2003.  INTERNET.
423. Jesse Outlar
424. Earl Lawson: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 40.
425. David Condon: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 318. (Chicago Daily Tribune, Wednesday, August 3, 1955.)

Page 18.

426. Al Thomy: 
427. Joe Durso: Hall of Fame website.
428. Phil Collier: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 51.
429. Bob Wolff: Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 53.
430. Joe McGuff: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 49.
431. Jerome Holtzman: Hall of Fame website.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 36.
432. Joe Falls: Hall of Fame website.  INTERNET.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 46.
433. John Steadman: INTERNET.  Baseball Memories, 1950-1959, An Illustrated Scrapbook of Baseball's Fabulous 50's, by Marc Okkonen, 1993, pp. 27.
435. Glenn Dickey: INTERNET.
436. Hal Bodley: INTERNET
437. Joe Goddard: INTERNET
438. Ross Newhan: Hall of Fame website.
440. Murray Chass: Hall of Fame website.
441. Charley Feeney: Hall of Fame website.
442. Hal McCoy: Hall of Fame website.
443. Peter Gammons: Hall of Fame website.
444. Bill James: INTERNET
445. Tracy Ringolsby: Hall of Fame website.
446. Rick Hummel: Hall of Fame website.
447. Larry Whiteside: : Hall of Fame website.
448. Skip Bayless: Baseball Extra: From the Eric C. Caren Collection, by 2000, pp. 414. (From Dallas Times Herald, Thursday, May 2, 1991.)
449. Larry Stone: INTERNET
450. George Lederer: INTERNET

Page 19.

451. Bob Klapisch: INTERNET
452. Bill Plaschke: INTERNET
453. Mike Klis: INTERNET
454. Dave Van Dyck: INTERNET
456. Blackie Sherrod: INTERNET
457. Dan Jenkins: INTERNET
458. Steven Goldman: INTERNET
459. King Kaufman: INTERNET
461. Tim Marchman: INTERNET
462. Gary Smith: INTERNET
463. Gregg Easterbrook: INTERNET
464. Joaquin Henson: INTERNET
466. Rick Riley: INTERNET
467. Bob Ryan: INTERNET
468. John Feinstein: INTERNET
469. William Rhoden: INTERNET
471. 'Woody' Paige: INTERNET
472. Jason Whitlock: INTERNET
473. Michael Wilbon: INTERNET
474. Mitchell Album: INTERNET

Page 20.

476. Terry Pluto: INTERNET
477. Peter Finney: INTERNET
479. Mike Downey: INTERNET
480. Doug Krikorian: INTERNET
481. Joe Henderson: INTERNET
482. Bill Simmons: INTERNET
484. Bob Elliott: INTERNET
485. Steve Hirdt: INTERNET
486. Moss Klein: INTERNET
487. Bill Madden: INTERNET
489. Ken Nigro: INTERNET
490. Jack O'Connell: INTERNET
491. Nick Peters: INTERNET
492. Mark Whicker: INTERNET
493. Unidentified sports writers
494. Helms Press' Hall of Fame
495. 1933 Roster of BBWAA sports writers, listed according to city.
496. The BWAA roster as of January 1, 1956.
498. Support/Feedback post
499. Bob Nightengale: INTERNET
500. Rob Neyer: INTERNET

Page 21.

501. Tom Boswell: INTERNET
502. Wesley Fricks: INTERNET
503. Richard Bak: INTERNET
504. Charles Alexander: Spoke, A Biography of Tris Speaker, 2007, dust jacket; INTERNET
505. John Thorn: INTERNET
506. Gene Carney:INTERNET
507. Al Stump: INTERNET
508. Steve Gietschier: INTERNET
509. Don Honig
510. Pete Palmer: INTERNET
511. Marty Appel: Baseball's Best: The Hall of Fame Gallery, 1977, dust jacket; INTERNET
512. Lloyd Johnson
513. Norman Macht
514. Marc Okkonen
515. Daniel Ginsburg
516. Maury Allen: INTERNET
517. Gene Schoor
518. Lamont Buchanan
519. John Rosenburg: The Story of Baseball, 1962, dust jacket
520. John D. McCallum: Ty Cobb, 1975, dust jacket
521. Jack Kavanagh:
522. William Kirk: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 57.
523. William Koelsth: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 57.
524. Fred Hewitt: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 45.
525. Frank Hutchinson: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 40.

Page 22.

526. Jesse Matteson: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 40.
527. Ralph McMillan: Boston Public Library: McGreevey Collection
528. Os W. Brown: Boston Public Library: McGreevey Collection
529. Samuel Carrick: Boston Public Library: McGreevey Collection
530. Arthur Cooper: Boston Public Library: McGreevey Collection
531. T. J. Burke: Boston Public Library: McGreevey Collection
532. C. E. Beane: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 31.
533. E. M. Thierry: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 68.
536. Norman Rose: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 48.
537. George Pulford: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 48. 
538. Louis Van Oeyen: Baseball Memories, 1900-1909, by Marc Okkonen, 1992, pp. 48.
653. David Thigpen:  Life Magazine photo archives

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to mention a caution, when you see a year listed above a photo of a sports writer. That year listed does NOT mean that the photo was taken that year! It simply means that the photos appeared in a publication that year. But, many writers used an old trick. They would submit one of their best photos, sometimes from years past, to the publication. The photo might have been taken in their youth!! Just so you know their tricks of the trade. Many people continue to do this to this day. Put a photo from their youth at the top of their sports columns!

Bill Burgess · #2 02-14-2007, 07:47 AM

Henry Chadwick:

Born: October 5?, 1823, Exeter, St. Thomas, England; (Apparently, his exact date of birth is disputed, as well as his year.)
Died: April 20, 1908, Brooklyn, NY, age 84; Henry is buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY.

Henry Chadwick began writing baseball for the Yankee Clipper in 1858 and stayed there until January 1, 1879, when Al Wright replaced him.

New York sports writer/author;
Family moved Brooklyn, NY (Sept. 21, 1837);
New York Times cricket reports (1856),
Brooklyn Eagle Cricket/BB editor (1856-94),
New York Herald,
New York World sports writer, (13 yrs),
New York Sun (6 yrs),
Sporting News,
Sporting Life,
Yankee Clipper (1858 - January 1, 1879),
Ball Players' Chronicle (1867-69).

Henry Chadwick was to baseball, what Wilhelm Steinitz was to chess. Its first great thinker, its most important early voice, and its chronicler. Although most sources list his year of birth as 1824, he gave October, 1823 as his birth to the 1900 US census taker. Without his efforts, The game might never have adopted the infield fly rule, might have been scored differently. He also wrote against gambling. Started playing around 1947, started writing BB around 1958, as sports writer on New York Clipper. He used a form of scoring a game, and borrowed from fellow sports writer Michael J. Kelly of NY. He supported playing until a tie was broken, thus avoiding games ending in tie games.

In 1896, NL voted him pension for life. Editor-in-Chief of NL Spalding Baseball Guide until his death (1881-08). John B. Foster succeeded him in that job until John died in Washington, DC in 1941.
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Biograpy Resource Center:
British-born Henry Chadwick enjoyed many sports, but he had a particular love of American baseball. He was the first to write extensively about the game in books, magazines, and newspapers over a period of more than fifty years. Jerry J. Wright wrote in Dictionary of Literary Biography that Chadwick "was universally accepted as the greatest authority on baseball in the country, and from behind the scenes he posed a powerful, influential force for shaping the game." Chadwick developed the first box score and many of the rules of the game, and he chaired the rules committees of both the National Association of Base Ball Players and later the National League. His writing and continuous involvement are largely responsible for the way we understand and appreciate baseball and are the reasons he came to be called the "Father of Baseball."

Chadwick was born in England, and his early interests included fishing, billiards, chess, and, at school, cricket. His mother taught him piano, and while he showed talent, the young Chadwick became a journalist like his father, James, editor of the Exeter Western Times and a well-known radical. The elder Chadwick had high moral and ethical standards and freely spoke out on political and social issues, but frustration eventually led him to take his family to the United States, where they settled in Brooklyn, New York, while he continued to work as a journalist.

Chadwick completed a public-school education and continued his study of music. At seventeen he worked as a stringer for the New York Times, reporting on local cricket matches, and at twenty he became a contributor to the Long Island Star in Brooklyn, where his contributions covered many sports, including cricket, sailing, and horse racing. His fine writing came to the attention of other editors, and Chadwick was kept busy for years writing sports stories and theater reviews for many newspapers. He also taught music and composed, and it was through music that he met his wife, Jane Botts.

Like his father and half brother, Edwin, Chadwick wrote about the need for reforms, particularly in sports where he saw the general public excluded from the exclusive cricket and yacht clubs of the time. He wrote instructional books about the game of baseball, which he saw as a means to strengthen American society through fair play, morality, organization, and good health, as cricket had done in England. When the New York Times granted his request to cover baseball exclusively, the game began to consume Chadwick's life. Although he still covered other sports for various papers, when it came to baseball, he would write about it at no charge if there were no games being played for him to cover. It was Chadwick who proclaimed in print that baseball "is generally considered the National Game amongst Americans." His first feature article in the New York Times was a comparison of the various differences in the rules and play of the Knickerbockers, the National Association of Base Ball Players, and the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players.

In 1858 Chadwick became the first baseball editor of the New York Clipper. He wrote up accounts of the initial all-star game between players from New York and Brooklyn in the New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, and Long Island Star, but his article in the Clipper was the most detailed. These stories introduced baseball to the readers of those newspapers and Chadwick as the expert on the game. His authority was assured after the publication of the first of his many books on the sport, Base Ball Rules. Chadwick was named chairman of the rules committee of the National Association of Base Ball Players, which gave him the power to interpret the rules while influencing the game. He continued to promote it for its health benefits, particularly in annuals like Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player.

Baseball took a back seat to the U.S. Civil War, but Chadwick kept the game visible. On October 21, 1861, three months after the Battle of Bull Run, he arranged and promoted the "Silver Ball Match," between the best players from New York and Brooklyn, a game sponsored by his employer, the Clipper. He covered the war and baseball-related stories, such as accounts of entire baseball and cricket teams that joined together.

Chadwick was a northerner, and his wife was a southerner, but they did travel together to Washington, she to visit relatives, and both to attend the theater. At a performance of Hamlet where President Abraham Lincoln and his Union generals and their wives were present, Chadwick had the opportunity to write his observations on something other than baseball.

After the war, Chadwick went back to sportswriting and took a position as baseball writer for the New York Herald. In 1861 he had developed the scorecard, and in 1867 he included a box score, using letters to indicate various plays. He continued improving this system and set down the first player statistics, such as the batting average and earned-run average. In his How to Play Base Ball, Chadwick advances the strategies of the game, comparing them to military attacks, or as his publisher, A. G. Spalding, called the game, the "bloodless battle." Prior to the Civil War, a ball that hit the ground once before being caught counted the batter out. Chadwick wrote in the 1860 edition of Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player that fielders should "try their utmost to take it on the fly, and not wait until it is almost touching the ground, and then, Boy-like, try to take it on the bound. Nothing disappoints the spectator, or dissatisfies the batsman so much, as to see a fine hit to the long field caught on the bound in this simple, childish manner." Through Chadwick's efforts, the fly ball rule was changed in 1864.

Chadwick's efforts also cleared up the blurred line between amateur and professional baseball when in 1871, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formed in New York City. Three years later, this group adopted Chadwick's suggestions for establishing a batter's box and for prohibiting players from betting on their own teams. Not all of his suggestions were accepted, but more were incorporated into the rules than not. Although the game became more professional, Chadwick was disturbed by what he saw as immoral influences that had crept into the game, such as gambling, greed, and intoxication. In an attempt to recoup lost revenues, the leagues raised the price of admission, and the players wanted their cut. But higher prices further decreased attendance, and profits. Chadwick wrote in the Clipper that the admission should be lowered to twenty-five cents, and the pays of the players, with the exception of the pitchers and catchers who deserved more, should be set at $100 a month for six months.

On January 1, 1879, Chadwick left the Yankee Clipper and was succeeded by Alfred Wright.

While the technical aspects of baseball rose to new heights, the discipline and morality among the players, in Chadwick's view, had sunk to new lows. He wrote an occasional column for Sporting Life, and in his August 10, 1887 "Chadwick's Chat," he wrote that "if this season teaches anything, not to mention that of past seasons, it is the utter folly of expecting good play and thorough team work out of a party of players, the majority of whom take no care of themselves in keeping their bodies in a healthy condition for the exacting work of the diamond field. To suppose that a man can play ball properly who guzzles beer daily, or indulges in spiritous liquors, or who sets up nightly gambling or does worse by still more enervating habits at brothels is nonsense."

Chadwick spoke out against the evils of gambling, particularly the practice of players' throwing games, and he was able to have betting pools banned from the stadium. He opposed the Players League and criticized its organizer, John Ward, in print for forming the League for the purposes of extorting unreasonable salaries. Chadwick's influence was instrumental in breaking up the Players League, and its members joined the National League and American Association, both of which have survived to present time. He continued to suggest improvements for the game and write about his favorite sport, but he was often disappointed by the realities of life in the stadiums and on the fields.

Chadwick lived his entire life in the United States as a resident of Brooklyn and continued his crusade to establish baseball as an American institution into his eighties. He had a long association with Spalding, a former baseball player, manager of the Chicago White Stockings, and publisher who had gone into the business of manufacturing sporting goods. For more than twenty-five years Chadwick edited Spalding's Base Ball Guide.

Chadwick and Spalding had very different ideas about the origins of baseball. Chadwick contended that it evolved from the British game of rounders, which also uses a field, ball, bat, and bases. Spalding, who contended that baseball was a home-grown game, established a commission headed by former league president Abraham G. Mills to determine the truth. In 1907 the Mills Commission found that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, a decision that has endured.

When he died Chadwick was honored by flags flown at half staff in ball parks across the country. He was one of the initial inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame when it opened at the legendary home of the game in Cooperstown in 1939. "For the many sportswriters who followed him, Henry Chadwick set a precedent," wrote Wright. "He was part of the action, on and off the field, that he described to the public. He not only wrote the news, he made it. Equally important, his columns and books conveyed to readers that real sport was not a fantasy but a reality to be taken seriously, with rules and codes and structure to transcend their lives. Further, he felt that the public should consume performed sporting contests that were developed, packaged, and delivered by a diverse industry of sport providers. As a sports journalist, Chadwick was a major innovator and developer in the evolution of that industry."

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Family: Born October 5, 1824, in St. Thomas Exeter, Devon, England; immigrated to United States, 1837; died of pneumonia and heart failure, April 20, 1908; son of James (a journalist) and Henrietta Chadwick; married Jane Botts, August 19, 1847; children: two daughters.

AWARDS: National League, honorary membership, 1894, lifetime pension, 1896, for service to the league and contributions to baseball; honored by President Theodore Roosevelt, 1903; journalism medal, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis World's Fair, 1904; inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY, 1939.

CAREER: Journalist, writer, musician, theater critic, and sports advocate. New York Clipper, New York, NY, baseball editor; U.S. Civil War correspondent; New York Herald, baseball writer.
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BB Library---Wikipedia Chadwick article---Chadwick article

Sporting Life obituary, April 25, 1908, pp. 4.------------------------------New York Times' obituary, Tuesday, April 21, 1908, pp. 9.

Sporting Life obituary, April 25, 1908, pp. 5.

Bill Burgess · #3 02-14-2007, 03:48 PM

The Sporting News was the most important and best sports publication that ever was. Sadly, it isn't any longer, nor has been for a long time.

Alfred Henry Spink - founded Sporting News in St. Louis, MO, on March 17, 1886, where it has been ever since. He sold it to his brother Charles Spink in 1895.

Charles Spink was a fabulous owner/editor, and ran it from 1895, until his death on April 22, 1914.

Charles' son John George (JG) Taylor Spink inherited it, and ran it from April 22, 1914, until his death December 7, 1962. He was as fantastic as his Dad had been. During WW II, he had sent free copies to US service men overseas, and expanded it to include all sports, mainly including boxing & football.

Upon his death, it was inherited by Charles Claude (CC) Johnson Spink, who ran it from December 7, 1962 until he sold it in January, 1977, to the Times Mirror Corporation for $18m. He did a respectable, credible job, but was not in the same league as his 2 immediate predecessors, who had been inexhaustible, relentless powerhouse perfectionists. In 1990, the paper stopped running obituaries, which to me was a bitter, devastating blow. That editorial decision caused me to abandon it.

From its inception in 1876 to 1937, it ran only 8 page issues. By WWII, it was up to around 40, during the 70's-80's it often ran up to 100 page issues. Today, it usually runs 68 page issues.

While it started out as a general sports publication, in 1900, it became primarily a baseball newspaper, and hence adopted the moniker, 'The Bible of Baseball'. And it richly earned its title until 1942. In the fall of 1942, The Sporting News incorporated football, boxing, basketball and hockey into its regular lineup, and has kept them there ever since.

Policy-wise, TSN opposed the Players League of 1890, calling it "outlaw", supported Ban Johnson/Charlie Comiskey's launching of the American League, was a worthy adversary of Commissioner Judge Landis, always supporting AL President Ban Johnson, fully promoted BB stars such as Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, & Babe Ruth, did not support Joe Jackson's or Buck Weaver's innocence in the Black Sox scandal, and supported the Yankees in disciplining Babe Ruth.

In 1996, it incorporated 4 color photos.

Today, it sells around 520,000 copies every week, and is an important publication, but no longer stands out from its competition. It requires its obituaries section & interviews from former players to give it its former historical relevance, continuity & context.

Despite its decline, I must still highly recommend using it as a primary research resource.
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In 1962, J.G. Taylor Spink was the first recipient of the award that bears his name.

John George Taylor Spink began his journalistic career as a teenage copyboy at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Within months he moved to his father's sports weekly, The Sporting News, and quickly progressed through the ranks until, with his father's passing in 1914, Spink took over as publisher, editor, and advertising manager of the paper. He also wrote weekly columns, stories, and editorials.

Spink's passion for baseball earned him the nickname "Mr. Baseball" and his accomplishments are voluminous. The driving force behind The Sporting News becoming "The Bible of Baseball," it was Spink's idea to send the sports weekly to U.S. troops overseas during both World Wars I and II. Spink's aid was instrumental in uncovering the truth behind the Black Sox scandal. He took over publication of the Official Baseball Guide in the 1940s and was the author of two baseball classics: Judge Landis and Twenty-Five Years of Baseball (actually ghost-written by staff member Fred Lieb) and Daguerreotypes.

Under Spink's direction, The Sporting News not only reported the National Pastime, but helped develop and elevate the game. Opinionated and gruff, yet compassionate and understanding, Spink's contributions are still evident throughout baseball and sports journalism. As Dan Daniel wrote, Spink was "militant for the right thing and the best interest of baseball in particular, and honest living in general."
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John George (JG) Taylor Spink:

Born: November 6, 1888, St. Louis, MO,
Died: December 7, 1962, Clayton, MO, age 74

Inherited The Sporting News from his Dad in 1914, and owned, guided the best sports publication ever until his death December 7, 1962. After his death, an award was created for the best sports writers, the Spink Award. It's a lifetime achievement award for the sports writing profession. There is a wing in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame for their plaques. However, some people do not feel that this entitles the recipients of the Spink/Ford Awards to be considered, "in the Hall of Fame".

The impact of a death, (outside one's own family), lies in its consequence. I stand by my opinion that his death was the most devastating to baseball as a whole, based on its impact of its coverage. It is difficult to equal the overall baseball impact of the loss of the guiding light of the sport's most important publication.

Taylor Spink ran The Sporting News, from 1914, to his death on December 7, 1962. Oh unhappy day for baseball when he passed! His successor, Johnson Spink, lacked the greatness to keep up the standards. And all of the sport suffered greatly for the loss of its chronicler.

All deaths are a loss, but some ripple on in their impacts forever. One would have had to be familiar with the paper to understand the profundity of the loss. He could not be replaced, and was not. Baseball was never covered/documented as well since. If it had been, we would have had a constant and continuous stream of interviews with Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Frank Robinson, Jackie Robinson, Clemente, Kalilne, etc. ever since they retired until they died. But we didn't. And how much the poorer we all are for those never conducted interviews!

We haven't come close to hearing what the best players since 1962 had to say about their sport, up to today. And that would never have been allowed to happen if Taylor Spink had lived. He simply would not have allowed such a devastating blackout of the opinions of its most glittering ornaments.
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Essay by David Quentin Voigt
Spink, John George Taylor (November 6, 1888 - December 7, 1962), baseball publicist, was born in St. Louis, Mo., the son of Charles Claude Spink and Marie Taylor. Two years before his son's birth, Charles Spink had abandoned a homesteading venture to assist his brother Alfred in founding Sporting News, a St. Louis-based weekly journal of sporting and theatrical news. Alfred Spink soon left Charles in control of the struggling publication. By concentrating on baseball news, Sporting News soon rivaled New York Clipper and Sporting Life as a leading baseball weekly.

As editor, Charles Spink won local support through his attacks on Chris von der Ahe, the controversial owner of the St. Louis Browns, and national readership through his support of the Players' League in 1890 and his attacks on monopolistic major-league owners during the 1890's. When Spink supported Byron Bancroft Johnson's successful bid for major-league status for the American League in 1903, he gained an important ally.

Taylor Spink spent his early years training to succeed his father as publisher. Since both parents worked on Sporting News, his interest was encouraged, and he was permitted to leave high school in the tenth grade to further his apprenticeship. He served stints as office boy, copy boy, writer, and assistant editor.

Spink attained a responsible position with Sporting News in 1912, at a time when circulation had fallen to 12,000 a week. Blaming his father's ill-advised support of the interloping Federal League for alienating major league officials, he tried to contravene that policy. When his father died April 22, 1914, Taylor, who had just married Blanche Keene (on April 15), cut short his honeymoon to assume the editorship. The Spinks had two children.

Reversing his father's policy, Spink ingratiated himself with the baseball establishment by opposing the Federal League "invaders." Sporting News circulation improved, while that of Sporting Life declined to the point that it ceased publication (1917). For the next two years Spink enjoyed a monopoly of baseball news, but the outbreak of World War I posed a threat to Sporting News. When weekly circulation dropped to 5,000, American League president Johnson, a family friend, rewarded Spink's loyalty by buying 150,000 copies each week for distribution to servicemen.

After the war, baseball and Sporting News prospered. By working seven days a week, Spink made it indispensable, the "Bible of Baseball," the best source for statistics, box scores, records, and coverage of all levels of professional play. To gather detailed information, Spink deployed an army of correspondents and stringers in every baseball town, tirelessly directing their activities by persistent phone calls and telegrams. As a result, by 1942 Sporting News, with its sixteen pages of small type and its colorful headlines, boasted a weekly circulation of 100,000 copies. By then Spink was wealthy, but most of his earnings came from ancillary publications such as Sporting Goods Dealer, yearbooks of baseball facts and statistics, and books and pamphlets on various aspects of the game. Among these The Baseball Register, first published in 1940, annually sold more than 500,000 copies.

Nevertheless, the heart of Spink's publishing empire was Sporting News, which thrived under his fussy leadership. He himself wrote sparingly, delegating even his bylined columns to others. (This was true also of his biography of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.) His strengths were providing imaginative story leads for others to pursue and his martinet style of editorial direction. Unlike his father, Spink supported baseball's status quo, preferring to inform, enlighten, and amuse readers rather than undertake crusades. Both baseball and Sporting News profited from national publicity resulting from the awards and trophies he provided.

When World War II brought another circulation crisis, the baseball establishment again subsidized Sporting News by distributing 400,000 copies weekly to servicemen. But the postwar rise of rival sports and leisure publications threatened the life of a journal devoted wholly to baseball. Spink adapted by converting Sporting News into a lively tabloid and extending its coverage to other professional sports.

After his death at Clayton, Mo., Spink's son became publisher of Sporting News. The journal continued to prosper, but inroads from other sporting publications and his lack of an heir prompted him to sell Sporting News to the Times Mirror Company in 1977.
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His entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball, ----------------TSN's-Rookie of the Year award to Jackie Robinson in 1947.
-ed. by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 496, pp. 496.-------------------J.G. Taylor-Spink of The Sporting News presented the award.

JG Taylor Spink, Owner/Editor-In-Chief of the Sporting News, 1914-1962.---This shot was probably taken around 1942.

John McGraw/Taylor Spink,--------------------------------------Taylor Spink, left, with Jack Potter (right) on board ship. Potter, son of a
February 9, 1932--------------------------------------------------one-time co-owner of the Philadelphia Phillies

JG Taylor Spink (Sporting News' boss)/Ban Johnson (AL Pres.), probably late 1910's.

February 2, 1941, Hotel Commodore; New York Baseball writers' dinner;
L-R: New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, Babe Ruth, Ford Frick, Bill Slocum?, Taylor Spink.----------Frances Richter/Taylor Spink: 1912 World Series

Bill Burgess · #4 02-14-2007, 03:52 PM

Francis Charles Richter:

Born: January 26, 1854, Philadelphia, PA
Died: February 12, 1926, Philadelphia, PA, age 72,---d. bronchial pneumonia at home.

Article on Richter's Impact on baseball
Francis' Wikipedia page

Philadelphia sports writer/editor: Sporting Life, 1872-1926---54 years;
Was Editor-in-Chief of AL Reach Official American League Base Ball Guide (1902-1926, February 12, death);
Founder/Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, The Sporting Life, April, 1883 - 1917.

In those days, being a Guide editor was a position of enormous prestige/importance.

Mr. Richter was a noted amateur player in Philadelphia. In 1872, he started in newspaper work with the Philadelphia Day, eventually rising to managing editor. He moved to the Sunday World and Public Ledger in 1880, when The Day folded. He instituted the US's 1st full-fledged sports departments in the Phil. Public Ledger.

In 1876, the NL expelled the Phil. Athletics from the league. Consequently, Mr. Richter supported the the formation of the rival American Association (AA) in 1882. Mr. Richter founded the weekly Sporting Life in 1883, 3 years prior to the Spink Brothers founding The Sporting News, in 1886, in St. Louis, MO.

In 1883, Mr. Richter assisted organizing the Phillies as the NL came back to Philadelphia. He supported the Player's League in 1890, with his Sporting Life.

He wrote, "I have no very great cause to love the National League. What has it ever done for The Sporting Life? ... All the League ever did for The Sporting Life because it chose to act independently was to try and crush it."

When the AA folded in 1891, Mr. Richter was involved in several tries to break the monopoly of the NL. In 1894, he allied with Al Buckenberger, Fred Pfeffer & Billie Barnie in a failed try to revive the AA. Again in early 1900, he allied with Chris Von Der Ahe, Cap Anson & John McGraw to reform a new AA.

In 1901, he was named Editor-In-Chief of Reach Guide for 1902, which covered the AL. He continued in this role until he died.

In 1880, he started the 1st sports dept. ever in a newspaper, The Public Ledger.

Drew up National Agreement (1883),
Helped place Philadelphia Club in AA (1882),
Helped place Philadelphia club in NL (1883),
Helped assimilate AA into NL (1891),
Drew up Millennium Plan which ended baseball war.

Mr. Richter was offered the Presidency of the National League in 1907. He declined due to his obligations to the AL Reach Guide & his own Sporting Life.

In 1914, he wrote, "Richter's History and Records of Baseball", an expansion of his earlier Brief History of Baseball.

In WWI, Sporting News was granted a subsidy by ML Baseball. Mr. Richter's Sporting Life received no such kindness.

For many years, he was one of the official scorers for the World's Series games, sharing the honor with JG Taylor Spink, publisher of the Sporting News.

He founded Sporting Life in 1883, a weekly baseball paper, which became a great force in BB until he disposed of it in 1917, during the War. The motto of his publication, "Devoted to the Baseball Men and Measures, With Malice Toward None and Charity for All," sums up the character of Mr. Richter.

He was a columnist for Sporting News from Dec. 8, 1921 - Sept., 1925. His column, Casual Comment was often addressed to administrative matters. He was always at the top of the BB world, albeit behind the scenes, working for the betterment of the game he loved so much.

For a long lifetime of service to BB at its highest levels, I nominate him for the Taylor Spink Award. His every waking moment was happily devoted to BB. In April, 1946, he & 11 others were elected to BB Hall of Fame as sports writers (Honor Rolls).
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Some examples of Francis Richter's writings. In this case, on the subject of Babe Ruth, in the early 1920's.
(Sporting News, July 6, 1922, pp. 4, column 5; Casual Comment column)

1922 - "The recent additional disciplining of Babe Ruth by President Johnson for vile language to Umpire Dinneen, following other suspensions for offenses since his return to the game, has had a temporary quieting effect upon this inflated and ill-disciplined young man, but of the permanence of his reform there must be grave doubt, as his entire career shows that he has not the fundamental character to build real greatness in his chosen profession upon. Ruth has been spoiled by his popularity with the unthinking part of the public for excellence in one specialty: by the injudicious coddling and exploitation by his club; and by the incessant praise of the metropolitan writers--all of which he has not the brains, training or temperament to bear with becoming modesty or grace. His lack of ability to measure up fully to true greatness has been revealed throughout his career in recent years.

When the Boston Club gave him leeway in 1919 for his home run specialty by making him a regular instead of a pitcher, he broke the long-standing major league individual home run record, but proved such an insubordinate member of the team that Boston was glad to sell him to the New York Club. For that club in 1920 he broke the world's home run record, with the aid of the radical changes in the pitching rules, but the New York team won no pennant--owing largely to Ruth's discouraging effect on team work, though the club profited largely through his attraction as a drawing card. In 1921 he again bettered his world's record and the New York team finally won the pennant, however, not by reason of his home run hitting, but owing to the misfortunes of the Cleveland team; and that it lost the World's Series was largely due to Ruth's failure to measure up to form and expectation in that classic event.

Then came the famous "barnstorming" episode, in which Ruth defied both the laws of the game and Commissioner Landis, for which he drew a five weeks' suspension at the start of the 1922 season-- which marked the beginning of the end for Ruth. That five weeks' suspension was fatal to Ruth for the reason it prevented his proper development in condition and skill which comes only by participation in games; precluded all chance of equaling or making a new home run record this season, owing to his manifest decadence in batting; enabled other players to step into the home run picture, and demonstrated conclusively that he was not necessary to the New York team, as it jumped into and maintained the lead long before Ruth and Meusel rejoined it, and lost the lead not long after these two worthies got into the game, owing to the futility of their batting.

All this led to enormous shrinkage of Ruth's popularity with the fans, particularly of New York, many of whom turned from adulation to derision. The press, too, turned largely against the fallen idol--all of which had its effect upon a man of Ruth's limited intelligence, variable temperament, and colossal egotism, and undoubtedly led to his senseless rows with umpires, for which he has been properly disciplined by President Johnson, who threatens to repeat the dose, upon similar provocation, until Ruth either behaves or gets out. . .

In this event the brief reign of Babe Ruth, though highly profitable to the New York Club, will be memorable only for its evil effect upon the sport as a whole, as his constant exploitation as a home run hitter stimulated a home run craze in both public and players that led to temporary abandonment of scientific play; and militated vastly against team work and discipline; and, worst of all, made a popular hero of a specialty player who lacks every qualification of a truly great player." (Sporting News, July 6, 1922, Casual Comment column)
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Followup piece by same writer, Mr. Francis Charles Richter.
(Sporting News, October 4, 1923, pp. 4, column 5, Casual Comment column)
"One of the biggest factors in the complete reversal of the Yankee team form was Babe Ruth, who amply made good his promise of reform made last winter, while still smarting under the ignominy of his pitifully inadequate World Series showing. This reformation, consistently carried out, embraced both conduct on & off the field and general play. His general conduct has been exemplary, not containing even one rebuke, while his entire method of play has been both revolutionized and his conception of his place in and duties to the scene of baseball has been changed and vastly enlarged. Ruth has become traceable, obedient to his manager's slightest wish, and a team player of the first rank, always willing to subordinate himself to the common good."

"Instead of confining himself to his former specialty of home run hitting (He hit 41 in '23) -- Ruth has all season resorted to every style of batting suitable to the occasion, not even excepting bunting: and consequently has proven one of the greatest batsman in the American League, running a season-long neck-and-neck race with Harry Heilmann of Detroit for the batting leadership. In addition his fielding has been both accurate and brilliant, and his base running excellent (17-21). Altogether a more striking and successful change was never witnessed in a star player between two seasons."

Ruth has now been rewarded for his subjugation of self, and a great and most fitting reward it is. Instead of being known simply as the great home run slugger he will go down in history as the most valuable player on all counts in the American League in 1923--the greatest tribute that could be offered any player, and one coveted by all players in that great organization.

This honor officially falls to Ruth by vote of the American League Trophy Committee, consisting of one scribe from each American League city, under the chairmanship of the veteran I. E. Sanborn of Chicago. A striking thing about this decision of the committee and at the same time a tribute to Ruth's complete in manner, habits and team play, was that the vote for Ruth was unanimous, whereas a year ago, his name was not even mentioned, which should convince the "American League's greatest player of 1923" of the enduring value of good conduct, personal subjection to discipline, and all round team play, so that he may persevere therein, and thus go down in history as one of the comparatively few really great players in conduct and all departments of play.(Sporting News, October 4, 1923, pp. 4, column 5, Casual Comment column)
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By Frances Richter, Reach AL Baseball Guide, February, 1926

------------------------A Base Ball Idol Dethroned---------------------------------------
-----------------------By the Editor of the Reach Guide----------------------------------

During the 1925 season Babe Ruth, the best advertised and most exploited base ball player of modern times, and consequently the most popular player for the time being, suffered his worst season both in health and playing skill, and toward the end of the season fell from his throne through disobedience of orders and through illness, caused in part through his regular defiance of living rules was ill for nearly two months in a New York hospital, and when he did report for duty, found his forces so much impaired that he suffered much in playing skill. His work in the field was decidedly mediocre and he fell off so greatly in batting that he fell from the pinnacle to a very mediocre place, his average for the major part of the season being about 260. But his real fall came on August 30, when on the same day that the veteran Ty Cobb was honored by the City of Detroit at a municipal dinner at which he was presented with a $10,000 check by the Detroit Club president, Ruth, Cobb's greatest rival for popularity was suspended indefinitely and fined $5,000--a record for breaches of club rules in staying out late at nights. This action was taken at the close of a Western trip and the Yankee team left for home without Ruth.

----------------------RUTH ADMITS HIS SHORTCOMINGS---------------------------------

Ruth stopped off in Chicago for the purpose of seeking Commissioner Landis' intervention n the matter of his indefinite suspension and record-breaking fine. Ruth failed to find Mr. Landis, who was at his summer home at Bent Lake, Michigan, but was advised that under the rules, Mr. Landis had no jurisdiction in the case for ten days, so Ruth decided to hurry to New York to lay his case before President Ruppert. While in Chicago, Ruth admitted that he had twice expressly violated Manager Huggins' orders while at bat, one time hitting the ball out when ordered to sacrifice, and the other time sacrificing when ordered to hit, thus willfully substituting his own judgment in violation of club rules and discipline. He also admitted having remained out an hour and a half late one night at St. Louis, but he contended that his suspension and fine -- was merely an attempt by Manager Huggins to shield his own managerial short-comings, and to make him - Ruth - the goat. Ruth charged that Huggins was an incompetent manager whose team won for three years through its internal strength and lost the pennant in 1924 by not getting the most out of the team--to all of which charges Manager Huggins refused to reply, merely pointing to Ruth's repeated refractions of league and club rules in the seasons of 1922 and 1924, and his latest escapades in 1925, all of which violated repeated promises to reform, promises which were only kept in 1923, when Ruth performed so well all season that he was voted the crown as "the most valuable player in the league."

---------------------------RUTH FORGIVEN AND REINSTATED--------------------------

When Ruth arrived in New York he made haste to lay his case before President Ruppert. To his surprise he met with a frosty reception, was reminded of his serious breeches of club rules in the past and was told his reinstatement was entirely up to Manager Huggins, with whom he would have to make his peace, else the indefinite suspension would continue. This plainly showed Ruth just where and how he stood and he at once decided to make overtures to Manager Huggins for reconciliation and reinstatement. He sought Manager Huggins after a game, apologized for his criticism of the manager, and asked pardon for his breeches of club rules, promising complete reformation if reinstated. Manager Huggins therefore shook hands with Ruth in forgiveness of his personal criticism and promised to take the matter of reinstatement under consideration. After letting Ruth sweat for several days Manager Huggins reinstated Ruth, on September 7, but according to all accounts the record fine of $5,000 was not remitted. In justice to Ruth, it must be admitted that for the balance of the season he played good ball and also showed such improvement in batting that by the end of the season it was .293--an improvement of thirty point over his mid-season batting. Ruth has undoubtedly been one of the greatest drawing cards in all of the history of the game, and in spite of the big pay he has received has probably been a good investment for his employers. His future depends largely upon himself. If he has "gone back" for good, the fickle public will soon be looking for some one to take his place. But if he has the ability and the desire to shine again both his employers and the patrons of the game are likely to be indulgent. The moral of it, however, is that if you want to succeed you have to be on the job constantly.

--------------------LOST FORTUNE THROUGH IRRESPONSIBILITY--------------------------
In an article in "Collier's Weekly," Ruth, after his reinstatement estimated that through extravagances and follies he had lost a large-sized fortune. Ruth, in his narrative recounts his "missteps" and really tremendous losses through gambling, ill-starred business ventures and in fighting legal suits, all of which he figures at $250,000 besides an equal amount estimated to have gone to "high living, parties, charities, gifts, etc." Once, he admits, he lost $35,000 on a single horse race. Ruth also disclosed that as early as 1922 Miller Huggins, manager of the New York Yankees fined him $9,000 for "continued violation of training rules, culminating in a wet party on Broadway." But the fine was later rescinded because Ruth was "riding the crest of one of my inspired batting streaks, hitting a homer almost every day." This was not known generally, late last season, when Ruth was fined $5,000 by Huggins for "misconduct off the field," while the Yankees were in St. Louis. "I have been the sappiest of saps", he adds. "But I'm going to make good all over again." As evidence of his intention to come back, Ruth, after finishing a hunting trip in the north woods, plans to go to St. Petersburg, Fla., the Yankees training camp, then to visit Hot Springs before joining his teammates in Florida for the regular conditioning grind.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To the Memory of Frances Richter: John B. Foster Gives Estimate of Late Writer:
Veteran Historian and Authority Loved His Baseball and Wrote It with Understanding and Spirit. (Sporting News, February 25, 1926, pp. 6, column 6-7.)

The following is a communication from John B. Foster, editor of the Spalding Guide, and one of the best known of the older chroniclers of baseball affairs in New York. It is a personal appraisement of the character and genuineness of Frances C. Richter, veteran baseball writer and historian of Philadelphia, who died the other day. Foster knew Richter intimately, knew his high ideals and purposes and knew his value and source to the game.

"I beg the courtesy of the columns of The Sporting News to express my personal grief over the death of Frances C. Richter, founder and editor of Sporting Life until it passed into the graveyard of newspaper enterprises. Francis C. Richter was one of the constructive geniuses of baseball with the pen. In the past 30 years we have had many commentators on baseball, some of them sincere, some purely frivolous, some penetrating, some shallow, some quick of perception, some not so keen, some prophetic, some fatalists.

"How could it be otherwise with all manner of men writing of baseball, and men thrown into the position of critics of baseball at the behest of managing editors who, because of the success of humorous and cynical writers--few of whom ever kept up the task very long--were imbued with the idea that baseball was closely related to the comic valentine, hence governed themselves accordingly.

-------------------------------------Game Close to Richter's Heart-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Richter was none of these. He loved baseball and he wrote baseball from the standpoint of the man who has found what a game really is. He permitted all manner of criticism to enter into the columns of his publication, if it were not libelous, even though at variance with his own opinions, and thus he helped the game of baseball mightily. His own personality was against destructive criticism, yet he conceded that out of the preaching of the opportunist there might come good for the stability of the sport.

"It was the custom in years gone by to predict from season to season that there would be 'no next season.' Often men who enjoyed the game of baseball would express their doubt as to its future. Again and again I heard some of them say--'How much longer will it last?' That was in the 'eighties' and if at that time some one had said there would be 50,000 spectators to see a ball game in the next quarter century, there have been doubts as to his sanity. even as late as the 'nineties' a statement made by the late Albert G. Spalding that 75,000 persons would soon see a ball game, which was made to me in the course of conversation, was ridiculed by the pessimists. Yet, Spalding was right. The 75,000 mark has not been actually reached, but if there were 100,000 seats available they could be sold, not only for World's Series games, but for occasional holiday games.

"Francis C. Richter was always of this group of firm believers in baseball future. He commented caustically at times and he wielded a pen that could put the truth home with a sharp point. However bitter his criticism might seem to be there was behind it a fight for the game of baseball itself and it was that surface cynicism of the writer who deals in personalities. A field of personalities is always easiest in which to volunteer as a commentator.

"When baseball needed the enforcement of certain regulations that had been forced upon it, because of its growth and its unexpected evolution as a magnet for the non-player, Richter was foremost in fighting for them.

"He entered losing battles when he essayed to play league politics and fight for separation of organizations, and the entry of newer organizations, but I have been told that he was forced into this condition by the business policy of his office management, which shifted its affiliation, if that is the better way to put it, and which erred grossly because it was this which ultimately led to the downfall of Sporting Life. The stability of the paper as an organ of baseball was undermined by the intervention of the business office and in his later days Richter deplored with sad words the end of one of the best newspapers devoted strictly to the game that had been introduced into current affairs.

-------------------------------------------GRACED WITH BROAD VISION-------------------------------------------------------
"When the American Association and the National League were amalgamated into a 12-club league in 1891, there were but two writers of those in the United States who knew every move that was being made from the first approach of the National League to absorb its rival, and one of the two was Richter. It was he who worked with the committee of the National League to prove to Von Der Ahe of St. Louis, that it would be better to weld the circuits into one. Richter was present when the final step was taken.

"He was a good student of baseball rules and it was largely through his insistence and splendid presentation of argument that the pitching distance was increased to 60 feet, six inches, although there were many who thought he was quite wrong. Even the pitchers thought so, but they shortly found out they could pitch better at the long distance than at the short, as their curves broke better for them.

"Almost without exception, as I recall it, Richter was right in anything which had to do with development of the game, per se, but some of us differed with his opinions about what is known as baseball politics. Whatever baseball politics may be, they have never been able to harm the pastime from tits standpoint, of good to man, although they have played a disastrous hand more than once to promoters of baseball clubs who have ventured into the sport with the idea that it is something which gains large earnings even if there is poor judgment in administration and complete lack of knowledge as to the requirements.

"Various men are designated as this and that in baseball. Some of them are entitled to the fine tributes that have been paid to them, yet I doubt if any one of them ever did as much and certainly not more, for baseball, when the game really needed support most of all, than Francis C. Richter.
---------------------------------------------Saw the Sport of the Thing------------------------------------------------------

"Those who are modern to the game have no conception of some of the early handicaps that attended it." Owners of baseball clubs, to a great extent in formative days, supported the clubs purely from the standpoint of local pride and at loan to themselves.' The local idea of a ball club was far different from that of the present era. The enthusiasts of baseball were so loyal to the game that time and again they subscribed to the support of a losing team, hoping for better results, but above everything desirous of retaining the club in the city which it represented. Men were out of pocket season after season merely because they realized that joy which men have in dabbling in anything that pertains to athletics.

"When baseball needed encouragement and assistance in moments of that period of the national game's existence, Richter elaborated not the need of money, but the good of baseball and interested other men and still others in it. A later generation began to comment of baseball, not as a game but as something placarded with the dollar mark, because it is easier to dabble with figures than it is to go to a ball game and see how it is played and why it is won.

"The huge sum received for World Series contests have had their share in change opinion. A game over-financed in reputation will sere quicker than one which is fresh with the thrill of its own performance.

"Francis Richter lived baseball and for baseball. Glory to his memory! It was not a joke to him, not the butt of a lapper, but something which had to do with the inner life of the youth of the United States, and he fought for it because of the splendid sentiment which was created on the fields of Philadelphia where they played baseball for the sport of a wonderful pastime and cherished its memories as no other city cherishes them. They are then today, some of those old fellows, some of the pioneers, with the same fondness for the national pastime, and always had and the same delight in recalling the fun which they accomplished when they were younger.

"Richter had courage and he had conviction. He fought losing battles, but he fought them with a fertile mind that brought argument to defend his position. He was a good loser, too, and accepted the inevitable with the resignation of a man who hopes to be justified by the future and feels that he has been sincere in the present." (Sporting News, February 25, 1926. Mr. Richter died on February 12, 1926. He had hosted a Sporting News column, titled 'Casual Comment', largely dealing with the administrative side of the game, from December 15, 1921 - summer, 1925.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Biographical Dictionary of American Sports,
-----------------1927 AL Reach Guide, pp. 244.------------------------------- 1992-95, suppiment: Communications

----------Frances Richter/Taylor Spink: 1912 World Series

Bill Burgess · #5 02-14-2007, 04:06 PM

John Buckingham Foster:

Born: July 16, 1863, Norwalk, OH
Died: September 29, 1941, Washington, DC, age 78

Cleveland/New York sports writer; (Cleveland, 1887 - 1896), (New York, 1896 - 1941)
Norwalk High School, Norwalk, OH; State editor;
When John was 18, for his 1st job, he was appointed the Postmaster of his village of Norwalk, OH. After the next election, he was left without a job, and went to work for the Cleveland Press.
Cleveland Press, general representative & state editor,
Cleveland Leader, sports editor, 1888 - 1896
Arrived New York City, 1896
New York Evening Telegraph, sports editor & city editor, 1896 - 1912
New York Journal,
New York Herald,
Consolidated Press Association, 1918 - 1920
New York Sun, 1920 - 1931
5'8 & 7/8

Credited with promoting Army Navy game at the Polo Grounds into national interest.

Editor-in-Chief of Spalding Official NL Base Ball Guide (1908-1941).

John B. Foster of the Cleveland Press was the founding Secretary and one of seven founding Directors for the Cleveland Press Club. This is reported by the Cleveland Gazette 1887-02-05 page 4. It's called the Cleveland Press Association, page 3. "The Association is composed of the journalists of the city connected with the daily and weekly newspapers." The Association or Club was established Tuesday night 1887-02-01, purposes not stated. It is said to be the only press association with a colored member, namely H.C. Smith the editor of the Gazette.

Years on Baseball's rules committee. Considered an authority on Baseball law, rules, admin. Credited with answering 500,000 questions on Baseball rules, laws, and various phases.. Wrote digest of rules for the French. Was named official authority for rules for Japan.

In 1910, he was suggested as President of the National League. Mentioned frequently between 1910 - 1919, for that position.

Official scorer at Polo Grounds almost all his career. Couldn't attend games after 1932, due to right side paralyzed. Followed game via radio, newspapers.

New York Giants' Secretary & business manager, January 6, 1913 - December 4, 1919

When Henry Chadwick died in 1908, John succeeded him as Editor-in-Chief of Spalding Official NL Base Ball Guide (1908-1941) and held it until he died.
----------------------------
Father: Francis Boardman: Mother; Flora Ann Beebe. Paralyzed on his right side his last 9 years, Buried: funeral services in New York City, cremated, ashes buried Rock Hill Cemetery, Foxboro, MA
-------------------------------------------------------

New York Times' obituary------New York World-Telegram & Sun obituary
September 30, 1941, pp. 23.-----September 29, 1941.

1911 New York sports writers: Polo Grounds
Top: John Neville Wheeler, John B. Foster.
Bottom: Sam Crane, Fred Lieb, Damon Runyon, Bozeman Bulger, Sid Mercer, Grantland Rice, Walter Trumbull.

Bill Burgess · #6 02-14-2007, 04:30 PM

William Arlie (Bill) Phelon:

Born: September 7, 1872, Chicago, IL
Died: August 19, 1925, Cincinnati, age 53,---d. after 3 days of Bright's disease (kidney disease).

Chicago/New York/Cincinnati sports writer/editor;
Chicago Daily News, 1888 - October, 1905
Chicago Daily Journal, October, 1905 - 1908
Chicago Tribune, 1908 - 1910
New York Morning Telegraph, 1910
Cincinnati Times-Star sports editor, spring, 1910 - 1925.
Easily most colorful eccentric sportswriter ever. The Rube Waddell of the BWAA.

As a writer, Bill was one of the best, and one of the most prolific. He was an associate editor of Baseball Magazine (March, 1913 - November, 1924). He had replaced Jake Morse (Boston sports writer), who himself had encyclopedic knowledge of all things baseball. Also was Cincinnati correspondent for the Sporting News. From 1889-1915, had scored over 3,500 ballgames. Made all road trips with Reds. Total home team rooter. As a complete authority of baseball, he lived the game. Had been famous amateur ballplayer & boxer, was an actor, wrote for the stage, studied Indian lore, wrote baseball poetry, was twice married with a son; Contributed to Weekly Baseball Guide, Chicago Baseball News, New York Herald Examiner, New York World.

Cincinnati Commercial Tribune obituary----------------------------------Sporting News' article, ------------Sporting News' article,
August 20, 1925, pp. 10--------------------------------------------------March 16, 1933, pp. 4.-------------May 21, 1936, pp. 22.

-----------------American League Reach Guide, 1926--------------------------New York Times' Obit, August 20, 1925, pp. 15.

Bill Burgess · #7 02-14-2007, 05:02 PM

Henry Grantland (Granny) Rice:

Born: November 1, 1880, Murfreesboro, TN
Died: July 13, 1954, New York, NY, age 73

Atlanta / New York sports writer;
education: Wallace University School, Nashville,TN; Vanderbilt University
Nashville Daily News, sports, 1901
Atlanta Journal, sports editor, 1902 - 1905
Cleveland News, sports editor, 1905 - 1907
Nashville Tennessean, sports writer, 1907 - 1910
New York Evening Mail , sports columnist, 1910 - 1913
New York Tribune, sports & syndicated columnist, 1913 - 1924
New York Herald Tribune, 1924 - 1954
The American Golfer, editor
5'11 1/2, grey eyes.

Wrote many books, and contributed to numerous magazines. The quintessential Southern Gentleman, courtly Granny Rice was without a shadow of a doubt the most well-known & loved sports writer of his & perhaps all times. His fellow sports writers not only held him in the highest possible esteem, but were his affectionate friends. Especially Red Smith, Frank Graham, and Fred Lieb. They treasured their friendship with him and were fiercely loyal. Granny Rice is one popular conception of the greatest sports writer who ever lived. His autobiography was, "The Tumult & the Shouting: My Life in Sport", 1954. Buried: Woodlawn Cemetery, NY

Wikipedia: Grantland Rice
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The recipient of the 1966 J.G. Taylor Spink Award was Grantland Rice.

Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1880, Grantland Rice began his legendary career in journalism as sports editor of the Nashville Daily News. He later moved to the Atlanta Journal where, as sports editor, he received telegrams relating the exploits of a promising young ballplayer in Anniston, Alabama. The player was Ty Cobb and, as the Hall of Famer later admitted, it was Cobb who was responsible for the telegrams.

Rice later joined the Cleveland News, in part to follow the exploits of the great Nap Lajoie. After returning for a few years to Tennessee, the call of New York lured him to the Evening Mail in 1911. There, Rice joined such notables as cartoonist Rube Goldberg and columnist Franklin P. Adams. Rice later covered the sporting scene with the Herald-Tribune and the New York Daily News.

On July 13, 1954, less than a month following the completion of his classic autobiography, The Tumult and the Shouting, Rice passed away. Fred Lieb reminisced that "Rice was more than a great sportswriter; he was a national institution." Fred Russell recalled that Rice was "the outstanding man in the history of his profession, and the most beloved; his gift for poetry and prose and his sense of honor and fairness contributed inestimably to the wholesome development of sports in America." And Red Smith called Rice "the greatest man I have known, the greatest talent, the greatest gentleman."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography Resource Center:
Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 5: 1951-1955. American Council of Learned Societies, 1977.
Rice, (Henry) Grantland (Nov. 1, 1880 - July 13, 1954), sports journalist, was born in Murfreesboro, Tenn., the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a farmer, and Beulah Grantland Rice. In the mid-1880's the family lived in the Nashville home of the man Rice later called the central figure of the family, his maternal grandfather, former Confederate major Henry Grantland. Later they farmed near Nashville for almost ten years before returning to the city. Rice received his early schooling at the Nashville Military Academy and took a college-preparatory course at the Wallace University School in Nashville. He enrolled at Vanderbilt University in 1897, majoring in Greek and Latin.

Rice played team sports enthusiastically in school and in college. A scrawny youth, he suffered many football injuries, one of which hampered his throwing and kept him from seeking a career in professional baseball as a shortstop. Nonetheless, after his graduation with the B.A. degree in 1901, he played semiprofessionally, until he was ordered by his father to go to work.

Rice stayed close to competitive sports by joining the Nashville Daily News as sports editor, then a job paying only $5 a week. A friend, Herman Suter, gave him a job on Forester Magazine in Washington, D.C.; but in 1902 he joined the Atlanta Journal as a sportswriter, and in 1905 moved to the Cleveland News, where his salary was $50 a week. By the fall of 1906 Rice was back in Nashville, earning $70 a week on the Tennessean as a sportswriter, versifier, and theater reviewer. He had married Katherine Hollis on Apr. 11, 1906; they had one daughter. In 1911 Rice moved to the New York Evening Mail, for which he wrote a column called "The Sportlight," a name suggested by his colleague Franklin P. Adams. Three years later he followed Adams to the New York Tribune. There, for the first time, he had nation-wide distribution when the Tribune syndicated his column.

Rice's career was interrupted by service in the 115th Regiment, Field Artillery, Thirtieth Division, during World War I. He sailed to France as a lieutenant in April 1918 and later pleaded his way out of a brief assignment on the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, to rejoin his unit at the front. He was mustered out in 1919.

Rice's palmiest days as a journalist lay ahead. During the 1920's, perhaps the golden era of sport, large-scale spectator and professional athletics flourished and expanded. Rice, an exponent of what has been called the "Gee whiz" school of sports reporting, became in effect the spectators' spectator. He was enthusiastic, hyperbolic (often drawing metaphors from the classics or the military), and expert. He helped build the reputations of such figures as baseball's Babe Ruth, golf's Bobby Jones, and football's Red Grange. In one of his most famous stories, on Notre Dame's football victory over Army in 1924, he dubbed the Notre Dame backfield the Four Horsemen, a name that stayed with the quartet for the rest of their careers. Rice enjoyed unusual access to his subjects, for he was often their off-the-job social or golfing companion. Gentle and self-effacing, he had little trouble getting along with even the most egotistical athletes.

Rice became a celebrity in his own right, noted among journalists for his dependability and productivity. He estimated at the end of his career that he had written 67 million words, including 22,000 columns, 7,000 verses, and 1,000 magazine articles. For many years he chose the All-American football teams for Collier's magazine. Beginning in 1925 Rice and associates produced short Sportlight films, one of which won an Academy Award in 1943. He published three volumes of rather commonplace and often elegiac verse, of which the lines most frequently quoted are "When the Great Scorer comes/ To mark against your name,/ He'll write not 'won' or 'lost,'/ But how you played the game." Rice remained with the Tribune until 1930, when he joined the North American Newspaper Alliance. He died in New York City.

-- James Boylan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
His photo/entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball,
edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.-------------------------------------1940's

New York City Sports Writers, 1911:
Grant Rice is seated on the right.
Rakish, jaunty hat.-------------His Prime: 1921; Grant tried his hand as one of the earliest sports announcers.-----------------------------Granny's June 24, 1924 passport photo.

Sporting News' Obituary, July 21, 1954, pp. 36.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 171.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------November, 1948 Army/Navy game

Examples of Granny Rice's style of sports writing.
"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore, they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below." (That is how Rice wrote up how the Notre Dame Cyclone beat Army, 13-7, in 1924.)

(from his poem "Alumnus Football")
"For when the One Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He marks - not that you won or lost -
But how you played the Game."

Bill Burgess · #8 02-14-2007, 05:07 PM

Timothy Hayes Murnane:

Born: June 4, 1851, Naugatuck, CT
Died: February 7, 1917, Boston MA

Boston Globe, sports writer/editor, 1888-1917

ML 1B, 1872-78;
Boston sports writer, 27 yrs., 1890-1917;
New England League Class C President, 1891-1915.
Founded National Association of Proffessional Baseball Leagues, 1901-15, and served as its Vice-President;
NL umpire, 1886.

Wright and Ditson Baseball Guide editor, 1889-1912, the official organ of the minor league National Association; Eastern League's 1st Pres., 1915. Chicago Cubs' scout. Manager of Boston team, 1884, in outlaw Union Association.

In 1884, he served as part-owner, manager, captain, 1st basemen & recruiter for the Boston Union team. Organized the Boston Blues in 1886, but it wasn't successful.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Murnane and Dick Young were the recipients of the 1978 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Murnane, one of most remarkable and colorful characters in the Game's history, began his ball playing career in 1869. With major league stops at Middletown (Connecticut), Philadelphia, Boston, and Providence, the highlight of his ballplaying career came in 1874 when, as a member of the old National Association's Philadelphia Athletics, he participated in the first baseball tour of Europe. In 1884, Murnane managed the Boston club of the Union Association.

Murnane was responsible for the discovery of many of the Game's early stars. Following his playing days, Murnane held the position of President of the New England League for 24 years. He later was president of the Eastern League, a member of the Arbitration Board, and was the first Vice President of the National Association.

Murnane published the Boston Referee, edited the Minor League Guide and was baseball editor of the Boston Globe for 30 years. His delightful wit and Irish brogue made him a popular after dinner speaker. He was a tireless and enthusiastic worker and one of the early authorities on baseball.

New York Times Obituary-----Wikipedia article---Sporting News' Obituary

New York Herald obituary, February 8, 1917------Chicago Tribune obituary, February 8, 1917.

Sporting Life obituary, February 17, 1917, pp. 3.

Bill Burgess · #9 02-14-2007, 05:45 PM

Samuel Newhall Crane:

Born: January 2, 1854, Springfield, MA
Died: June 26, 1925, Bronx, NY, age 71
d. developed pneumonia during Giants' western swing. Arrived home in Bronx, went right to bed, couldn't rally.

ML Player / New York sports writer;
Minor league manager, amateur player, 1875-82.
ML 2Bman, 1880 - 1890
New York Press, 1890-1898,
New York Journal, 1898-1925

New York sports writer; 37 years, 1888-1925;
Atlantic League president, 1895.

Considered best fielding 2B for his time. Famous for how loved he was by all.
(NY Journal, 1898-1925, at time, this paper had over 1 million readers, largest daily in US.)

Studied civil engineering at MIT for 2 years, ML 2B, 1893-1890, managed Buffalo in NL (1879-80) & Cincinnati (U, 1884). Old Atlantic League President (1895), New York Press sports writer (1890-98), NY Journal (1898-1925).

One of McGraw's closest friends, fought with him often. Made all road trips with Giants. Arguably most beloved sports writers of his day.
When Tim Murnane of Boston died February 7,1917, Crane became the new 'Dean of Sports Writers'. Knew many things due to his close proximity to McGraw, never was known to take advantage of it to "scoop" rival writers.

Wikipedia
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpts from Baseball Magazine, April, 1918, 'The Dean of Baseball Writers, by F. C. Lane, pp. 475-476)

-----The Dean of Baseball Writers: How Old Sam Crane, of the New York Journal, Has Enjoyed a Richer, More Varied Experience Than Any Other Scribe in Baseball, by F. C. Lane-------------------------------------------------

The dean of American sport writers is Sam Crane. There died in Boston, last summer, the only man who could compete with him in length of baseball service. Yes, Tim Murname was the one person to challenge Sam's right to the laurels of his craft, and Tim has passed on to that bourn where "the box scores cease from troubling and the sport scribes are at rest."

Within Sam's single experience is embraced the entire history of Major League baseball. Before ever the National League emerged from the chaos of ill assorted ball clubs, and took its first feeble, tottering steps down the broadening road of profession ism, Sam was a rising young second baseman of undoubted ability, playing for money in the days when salaries in the field of sport were lean and few.

Many of us of the younger generation, look upon Wright and Barnes and Spaulding as vague names of an almost mythical age in baseball history. But to Sam Crane these names awake vivid recollections of those old heroes of the diamond, when they were in their prim, while they were still blazing the untrodden trail for the greatest sport the world has known. Sam has seen them all come, and the vast majority of them go. Where others laboriously turn the ancient dope sheets Sam looks into his inner consciousness, revives the faded memories of old time heroes, and pictures them as he knew them when they were in their prime.

Sam Crane occupies a peculiar position in the ranks of sport. We have had many writers who became prominent in baseball as owners, or officials. Charles Webb Murphy was once a newspaperman. So was Ed Barrow and Ban Johnson. Most of baseball's business managers and secretaries have been newspapermen. Yes, the link between the writer and the game is very, very strong. But Sam is the only prominent scribe whom we recall off hand, who was a famous player before he entered the field of journalism. In Sam's case, at least, the favorite route from the paper to the game has been reversed. He has led the way from the game to the paper.

Sam graduated from high school and for two years attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studied electrical engineering but the attraction of the diamond was so strong that he soon entered the ranks of the ball player and never attempted to make any use of his scientific training.

In 1889 he was called upon to see what he could do as manager and took the helm of the Buffalo club then in the National League.

Sam didn't get on very well at Buffalo. "Those were lean years in baseball," he explains, "and I thought I would be better off in some other business. So I got a job traveling for an envelope company in Holyoke."

Sam kept this job for two years but in 1883 he joined the famous Metropolitan Club. The following season found him again a manager, this time at Cincinnati. . . . In 1888 he again tried his hand at managing, having secured the reins of power at Scranton.

Yes, he once filled that important role (League President), with the Old Atlantic League along in 1895. . . When 1890 had demonstrated the fact that Crane was through as a player he sought and obtained employment on the New York Press. At first he grew rather slowly into the unaccustomed task, but fully twenty years ago the New York Journal took him on and he has been with that paper ever since.

Baseball writers are divided roughly into two groups. One group hold their jobs through their known ability to write; the other through their proved experience and knowledge of the game. It is no disparagement to Crane's ability as a writer to say that he belongs in the latter class. Sufficient for him that he has the knack of expressing facts in a straightforward common sense way, well suited to the million old readers who peruse the sport sheet of the New York Journal. It is credit enough to say that a man has held a job as sport writer on the largest daily in the country for twenty years. That achievement, in the face of keen competition, speaks for itself.

But Crane's experience is unique, unparalleled. When he discusses baseball he is in a position to do it from every conceivable angle. His experience runs the gamut of things possible. He has been everything there is to be in the game from player to league president. And his experience embraces all Major League history.

. . . There are old timers who seem to take special pride in the fact that they are old timers. They conjure up forgotten facts about individuals who have long since passed from the stage of action, discant on their own vast experience in baseball, and the crudity and general ignorance of the younger generation. If some of these fossils who think they know it all realized how ridiculous they seem when making such remarks, they might act otherwise. But no shadow of such criticism could ever attach to Sam Crane.

With a fund of experience which must impress by its sheer vastness there is never a taint of that overbearing self satisfied quality about him. The one perhaps, most of all entitled to special consideration, he is the most modest of sport writers. Of all the multitude of baseball men, players, writers and owners that he has known it is a hundred to one shot that not a solitary enemy from that vast array could be called an enemy to Sam Crane. And literally a host of these men are glad to call him friend.

"Other men have made more of a success than I," said Sam recently, "I don't know why I haven't got along better. I guess perhaps I was always too backward about shoving myself ahead." Perhaps. But what is success? Charles Webb Murphy broke into baseball when Sam was already a fixture in the game and then broke out again with a smug, large fortune. Ban Johnson entered the arena long after Sam Crane had blazed the trail and became the most powerful figure in the sport. Others, many others, have held positions of more influence than any that ever came Crane's way. Others, many others perhaps, have amassed more wealth, than he can call his own. But if true success is measured in full, rich experience, in knowledge of a life's career well spent, in absence of enmity and multitude of friends, then we know no sport writer more genuinely successful than old Sam Crane.

His kindly face, with its drooping white mustache is known to thousands. His tall, dignified presence, his freedom from all snobbishness, his accommodating ways, the unconsciousness friendliness for all which shown forth, from his eyes are familiar features of the Polo Ground press box. And may they continue to be such for many years to come. (end of excerpts) (Baseball Magazine, April, 1918, 'The Dean of Baseball Writers, by F. C. Lane, pp. 475-476)
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New York City Sports Writers, 1911: Polo Grounds---------------------------------------------------------------------------------March 11, 1922,
Sam Crane is seated at the far left. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------next to Mrs. Blanche McGraw.

New York Times' Obituary, June 27, 1925, pp. 8.---------------Sporting News' Obituary,-----------------------New York Herald-Tribune Obituary, July 27, 1925.
----------------------------------------------------------------------July 2, 1925, pp. 4, col.1

Bill Burgess · #10 02-14-2007, 05:52 PM

Frederick George Lieb:

Born: March 5, 1888, Philadelphia, PA
Died: June 3, 1980, Houston, TX, age 92

Philadelphia News bureau, magazine & newspaper, 1910
Arrived in New York City, March, 1911
New York Press, Baseball editor, 1911 - 1916
New York Morning Sun, 1916 - 1921
New York Telegram, Baseball editor, 1921 - 1927
New York Evening Post, March, 1927 - 1934
Moved to St. Petersburg, FL, 1934

Sporting News correspondent (1935-58) & columnist (1943-47),
St. Petersburg Times (Florida) (1965-77).

February, 1980 - June 5, 1980 nursing home Houston,TX.
World Series scorer (1922-24), covered World Series (1911-58).
Sporting News historian for years.

edu; Philadelphia Central Manual Training HS, Pa. associate editor, weekly Baseball Guide; writer, Christy Walsh Syndicate; past associate editor, baseball Magazine, Sport-life. chief official scorer, World's Series, 1922-23-24;

Authored the following books:
The St. Louis Cardinals: The Story of a Great Baseball Club, 1944
Connie Mack (actually a book on the Philadelphia A's), 1945
The Detroit Tigers, 1946
The Boston Red Sox, 1947
Judge Landis and 25 Years of Baseball, by Taylor Spink (actually ghost-written by Fred Lieb)
The Pittsburgh Pirates, 1948
The Story of the World Series: An informal history, 1949
The Baseball Story, 1950
Can You Buy a Baseball Star?, 1953
The Philadelphia Phillies, 1953
The Baltimore Orioles: The History Of A Colorful Team In Baltimore And St. Louis, 1955
Comedians and Pranksters of Baseball, 1958
The Story of the World Series, 1965
Baseball as I Have Known It, 1977
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred Lieb, J. Roy Stockton, and Dan Daniel were the recipients of the 1972 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Born in Philadelphia on March 5, 1888, Frederick George Lieb's life-long love affair with baseball began as a young fan of his hometown Athletics. Following a short tenure with the Philadelphia News Bureau, Lieb began writing biographies for Baseball Magazine in 1909. By the age of 23 he was writing for the New York Press and later found employment with other New York papers such as the Post, the Morning Sun, and the Telegram. He was a longtime correspondent for The Sporting News, was a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) for 68 years, and served as president of the BBWAA for three consecutive years (1921-23).

Over his long and distinguished career, Fred Lieb covered over 8,000 major league baseball games. He covered every World Series from 1911 through 1958 as well as 30 All-Star Games. He wrote numerous books on baseball, including the classic Baseball as I Have Known It. It was Lieb that dubbed Yankee Stadium "The House that Ruth Built."
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Biography Resource Center:
Few people could have been more enthusiastic about their work than Fred Lieb. A lifelong baseball enthusiast, Lieb was also one of the most prominent national writers on the sport. His long career included newspaper, magazine, and book-length work--and the heady honor of rubbing elbows with the likes of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Connie Mack. Lieb, who wrote almost constantly until his death at ninety-two, is quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as having said: "I love baseball. I could watch it every day, every year. And to think I get paid for watching it."

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Lieb set out to find a newspaper job after graduating from high school in 1904. At first he had to settle for publishing in pulp magazines while working in a railroad office, but by 1909 he had a regular assignment from Baseball Magazine, and by 1911 he had landed a job as baseball writer at the New York Press. All told, Lieb worked for four different New York newspapers between 1911 and 1934. According to J. Douglas English in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Lieb was a superb stylist who considered much popular sportswriting to be vulgar. Rejecting both the "Gee Whiz" and the "aw shucks" angles many writers adopted, he instead "reported as if the audience was composed of readers such as he--as if they wanted what he had wanted as a young connoisseur of sportswriting in Philadelphia."

In 1935 Lieb became a national correspondent for The Sporting News, and he earned a reputation for his continuous coverage of the World Series and the All-Star Games. By the time his career ended, he had sat in the press box for the Fall Classic sixty times, and he was widely respected as one of the foremost historians of major league baseball. It was also during this period that Lieb began his series of book-length team profiles for Putnam, including The Detroit Tigers, The Boston Red Sox, and The Philadelphia Phillies. His more wide-ranging books, The Story of the World Series and The Baseball Story, "still serve as foundational references for baseball research, and it is difficult to find any historical work on baseball that does not contain Lieb's name either in its bibliography or index," to quote English.

Another best-selling Lieb book was Connie Mack: Grand Old Man of Baseball. The colorful Mack was a manager of the Athletics for fifty years and was much beloved in the hearts of his fans. Lieb's account of Mack's life "should be a welcome addition to the libraries of many of those who are interested in the whys and the wherefores of what has come to be known as America's national pastime," noted a Book Week correspondent. According to Al Horwits in the New York Times, "For the majority of the sporting world who know much about Connie Mack this biography will serve chiefly to refresh memories of him and of his great players, and of those events in baseball which never become dull no matter how many times they are repeated."

Among Lieb's accomplishments are a few permanent additions to sporting lore. His piece "Hits Are My Bread and Butter" is considered a classic of magazine journalism, and it was he who coined the sobriquet "House that Ruth Built" to describe Yankee Stadium. Lieb was inducted into the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, long after he had "retired" to St. Petersburg, Florida. He died in a nursing home in Houston, Texas, about one month after his last by-line appeared in The Sporting News. English quotes Lieb as once having commented: "When I walked into the New York press box for the first time, I couldn't have been happier, not if I'd made it to the Oval Office of the White House."

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Born March 5, 1888, in Philadelphia, PA; died June 3, 1980, in Houston, TX; son of George August and Theresa (Zigler) Lieb; married Mary Ann Peck; children: Marie Theresa (Mrs. R. Leslie Pearsall). Education: Attended high school in Philadelphia, PA. Politics: Republican. Religion: "Unity." Memberships: Masons.

AWARDS: J. G. Taylor Spink Award from Baseball Hall of Fame, 1972; inducted into writers' wing of Baseball Hall of Fame, 1973; award from St. Petersburg Times, 1975.

CAREER: Norfolk & Western Railway, Philadelphia, PA, clerk, 1904-10; New York Press, New York City, baseball writer, 1911-16; New York Morning Sun, New York City, baseball writer, 1916-20; New York Evening Telegram, New York City, baseball writer, 1920-27; New York Post, New York City, baseball writer, 1927-33; Sporting News, St. Louis, MO, baseball writer, 1935-67; writer, 1967-80. Official scorer for World Series, 1922-24, 1945; covered sixty World Series.
--------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------
His entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball,-------------------------------------------New York Times' obituary
edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.-------------------------------------------June 5, 1980, pp. B12.

No Cheering In the Press Box----------------------------Sporting News' obituary, June 21, 1980, pp. 50, col. 1.
by Jerome Holtzman, 1973, pp. 46-47.

Young pup: 1911, Fred Lieb is seated, second from the left

--------------His Prime: 1933-------------------------------Seasoned Veteran: 1951

Bill Burgess · #11 02-14-2007, 06:12 PM

Shirley Lewis Povich:

Born: July 15, 1905, Bar Harbor, ME
Died: June 4, 1998, Washington, DC, age 92

His parents were Jewish migrants from Lithuania, one of the 3 Baltic states. Formerly forcibly invaded, conquered, occupied by Russia during WWII, now free.

Washington Post reporter, 5'8, (1922-25), sports editor (1926-33), sports columnist (1926-74), war correspondent (1945),

Even though he "retired" in 1974, he continued his column "This Morning", very often. Was Jewish, and was listed, in 1959, amusingly and mistakenly, in a Woman's Who's Who.

Authored the following books:
All Those Mornings...at the Post, 2005 (Compilation of his Wash. Post newspaper columns, This Morning.)
The Washington Senators: An Informal History, 1954
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shirley Povich and Tom Meany were the recipients of the 1975 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

A chance meeting as caddy for Washington Post publisher Ned McLean eventually brought Shirley Povich from his native Maine to the Washington Post in 1923. Starting as a copyboy, Povich eventually gained his first byline in 1924.

By 1926, the 20-year-old Povich was the youngest sports editor of a major U.S. newspaper. Povich officially retired 51 years after first joining the Post, but he continued to write for the paper until, literally, the day before he passed away. Povich wrote over 15,000 columns during a sportswriting career which lasted nearly 75 years, witnessing milestones of baseball history from the Senators one and only World Series championship in 1924 to the game in which Cal Ripken Jr. passed Lou Gehrig as the record holder for most consecutive games played.

Ben Bradlee, former executive director of the Washington Post, stated, "Shirley Povich was why people bought the paper. You got the Post for Shirley and the sports section. He was the sports section. For a lot of years, he carried the paper, and that's no exaggeration."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wikipedia article

Biography Resource Center:
One of nine children born to Nathan Povich, who sold furniture, and Rosa Orlovich, a homemaker, Povich got his name, common among Maine boys in those days, from a loose translation into Yiddish of the name of his grandmother Sarah. His parents were Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Lithuania who had settled in Bar Harbor, where many of America's wealthiest citizens spent their summers.

As a teenager, Povich worked as a caddy at the Kebo Valley Golf Club, where he was taken under the wing of Edward B. McLean, then the publisher of the Washington Post. For three summers, beginning in 1920, Povich was McLean's personal caddy. Povich graduated from high school in 1922; at the end of that summer, McLean told his seventeen-year-old protégé that he wanted Povich to return to Washington, D.C., with him. There, McLean said, Povich could work as his caddy and as a copy boy at the Post, while attending classes at Georgetown University.

On his first morning in the capital, Povich found himself caddying for McLean and the publisher's good friend President Warren G. Harding. Meanwhile, at the Post, Povich rose from copy boy to police reporter and night rewrite man before being lured to the sports department in 1924 by a $5-a-week raise. His first byline appeared that August over a story on the Washington Senators, who were on their way to a World Series title.

Povich was just twenty-one when McLean made him sports editor of the Post in 1926, the youngest man to head the sports section of a major U.S. newspaper. Shortly thereafter, he began writing a column, "This Morning, with Shirley Povich." Although Povich stepped down as sports editor after seven years, he continued to write the daily column. Povich wrote "This Morning" for more than seventy years, filing his final column the day before he died.

Povich was present when Babe Ruth clubbed his famous and much-disputed "called shot" home run in the World Series against the Cubs in 1932. Povich later said Ruth did not predict his home run, but rather was pointing at Cubs pitcher Charlie Root because Root's previous pitch had come before Ruth was ready. Povich was also in Yankee Stadium for Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, which generated one of his most famous leads: "The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series."

Always sharply dressed, Povich, a dapper little man of about five feet, six inches was a near-perfect gentleman in the often rough-and-tumble world of sports. His longest-running feud was with George Preston Marshall, the owner who moved the National Football League (NFL) Redskins from Boston to Washington in 1937, and who earned Povich's enmity with his bullying, racist ways. When Marshall stood on the sidelines during a game, pacing nearer and nearer to the field of play as he made substitutions, Povich wrote, "If Marshall takes one more step, the Redskins will be penalized for having eleven and a half men on the field."

In 1943, after Povich wrote columns criticizing the Redskins for taking too big a cut from a wartime charity exhibition that was supposed to benefit the widows and children of servicemen, Marshall unsuccessfully sued Povich and his paper for $100,000.

Later, when the Redskins were the last NFL team with no black players on their roster, Povich wrote, after a clobbering by the Cleveland Browns on 31 October 1960, "Jim Brown, born ineligible to play for the Redskins, integrated their end zone three times yesterday."

During World War II, Povich was dispatched by the Post to cover the U.S. Navy's campaign to retake the Pacific from the Japanese. He covered the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns before fracturing two vertebrae and returning home.
Povich achieved notoriety outside the world of sports in 1959 when he was included in the first edition of Who's Who of American Women. The mistake provoked newspaper stories, a Time magazine photo of Povich wielding an enormous cigar, and a telegram from Povich's friend Walter Cronkite: "Miss Povich, will you marry me?"

As Cronkite knew, Povich was already taken, having married Ethyl Friedman in 1932, two years after they met on a blind date at a Baltimore sorority dance. The couple had two sons and a daughter: David, who became a Washington lawyer; Maury, a broadcast journalist and television talk show host; and Lynn, a journalist and magazine editor.

Even after Povich officially "retired" from the Post in 1974, he continued filing regular columns--more than 15,000 in his career, according to a posthumous calculation. Povich covered heavyweight title fights, football championships, horse races, even the occasional basketball game, though he disliked the latter sport's aerial evolution, complaining, "They don't shoot baskets anymore, they stuff them, like taxidermists."

Baseball was Povich's favorite sport, and he covered most of the game's greatest names, from Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Walter Johnson early in his career; through Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle; down to Cal Ripken and Mark McGwire in the 1980s and 1990s.

Along with DiMaggio, Povich was one of only two people present for both the end of Gehrig's streak of 2,130 consecutive games played and for the 1995 game in which Ripken surpassed that record. In his final column, published the morning after his death, Povich compared the feats of Babe Ruth with those of Mark McGwire, who months later would break the record for home runs in a season, a record that had been held most famously by Ruth. Not surprisingly, Povich came down in favor of Ruth's superiority, much as he maintained that no latter-day boxer--not Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, or Muhammad Ali--could have matched Jack Dempsey in his prime.

Povich received numerous journalistic awards during his long career and served as president of the Baseball Writers Association of America. In 1976 he was elected to the writers' division of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Povich died of a heart attack at his home in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Elevesgrad Cemetery in Washington. The child of immigrants, Povich lived a classic "made in America" success story, seizing the opportunity offered by Edward McLean and turning it into one of sports journalism's most remarkable careers. As Povich once wrote of his good fortune in being transferred off a World War II hospital ship just before it was attacked by the Japanese, "I was leading a charmed life, for reasons unknown to anyone before or since."

-- Tim Whitmire
-----------------------
Shirley's entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball,
edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 509.--------------------No Cheering In The Press Box, 1973, pp. 114-115.

--------------Young Pup: 1933------------------------------------His Prime:

New York Times' obituary, June 7, 1998, pp. 35.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GiambiJuice

Maury Povich (TV Talk Show host) is his son.

Bill Burgess · #12 02-14-2007, 06:16 PM

Charles S. Dryden:

Born: March 10, 1857, Monmouth, IL
Died: February 11, 1931, Biloxi, MS, age 74

Chicago sports writer;
Chicago Sunday Times reporter, 1889-1890
San Francisco Examiner sports writer, 1890
New York Evening Journal, 1898-99
Philadelphia North American, 1899 - 1905
Chicago Tribune, 1906 - 1908
Chicago Examiner, 1908 - 1917
Chicago Herald & Examiner, 1918 - 1921

He was one of the 1st, most popular & most influential baseball writers who ever lived. Humorist influenced a generation of following baseball writers. Suffered devastating stoke, 1921, left him disabled. Awarded Spink award, 1965.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Dryden was the recipient of the 1965 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

A newspaper sportswriter in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York, Charles Dryden was a charter member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The humorist was often regarded as the master baseball writer of his time.

Dryden's stray witticisms, still being tossed about in the capricious baseball breezes decades after his passing, seem as ageless as the characters that inspired them. It was Dryden that coined the phrase: "Washington—first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." And he was responsible for monikers such as "Peerless Leader" for Frank Chance, "The Old Roman" for Charlie Comiskey, "Shufflin' Phil" for Phil Douglas, and "The Hitless Wonders" for the World Champion 1906 Chicago White Sox. Upon receiving compliments from New York writers on his humor-filled columns, Ring Lardner replied: "Me, a humorist? Have you guys read any of Charley Dryden's stuff lately? He makes me look like a novice."

Tragically, Dryden suffered a debilitating stroke in 1921, leaving him paralyzed and essentially unable to speak. He died ten years later at the age of 73.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BB Library

------------New York Times' obituary-----------------------Chicago Tribune obituary-----------------Biographical Dictionary of American Sports Writers:
-----------February 13, 1931, pp. 17.----------------February 12, 1931. pp. 27, Section 2.---------------- Communications: 1989-92 Suppliment.

Bill Burgess · #13 02-14-2007, 06:26 PM

Alfred Damon Runyon:

Born: October 8, 1884, Manhattan, KS
Died: December 10, 1946, NYC, age 62, d. developed throat cancer, 1938, lost speech, 1944, after operation.

NYC sports writer/author;
Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1906-10
Arrived NYC, 1911,
New York American, 1911 -
served 1912-16 as Hearst foreign correspondent in Mexico & Europe.
Stopped writing baseball, September, 1917,
columnist and feature writer for King Features, International News Service, 1918-45;
film producer at RKO and Twentieth Century-Fox, 1942-43;
contributor of short fiction to Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's.

Made his name as author of novels with colorful Broadway characters. Many of his novels were used for movies, such as:

Lady For A Day, 1933
Little Miss Marker, 1934, with Shirley Temple
A Slight Case of Murder, 1938
Double Indemnity 1944
Lemon-Drop Kid, 1951
Guys & Dolls, 1955
Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, 1955

Wikipedia
------------------------------------------------------------------
The recipient of the 1967 J.G. Taylor Spink Award was Damon Runyon.

A reporter, sports columnist, and popular short story writer, Damon Runyan was described by Connie Mack as "a master of characters and plots such as we see every day in our grandstands." Runyon was a moody man who always showed just a hint of a smile. As Fred Lieb recalled, "you felt he was laughing at the world, not with it."

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1884, Runyon arrived in New York in 1910 and covered the New York Giants for the New York American from 1911-1920. As author Gene Fowler put it, Runyon "underscored excitement by casting his stories in the present tense." Runyon was responsible for nicknaming Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson "Uncle Wilbert."

Following his career as a baseball reporter, Runyon turned to literature. Called "a master of the art of anonymity in the first person," Runyon became best known for his short stories that later became successful musicals and movies such as Guys and Dolls and Little Miss Marker. In the language of Reader's Encyclopedia, he "interpreted the semiliterate in slangy Americanese and with unusual observation."

Throat cancer in 1944 left Runyon unable to speak, but he continued to write until his death in December of 1947.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography Resource Center:
Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003.
Damon Runyon was one of America's most popular newspaper columnists and sports writers from the time of the Jazz Age through World War II. He is best known as a humorist who popularized a colorful first-person idiom called "Runyonese" in his short stories of life on Broadway. Consisting largely of urban colloquialisms, Runyonese is the common dialect of an array of comical lower-class gangland characters. Although Runyon based many of his fictional characters on such figures as journalist Walter Winchell and mobster Al Capone, his short stories offered readers a highly romanticized version of their world. In their day, Runyon's stories were quite popular in the United States and Great Britain, and theater audiences still enjoy the hoodlum heroics of Guys and Dolls, the popular musical comedy based on Runyon's fiction.

Runyon was raised in Pueblo, Colorado, where he lived with his widowed father, an itinerant newspaper printer and editor. Runyon quit school in the sixth grade and went to work as an errand boy on a local newspaper--by the age of fifteen he was a full-time reporter. When the United States went to war against Spain in 1898, Runyon was eager to enlist even though he was a few months short of eighteen years, the required age to join. Runyon traveled to Minnesota, lied about his age, and ended up serving in the Philippines with the Thirteenth Minnesota Volunteers. Runyon's experiences in the war, along with his early exposure to gambling and drinking and his work in journalism, were to shape his writing career and provide fodder for future works, including The Tents of Trouble: Ballads of the Wanderbund and Other Verse, and Rhymes of the Firing Line.

Between 1900 and 1906 Runyon spent time riding the rails and working a variety of newspaper jobs. The hobos that he met and the stories that he heard were later to find their way into his writing. He lost a few of the newspaper positions due to his heavy drinking. In 1906 he landed a position with the Denver Rocky Mountain News and stayed there for four more years. During this time, he met and later married Ellen Egan, a society reporter for the Denver paper. Their marriage produced two children: Mary (born in 1914) and Damon, Jr. (born in 1918 and later to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps as a journalist). During this time, Runyan swore off alcohol and remained sober for the rest of his life.

In 1911 Runyon was hired as a sports writer for the Hearst-owned New York American. Runyon's move to the East marked a lucrative turning point in his journalistic career. His sharp eye for detail and vigorous writing style landed him top reporting assignments, and he was versatile enough to give equally vivid accounts of everything from baseball games to murder trials. His flamboyant style made everything he covered, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, an event.

As a sportswriter, Runyon wrote regular columns and differed from his peers in that he provided a glimpse into the lives of the players as humans, rather than relying on statistics and play-by-play recitations to report sports events. According to Paul J. Sandin in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Runyon shunned the box scores, round-by-round accounts, and the win-place-shows in favor of more colorful descriptions of the people involved in the events. He noticed the small details. And readers could not wait to read the column".

Early in his career Runyon experimented with several short story forms. Most of the tales were simple, local color stories drawn from his childhood memories of frontier towns. A few of these early works were published in national magazines, but received little attention. In 1929 Runyon wrote the first of his Broadway stories, "Romance in the Roaring Forties." The "guys and dolls" of his Broadway beat fascinated readers, and demand for his short stories grew. As his popularity increased, several of his stories were made into motion pictures: Lady for a Day, adapted from "Madame La Gimp," was very successful, and Little Miss Marker launched the career of Shirley Temple. In addition to his many collections of stories, such as Guys and Dolls, Blue Plate Special, and Money from Home, Runyon published selections of his best-liked newspaper columns in Short Takes and in My Old Man, which contained both authentic and fictional sketches of his father. Short Takes prompted a famous self-deprecating review of his own book, in which he said: "It contains enough gummed-up syntax to patch hell a mile." Other favorite columns, featuring the humorous domestic tribulations of Ethel and Joe Turp, were collected as My Wife Ethel. Many of Joe's and Ethel's amusing conversations dealt with contemporary political and social issues. These three collections of Runyon's newspaper work represent only a small part of his prolific journalistic career; by his own estimation, Runyon wrote over eighty million words. He continued writing until his death from cancer in 1946.

Runyon's most enduring literary contributions are his Broadway stories. Though narrow in scope and often repetitive, these stories depict an American subculture similar in appeal to that of the American cowboy. Throughout his career, he portrayed members of the gangster community as unlikely heroes and heroines living on the periphery of mainstream society. Much of the satirical humor of Runyon's stories is provided by this juxtaposition of underworld characters with the rest of society. According to some critics, these tales contain subtle social commentary that often reveals the pretensions and hypocrisy of "respectable" people. All of Runyon's Broadway fiction is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who, by happenstance, becomes involved with thugs, touts, gamblers, and various petty criminals.

Assessing The Best of Damon Runyon in the New York Times Book Review, Fred T. Marsh noted that Runyon's narrator "emerges as not only the most interesting guy in the book, but as an unforgettable mug in the rogues' gallery of American fiction." Critics suggest that Runyon's consistent use of the present tense in the Broadway stories reflected the speech patterns of the hobo and underworld subcultures. The present tense narration diminishes the importance of time, thus expediting the action of the story. Runyon's underworld idiom, Runyonese, is the most prominent element of his style, and is based on the clang of actual gangsters with whom he was acquainted. "Monkey business," "fuzz," "shoo-in," and "shiv" are but a few of the gangland terms he popularized in his fiction, as well as several of his own invention, such as "hotsy totsy" and "phonus balonus."

Throughout his career, Runyon was primarily reviewed in terms of his journalistic prowess and versatility, and his short stories were frequently dismissed as popular entertainment for the semiliterate. Although he was never considered a serious fiction writer during his lifetime, critics today find Runyon to be a natural story teller, similar to O. Henry and Mark Twain. Jean Wagner has demonstrated that many critics have failed to see the satirical social comments artfully hidden beneath the lighthearted gangland antics of his stories. In The World of Damon Runyon, biographer Tom Clark has attributed Runyon's lack of scholarly acceptance to his unusual role-reversal that placed "criminals and `legitimate people' on unfamiliar sides of the sympathy meter."

Runyon was consistently praised by his colleagues for his unique writing style, and respected Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane called him "America's greatest reporter." As a journalist, Runyon reported some of the most exciting news events of the early twentieth century, such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. In his fiction he portrayed the complexity of human nature, using his keen reporter's eye to humorously chronicle a lost American subculture.

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Family: Born October 4, 1884 (some sources say 1880), in Manhattan, KS; died of cancer, December 10, 1946, in New York, NY; son of Alfred Lee (a printer and newspaper publisher) and Elizabeth J. (Damon) Runyan (author later changed spelling of his own surname to Runyon); married Ellen Egan (a journalist), May, 1911 (died, 1931); married Patrice Amati del Grande (a dancer), July, 1932 (divorced, 1946); children (by first marriage): Mary Elaine, Damon Runyon, Jr. Education: Educated in the Pueblo, CO, public schools.

CAREER: Successively a reporter for Pueblo Chieftain, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver News, Denver Post, and San Francisco Post, 1900-10; sportswriter for New York American, 1911; war correspondent for Hearst Newspapers, 1912-18; columnist and feature writer for King Features, International News Service, 1918-45; film producer at RKO and Twentieth Century-Fox, 1942-43; contributor of short fiction to Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's. Military service: U.S. Army, Minnesota Volunteers, 1898-1900; attained rank of private.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
The Tents of Trouble. Ballads of the Wanderbund and Other Verse, Fitzgerald, 1911.
Rhymes of the Firing Line, Fitzgerald, 1912.
Guys and Dolls, Stokes, 1931.
Blue Plate Special, Stokes, 1934.
Money from Home, Stokes, 1935.
More than Somewhat, Constable, 1937.
Take It Easy, Stokes, 1938.
Furthermore: A Companion Book of Stories to "More than Somewhat," Constable, 1938.
The Best of Damon Runyon, Stokes, 1938.
The Damon Runyon Omnibus, 1939.
My Old Man, 1939.
My Wife Ethel, 1939, 1951.
A Slight Case of Murder, 1940.
Runyon a la Carte, Lippincott, 1944.
The Three Wise Guys and Other Stories, 1946.
In Our Town, Creative Age, 1946.
Short Takes: Reader's Choice of the Best Columns of America's Favorite Newspaperman.
Poems for Men, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1947.
Trials and Other Tribulations, 1948.
Runyon First and Last, 1949, 1950.
More Guys and Dolls, 1951.
Runyon from First to Last, 1954.
Runyon on Broadway: Omnibus Volume Containing All the Stories from More than Somewhat, 1955.
A Treasury of Damon Runyon, 1958.
Damon Runyon: Favorites, 1976.
Slow Horses and Fast Women, 1979.
The Bloodhounds of Broadway and Other Stories, 1981.
Troopers, Tramps and Other Loose Characters, 1985.
Romance in the Roaring Forties and Other Stories, 1986.
Ring-Tailed, Red-Eyed Sons o' Trouble, 1988.
(With Jack Johnson) Jack Johnson: In the Ring--and Out, 1992.

Damon Runyon is seated, 3rd from the left, with the flat porkpie hat. -----------------------------------------------------------------March 31, 1936.

Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists, by Sam G. Riley, 1995------L-R: Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, Sherman Billingsley at the Stork Club, NYC.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------April, 1936.

New York Times' obituary, December 11, 1946, pp. 31.

----------------------------------------1936.

Bill Burgess · #14 02-14-2007, 06:37 PM

Francis Westbrook Pegler:

Born: August 2, 1894, Minneapolis, MN
Died: June 24, 1969, Tucson, AZ, age 74,

New York sports writer;
Des Moines newspaper,
United Press office in NY, 1912,
St. Louis / Dallas, TX as a reporter, business manager.
Went to London, England as foreign correspondent with American Expeditionary Force, 1916.
Enlisted US Navy.
After war, returned to United Press, 1919 in NY office, as sports writer & sports editor. From 1925-33, Pegler was an extremely high-paid sports writer for the Chicago Tribune.

In 1933, he was sent to Washington, DC, to write politics & politicians. He developed an extremely bitterly-biting, critical, acerbic style of attack journalism. Became feared for his poisoned pen, or toxic type-writer. In 1933, Pegler went nationally syndicated with his "Fair Enough" column for Scripps-Howard, within the Hearst family of papers. He targeted labor union bosses as a menace. In 1944, went to NY Journal-American, with "As Pegler Sees It." Pegler became a 1930's & 40's version of Rush Limbaugh & Joe McCarthy. When the Political Right unleashed it's dogs of war, Pegler was the lead dog.

In 1949, Westbrook Pegler attacked Quentin Reynolds so bitterly, that Quentin sued him for libel & won. Louis Nizer was Reynold's Jewish attorney, who won for him $175,000. and earned the enmity of Pegler for Jews. But after that Pegler's career didn't seem to have it's former impetus. The case had lasted 5 yrs.
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Biography Resource Center:
Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 8: 1966-1970. American Council of Learned Societies, 1988.

Pegler, Westbrook (Aug. 2, 1894 - June 24, 1969), journalist, originally named Francis Westbrook Pegler but later called James Westbrook Pegler, was born in Minneapolis, Minn., the son of Arthur James Pegler, a journalist, and Frances Nicholson. He spent his early years in St. Paul, Minn., and in 1904 his family moved to Chicago, where his father worked for William Randolph Hearst's Chicago American. In Chicago, Pegler completed his elementary schooling but attended Lane Technical High School for only a year before dropping out. He then worked at various odd jobs, including one as office boy for the United Press, and attended a Jesuit preparatory school, Loyola Academy, for eighteen months. In 1912 he returned permanently to newspaper work.

After a stint with the International News Service, Pegler returned to the United Press, where he covered a variety of human-interest stories and won a byline for a daily sports squib. His bachelor status made him available for assignments outside Chicago, chiefly in the Middle West. In 1916, Roy Howard, the president of the United Press, offered him a post on the staff in London. After the United States entered World War I, Pegler was transferred to Queenstown, Ireland, a major port used by American warships. When he prematurely filed a news story about an American destroyer firing on a German submarine, he was reprimanded by Admiral William Sims. The altercation led the United Press to conclude that it would be wise to assign Pegler to France. There Pegler offended General John J. Pershing by making critical comments on army censorship and efficiency. At Pershing's request, Pegler's status as an accredited correspondent was revoked. Although Pegler was not discharged by the United Press, he decided to return to London, where he volunteered for service in the American navy in March 1918. He served as a yeoman second class, doing desk work in Liverpool until the end of the war.

In 1919, Pegler settled in New York City, which became his professional base for the next four decades. In 1921 he received a byline for a full-length sports column for the United Press, and in 1925 he was appointed eastern sports editor for the Chicago Tribune. A rather shy and lonely bachelor, Pegler brightened his personal life by his marriage to Julia Harpman on Aug. 29, 1922. Although his wife was in poor health through most of the thirty-three years of their childless marriage, there is no reason to doubt Pegler's unabashedly sentimental comments to his friends that it was a loving union.

In his sports columns, Pegler showed traits that later characterized his political columns--a cynical pose, a sustained irreverence toward national heroes and institutions, and a sure instinct for uncovering hypocrisy in the righteous. His use of sports as a vehicle for making sardonic comments on Prohibition, gambling, and national politics prompted Howard to offer him a contract as a general columnist. Although Pegler initially professed to be uncertain about his qualifications, the appearance of his column, "Fair Enough," in the Scripps-Howard newspapers in 1933 was the turning point in his career. The only change in his position as a nationally recognized journalist was his move to the Hearst chain in 1944, where his growing conservatism was more congenial to the views of the publisher. The title of the column became "As Pegler Sees It." Pegler stayed with the Hearst organization until 1962.

Pegler's strength as a columnist lay in his abilities as a parodist, an investigative reporter, and a polemicist. His spoof of Eleanor Roosevelt's newspaper column, "My Day," while uncharacteristically gentle, reveals his talent as a parodist. As an investigative reporter, he was particularly effective in uncovering the criminal backgrounds and activities of labor-union officials. His greatest coup was winning a Pulitzer prize in 1941 for his articles on labor racketeers in the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators.

Pegler's polemics were aimed at personalities as much as at issues. He was remembered after his death for hurling tirades and vituperative epithets at Franklin D. Roosevelt ("the feebleminded Fuehrer"), Eleanor Roosevelt ("La Boca Grande"), Henry A. Wallace ("Old Bubblehead") and Dwight Eisenhower ("a picnic pitcher in a World Series"). Pegler consistently criticized the New Deal and the Fair Deal for paving the way for Communism. He became an ardent supporter and personal friend of Senator Joseph McCarthy and regularly endorsed the idea that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations constituted "twenty years of treason." By the mid-1950's, Pegler's biases increasingly distorted his perspective. In several columns in 1954, for example, he asserted that Colonel Edward House's novel Philip Dru, Administrator (1912) was an actual blueprint for an ongoing conspiracy to establish a police state in the United States.

In 1954 the Hearst organization had to pay a libel award of $175,000 to the journalist Quentin Reynolds for charges against, and innuendoes about, him in Pegler's columns, which had questioned Reynolds' bravery and sexual morals. During the next eight years, Pegler attacked federal judges and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and not only opposed American support for Israel but insisted on referring to the original Jewish names of persons who had changed them. When his increasingly restive employers changed or suppressed entire columns, Pegler protested this censorship with characteristic vehemence. When some of his private comments about the Hearst hierarchy were leaked to the press, a continuing relationship became impossible, and thus, his contract was bought up in 1962.

Pegler's correspondence of his last fifteen years reflects personal bitterness and professional frustration. In 1955, Julia Pegler died, and on May 11, 1959, he married Pearl Wiley Doane. A separation followed in 1960, and divorce, in 1961. After his break with Hearst, he published only sporadically, chiefly in rightwing journals. On Nov. 22, 1961, he married his longtime secretary and assistant, Maude Towart; they had no children. He died in Tucson, Ariz.

-- Charles E. Larsen

Wikipedia article

Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists, by Sam G. Riley, 1995.---Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Outdoors: Communications and Media, 1988.

September, 1944.------------------------------------------------Westbrook's June 20, 1916 passport photo.

Bill Burgess · #15 02-14-2007, 06:50 PM

Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun:

Born: December 7, 1888, Brooklyn, NY
Died: December 18, 1939, NYC, age 51

New York sports writer;
New York Morning Telegraph reporter 1908, 1910 - 1911
NY Evening Sun, 1909
New York Tribune (copy reader, rewrite man, sports writer, sports editor, war correspondent, critic, columnist, 1911 - 1921
New York World, 1921 - 1928
New York Telegram, 1928 - 1931
New York World-Telegram, 1931 - 1939
New York Post, 1939

Early as Giants fan, he would root violently for his Giants. In 1917-18, WWI, disliked Pershing & sent his copy directly to NY Tribune. Harvard University, 1910

Lecturer on modern drama, Columbia University, 1920; Rand School, NY, 1921; dramatic editor, Vanity Fair; motion picture editor, Judge, NY Contributor to mags on the theater, books, sports, and politics. Became well-known as an advocate of left of center political causes, in much the same way as Westbrook Pegler became renowned as an advocate of right of center political issues. Interestingly, they lived as next door neighbors.
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Heywood Broun was the recipient of the 1970 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Born in Brooklyn in1888, Heywood Broun (pronounced broon) began his newspaper career with the New York Morning Telegraph in 1910. He later joined the Tribune where he first began covering baseball and the New York Giants. A close friend and checkers-playing partner with Christy Mathewson, Broun left baseball reporting to act as war correspondent for the Tribune during World War I.

In 1921, Broun signed with the Morning World where he began his famed, opinionated, no-holds-barred column titled "It Seems to Me." When his stories weren't shaking up the establishment, he turned to baseball. His fascination with Babe Ruth eventually led to a life-long friendship and it was Broun who led his story about Game Two of the 1923 World Series with the classic line "The Ruth is mighty and shall prevail."

The founder and first president of the American Newspaper Guild, Broun was an unorthodox writer and an opinionated individualist. As Fiorello LaGuardia stated: "The forces of reaction did not hate Broun because he was a radical, nor did they dislike him because he was a liberal; but how they feared him because he was truthful!"

Wikipedia article
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography Resource Center:
Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Supplements 1-2: To 1940. American Council of Learned Societies, 1944-1958.

Broun, Heywood Campbell (Dec. 7, 1888 - Dec. 18, 1939), newspaper columnist, author, and organizer of the American Newspaper Guild, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., the third of four children and the youngest of three sons of Heywood Cox and Henriette (Brosé Broun. His father, who was born in England of Scottish ancestry, had come to the United States as a youth. His mother, a native of Brooklyn, was the daughter of an emigrant from Germany who made a success as a broker. The elder Broun's partnership in a printing and stationery business was lucrative enough to provide his family with a comfortable and cultivated home. After combining athletics with editing the school paper at the Horace Mann School, Broun spent the next four years at Harvard in the celebrated class of 1910. He stood out in the literature class of Charles Townsend Copeland and in the playwriting workshop of George Pierce Baker [q.v.], and he published a story in the Harvard Advocate in 1909. But non-academic distractions, including poker, the theatre, and the fielding of Tris Speaker for the Boston Red Sox, so interfered with his study of French that he did not receive a degree.

The distractions soon became the convivial, lumbering Broun's way of life. Having found newspaper work to his taste through a summer stint in 1908 on the New York Morning Telegraph, he joined its staff as a reporter in 1910 on leaving Harvard. Discharged two years later when he asked for a pay increase, he went in 1912 to China and Japan for "atmosphere" for a theatrical company. On returning, he became a reporter on the New York Tribune, for which he wrote feature news and covered baseball. No sportswriter before him had conveyed to the reader so much of the game' excitement or interlarded the facts with such graphic allusions. In 1915 he was assigned as the Tribune's drama critic, an activity that led to an infatuation with and brief engagement to Lydia Lopokova, a Russian dancer who subse quently married the economist John Maynard Keynes. On June 6, 1917, Broun married Ruth Hale, a native of northeastern Tennessee, with whom he had been intellectually companionable for three years. Shortly afterwards they went to France, he as a war correspondent for the New York Tribune and she--the determined president of the Lucy Stone League and unwilling to use her married name--on the overseas edition of the Chicago Tribune. Broun's vivid dispatches were critical of General Pershing, the training of United States troops, and much of the American war effort, with the result that he was frequently in trouble with the military censors. He returned to New York in January 1918, preceded by Ruth Hale, who then became the mother of their only child, Heywood Hale Broun.

The Tribune made Broun its literary editor in 1919, in addition to drama critic, and he launched a book column that was soon appearing daily. His mixing of bright opinions, humorously expressed, on assorted subjects, with criticism of the new writers--Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, and others--won an enthusiastic readership. In 1921 he moved to the New York World, where, under the title "It Seems to Me," he wrote a column that was mostly whimsy and highly personal reactions to the postwar world. But it called for the release of Eugene V. Debs [q.v.], condemned the Ku Klux Klan, and revealed a growing emotion in behalf of justice for ordinary people.

Broun's daily column grew into an outstanding personal success. Yet it remained for the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti [qq.v.] to make a national issue of it. When Gov. Alvan T. Fuller's advisory committee, including President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, recommended against a new trial for the convicted men, Broun attacked the decision with eloquence and bitterness as the handiwork of the "tight minds . . . of old men" (New York World, Aug. 5, 1927). Ralph Pulitzer [q.v.], editor and publisher of the World, printed two of Broun's almost savage columns and then drew the line, publicly suspending him until he wrote on some other subject. When Broun, in the Nation (May 4, 1928), for which he had meantime begun to write, accused the World of timidity and inconsistency, Pulitzer summarily discharged him for "disloyalty," whereupon he went to the Scripps-Howard New York Telegram at the invitation of its publisher, Roy W. Howard. Three years later the World sold out to the Telegram, and the combined World-Telegram was Broun's more or less happy journalistic home almost to the end of his career. His column was syndicated, and his following was estimated conservatively at a million readers a day. But in July 1939, after some of his columns were changed and others omitted, he anticipated the end of his contract by inserting a "situation wanted" advertisement in the New York papers; and that fall his contract was not renewed. Meanwhile he had begun the publication of the Connecticut Nutmeg, a literary and humorous weekly, later Broun's Nutmeg. He also transferred his weekly column from the Nation to the New Republic, where it appeared irregularly under the caption "Shoot the Works." The New York Post gave him one more metropolitan forum late in 1939, but he wrote only a single column (Dec. 15) before his death.

There was little in ideas that did not somehow interest Broun. In 1930 he joined the Socialist party and ran for Congress on its ticket in Manhattan's 17th district. He campaigned seriously on the issue of unemployment, but in a three-way race the office went to the Republican incumbent, Mrs. Ruth Pratt. Early in 1930 he had conducted a "Give a Job Until June" campaign, operating a free employment agency. In 1931, to assist unemployed stage people, he produced and largely financed a cooperative New York musical, Shoot the Works, in which he talked, sang, and danced until he virtually collapsed from exhaustion. The end of the World and widespread unemployment among newspaper men led him to advance the idea of a union for newspaper employees as a means of self-protection and professional and economic advancement (World-Telegram, Aug. 7, 1933). The proposal met with immediate response among rank-and-file newspaper workers, and with the organization of the American Newspaper Guild--"guild" was his word--in December 1933 he became its president. He was reelected annually at national conventions, where he was the center of affectionate regard and merry fellowship and also a shrewd and able leader in the planning and execution of union policy.

Twelve books, produced in the face of daily journalism's insatiable demands, belied the surface impression that Broun was easygoing to the point of laziness. Besides collections of his war reporting and of his columns--among them Seeing Things at Night (1921) and Pieces of Hate and Other Enthusiasms (1922)--they included an autobiographical novel, The Boy Grew Older (1922), a second novel, The Sun Field (1923), a philosophical fairy tale, Gandle Follows His Nose (1926), and two serious collaborations that reflected his growing concern for important social issues: Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord, with Margaret Leech (1927), on censorship, and Christians Only: A Study in Prejudice, with George Britt (1931), on the rise of anti-Semitism.

Always resentful of her married state and too individualistic for connubial give-and-take, Ruth Hale lived apart from Broun for the last five years of their marriage. Against his wishes she went to Nogales and was granted a Mexican divorce on Nov. 17, 1933. Their relations continued generally amicable, and he attended her bedside in a long illness that ended with her death on Sept. 18, 1934. His professional stresses required him to have companionship, and on Jan. 9, 1935, he was married to the former Constantina Maria Incoronata Fruscella, known to the stage as Connie Madison, a dancer and singer of Spanish background who was the widow of Johnny Dooley, a vaudeville performer; Broun adopted her daughter, Patricia Dooley. A huge, rumpled figure of a man, with a shambling gait, Broun had a more complex nature than his relaxed amiability suggested. Never deeply confident, he suffered occasional fits of depression, and he had long had a mystical streak that led him to think and write of death. After his second marriage he decided to become a Roman Catholic--a development that amazed friends who had known him first as an Episcopalian and later as a freethinker and foe of intellectual conformity. He was baptized (taking the name of Matthew) on May 23, 1939, by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, who seven months later conducted the solemn high requiem mass at Broun's funeral service in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Ill with grippe for several days at his home near Stamford, Conn., he died of pneumonia soon after his fifty-first birthday at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. He was buried in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven, Hawthorne, N. Y. At the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt called the columnist "a hard fighter . . . undeterred by slander, calumny or thought of personal consequences." Christopher Morley characterized him as "a commuter between two worlds, the Flesh and the Spirit; the Serious and the Merry." In American journalism he had set the pattern for an important twentieth-century institution: the signed, syndicated column of opinion, not necessarily in agreement with the editorial policies of the newspapers in which it appeared.

-- Irving Dilliard

------------------------1920's-------------------------------------------1925--------------------------------------------1939

August 22, 1938: Heywood Broun preparing to read a statement before the Dies Committee.
Mr. Broun told the Committee that he was not a Communist.

Bill Burgess · #16 02-14-2007, 07:13 PM

Ringgold Wilmer (Ring) Lardner:

Born: March 6, 1885, Niles, MI
Died: September 25, 1933, East Hampton, NY, age 48

Chicago, NY, Boston sports writer, 1907-1919
Chicago Inter Ocean, 1907-10
Chicago Examiner, 1910
Chicago Tribune, 1910
Sporting News managing editor, 1910
Boston American, sports writer, February, 1911 - October, 1911
Chicago Tribune, 1913 (Wake of the News)
Chicago American, copy reader,
Chicago Examiner, sports writer
Equally fluent at baseball and football.

Chicago Tribune, June, 1912-19), Conducted The Wake of the News for the Chicago Tribune from June, 1913 to June, 1919, when he left for NYC. Oldest, continuous sports column in US. NY Bell Syndicate of John N. Wheeler 1919-27.

When he went to work for the Bell Syndicate of John Neville Wheeler, he wrote a weekly column, moved his family from Chicago to NYC, traveled the US covering major sporting events, continued his fiction for magazines. In 1932, he published a series of autobiographical articles for Saturday Evening Post. Ring was diagnosed with TB. He died following a heart attack. He became extremely disillusioned with baseball after 1920, due to the live ball style of live ball HRs, and the sudden feeling that his former work of "AL" felt dated. His former work was the basis of his income/prestige.

Wikipedia article
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ring Lardner was the recipient of the 1963 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Born in Niles, Michigan, in 1885, Ring Lardner's fame as sportswriter, humorist and satirist transcended the sporting world. Lardner was a columnist for The Sporting News in 1911 and also wrote for newspapers in Chicago and Boston. But it was the famed "You Know Me Al" series in the Saturday Evening Post that elevated Lardner to his status as an American classic.

Along with fellow reporter and close friend Hugh Fullerton, Lardner was suspicious about the goings-on of the 1919 World Series from the very start. Though the Black Sox scandal may have dampened his feelings for the game he so loved, Lardner never forgot that his roots were in baseball. Long after his daily baseball reporting career had ended, Lardner appeared at a meeting of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Given the cold shoulder by some of the attendees, Lardner remarked: "What's the matter with you boys? I belong here. I am still a baseball writer and always will be."

Fred Lieb reminisced that Lardner was "taller than most baseball writers, and towering above all in his genius for writing and expression. He won acclaim not only from the ordinary fan and reader but from the eggheads and top literati of the nation."
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Article: Ring Lardner, Sr.

Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan on March 6, 1885. He was one of six children. The older group includes William, Henry, Jr. and Lena. The younger group, born within a period of three and a half years, consisted of Reginald (Rex), Anna (Anne) and Ringgold (Ring). His parents were Henry and Lena Lardner. After courting Ellis Abbott for four years - mostly through correspondence - they married in 1911.

His first journalistic job he, in a sense, took from his brother Rex. After a brief attempt at higher education and years of bouncing from one job to the next he was hired as a baseball reporter and general handy man on the South Bend Times. There are several stories as to the actual account of how he came into his first job, but Jonathan Yardley does a nice job piecing it together.

According to Yardley, his brother Rex was writing for the South Bend Tribune and the Times had noticed his writing. They were interested. "Sometime in the late fall of 1905 Stoll made a trip to Niles especially to see Rex, in the hope of hiring him away as a full-time staffer" (Yardley, p. 62). Stoll was the editor and had found Ring to ask where his brother was. Ring told him Rex was contracted to someone, which was the truth, and then proceeded to ask about the job. When asked if Ring had ever done any newspaper work, he lied and said that he helped his brother often. As a result, Ring was offered the job of society reporter, court-house man, dramatic critic and sporting editor.

He moved to Chicago in 1907 and began writing for the Inter-Ocean, which was the worst of the four newspapers in Chicago. He quickly moved to writing for the Chicago Examiner where he was assigned to travel on the spring tour with the Chicago White Sox. By 1908 he was baseball reporter for the Chicago Tribune (Topping, online).

Ring at the Chicago Tribune.
In 1910 he left the Tribune to try his hand at being a managing editor for the St. Louis Sporting News. Here, he was encouraged by Taylor Spink to try his hand at writing a column about major league baseball. This turned into a humorous column called "Pullman Pastimes." These articles turned into the beginnings of his most famous work, You Know Me, Al (Sporting News, online). After staying there only three months, he went to Boston to write for American.

By 1913 he began writing "In the Wake of the News" at the Chicago Tribune which made him an instant household name. Not only were his "Wake" columns becoming very popular, but also his short stories were well received in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Lardner wrote more than 4,500 columns and articles, and at the height of his popularity his work was syndicated in more than 115 newspapers.

What made him so popular was his use a slang and the vernacular of the baseball players. This is why characters like Jack Keefe and Alibi Ike were so popular with the people - they spoke like the real baseball players of the time (Cosmic, online).

In 1919 something happened that changed his way of reporting about sports and changed his love for baseball. This was the Black Sox scandal when the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Ring was exceptionally close to the White Sox and felt he was betrayed by the team (National, online). After the scandal, Ring always wrote about sports as if there were some kink to the outcome.

Through his entire life, Ring tried to be a great songwriter and playwright. Unfortunately, few producers thought his works were worth noting. The only play of his that gained any real popularity was June Moon, which is still performed today. Many of his songs were flops as well, but you can listen to his song "Gee, It's a Wonderful Game" still. The song was written about the same time as "Take me out to the Ball Game," but obviously didn't become as popular.

Ring died in 1933 at the age of 48. He had been struggling with alcoholism and tuberculosis for five years before he suffered from a heart attack. He went into a coma and never came out of it.
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Biography Resource Center:
Source: Dictionary of American Biography, Supplements 1-2: To 1940. American Council of Learned Societies, 1944-1958.

Lardner, Ringgold Wilmer (Mar. 6, 1885 - Sept. 25, 1933), journalist and author, known generally as Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Mich., the son of Henry and Lena Bogardus (Phillips) Lardner. He graduated from the Niles high school in 1901, and because his parents wished him to be a mechanical engineer, he attended for a time the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago. Finding himself unsuited to the engineering profession, he returned to Niles to take a job as a freight agent and later as bookkeeper. In 1905 he went to Indiana, where he began his journalistic career as a reporter on the South Bend Times. Here much of his work consisted in reporting baseball news. His success on this paper led in 1907 to his appointment as sporting writer on the Chicago Inter Ocean. The following year, he accepted a similar position on the Chicago Examiner, and, a little later, on the Chicago Daily Tribune, where he remained until 1910. For a short time in 1910-11 he edited the St. Louis Sporting News. On June 28, 1911, he married Ellis Abbott of Goshen, Ind. From 1911 to 1913 he worked successively on the Boston American, the Chicago American, and the Chicago Examiner. Finally, he returned in 1913 to the Chicago Tribune, where until 1919 he conducted a sporting column called "In the Wake of the News." A brief trip abroad during the war is humorously recorded in My Four Weeks in France (1918). In 1919, moving to Great Neck, Long Island, he became a writer for the Bell Syndicate.

In the meantime, the success of his sporting column in the Tribune had led him to experiment with fiction. In 1914 he started contributing to the Saturday Evening Post his Jack Keefe letters, which at once became popular. The first of these, published in book form as You Know Me Al (1916), consisted of letters which Keefe, a league ball player, purports to have written home to his friend, Al. Always impatient with the glory which the public bestowed on its professional sportsmen, Lardner humorously portrayed young Keefe as an ignorant and conceited "busher." In Treat 'Em Rough (1918) Keefe's experiences in an army camp are described, and in The Real Dope (1919) he is seen as a soldier in France. In much the same vein of broad humor, only dealing with different characters, are such productions as Own Your Own Home (1919), The Big Town (1921), and Symptoms of Being 35 (1921). Loose in form, and adapted mainly to serial reading, these sketches frequently grow tenuous and monotonous when perused in book form. Yet they contain much that is typical of Lardner's style and method, especially his humorous exposure of dullness and sham through the character's self-revelation. The same realistic humor, now grown mordant, is more sharply focussed on crassness and stupidity in How to Write Short Stories (With Samples), published in 1924, The Love Nest and Other Stories (1926), and Round Up (1929). His use of the vernacular plays a significant part in all his stories. H. L. Mencken especially commends the accuracy with which he has reported the "common speech" of the people, and William McFee asserts his stories to be "fundamentally American."

Toward the close of his life, Lardner became much interested in the theatre. His first play, Elmer the Great, done in collaboration with George M. Cohan, was produced in 1928, but never published. The following year his June Moon, written with George S. Kaufman, was produced. He also contributed to a number of musical shows and revues. His magazine writing during the last few years had been chiefly confined to stories for the American Magazine, Collier's, and the Saturday Evening Post, and to radio reviews for the New Yorker. In failing health since 1931, he died of heart disease at East Hampton, Long Island, survived by his wife and four sons--John A., Ring W., James Phillips, and David Ellis.

-- Nelson F. Adkins

Ring Lardner, left with Gene Buck

Bill Burgess · #17 02-14-2007, 07:17 PM

Ferdinand Cole (F.C.) Lane:

Born: October 25, 1885, nr. Moorehead, MN
Died: April 20, 1884, Hyannis, Cape Cod, MA, age 98

Editor-in-Chief Baseball Magazine (1910-12, Boston), (1912-38, NYC). Wrote probably close to 1,000 excellent detailed articles on baseball's technical side as well as interviews w/stars at home in winter. Hall of Fame must. After retiring in 1937 from the editor's chair, he returned to Cape Cod for his long life. Headed Piedmont College's History Dept. (1941-43) at Demorest, GA. Established journalism program there. He traveled extensively with wife Emma, whom he married in June, 1914. Together they made many overseas voyages, circling globe 6 times. Wrote several books on geography & nature for adults & youths, 1940's-50's. Published his poems in 1958 (On Old Cape Cod). Lived their final years in Cape Cod nursing home, she died 10 months after him.
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Biography Resource Center
Ferdinand Cole Lane was an editor with Baseball magazine for nearly three decades. Because the magazine was a monthly, Lane was able to publish in-depth articles about various aspects of the national pastime that dailies or weeklies were prevented from covering by reason of time constraints. Baseball published biographies and essays, some of which were discussions of the politics and business end of baseball, and Lane conducted many of the interviews and wrote the stories himself. He is credited with more than 800 articles and probably wrote many more anonymously.

Lane was born in Minnesota, and the family moved several times before settling in Massachusetts, near Truro on Cape Cod. He received a B.A. from Boston University and stayed on there to attend law school for three years. Lane also took graduate courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked as a biologist for the State of Massachusetts. He later applied his training in scientific observation to his observations of the game of baseball. He wrote annual articles in which he evaluated the teams as the season wound down to the World Series, and he picked both American League and National League all-star teams, as well as an all-American team comprised of players from each. In 1927 Lane began choosing the most valuable offensive player of the year. He was uncomfortable with the tendency of extolling the virtues of sluggers like Babe Ruth over players who displayed overall high performance in not only batting, but in pitching, fielding, and base running. For this reason, he supported the development of vital statistics as a means of documenting players' performances. As a scientist, he found statistics and averages fascinating.

Lane's editorship carried him through some of the most turbulent times in baseball, including the Black Sox scandal, the reign of controversial baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the effect on the sport of the Great Depression. In 1933, he wrote extensively on the escalating salaries being paid to players as owners sought to retain star athletes, a practice Lane found to be a serious mistake. He deplored the obsession with winning that was exhibited by both fans and owners with each year's race for the pennant. Lane was in favor of a third "Federal League," feeling there was plenty of financing available and enough fans to support expansion, and later, when attendance at games fell off, he felt that interleague play between the American and National Leagues would inject needed enthusiasm at the end of the season.

Lane's only book about baseball, Batting: One Thousand Expert Opinions on Every Conceivable Angle of Batting Science, sold for one dollar and reflected years of interviews with hitters and experts on batting practices and styles. Feeling that the statistics that were being collected were not adequately determining player worth, Lane came up with comprehensive guidelines for rating pitchers in 1926. In 1927, he did the same for batters, including twelve categories of offensive play and a point system with which to evaluate players. In the first year, Ruth was the top point winner in the American League, and Hack Wilson of the National League won, even though he was not one of the top five batters in the league. But Lane also emphasized that hits were but one of the deciding factors in scoring runs, which was a team's actual goal.

Leverett T. Smith, Jr. wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that "having focused his readers on scoring runs as the meaningful dimension of batting, Lane turned his attention to the relation of batting average to 'batting ability.' 'A hit is a fraction of a run, but there are other fractions just as important, just as expressive of true batting ability.' Lane proceeded to list the others--the walk, the sacrifice, the hit by pitch, the infield out or fly ball--that advance baserunners and wondered 'are they . . . expressed in the batting averages which are supposed to disclose a batter's ability?' The answer is no--for Lane one fundamental weakness of the batting average as a baseball statistic." Smith noted that Lane considered a second weakness the fact that batting averages "'exaggerate the importance of one particular feature of batting skill. They minimize or ignore or penalize other factors which also have their place. They are one-sided and therefore inaccurate. They are inaccurate and therefore unjust.'"

Lane continued to write about evaluating batting ability, what he considered an excessive number of home runs, home run and stolen-base figures, and changes in the offensive style of play. The December 1937 issue of Baseball was his last as editor, and for the next ten years, he served as editor of the annual The Little Red Book of Major League Baseball, published by his friend Al Munro Elias. The last years of Lane's life were spent teaching and writing nature books. He was ninety-eight when he died at his home on Cape Cod.

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Born October 25, 1885, in Morehead, MN; died April 20, 1984, in Cape Cod, MA; son of Alpheus Ferdinand and Mary (Cole) Lane; married June 30, 1914; wife's name Emma (died, 1985). Education: Boston University, B.A., 1907, attended law school; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduate studies.

AWARDS: Piedmont College, Ph.D. (honorary).

CAREER: Sportswriter. Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, assistant biologist; Baseball (magazine), 1910-38, coeditor, 1911-12, editor, 1912-37; The Little Red Book of Major League Baseball, editor, 1938-48; Piedmont College, GA, professor.

His photo/entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 503.---Wikipedia write-up

Bill Burgess · #18 02-14-2007, 07:49 PM

Daniel (Margowitz) (Dan) Daniel:

Born: June 6, 1890, New York City
Died: July 1, 1981, Pomano Beach, FL, age 91, buried: Forrest Lawn Memorial Gardens, Pompano Beach, FL

Dropped his Jewish birth name, Moskowitz, because he felt it was too Jewish for professional use in 1910.

New York sports writer;
National correspondent for The Sporting News, mainly covered Yankees, was as much an authority in boxing as baseball.
New York World-Telegram
New York World-Telegram & Sun, 1910 -1959
Washington Senators' announcer, 1960 - 1968
Helped found Ring Magazine in 1922, Could also handle Football.
President of BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America), Baseball Rules committee,
Won Spink Award in 1972, Baseball's Hall of Fame Veterans committee,
Chairman of New York chapter of BWAA, more honors/awards than can be listed.

Contributed more articles to Sporting News than any other writer.

Authored:
The Real Babe Ruth, with anecdotes - I Remember Ruth, 1948

Dan Daniel Wikipedia article
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Daniel, Fred Lieb, and J. Roy Stockton were the recipients of the 1972 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Born in New York City, June 6, 1890, Daniel Markowitz (he chose to use the redundant "Dan Daniel" for his byline in The Sporting News) left medical school to pursue a career in sports journalism that lasted some 50 years. Though he wrote columns for the New York World Telegram and Sun, he is best known for his work in The Sporting News under the byline "By Daniel." Indeed, it is probable that no one wrote more stories for The Sporting News than Daniel.

Daniel was recognized as an authority on the history of the Yankees as he covered the club from the pre-Babe Ruth era through the days of Mickey Mantle. A former president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the versatile Daniel was also chairman of the Football Writers' Association and the Boxing Writers' Association. He was a member of baseball's rules committee and served for many years on the Hall of Fame Committee on Baseball Veterans.

As Bob Broeg recalled, "Daniel wrote so voluminously that he rarely showed the quality of prose of which he was capable. But when a story moved him to take the time-or when he rose to speak in his rasping voice-the old baseball writer best demonstrated the wit and warmth he kept covered under a gruff exterior."

Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 492.----------------------------Sporting News' obituary

------------------------------------------------------------------Biographical Dictionary of American Sports Writers, 1989-92,
------------------No Cheering in the Press Box, 1973, pp. 1-2.,---------------------Suppliment of Baseball and Football, edited by David L. Porter, 1992.--------Dan Daniel/Miller Huggins, spring training, 1928

---------------------------------1952---------------------------------------------same shot enlarged-------------------------------------1932

Bill Burgess · #19 02-14-2007, 07:58 PM

Henry Pierrepoint Edwards:

Born: December 11, 1871, Dunkirk, NY
Died: August 1, 1948, Wilmette, IL, age 76

Cleveland sports writer, AL service bureau;
Cleveland Recorder, sports editor, 1898 - April, 1901,
Cleveland Plain Dealer, sports editor, July 29, 1901 - February 1, 1928,
American League service bureau, Chicago February 1, 1928 - February 1, 1942.

Bill Burgess' post on Henry Edwards

His entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball,
edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 502.--------------------------------------------------------New York Times' obituary, August 3, 1948, pp. 25.

----------------------1933-------------------------------1942

Bill Burgess · #20 02-14-2007, 08:10 PM

Oliver Perry (OP) Caylor:

Born: December 17, 1849, Dayton, OH
Died: October 19, 1897, Cincinnati, OH, age 47,---d. developed tubercular tumors in his throat, resigned his post at the Herald, NY in September, 1897, went to Winona, MN to recuperate 6 weeks before his death, where they burst & killed him by asphyxia (suffocation).

Cincinnati / New York sports writer;
Cincinnati Enquirer, sports editor, November, 1874 - 1881,
Helped found American Association & secured a Cincinnati franchise in it, November, 1881
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, 1881 - 1887
New York Daily, 1887,
served as Reds Secretary / business manager through 1886.
Carthage, MO newspaper 1888,
The Sporting News (New York, editor - 1889-1890,
New York Herald, Baseball editor 1892 - 1897, death.
Official scorer for NY Giants.
Also managed Cincinnati (AA, 1885 - 86) & NY Metropolitans, (AA, 1887).
Accepted administrative job with NY Metropolitans, 1886.
Accepted job as on-field manager of team, June, 1886 - end of season.Team was in 7th & he couldn't improve team's standing by season's end.

Famed for caustic, sarcastic humor & wit.

New York Times Obituary

Sporting Life obituary, October 30, 1897, pp. 3.

Bill Burgess · #21 02-14-2007, 08:21 PM

Walter Wellesley (Red) Smith:

Born: September 25, 1905, Green Bay, WI
Died: January 15, 1982, Stamford, CT, age 76

Milwaukee Sentinel, 1927 - 28
St. Louis Star sports writer & copy editor, 1928 - 33
St. Louis Star-Times re-write man, 1933 - 36
Philadelphia Record sports reporter & columnist, 1936 - 45
New York Herald-Tribune sports columnist, 1945 - 67
Publishers-Hall Syndicate, 1967 - 71
New York Times, 1971 - 82
Was very loved for his gentle, civilized writing style, like his best friend, Grantland Rice.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Red Smith and Harold Kaese were the recipients of the 1976 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

A graduate of Notre Dame, Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith began his career in journalism as a news reporter with the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1927. After turning to sportswriting, Smith's legendary career made stops at the St. Louis Star and Philadelphia Record, before settling in New York City in 1945. There he wrote for the Herald-Tribune, World Journal Tribune, and the New York Times.

Gifted with a startling memory and an unparalleled storytelling ability, Red Smith was, according to Ernest Hemingway, "the most important force in American sportswriting." A Pulitzer Prize winner in journalism for "distinguished commentary," Smith had a fine sense of the absurd in human conduct and a penetrating perception of detail for accuracy.

Shirley Povich recalled: "Those, of all persuasions, who had an appreciation for the written word were attracted to him and his facility for using the language. He raised the sportswriting trade to a literacy and elegance it had not known before."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography Resource Center, by Jeff Merron
Born to Ida Richardson Smith and Walter Philip Smith, a grocer, Walter Smith grew up in Green Bay with an older brother and a younger sister. Walter, nicknamed "Brick" for his shock of red hair, began reading at age five and developed an interest in sports as a youth, following especially the Green Bay minor league baseball team in the Class C Wisconsin-Illinois league. Smith attended East High School in Green Bay, graduating with a B average. One year later, in 1923, he entered Notre Dame University. While at Notre Dame he first displayed his talent in journalism, writing for the Notre Dame Daily and editing the college yearbook, The Dome, in his junior year.

After graduating from Notre Dame on 5 June 1927, Smith began a journalism career that spanned fifty-five years. His first job, as a general-assignment cub reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, brought in $24 per week. He worked there for ten months before landing a $40-a-week copy editor position with the St. Louis Star, composing headlines and rewriting stories hastily compiled by other reporters. After a few months he was offered a job as a sportswriter--a position that he did not seek but took because he wanted to be out reporting. He covered boxing, basketball, and track for a few months before taking an assignment in 1929 to report on the St. Louis Browns baseball team full-time. Two years later, in 1930, Smith was promoted to covering the St. Louis Cardinals, a team he reported on for three seasons.

During the early years of his career, Smith worked hard and developed a rich personal life. He socialized often with ballplayers and reporters (he became famously linked with fellow sportswriters Frank Graham and Grantland Rice, with whom he was close friends), and successfully courted Catherine ("Kay") M. Cody, whom he married on 11 February 1933. Smith was a dutiful husband and father. Throughout the Great Depression, he often worried about money; after gaining some experience he made about $50 a week at the Star, but he felt that this salary was far from enough to raise a family. Still, he turned down a public relations position with Southwest Bell Telephone Company that would have paid $10 a week more. "I only wanted to be a newspaperman," he said later. "I was attached to the newspaper like an undernourished barnacle."

In 1936 Smith moved to the Philadelphia Record, attracted by a higher salary. He covered the Philadelphia Phillies for the Record, and in 1936 he was first identified in a byline as "Red" Smith, a moniker that stuck for the remainder of his career. At the Record, as at the newspapers that followed, Smith kept himself very busy: a typical autumn weekend had him covering college football on Friday night and again on Saturday afternoon, professional football on Sunday, and then writing a weekend wrap-up about the local high school championships. Near the end of his life, Smith estimated that he had written about 10,000 columns.

The key to Smith's success was his ability to write well and get to the heart of a story while avoiding the usual excesses and clichés of sportswriting. He wrote to an aspiring journalist in 1937: "About the only requisites I could name for a sportswriter are those of any ordinary reporter--intelligence, common sense, and an impersonal viewpoint. By the latter I mean the ability to stand a little apart, take no sides, and merely report what happens. The good sportswriter needs one thing more--a degree of writing ability, the capacity to put a little freshness and originality into his stories." To that end, Smith said in one of his most famous quotes, "Writing is easy. I just open a vein and bleed."

Smith did not take sides--except for those of the athletes when they came in conflict with the owners--until the late 1960s, when he became increasingly aware of the political aspects of sports. During the last fifteen years of his career he wrote about baseball's reserve clause, the hypocrisy of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games (which were not halted even after eleven Israelis, five terrorists, and a policeman were killed during a terrorist incident), and other issues.

Amplifying his feeling that sports "are just little games that little boys can play, and it really isn't important to the future of civilization whether the Athletics or the Browns win," Smith criticized the IOC during the 1972 Olympics: "Walled off in their dream world, appallingly unaware of the realities of life and death, the aging playground directors who conduct this quadrennial muscle dance ruled that a little bloodshed must not be permitted to interrupt play.... The men who run the Olympics are not evil men. Their shocking lack of awareness can't be due to callousness. It has to be stupidity."

Although Smith was on the road almost constantly throughout his career, he was a family man, the father of two children, one of whom, Terence ("Terry") Fitzgerald, went on to become a reporter for the New York Times. Smith, who often frequented bars with friends, players, and fellow reporters, led a balanced lifestyle marked mostly by devotion to his family, work, and fishing, in that order; a Roman Catholic, Smith attended church on a regular basis.

Smith was serious about his work, but he found plenty of time for his favorite pastime, fishing. Conveniently, fishing could also be fodder for a sports column, and he seemed to enjoy writing about fishing as much as about the major sports. (In 1963 a collection of his columns entitled Red Smith on Fishing was published.)

In September 1939 Smith became a full-time sports columnist due to his skill at covering baseball and a range of other events, and his popularity with readers. In 1944 he published his first magazine article, "Don't Send My Boy to Halas," for the Saturday Evening Post. He would also write for Collier's, Liberty, and Holiday, and in 1945 he published his first book, Terry and Bunky Play Football, aimed at the juvenile market.

In September 1945 Smith joined the staff of the New York Herald Tribune, attaining a goal he had been working for since the beginning of his career--writing for a New York daily. He began writing a regular column for the Herald Tribune on 5 December 1945 and was an immediate success, winning the National Headliners Club Award for excellence in newspaper writing the following year. In 1946 his column went into syndication, and in 1954, after the death of Grantland Rice, it became the most widely circulated sports column in the country. Smith's last column, on 11 January 1982, appeared in 275 U.S. newspapers and 225 newspapers abroad.

By the late 1940s Smith was an institution, widely considered to be one of the best sportswriters in the country. His columns were considered worthy of study at major universities. One of his stories, about a heavyweight fight between Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, was the only sports story and the only piece of journalism anthologized in the college textbook A Quarto of Modern Literature.

Smith wrote for the Herald Tribune, with his column "Views of Sport" appearing six times weekly until the paper folded, publishing its last issue on 17 August 1965. He continued writing for the Tribune's syndicate, and then the newly created New York World Journal Tribune. Less than two years later--in May 1967--that paper also folded, and he was again relegated to writing for the Publishers-Hall Syndicate. Finally, in 1971, Smith accepted an offer to write a column for the New York Times, where he would continue to write his column, "Sports of the Times," four times weekly until just before his death.

Throughout the late 1960s Smith's personal life went through changes as well. In 1967 his wife Kay died of liver cancer. They had been married for thirty-four years. On 2 November 1968, Smith married an artist, Phyllis Warner Weiss, a widow with five children.

Smith's columns and magazine articles were collected in nine separate anthologies; the first, entitled Out of the Red, was published in 1950. The Red Smith Reader and To Absent Friends were released in 1982. Smith also edited a collection entitled Sports Stories in 1949.

Red Smith died of congestive heart failure and kidney failure on Friday, 15 January 1982, at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut. His ashes were buried at the Long Ridge Cemetery, also in Stamford.

Smith's greatness as a writer was recognized during his lifetime, not just by prize-givers like the Pulitzer committee. "Red Smith was, quite simply, the best sportswriter. Put the emphasis on writer," began a story by fellow New York Times columnist Dave Anderson the day after Smith died. "Virtually all of today's sportswriters grew up reading Red Smith's column. He was their idol and their inspiration. And their friend."

Smith's importance extended beyond the world of sports and journalism; in awarding only the second Pulitzer Prize ever to a sportswriter, the Pulitzer committee called his work "unique in the erudition, the literary quality, the vitality and the freshness of viewpoint." This high quality brought non-sports fans to read his column, and some thought it more than a coincidence that shortly after he called for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, the United States followed suit.

------------------------------March, 1951

1981 World Series, in the Pressroom at Yankee Stadium;-------------L-R: Frank Graham, Granny Rice, Red Smith.

TRfromBR · #22 02-15-2007, 01:59 AM

Richard (Dick) Young:

Born: October 17, 1917, NYC
Died: August 31, 1987, NYC, age 70

New York sports wrier;
New York Daily News sports writer, columnist, sports editor (1942-82)
New York Post sports writer / sports editor (1982-87)

Authored: Roy Campanella, 1952

New York Times Obituary
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dick Young and Tim Murnane were the recipients of the 1978 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Occasionally abusive, often abrasive, but always honest, Dick Young was one of the most influential sportswriters in the country. Young was respected for his knowledge of the game and for his crisp, breezy reportorial style.

Young began his career in journalism as the New York Daily News messenger boy. He would eventually become the sports editor and a syndicated columnist. He distinguished himself with the ability to give a second-day touch to a first-day game story, and with his hard-hitting, "tell it like it is" treatment of friend or foe alike.

Young was a leader in his field who constantly fought to improve working conditions for baseball writers in press boxes and clubhouses throughout the major leagues while keeping up to date on the latest trends in baseball writing and reporting. Fellow writer and J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Jerome Holtzman stated that Young "made considerably larger contributions to the sports communications business than anyone else with the possible exception of Red Smith."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Biography Resource Center:
Dick Young, longtime sports journalist for the New York Daily News and the New York Post, was dubbed "the world's most controversial sportswriter" by Douglas A. Noverr in the Biographical Dictionary of American Sports. In his 1987 book about the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s, The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn called Young "spiky, self-educated, and New York." His column in the Daily News, "Young Ideas," delighted and enraged readers for more than forty-five years. Young spent nearly his entire career at the Daily News, eventually becoming sports editor, until he left that newspaper for the Post in 1982, just five years before his death.

According to Jack Ziegler in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Young was a "key transitional figure" between the "gentlemanly" sports reporting of old-time writers like Grantland Rice and Arthur Daley. Young had a longtime feud with Red Smith of the New York Times, whom Young considered an old-fashioned sentimentalist. Young's style was streetwise, often abrasive, and direct. Ziegler said that "he wrote authentic, accurate accounts of games and players."

Young was unhesitatingly frank in his opinions of sports figures, managers, and other sports commentators. He called sportscaster Howard Cosell "Howie the Shill." He was never politically correct, telling Harry Waters in a 1973 Newsweek article that many African-American athletes "believe that everything bad that is happening to them is happening because of their blackness. It's a terrible crutch."

Ziegler noted that Young never let go of the values he developed in the 1930s and 1940s--a high level of patriotism, conservative political and social views, a no-nonsense attitude toward hard work and achievement, a loathing for drug abuse among players, and a disdain for the younger players who did not meet his high standards. For many years, for example, he was unsympathetic toward the draft-resisting of Muhammad Ali, whom he persistently called by his pre-Islamic name, Cassius Clay. In 1971, in an article called "The Joe Namath System," he all but called the New York Jets quarterback a spoiled brat who made unreasonable demands on his managers. Instead, Young reserved his respect for older athletes, like Roy Campanella, the longtime catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers who was paralyzed in an accident. Young wrote a biography of Campanella in 1952.

Young may have developed his crusty attitudes from his hardscrabble childhood. Born in the Bronx, he was farmed out to an Italian Catholic family in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan from the ages of six to twelve. Poor but ambitious, he went with his father to California after high school, then worked for thirty dollars a month at Civilian Conservation Corps projects in upstate New York during the Great Depression. He hitchhiked to New York City, landing a job at the Daily News as a messenger boy. There he stayed, working as a tabulator, a beat reporter, a columnist, and finally sports editor, until he moved to the Post. At his peak he earned around $150,000, probably the highest salary earned by any sportswriter during his time.

By 1944 Young was already approaching legendary status in the sportswriting field. With what Ziegler called his "superb sense of narration," he riveted readers with his stories of subjects like illegal betting in the sports arena, Jackie Robinson's entry into the major leagues, and Happy Chandler's suspension of Dodger manager Leo Durocher in 1947. He disliked the abrasive Durocher personally but defended him as the victim of a hypocritical owner. Young had few kind words for Durocher's mild-mannered successor, calling him "Kindly Old Burt Shotton," often shortened to "KOBS." Young deeply regretted the departure of the New York Giants and the Dodgers and began to campaign fiercely for a new National League franchise. Suffering with the fans through the early, somnolent days of the New York Mets, he praised them for their comeback when they won the National League East championship in 1969. Yet he castigated fans for the poor sportsmanship they exhibited toward the rival Montreal Expos.

Mellowing somewhat in his latter years, Young often lionized older sports figures like Babe Ruth in his columns. Minimizing Ruth's known alcoholism, he still saw him as a hero, compared to a young star like Namath, whom he frequently castigated. Young also admired baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who had a major role in desegregating the game. Young's longstanding dislike for Muhammad Ali came to an end when he reconciled with the fighter around 1986. According to Ziegler, "[He] realized that beneath his slick surface, Ali was a decent man, devoted to his family and possessed of courage and athletic skill."
Young was a complicated mixture of bravado, coarseness, sensitivity, belligerence, practicality, intelligence, and idealism. Other writers praised the breezy style which often masked profound thinking. In an Esquire article, Randall Poe found Young's writing style "coarse and simpleminded, like a cave painting. But it is superbly crafted." Young often applied higher moral standards to others than he adopted in his own life; he was known for womanizing and heavy drinking. At the same time, he had an extremely demanding work ethic. He wrote as many as seven "Young Ideas" columns in a week and routinely covered a baseball team six days a week. Revealing some of his writing secrets to Kahn in The Boys of Summer, he said, "Now you're gonna write the game most of the time. Nothing you can do about that and it ain't bad. But anytime you ...can get your story off the game you got to do it. Because that's unusual and people read unusual things. Fights. Bean Balls. Whatever. Write them, not the games." In the end, Young succeeded in becoming the kind of sportswriter he dreamed of being. As he told Ross Wetzsteon in an article published in Best Sports Stories: 1986, "I wanted to be a stop-the-presses guy, competing with the other paper for the scoop and for the girl."

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Family: Born in 1917 (some sources say 1918), in New York, NY; died August 31, 1987, in New York, NY; married; wife's name Jay; children: seven daughters, one son. Education: Attended George Washington High School, New York City. Politics: Conservative. Religion: Catholic.

AWARDS: Inductee, National Baseball Hall of Fame, 1978; J.G. Taylor Spink Award, National Baseball Hall of Fame, 1979; President, Baseball Writers' Association of America; James J. Walker Award, Boxing Writers Association of America, 1987.

CAREER: Sportswriter, sports editor, New York Daily News, 1936-81; New York Post, 1982-87; columnist, The Sporting News, late 1950s to 1985.

Bill Burgess · #23 02-15-2007, 05:38 PM

William Blythe Hanna: AKA William B. Hanna, AKA Bill Hanna

Born: January 5, 1866, Plattsmouth, Cass County, Nebraska [1900 census confirms January, 1866 DOB (ancestry.com); Lafayette College confirms his January 5, 1866 DOB.]
Died: November 20, 1930, Newfoundland, NJ, age 64,---d. was stricken with apoplexy May 24, 1930.
Buried: Mount Washington Cemetery, Independence, (Jackson County), MO, Plot: Kansas City Heritage

Kansas City, MO / New York sports writer;
Graduated Lafayette College, Easton, PA, 1878
Kansas City Star (MO),
Arrived NYC, 1892,
New York Herald, 1892
New York Press, 1893
New York Sun, 1900 - 1916
New York Herald, 1916 - 1924
New York Herald-Tribune, 1924 - May, 1930, death.
Acknowledged expert on baseball, football & billiards.

5'6 1/2, grey eyes

Father: Thomas King Hanna (born Shelby Ct., Kentucky, February 8, 1829, Dry goods store; Mother: Judith Joyce Venable, born Shelbyville, KY, 1836; They were married Setptember 25, 1955, St. Joseph, Buchanan Co., MO. Bill was born in Nebraska, but family had relocated to Kansas City, MO by 1870. Was 6th child. Mother: Eva A. Baker on December 25, 1884 in Maryville, Nodaway, MO;

d. Stricken with stroke (apoplexy) May 24, 1930, was taken to Army cadet hospital for 3 weeks, and transferred to Idylease sanitarium, Newfoundland, NJ at his wishes to be near his brother, Thomas K. Hanna.

His style was noted for his eschewing of slang such as "swat, pill, horsehide", etc. His choice of words were those less chosen, terse, precise, kind. His style was succinct, his knowledge encyclopedic. He always signed his copy, William B. Hanna, and became upset if anyone changed it.

Sporting News' Death Notice-------------------------------------------------------------------Sporting News' Obituary
November 27, 1930, pp. 4, column 2-----------------------------------------------------------November 27, 1930, pp. 6, column 7.

Bill Burgess · #24 02-15-2007, 05:51 PM

Walter Saunders Barnes, Jr.:

Born: November 26, 1860, Boston, MA
Died: February 13, 1940, Brookline, MA, age 79

Boston Post reporter, 1889-1891
Boston Journal sports editor, 1891 - October, 1906
Boston Herald sports editor, 1906-11
Boston Globe sports writer, 1911-33, sports editor, 1914-1933, Emeritus, 1933-40.

New York Times' obituary, February 14, 1940, pp. 26.

Bill Burgess · #25 02-15-2007, 06:08 PM

John Christian (Jack) Kofoed:

Born: December 17, 1894, Philadelphia, PA
Died: December 27, 1979, Miami, FL, age 85

Philadelphia / New York / Florida sports writer;
Philadelphia Public Ledger, 1912-17
Philadelphia Record, 1917-23
New York Telegram, 1923-24, 6 months
New York Post, 1924-32
New York Journal-American, 1933-35
Miami Daily News, 1938-42
in the military, assistant intelligence officer (captain), with 3rd Bomber Command.
Miami Herald, November, 1944 - May 31, 1979

Authored: The Best of Jack Kofoed: Collection of articles and columns which were previously published in the Miami Herald, 1970.

Served in WWI (France, non-commissioned) & WWII (London, PR officer, 8th Air Force).
Columbia Pictures, New York, NY, and Hollywood, CA, short subjects producer, 1935-38;
Miami News, Miami, FL, columnist, 1938-42;

Miami Herald, Miami, FL, columnist, 1945
Radio commentator, WHN (New York, NY), WIOD, WQAM, WKAT (all Miami, FL).

Son of Hans Senius (sea captain) and Anna (Hansen) Kofoed; married Marie Ackerman, May 31, 1924. Education: Graduated from Northeast High School, Philadelphia, PA, 1912. Military/Wartime Service: U.S. Army, served in France, 1917-19, became sergeant; U.S. Army Air Forces, 1942-44, became lieutenant colonel. Memberships: National Press Club, Racquet Club, Palm Bay Club, Miami Shores Country Club, Country Club of Miami.

His entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 493.

New York Times' obituary, December 29, 1979, pp. 19.

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