The long-time editor of Baseball Digest died April 2 at the age of 87.
Kuenster is another of those veterans of the publishing world I waited too long to try to interview. Others included Mark Harris (The Southpaw Trilogy) and Eliot Asinof (Eight Men, Out, Man on Spikes). So I’ve learned my lesson.
Of all the publications I’ve read, I probably have the longest association with Baseball Digest. As a kid, I used to get an allowance of 50 cents a week. One day my mother sent me to the store. I was planning to take the money out of the change and buy myself the latest issue, but I “supplemented” that by taking another 50 cents to buy that week’s issue of The Sporting News. My mother was not pleased. At all. I used to think it was a matter of principle, but I’ve since learned just hour difficult out economic situation was during my childhood. Parents have a tendency to try to hide such things from their kids, but sometimes honesty is the bets policy.
Baseball Digest, back when it was a digest, and not in its current regular magazine-size glossy format, had regular features; in April is was the data-filled Season Opening issue, March it was a preview of promising rookies. Several years ago I made the acquaintance of the great sportswriter Maury Allen, who has since passed away. During one of our infrequent meetings, I showed him the March 1968 issue for which he had written the capsule bios of that year’s batch of rookies.
As the Chicago Tribune obit (he was a resident of Evanston, Illinois) and others note, Kuenster was one hell of a story-teller.
Many issues of Baseball Digest are available on-line, via Google Books.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.