Kudos to a couple of writers

December 7, 2010 · 2 comments

Bill Conlin was just named recipient for the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, given by the Baseball Hall of Fame for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”

The long-time beat writer for the Philadelphia Daily News published Batting Cleanup Bill Conlin, a collection of his columns, in 1997 and edited The Rutledge Book of Baseball in 1981.

Kudos also go to one of my favorite baseball scribes, the late Leonard Koppett, who was elected into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Class of 2011. The Hall is located in Netanya, Israel.

Koppett was the first sportswriter who ever gave me the time of day. I was working on a project about baseball during the Korean War. I must have read something he had written on the subject (the details escape me) and took the surprising (for me) step of actually getting in touch with him. He wrote a very cordial letter (kids, ask your parents) and offered to meet for further discussion. I wish I had taken him up on it; he died shortly thereafter.

Koppett wrote some of the best baseball books to date, including several editions of The Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball (later changed to Thinking Fan’s Guide… for PC reasons), as well as Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball, The Man In Dugout, and Sports Illusion, Sports Reality: A Reporter’s View of Sports, Journalism, and Society, as well as books on basketball.

Koppett was also a recipient of the Spink Award (1992) and is the only sports journalist elected to both the baseball and basketball halls of fame (Curt Gowdy Award, 1994).

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1 Bill Lewers December 7, 2010 at 11:14 pm

Koppett also wrote “The New York Mets: The Whole Story”, an excellent account of the Mets from their birth through the 1969 World Championship.

2 Anonymous December 7, 2010 at 11:23 pm

Absolutely. Don’t know how that one escaped me. Thanks, Bill.

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