The first harbingers of spring — UPDATE

If you’ve been following the blog for at least a couple of years, you know I take great pleasure around this time because this is when the baseball magazines hit the stores. But like any person my age, I think things were better “back in the day.” Thanks to 24/7 spots media, the idea of putting this kind of information on glossy paper seems quaint (and almost anti-tree). Information hits us so quickly, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to put it out in bound form any more. In recent years, publications about fantasy baseball have outnumbered the more traditional fare by at least two-to-one, according my very unscientific calculations; fans seem more interested in the analytics  than the handful of feature stories.

So I was not surprised that the first two items for 2018 at my local CVS were these:

Considering that data flow, I’m kind of surprised that even these still exist. A lot of things happen during spring training — trades, free agent signings, rookie promotions — which might impact on how a given player is used that subsequently could change his fantasy market value. Still, I suppose there’s something to be said about having all the material at your fingertips

I’ll be curious to see what regular baseball annuals return this year, whether we’ll have the usual suspects and maybe a new discovery, or nature will have taken its course.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this to the Baseball Book group on Facebook, John P. sent this picture:

Glad to see S&S has published under its own banner again.

Tagged as: Baseball magazines