Author picture

Jerome Holtzman (1926–2008)

Author of Fielder's Choice: An Anthology Of Baseball Fiction

8+ Works 235 Members 4 Reviews

About the Author

Jerome Holtzman was named the first official historian for Major League Baseball in June 1999 by Commissioner Bud Selig. He's the "dean" of America's baseball Boswells & was the baseball columnist & national baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune from 1981 until 1999. He joined the Tribune in 1981 show more after 38 years at the Chicago Sun-Times & the Daily Times. A member of baseball's Hall of Fame, he was assigned major league baseball in 1957 & traveled with the Cubs & the White Sox for 28 years, dividing his time equally between the two clubs. (Publisher Provided) Sportswriter Jerome Holtzman was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 12, 1926. After the death of his father when he was 10, his mother could no longer support the family and he spent the remainder of his childhood in an orphanage. At the age of 17, he worked as a copy boy at The Daily Times. He spent two years in the Marines and then returned to the paper to cover high school sports. In 1957, he became a baseball writer for The Sun-Times and in 1981 he became a columnist at The Chicago Tribune. In 1959, he invented the statistic known as the save, which in 1969, became the first new official statistic ackowledged by Major League Baseball since 1920. He published No Cheering in the Press Box, an oral history featuring the recollections of 18 of his colleagues, in 1974. He also wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on baseball and the year-end summary of the baseball season for the Official Baseball Guide for numerous years. In 1989, he was elected into the writers' wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He died from a stroke on July 19, 2008. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Works by Jerome Holtzman

Associated Works

Baseball: A Literary Anthology (2002) — Contributor — 335 copies
Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck (1962) — Foreword, some editions — 238 copies

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Holtzman, Jerome
Birthdate
1926-07-12
Date of death
2008-07-19
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Occupations
sportswriter

Members

Reviews

The full title of this collection is "No Cheering in the Press Box: Recollections--Personal & Professional--by Eighteen Veteran American Sportswriters." And that pretty much sums up this marvelous book, first published in 1974. The interviewer and editor of the book, Jerome Holtzman, was himself a very well known sportswriter at the time, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sporting News and other national sports publications. Holtzman set out to record interviews with, as noted, 18 famous veteran sportswriters. One thing I appreciated about Holtzman's approach was that, in the presentation of these interviews, Holtzman took himself out of the narrative entirely. These aren't, then, question and answer type interviews. We have only the interview subjects speaking, so what we get are much more akin to oral histories.

Cumulatively, these oral histories present a picture of American sportswriting, and very much the American newspaper world, in general from the 1920s through the 1960s. For one thing, there were no journalism schools in those days. Most of these writers became newspapermen by showing up in newsrooms and wrangling a position whereby they made coffee and emptied wastepaper baskets. Maybe, eventually, they'd be sent out to cover a high school basketball game when whoever was originally assigned called in sick. If you did a good job, you might get another assignment. The book's final interview is with the legendary Jimmy Cannon, who tells this story:
_____________________________

I was about fourteen when I started as an office boy on the Daily News. I worked the lobster trick--from midnight to eight in the morning. One night, after I'd been there for about two years, there was a shortage of rewrite men. The whiskey must have been flowing pretty well, and for some reason a guy on the desk gave me a short story to write, about three hundred words. It was on Decoration Day, about a kid who ran away from a summer resort and came to Manhattan.

Harvey Duell, who was one of the great newspapermen, was the city editor of the Daily News. He read the story, and the next day there was a note in my box: "See Mr. Duell." Well, us boys didn't see the city editor unless we were in trouble. I thought I was in trouble. When I went to see him, he was very kind and said, "I understand you wrote this, young man."

He asked me where I learned to write. I said, "I don't know if I can write at all."

Then he told me, "This is the second thing you've done that's impressed me."

"What's the first?"

"I sent you out for coffee one night and you refused a tip."

I said, "I don't remember. I must have been crazy that night."

That's how I became a city-side reporter.
_____________________________________

Another part of that world described by many of the interviewees is the different relationship the reporters built with the players and managers (I should have noted earlier that the interviews deal mainly with baseball writing) in the earlier decades of the 20th century. The writers rode in the same trains during road trips, played in the same poker games, and often went on the same hunting and fishing trips. The writers describe the difficulty of still having to criticize a player's performance or a manager's decision making when it was someone you were friends with otherwise. On the other hand, they were much less likely to write about a player's personal flaws or misadventures of the field than sportswriters today are. Many of the writers offer their memories and impressions of particular players, people like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams, and even earlier players and managers. All in all, these writers were fine storytellers, which makes their oral histories fun to read. They paint a mostly romantic picture of that bygone era of American sports, though the difficulties of spending so much time on the road and in hotels are noted, as are the pressures of writing on deadline.

Of the eighteen journalists interviewed, I had only heard of seven: Paul Gallico, Shirley Povich, Abe Kemp, Ford Frick, Red Smith, John R. Tunis and Jimmy Cannon. Tunis who also wrote many (what we would now call) YA sports novels, wrote my favorite baseball novels as a boy, the Roy Tucker series starting with The Kid From Tompkinsville. Tunis had a surprising (to me at least) observation to make about American culture of the 60s and 70s, saying that he disapproved of the growing trend to make sports, and especially youth sports, all about winning, as if the games didn't mean anything if you didn't win them. He says (and I'm paraphrasing, now) "I'm much more interested in writing about characters who don't win, about what they go through and what they learn." I found that of interest in particular because of the derision some people want to heap on parents and educators nowadays who have tried deemphasize the "win at all costs" mentality, making fun of, for example, participation trophies as hippy, woke b.s. Given that Tunis represents that emphasis on only valuing winners as a new trend at that time, it made me wonder whether such attitudes ebb and flow within American culture more than I'd previously realized. Or maybe Tunis was just one observer with an ax to grind. Anyway, I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in baseball and baseball history, or even maybe just in the history of American journalism in general, as seen through the lens of the sports section.
… (more)
½
 
Flagged
rocketjk | 1 other review | Apr 5, 2023 |
An anthology of baseball fiction, mainly short stories, although a few novel excerpts are included. I love good baseball writing, and this is a fine collection of stories, most of which were new to me. Among the familiar authors here are Ring Lardner, James Thurber, Chaim Potok, Damon Runyan, Philip Roth, Paul Gallico, John Sayles, Mordechai Richler, Irwin Shaw, P.G. Wodehouse and Bernard Malamud. There are stories that display the game's ethics, stories of humor and wit, coming-of-age stories, and even a couple that I think could fairly be considered science fiction. There are no clunkers and quite a few gems. An aptly named collection of fine writing, which just happens to be about baseball. The only other sport I've seen that rivals the wealth of great baseball writing is golf. Go figure.… (more)
 
Flagged
burnit99 | Aug 19, 2013 |
Being the memoirs of a well-known umpire who was active between the 1950's and '70's. There are plenty of the usual "So then I told Leo..." stories, but I particularly enjoyed his emphasis on the logistics of the umpires' travel, lodging, and getting the game set up.
 
Flagged
Big_Bang_Gorilla | May 11, 2012 |
Being an oral history comprised of interviews with eighteen sportswriters who, for the most part, began their careers in the teens and were winding down during the '60's and '70's. Like most oral histories, the interest level varies somewhat, as does the level of fame of those involved. It's a very worthy effort.
½
1 vote
Flagged
Big_Bang_Gorilla | 1 other review | Apr 11, 2011 |

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
8
Also by
2
Members
235
Popularity
#96,241
Rating
4.1
Reviews
4
ISBNs
14

Charts & Graphs