If you came of age as a sportswriter in the ’70s like me, there’s a good chance you were inspired by Jerome Holtzman’s classic, No Cheering in the Press Box.
Holtzman’s book was a first-person account from the great sportswriters in the 20s and 30s about what it was like to cover Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Knute Rockne and more. It was extremely entertaining, especially the stories of the writers witnessing Ruth’s antics, and provided a valuable snapshot into an important era of the profession.
When I joined the Chicago Tribune in the 1980s, Holtzman, a character in his own right, served as one of my mentors. It always will be one of the highlights of my career.
I can recall writers coming up to him in press boxes, asking him to autograph No Cheering. The book had that kind of impact.
I still have my signed copy of his book. Even more important, it served as a tremendous resource for my upcoming book on Ruth’s “Called Shot,” which will be coming out next month.
George Solomon, the long-time sports editor of Washington Post, has the same affection for Holtzman’s book. Now serving as the director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at Maryland, he sought a way to do a modern version featuring today’s sportswriters.
Instead of doing it in book-form, the Povich Center is running installments on its site, with Michael Wilbon as the first installment.
By the way, there is a chapter featuring Povich in No Cheering. No matter your age or at what point you’re at in your career in sports media, I highly recommend reading Holtzman’s book. I always tell my students in order to know where you’re going, you need to know where you’ve been.
The sequel also will be illuminating. All in all, Povich and Holtzman would be proud of the Center’s initiative. Definitely worth your time.
From the Povich Center.
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The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism is debuting a sports media project entitled “Still No Cheering in the Press Box.”
The project is an extension of the 1973 book “No Cheering in the Press Box” by Jerome Holtzman that detailed the lives and careers of 24 sportswriters whose careers spanned mostly from the 1920s to ’70s including Shirley Povich and Red Smith
In the modern-day version to be published at www.povichcenter.org/still-no-
The mostly student-driven project will be a look inside how the formative years of today’s great sportswriters shaped their careers as well as advice for aspiring journalists. The first chapter is posted today, Jan. 28 at http://povichcenter.org/
“Jerome Holtzman’s wonderful 1974 book “No Cheering in the Press Box” covered many of the best sportswriters of the 20th century – up to the 1970’s. That leaves us more than 40 years of great sports journalists to chronicle and who better than the students from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism to do the chronicling?” said George Solomon, Director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and Professor of the Practice.
“We hope to come close to meeting Mr. Holtzman’s standards and do justice to today’s sportswriting giants.”
Jerry would be spinning in his grave at the way sports is being covered today. In Chicago for example there are a handfull of “journalists” who are nothing but shrills for a particular team.
One in particular is the host of a daily afternoon talk show where he claims to be an insider for a MLB team. Funny thing is, said person was completely wrong in his predicitions about what was going to happen in the last two major moves by that team because of his unabashed rooting for the team he is supposed to be neutral for covering.