I participated in this seemingly futile exercise to determine “The 25 most important people in baseball,” as posted by the Baseball Past and Present blog.
Not players. Not executives. Not men. People. This opens the door for the consideration of personalities like Effa Manley, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eleanor Engle, Hilda Chester, Ila Borders, Jackie Mitchell, etc. I may have missed a few and I’m not counting the write-in votes.
Among the authors and writers on the list:
- Kearns Goodwin
- Bill James
- Jerome Holtzman
- Roger Angell
- Daniel Okrent
- David Halberstam
- Red Smith
- Dick Young
- Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills
- Ersnhaw Cook
- Gary Gillette
- J.G. Taylor Spink
- Jim Bouton
- John Thorn
- Jules Tygiel
- Roger Kahn
- Sam Lacy
- Susan Fornoff
- Wendell Smith
Some of these like Fornoff (first women reporter in locker room) and Cook (wrote a very complicated book on baseball stats), the average fan would have to look up. And if you have to do that, how important can the person be?
But maybe I’m way off base. How many can name the person who invented the mircowave oven of the personal computer?
Thoughts?
With all due respect to the gentleman who came up with this idea, his list is ridiculous. Some of these writers have turned out excellent books, but even I wouldn’t say that makes them among the most important baseball personalities.
On the other hand, who’s to say? It does engender conversation, even if that conversation is “artificial,’ Born out of frustration.
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