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Review: 'From Black Sox to ThreePeats' edited by Ron Rapoport
Sportswriting anthology recalls Chicago sports greats.
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Hometown Hub:
Stories of the Chicago
Marathon
PRIMETIME
Satchel Paige shows Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland Indians, his new fastball grip before a night
game at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland in 1949. (Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images /
December 31, 1969)
A special look at local
lifestyles for those over
50
By Allen Barra
August 31, 2013
"The papers in Chicago in those days were unlike any
printed anywhere else," wrote the great Hugh Fullerton in
1928 for the Saturday Evening Post. "They were written
largely in the language that the wild growing young city
understood." On the evidence presented in "From Black
Sox to Three-Peats: A Century of Chicago's Best Sports
Writing," neither the writing nor the city has changed all
that much.
This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal,
delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday
Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email.
Click here to learn about joining Printers Row.
Ron Rapoport, a former Chicago Sun-Times sports
columnist who served as a commentator for NPR's
Weekend Edition for two decades and is no slouch at the
typewriter himself, has assembled 100 years of gems from
the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, the Chicago Daily
News, the Chicago American, Chicago Today, the Daily
Southtown and other newspapers either dimly remembered
or sadly forgotten.
This is a flip-page feast for sports fans, "from (the SunTimes' Joe) Goddard's just-the-quotes-ma'am approach ...
to the graceful prose of (the Tribune's Bob) Verdi (to) the
take-no-prisoners pugnacity of (ESPN's Jay) Mariotti" —
and three dozen more just as good.
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Here's the previously mentioned Fullerton on Oct. 4, 1906,
the day after the Cubs clinched the National League
pennant while the White Sox took the American League
flag: "Last night Chicago was baseball mad. The entire
town talked baseball. Crowds stood cheering on corners at
the mention of the game, everywhere there was rejoicing."
For Chicago fans 107 years later, it seems like a fantasy.
There's Ring Lardner, the greatest of all American
sportswriters, indulging in inspired nonsense that made
readers laugh aloud on the "L" every morning. Here he compares shortstops on opposing
teams: "Risberg is a Swede, but on the other hand Kopf hits from both sides of the plate. …
Kopf is the better looking but Risberg is the tallest and if they ever try to drive a high line drive
over his head they will get fooled."
Rapoport includes The Chicago Daily Tribune's Charles Dryden — called "the father of
modern sportswriting" by the legendary sports editor Stanley Woodward — who coined the
terms "pinch hit," "ballyard" and "horsehide." He also christened the 1906 White Sox "the
Hitless Wonders."
Jerome Holtzman, who starred for both the Tribune and Sun-Times and was known as the
dean of American sportswriters, is in there, too. He invented baseball's save rule and was
appointed major league baseball's official historian after he retired from newspapers.
Some cities can boast of more winners, but no town ever had more good people to write about
than Chicago. What writers, what characters, what moments!
Bill Veeck, the most eccentric and creative owner any baseball team ever had, rips a $100 bill
received from New Y ork saloon owner Toots Shor and drops the pieces into Shor's drink.
Ernie Banks tells the Tribune's David Condon, "I can't be certain I won't be traded some day."
To which Condon replies, "Well, Phil Wrigley will be selling Dentyne at the corner cigar store
before Banks is traded from the Cubs."
Lou Novikoff, "The Mad Russian," a decent hitter for the Cubs during the war years, thought
the ivy on the Wrigley Field walls was poisonous. He once tried to steal third base with the
bases loaded because "I got such a good jump on the pitcher." Steve Bartman, the fan who
knocked the ball away from Moises Alou in game 6 of the National League championship
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series against the Marlins, makes an immortal statement: "I do not have a statement at this
time. I have no comment. No comment. No comment. No comment. No comment." Nor,
wrote the Tribune's John Kass, did he need one: "Bartman didn't tense up on the mound and
hang curveballs for smacking. Mark Prior did."
More than any volume of sportswriting I've ever seen, "From Black Sox to Three-Peats"
serves as a cutaway view of the evolution of sportswriting. Rapoport doesn't just herald the
past but brings us into the present. As the game story disappeared — viewers in the TV and
Internet age no longer depended on writers to tell them what had happened — the best writers
"responded to the new reality by working more player profiles, opinions, attention-getting
phrase making, and whatever rhetorical devices they could muster into their articles."
Sportswriting "started coming to terms with the fact that its heroes are not always what they
seem to be and that even those athletes who are altogether admirable have demons to
confront."
Scottie Pippen, wrote the Tribune's Sam Smith in 2004, was the antithesis of Michael Jordan:
"Pippen didn't smile much and often didn't say the right thing. That's why his return wasn't
exactly hailed here, and when he couldn't perform, many were quick to reject him again. …
But on the court, Pippen brought up the ball so Jordan could get his scoring place on the
wing. Pippen defended big scorers so Jordan could roam the lanes and turn steals into
breakaway layups."
Jeannie Morris started out writing for Chicago Today with the byline "Mrs. Johnny Morris."
Morris, the former wife of the Chicago Bears receiver, went on to win 11 Emmys for CBS
Sports in Chicago. She gave America some new sports heroes in February 1972: the girls and
women of the U.S. Winter Olympics team whom she described as "(t)he lovely young women
in Sapporo … crystals on the top of an iceberg." Perhaps Richard Nixon had her column in
mind later that year when he signed Title IX.
And John Schulian, whose successful career in television obscured the fact that he is one of
our best sportswriters, penned "K town," an eloquent tribute to heroes who never were: Skip
Dillard and Bernard Randolph, the schoolyard legends of Kedvale and Keeler streets who
respectively succumbed to cocaine and mental illness.
There's so much good writing in "From Black Sox to Three-Peats" that Rapoport can ask,
"Had we lived in a golden age of sportswriting and not been paying attention?" If so, it was
not just a golden age of sportswriting but of athletes and fans as well. As former middleweight
champ Rocky Graziano told Schulian of a match in which he realized he'd been declared
winner by technical knockout, "I like Chicago. They trut me good."
Chicago trut us all good, Rocky.
Allen Barra is a former sportswriter for the Chicago Reader. His latest book is "Mickey and
Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age."
"From Black Sox to Three-Peats"
Edited by Ron Rapoport, University of Chicago, 312 pages, $18
Copy right © 201 3 Chicago Tribune Company , LLC
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Ron Rapoport ·
Posting as Rebecca Rapoport (Change)
Comment
Following
Thanks to the great Allen Barra for those kind words. He really captured the spirit of the book, I thought,
and some of his perceptions made me realize things that hadn't occurred to me.
Reply ·
3 · Like · Follow Post · September 2 at 1:07am
Cheryl Devall
Meant to say "know-nothing..."
Reply ·
1 · Like · Follow Post · September 2 at 1:36am
Ron Rapoport ·
Following
Thanks, Cheryl. I hope you'll enjoy it. I start my week-long, one-city book tour to Chicago Sept.
14. Hoping to see a lot of friends there.
Reply · Like · September 2 at 12:04pm
From Black Sox to Three-Peats by Ron Rapoport
Thanks to the great Allen Barra for those kind words. He really captured the spirit of the book, I thought,
and some of his perceptions made me realize things that hadn't occurred to me.
Reply · Like · Follow Post · September 2 at 8:22pm
Cheryl Devall
Terrific review - makes this sports know-noting want to read it from cover to cover!
Reply · Like · Follow Post · September 2 at 1:36am
Jerry Pritikin ·
Follow ·
Top Commenter · Chicago, Illinois
I grew up on the great sportswriters of the 1940s & 50s. I loved reading the Wake of the News and its 10
years ago today almanac at the end of the column. Their stories were about on the field and not gossip.
Back in the mid 1950s, I was at a young Republican meeting and the guest speaker was Arch Ward. He said
that being the editor of the Trib Sports pages had its bennefits. He said that he had been to and reported
on all kinds of sports, Baseball & Football, Boxing and Basketball, professional, amature, at all kinds of
stadiums, and arenas, and he had been to the locker rooms of all these events... and he made this
observation... That not all men are created equal!
Reply ·
1 · Like · Follow Post · September 3 at 9:07am
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