Sports writing’s golden age

“I like to reminisce with people I don’t know” is a line from the comedian Steven Wright. It kind of describes the way I feel when I hear the expressions people used in conversation long before I was born.

Colorful language is one of the bonuses in a great oral history project involving sports writers, the book “No Cheering in the Press Box.”

Jerome Holtzman, a renowned sports writer from Chicago, interviewed 44 baseball writers who worked in the first half of the 20th century. Holtzman recorded and edited the interviews, all conducted from 1971 to 1973. The book’s first edition, in 1973, featured 18 of the subjects, with such luminaries as Jimmy Cannon, Ford Frick, Paul Gallico and Red Smith. 

Holtzman added six more writer interviews in a subsequent edition published in 1995.

The language used by the players and writers from that era is irresistible; some of it sounds straight out of a Bowery Boys script.

Dan Daniel, who covered baseball for several New York papers over 60-plus years, told Holtzman about an exclusive story he got from the Yankees that made the other writers jealous. They all “hollered murder,” he said.

Daniel also rued the introduction of baseball games played at night, which “ruined the whole business.” 

Gone was the leisurely pace of covering a day game for a morning newspaper.

“After the game you came back to the hotel, had your dinner, went up to your room and batted out your game story.”

Daniel could not have foreseen the job of a 21st century scribe who has to tweet before, during and after games, file an online story within minutes of a game ending and – with her other hand – record some video with her phone.

Ghost stories

I was in high school when I first encountered Holzman’s book and it inspired me to take up journalism as a career. The words of these writers from baseball’s golden age painted indelible pictures in my mind. The idea of watching games from a press box in Yankee Stadium or Wrigley Field, writing an account of the game and getting paid for it, seemed too good to be true. 

As it turned out, I spent very little time in press boxes during my newspaper career, but my infatuation with these interviews remains.

“No Cheering” shows how many of the customs and ethical norms of sports journalism have evolved.

For some reason it’s long been accepted that a writer is allowed to co-author a book with an athlete, someone whom they likely have covered as a journalist.

This wouldn’t be allowed for news reporters. You can’t picture Donald Trump or Joe Biden writing a book co-authored by a White House correspondent from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

In the early 20th century, the practice went far beyond “as told to” books. Famous ball players often had bylined articles in various publications that were authored by ghost writers. From Babe Ruth to Jackie Robinson, many a star was listed as the author of print columns that were written by others, often someone he knew as a beat writer. Ford Frick, a writer who became commissioner of Major League Baseball, was one of the ghosts for Ruth.

In the “golden era” of baseball, when writers traveled with the teams by train  and often shared meals or time in hotel bars on the road, the scribes often got close to the players and managers in ways we can scarcely imagine today. 

Jimmy Cannon, who became famous as a boxing writer and his signature column catch phrase “Nobody asked me, but …,” criticized baseball writers who turned into advocates for the home team, while also revealing that he wasn’t immune to favoritism.

“It’s one of the great boasts of all journalists, and especially baseball writers,” Cannon told Holtzman, “that they are not influenced by their relationships with people off the field. This is an absolute myth. I always considered myself a fair and neutral man, and yet how could I not be for Joe DiMaggio, who lived in the same hotel with me? We went on vacations together. We were great friends.”

And yet, Cannon said, “I never cheered out loud. … Most of the guys traveling with ball clubs are more publicists than reporters. … Sportswriting has survived because of the guys who don’t cheer.”

Chicken dinners with the Babe

Marshall Hunt, who covered baseball for the New York Daily News, recounted his years of providing companionship to Ruth while covering him for the paper.

Spoiler: The Babe was a good hang.

When Ruth was traded from the Red Sox to the Yankees, Hunt’s Daily News latched onto him as “a circulation builder.”

“We would go up to his apartment at night, take him fishing, hunting, anything,” Hunt said. “We recognized the Babe as a guy we could really do business with.”

Hunt spent many hours with Ruth when the slugger made his annual trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to soak in the baths and “boil out” before spring training. They played golf together, went fishing and shared hundreds of meals.

When they were tired of hotel food, Hunt said, “I’d hire a car and we’d go out in the country looking for farmhouses that said ‘Chicken Dinners.’ 

“What Babe really wanted was a good chicken dinner and the daughter combination, and it worked that way more often than you would think.”

Hunt accompanied Ruth to some houses of ill repute that, as a bonus, served some remarkably delicious meals.

Hunt related how Ruth satisfied his many large appetites, adding that most of his sexual activity was never reported on during his playing days. That side of Ruth remained an open secret, to use that great oxymoron.

Hunt claimed his newspaper stories never showed favoritism toward Ruth, which is hard to believe.

“I never had a cross word with the big baboon,” he recalled affectionately.

Hunt’s chapter, which runs 18 pages in the soft-cover edition, makes a great entry point to Holtzman’s book. In addition to Ruth’s exploits, Hunt tells why he thinks Grantland Rice was overrated, but Westbrook Pegler was the real deal. 

“Peg saw things in a baseball or football game that other writers didn’t see, or didn’t choose to write about.”

Pegler also happened to share Hunt’s conservative political orientation.

Holtzman’s book makes a perfect companion to “The Glory of Their Times,” Lawrence S. Ritter’s oral history collection of interviews with baseball players from the late 19th and early 20th century. 

Copies of “No Cheering in the Press Box” can be found in libraries or from used book sellers.