Synthetic conflicts and more: Media league softball

Sports Illustrated had a great story the other day on the life and times of the Central Park Press League, a softball competition that flourished for a couple of decades before withering and, at last in 2018, dying. The story by John Walters is a terrific read for anyone, but for this wire service and […]

Google’s news archive a treasure for baseball researchers, fans

For the baseball fan and the baseball researcher, the Google News Archive is a dream come true. Point your browser to news.google.com/archivesearch and at your fingertips you have access to an unimaginable bounty of newspaper and magazine clippings on the grand old game, not to mention just about any subject you might care to […]

RIP George Steinbrenner, one of the last great black-and-white figures

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=George+Steinbrenner&iid=2183905″ src=”http://view3.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/2183905/yankees-mets-steinbrenner/yankees-mets-steinbrenner.jpg?size=500&imageId=2183905″ width=”234″ height=”315″ /] As the world knows by now, George Steinbrenner died today. The longtime owner of the New York Yankees was 80 and leaves behind a legacy of championships. This afternoon I put together a gallery of Associated Press photos showing Steinbrenner over the years. What struck me was […]

A not-so-fond farewell to 2008 from the newspaper industry

The year is drawing to a close, and I daresay for most of us in the newspaper industry it’s time to say “good riddance” to 2008. According to the trade journal Editor & Publisher, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 21,000 newspaper jobs disappeared over the past 12 months. That report totals 3,000 jobs […]

Barack Obama, president-elect and Chicago White Sox fan

Here’s some great exposure for a baseball cap: President-elect Barack Obama wearing a White Sox cap. See more examples of how the photo played at the Innovations in Newspapers blog.

The newspaper cap and a changing industry

This post is a tough one. As a journalist, I’ve accumulated several newspaper caps from hundreds of visits to newsrooms and industry conventions. Collectively, they are among my favorites because they represent the vitality and pride of my profession. But the newspaper industry is in decline, severely so in towns deep in the clenches of […]

The Yankees as Evil Empire

For days I’ve been putting off this post, but with news of the Tigers trading Pudge Rodriguez to the New York Yankees, I can hold out no longer. The Yankees are the Evil Empire of baseball, an eternal force against which all others must contend. The Yanks are the archetype of the invincible. If they […]

My first cap

MLB replica caps were scarce when I was a kid in the 60’s. They weren’t mass-produced as they are today. I’ll have to comb through the hundreds of slides my father took to find the earliest evidence I can of my wearing a ballcap. I’m guessing I probably had a small-billed cap with a “little […]