The Sporting News
From BR Bullpen
The Sporting News (TSN) is an United States-based sports weekly magazine, book publisher, and radio network headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri. It was established on March 17, 1886 by Al Spink and would remain in the Spink family for 91 years. Although it began as a general sports publication, in the first half of the 20th century it was the primier publication covering baseball and earned the nickname "The Bible of Baseball".
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[edit] History
The first issue was published on March 17, 1886. Spink would sell the newspaper to his brother Charles in 1895. Charles would run the paper as owner/editor until his death in 1914. His son J.G. Taylor Spink inherited it, he to would run until he died on December 7, 1962.
During the tenure of Charles and J.G. Spink, TSN was decidedly non-glamorous, consisting of black-and-white newsprint with staid graphics on a broadsheet of only eight to ten pages. However, it was also the only paper to follow baseball teams from around the nation. At the time, it printed a box score for not only every major league game played each week but for most of the top minor leagues. Each issue also had a report on each major league baseball team, usually written by a local newspaper's beat writer for that team. Only Baseball Magazine would come close to achieving the same fame as TSN.
C.C. Johnson Spink would be the last Spink to run the paper, overseeing it from 1962 until he sold it in January, 1977, to the Times Mirror Corporation for $18 million. The advent of national sports media in the 1980s such as USA Today and ESPN, and the proliferation of the internet, deprived TSN of its unique role. Consequently, in recent years, TSN switched to a magazine format from a tabloid newspaper with a more diverse coverage of sports. TSN was recently sold to Advance Magazine Publishers.
[edit] Awards and Lists Sponsored
- The Sporting News Comeback Player of the Year Award
- The Sporting News Executive of the Year Award
- The Sporting News Major League Player of the Year Award
- The Sporting News Manager of the Year Award
- The Sporting News Most Valuable Player Award; discontinued (1929 - 1945)
- The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year Award
- The Sporting News Player of the Year Award; discontinued (1944 - 1991)
- The Sporting News Reliever of the Year Award; discontinued, formerly The Sporting News Fireman of the Year Award (1960 - 2000)
- The Sporting News Rookie of the Year Award; formerly split into two awards (1963 - 2003)
- 100 Greatest Baseball Players
- Baseball's 25 Greatest Moments
[edit] Quotations
- "When baseball wanted to speak, The Sporting News cleared its throat. It was also popular for featuring a week of box scores when box scores from west coast games were not readily available in the east." - Bill James
