Sports Biblio Digest, 4.14.19: A Salute to the Vanishing American Sports Page
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also In This Issue: 30 Baseball Books in 30 Days; Baseball’s Pitchmen; Ron Darling; 1918 World Series; 1961 Angels Cards; Defying the Nazis on Horseback; Doncaster Belles; Sunderland Diehards; Remembering Forrest Gregg and Marilynn Smith
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By leafing back and forth through time—representing decades of stylistic changes and topical sensibilities—a reader readily discovers that a collection of nearly a century of American sportswriting is more than a keepsake of a time or a technology.
The daily sports column, or game story written on deadline, or impressionistic sidebar of a slice of a night’s sports drama, has become something of a relic in a digital age in which space, language and the incessant demands of attention and provocation rule.
Even before a daily newspaper rolls off the presses, a prospective reader has already seen the towering home run, jaw-dropping touchdown catch or winning 3-point bomb many times. He’s already read about them in almost real-time, or chatted with fellow fans on message boards or social media.
Writers today are writing for audiences who’ve not only seen the games along with them, but have been provided commentary from television announcers, repeated replays and an avalanche of advanced stats.
The column, an artifact of a fixed production schedule, is being romanticized now more than ever, as newspapers continue their death cycle, with many falling into the hands of vulture hedge funds and national chains that have plenty of blood on their hands in helping send the industry to its grim fate.
I come here not to declare the demise of print, 15 years after leaving it, but to celebrate a new anthology of the glorious history of some of the best short sports pieces in newspapers and magazines, and bearing some of the most iconic bylines delving into figures and events famous and and anonymous.
That “The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns from Ring Lardner to Sally Jenkins,” published this week by the Library of America, has been expertly edited by John Schulian makes reading these selections even more of a treat.
His anthologists’ talent has produced previous volumes about writings on football and boxing, and this new one contains a subject range that could suit the most exacting or casual fan.
To have the words of Damon Runyon, Jimmy Cannon, Jim Murray, Jerry Izenberg, Bob Ryan, and Mike Lupica and so many more at one’s fingertips is to experience the dazzling evolution of American sportswriting from distant observation—as Schulian notes in his introduction, locker room access came about with the likes of Dick Young in the 1950s—to deeper expositions of sports and society amid the cultural turmoil of the last half-century.
The star sportswriter was becoming a significant factor as the multimedia age emerged. Schulian also wrote for the Philadelphia Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times and Sports illustrated during this time, before embarking on a screenwriting career:
“Everywhere I looked in the 1970s and 1980s, there were columnists playing the same game I was, each making his or her own distinctive moves beneath a mug shot and a byline set in type bigger an everyday reporter’s.”
Some post-print readers will find plentiful pieces on the Holy Trinity of American sports topics of the first half-century: baseball, boxing and horse racing.
From Gertrude Ederle to Buck O’Neil, the sports figures reflect the broad range of American humanity in the past century, as well as some of the burnishing moments of our sports history: Louis vs. Schmeling, the Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff, Secretariat at Belmont, Nicklaus winning The Masters at 46, Mary Lou Retton limping her way to Olympic glory.
There’s also W.C. Heinz’ heartbreaking classic from 1949, about putting down a horse that had been badly injured in a race at the Jamaica track near New York, and these chilling, revolting closing sentences:
“They worked quickly, the two vets removing the broken bones as evidence for the insurance company, the crowd silently watching.”
To this day, I cannot bear to watch the so-called “Sport of Kings.” The transactional ugliness of sports, stated so simply 70 years ago, is presented to present-day readers like a sledgehammer, but often without the graceful touch of Heinz.
Perhaps it’s why as a former newspaper sports reporter, I can’t abide by so much of what is written about the games today. While it’s hard to ask any self-respecting journalist to ignore glaring social issues, I was a bit put off by some of the later selections in this book: Mike Wilbon about Mike Tyson after his rape conviction, and Sally Jenkins broad-brushing male athletes because of the criminal misconduct of a small handful, including Lawrence Taylor.
These pieces resonate with the sanctimony of my generation of sportswriters that seems to have gone overboard in assigning themselves as moral arbiters where their predecessors so often looked the other way.
My favorite column in this selection comes from Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, who trekked to Texas in 2001 in search a long-lost Dodgers fan he wasn't sure existed, only to find a woman disabled by cerebral palsy and who had taken to blogging to nourish her spirit:
“It is the same fight the sports world experiences daily in these times of cynicism and conspiracy theories.
“The fight to believe. The fight to trust that athletics can still create heroes without rap sheets, virtue without chemicals, nobility with grace.
“It is about the battle to return to the days when sports did not detract from life, but added to it, with its awesome power to enlighten and include.
“In a place far from such doubt, with a mind filled with wonder, Sarah Morris brought me back.”
A Bevy of Baseball Books
Since this is April, this is the month for Los Angeles-based sportswriter Tom Hoffarth’s annual 30 baseball books in 30 days romp. Here’s what he’s been reading, and reviewing, through the first half, or what Tom cheekily calls his “entrance velocity.” As he theorizes elsewhere, there’s a reason for the plethora of baseball books every spring:
“Note that all sorts of revisionist history, personality-driven essays or bios that exhume new previously untold info resonate best with those who’ve endured a long, cold winter. Same with anything that takes good-natured digs to keep America’s Pastime part of the pop culture conversation.”
Among the 30 books list being reviewed elsewhere is Roberta Newman’s “Here’s the Pitch,” an academic look at baseball and advertising;
Baseball book blogger Ron Kaplan takes a look at 1969 Mets books at the Book Reporter. At his Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf blog, he examines former Mets pitcher Ron Darling’s controversial new release that’s prompted a defamation and libel suit from Lenny Dykstra;
Skip Desjardin’s “September 1918” was named the 2019 Larry Ritter Award by the Society for American Baseball Research, which is given to books written about the deadball era.
A Few Good Reads
From The Telegraph (U.K.): The woman who defied the Nazis to win the toughest horse race in history;
From USA Today: Are male-focused sports out of step?;
From UnHerd: For some hard-pressed communities in England, it’s more than a beautiful game;
From Halo’s Heaven: The Year in Cards, 1961: Painted Mercenaries, Sacrificial Aspromonte;
From The New York Times: Leaving the Doncaster Belles, England’s pioneering women’s soccer club, behind;
From Only A Game: The 1968 National Anthem performance that changed Jose Feliciano’s life;
From The Wall Street Journal: How Tampa Became Hockeytown.
Passings
Forrest Gregg, 85, was a Hall of Fame lineman for the Green Bay Packers and later a head coach in the NFL, and had been suffering from Parkinson’s Disease;
Marilynn Smith, 89, was one of the 13 women who founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association in 1950 and won 21 times, including two majors. She later served as LPGA president and would have been 9- years old today. The only two surviving founders are Shirley Spork and Marlene Bauer Hagge.
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The Sports Biblio Digest is an e-mail newsletter delivered each Sunday. You can subscribe here and search the archives.
This is Digest issue No. 162, published April 14, 2019.
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