Remember all those posts about the decline of the annual baseball magazine? The same could be said for baseball previews in newspapers.
There was a time when I used to collect these things, with the the help of my friends across the country. They were different from the magazines in that they had writers who covered the team ever day and had the (relatively) most up-to-date data at their fingertips.
But those days are gone, too, as more and more newspapwers fold.
The New York Times — which no longer has their own sports department but rather prints under The Athletic banner — printed this over the weekend (sorry about the quality). The headline reads, “We Don’t Care if We Never Get Back: Bats are cracking, gloves are popping and hopes are blooming. What could be better?” (I have yet to see this in the online version.) The hand-written lines were to remind me how to address that.
Do we really mean it when we offer such praises for the game every spring or has it just become habit? I mean, the Cincinnati Reds — the oldest professional team in the game — always used to have the honor of playing the first game of the season. No more. Tradition doesn’t seem to mean as much to each new generation of fan.
I had the privilege to attend Spitball Magazine’s CASEY Awards ceremony on Sunday. Much more on that later. When I returned home on Monday I picked up a copy of the Enquirer, that city’s only newspaper. Front page stories included pieces about the Reds and food available at The Great American Ballpark. I’m curious if other newspapers in Major League markets are printing stories about the upcoming campaign.
Joe Posnanski, who received his third CASEY for his latest gem, Why We Love Baseball, noted that one of the main differences between baseball and football is that the former takes the time to look backwards (history and story-telling) while the latter is always looking ahead, always peeking towards the next play and the sport’s draft.
is available on Amazon.com,
Comments on this entry are closed.