In 1986, I got thrown off the deep end and was named the White Sox beat reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I only was 26 and never had covered a beat. Suddenly, I now was entrusted with one of the most high-profile assignments for the sports section.
Somehow, I survived the endless travel and brutal lifestyle (which I hated). Then there were the endless games, terrible deadlines and a season that didn’t end with Game 162 (not a favorite of those, either). I reported on the White Sox for just under three years before I was moved over to become the Tribune’s national college football writer.
Bottom line: Covering baseball easily was the hardest job I ever had in 30-plus years in the business. It was a great experience that I never would want to do again.
Yet I’m glad I did it once. There’s a badge of honor in this profession to say you once were a baseball beat writer for a newspaper. Given the volume of travel and games, it is the sportswriter’s equivalent of being on the frontline.
The story of baseball writers is told vividly in a new book, Keepers of the Game: When the Baseball Beat was the Best Job on the Paper. Written by Dennis D’Agostino, the book features chapters on 23 baseball writers, many of whom are familiar names in their towns and beyond: Peter Gammons, Hal McCoy, Ross Newhan, Stan Isaacs, Rick Hummel, Bill Madden and more. I was thrilled D’Agostino included Joe Goddard of the Chicago Sun-Times and Dave van Dyck, who covered baseball for the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune. If not for “Young Joe” and Vandy, who were my “competitors” on the beat, I’d still probably be trying to find the Sox spring training home in Sarasota, Fla.
D’Agostino followed the same format used by legendary baseball writer Jerome Holtzman in his legendary book, No Cheering in the Press Box. He turned on his tape recorder and let the baseball writers provide an oral history of their craft.
Here is my Q/A:
What gave you the idea to write this book?
In my two previous books, an oral history of the New York Knicks and a coffee table book of photos of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, I had really enjoyed using the oral history process to tell a story. I don’t think I’m ever going to write a book that has 50 pages of footnotes or 30 pages of stat tables or endless passages copied out of The New York Times microfilm, which is the way a lot of sports books are done today. I’d much rather seek out the people involved, run a tape recorder, and ask them, “What was it like?” The late Steve Sabol had a great quote from his father Ed that I’ve always remembered: “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn, tell me the truth and I’ll believe, but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” I’ve never forgotten that.
Like so many of us, a staple of my growing up was Jerome Holtzman’s No Cheering in the Press Box, which I think my aunt and uncle bought for me when I was in high school. Even then, they knew! What Holtzman did was amazing, interviewing all those old writers from the first part of the 20th century. It’s such a brilliant book that you keep referring to it, over and over again. It never gets old. It’s been on my shelf for 40 years now.
So that book has always been in my head, so to speak. Then, after I did the Brooklyn Dodger photo book, I thought about doing what Holtzman had done, but with who? For better or worse, everybody in baseball, it seemed, had been given the first-person oral history treatment. . .players (starting with Larry Ritter’s classic The Glory of Their Times), managers, umpires, announcers, behind-the-scenes people, even batboys.
Then I realized that the one group who had never been heard from was perhaps the most influential of them all. . .the guys who wrote about the game back when the beat writers were at the peak of their power, before all the technology we have today splintered the media’s influence. Holtzman did his book on general sportswriters and columnists. I decided to center on guys who had made their reputations as baseball beat writers, and the older they were, the farther back they went, the better. I also knew I needed to have a good mix of writers from around the country. It couldn’t be an all-New York or all-Boston book.
The more I thought of it, the more it appealed to me. These guys produced so much copy, wrote so many words, had so much power, and yet — with rare exceptions — their own stories had never been told. These were guys I had grown up reading in the papers and The Sporting News, and then, when I went to the AP and the Mets, many became mentors and friends. That was a long time ago, and in a way, this book is a thank you note to them. My only regret is that I didn’t get everyone into the book that I wanted to. I can name at least a half-dozen guys who should be there but aren’t. Maybe in the paperback edition!
At one point, being the baseball writer was the best job at the newspaper. Why?
I’m thinking of two lines by Dick Young. . .”I don’t want to be a millionaire, I just want to live like one”. . .and “At what other job do you spend most of your time laughing?”
It’s really impossible to imagine how influential the baseball writer was at one time. Baseball was king, and it was the daily coverage in the newspapers that helped make it so. The beat writer was in every way a local (and even national) celebrity. And baseball was quick to realize it. When baseball needed official scorers, or a body to select its major award winners, who did they turn to? When the Hall of Fame started, who did baseball ask to come up with a voting process and make the selections? When you watch an old baseball movie, who’s the most trusted friend of the star? (think Walter Brennan in The Pride of the Yankees). Later on, when baseball expanded and teams relocated, who were the biggest movers and shakers not only in the media but also among the politicians, helping their cities get major league teams?
In addition, the baseball beat writer enjoyed unparalleled longevity. Every city, it seemed, had a handful of writers who’d been there since the beginning of time. Guys like John Drebinger and Fred Lieb covered Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Marvelous Marv. Who would want to give up a position of such prominence and influence?
How has the job changed? Deadlines, relationships with players/managers, etc..
You begin, obviously, with the technological revolution. Look at how things have changed just in the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, no one had ever heard of the internet. Ten years ago, no one had ever heard of Twitter or Facebook. Yet those things, combined with ESPN and talk radio, have changed everything. Now the beat writer, who used to be the undisputed source for all your baseball information, is just one of many, many options. And those options are growing every day.
I wanted guys in the book whose careers spanned so far back that they could tell me about sending stories by Western Union and via teletype. I figured that a concept like that would be so foreign to the readers of today that, unless you were around back then, you wouldn’t believe it was done that way. Most of those guys qualified, and so many told me about walking the streets in the dead of night, looking for a Western Union office. Stan Hochman went into great detail about that, all the way down to a legendary figure named Shorty who would receive Stan’s copy in the middle of the night at Western Union in Philadelphia, then ride his bike to hand-deliver it to the paper. That’s how far we’ve come.
Just about every guy lamented that the relationships between the writers and the guys they covered — the players, managers and executives — is nowhere near as close and trusting as it was back then. Several reasons for that. One is the sheer number of media people that now surround a baseball team; much, much more than at any other time because of all the new media. Athletes are much more distrustful now as a result. I had a few guys who had covered the Mantle-Maris home run chase, like Stan Isaacs, Phil Pepe and Jim Henneman, and they all said that for all of the stories about Maris being besieged by the media, the sheer numbers of people in the clubhouse weren’t anywhere near what they are today. There were a lot more writers, maybe, but that was it.
Another thing just about all of them pointed out was the travel. Back then, the writers all traveled with the team. . on the bus, on the plane, everywhere. They all stayed at the same hotel. That produced a closeness that’s impossible to imagine today. Also, the subject of access came up a lot. Guys like Henneman and Bob Hertzel told me about being able to sit with the manager in the dugout right up until the national anthem, almost. That certainly isn’t the case today, where the manager and players are available only at specific times.
One more thing. There was a lot more, for want of a better word, schmoozing back in the day. Many of the guys I interviewed pointed out that, with the internet, today’s writers are producing copy almost 24 hours a day, and there’s almost no time to get to know the guys you’re covering. Hochman told me that often he’d just pull up a chair in the clubhouse and talk to a guy, face-to-face, for a half hour. Not a lot of that is done today.
Did you get a lot of “It was better back then…” responses?
Yes, including several along the lines of, “Now, I swore that I’d never be one of those guys who’d say that it was better in the old days, but it WAS better in the old days.” It’s a natural reaction. That period when you were young and full of energy, learning the business and being a vital force in the paper every day. . .naturally, you’re going to look upon those days with great fondness. Leonard Koppett once had a great quote about every baseball fan having his or her own personal golden age, when everything about the game was the absolute best it could be. Same with these guys.
I explored the Chipmunk thing quite a bit with guys like Stan Isaacs, Phil Pepe, Maury Allen and Hochman. Back then, the older, established writers complained that the Chipmunks had no respect for the game or the profession, that they were young egotistical guys bent on upsetting all the traditions. Well, now the Chipmunks are all retired and they’re complaining about the same thing from today’s journalists. And I guarantee you that, 40 years from now, the bloggers and the social media experts of today will be complaining about whatever new technology exists, saying, “You know, it was so much better in the old days. . .”
What stories stood out for you?
To an extent, they all did. I’m so grateful that every one of those guys spent so much time with me and gave so much of themselves. In that sense, I don’t want to single anyone out.
A couple of guys got so emotional that they actually broke down a little bit while they were talking to me. I won’t mention who, but that really got to me.
I do mention in the book that Bill Conlin’s interview was the most emotional, the funniest, and the loudest of everyone I talked to. If you know anything about Conlin, you know what I’m talking about. Because of what happened with Conlin later on, I elected not to include his chapter, which was a shame for so many reasons. But I had to make that call.
Dave van Dyck was very interesting in that he didn’t talk too much in terms of specific memories or about his career in detail, but rather about the overall experience and about how quickly time flies when you don’t even realize it. He mentioned that when he started, he felt that there was no way he was ever going to last writing baseball nearly as long as Jerome Holtzman or Dick Dozer of any of those Chicago guys. . .and then he woke up one day and, bang, it had happened.
I loved the story Bob Hertzel told me. When Hertz was covering the Reds, Pat Corrales, the backup catcher, lived right next door and every morning after a game he’d show up on Hertz’ doorstep with the paper and critique what he’d written. I don’t think any writers live next door to players today.
In your mind, what makes the writers who have been at it for decades special? How do they do it?
The daily grind, for one thing. These guys were in the paper every single day and they were the undisputed link between the game and its fans. They were so well-known. . .remember the “Meet the Press” section that every team used to have in its yearbook? There’s a line from Holtzman in the book where he says that being a beat writer was much better and more advantageous then being a columnist, because the beat guy was read every single day.
Many of the guys told me how they hated to take days off, which is incredible when you think of the grind of a six-month season. But the best writers realized that baseball is a daily soap opera. Every day is a different chapter, and what happened yesterday does affect what happens today, and the day after that.
These were the guys who were in the trenches every day. They didn’t write the history of the game off clippings or Google searches, like many do today. They did it all on deadline, and the best ones did it with a style and professionalism that set them apart.
Not too long ago I came across something on ebay. It was a trading card set someone had put together a few years ago called “Great Baseball Writers”. Make no mistake about it, there were some big names in that set, guys who have written baseball classics in fiction and whatnot. But not one of them, not one, was a newspaper beat guy. I looked at that and said, “Someone’s missing the point here.”
Finally, what is it like to be married to an NHL Hall of Famer (Los Angeles Times hockey writer Helene Elliott)?
Well, I certainly married up. . .or as someone once said, I outkicked the coverage. She’s every bit a legend. I mean, she used to hang out with Royko, for goodness sake. Our dinner conversations usually center on the relative merits of Pierre Pilote, Keith Magnuson and Clark Gillies.
Technically, Helene is a “media honoree” in the Hockey Hall of Fame, just as the guys who have won the Spink Award aren’t technically enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. When she won the Elmer Ferguson Award in 2005, she was the first woman honored by the media wing of one of the “Big Four” sports Halls of Fame. I think she beat Lesley Visser by six months.
Frankly, I think I’ve always been more excited about it than she is. She always tries to downplay it, while I insist she always be introduced as “Hall of Fame writer Helene Elliott”, and stuff like that. She has a Hall of Fame jacket that I think she’s worn twice. It changes your life, but as she’ll tell you, you still have to go to work every day and crank it out.
And it does have some real advantages. When the Kings won the Stanley Cup last year, we got the Cup at our house for a few hours. At the start of the playoffs this year, the neighbors were already asking if we were going to get it again. Right now, it looks a little dicey.
Mike Ditka had the same question for Rich Cohen that I had: Why write another book on the ’85 Bears?
Here’s my Q/A:
What was it like meeting McMahon? Was meeting him your reason for writing the book?
