Spink Award finalists

Just read that this year's final three are Furman Bisher, Roger Angell and Mel Durslag.

How about guys who actually covered the beat and produced quality work while dealing with all the issues that come with daily coverage? Bob Hertzel, Charles Einstein, Phil Pepe, Gordy Verrell and Bill Centers are some of the names that come to mind. I'm not a fan of Klapisch, but he's more deserving than guys who are either columnists or write bloated non-deadline essays.

 

Bisher was a pretty important baseball writer in the time before Major League Baseball came to the Deep South. His 1949 "as told to" story on Shoeless Joe Jackson for Sport magazine was a great "get":

http://www.blackbetsy.com/theTruth.html

 

Man, if Furman Bisher wins, they need to display his blog post about why the Sam Hill are we opening the major league season in the land of the Pearl Harbor perpetrators.

 

For the record, Bisher's interview with Jackson was NOT the first interview Jackson ever gave after the Black Sox Scandal, which is frequently claimed. (Even Bisher claimed it was true, late in life.)

The Bisher interview was, however, the last major sit-down interview Jackson gave before he died in 1951.

But before then, Jackson was interviewed extensively by Shirley Povich (for the Sporting News), Scoop Latimer (for the Greenville News) and plenty of other writers.

 

I voted for Angell. The award is for “meritorious contributions to baseball writing" and who fits that description better than Roger Angell? Smasher, it's not like beat writers have been neglected. One wins almost every year. This year, for whatever reason, was a different sort of group, but I'd bet that the majority of winners will continue to be the beat guys.

 

Only question I have about Angell is the same one I have with Bill King for the Frick: What the hell has taken the voters so long?

 

Great. George Will next year?

Roger Kahn is more deserving than Roger Angell.

 

Oh Good Lord. Kahn covered the Dodgers for two years and wrote one great book he's been living off ever since ... that, and his friendship with Jackie Robinson.

 

Ed Sherman rounded up some of the debate....

http://www.shermanreport.com/heated-debate-does-angell-deserve-baseball-writers-top-honor-at-cooperstown-over-bisher-durslag/

 

I voted for Angell. Who's been a more influential and must-read baseball writer than him for the last 50 years? Journalism isn't just early notes columns. Dave, I don't know about you, but I find voting for this award a painful chore each year. I hate choosing among writers I know, have known and mostly liked a great deal. There's never an undeserving candidate on the ballot.

 

I understand that there is a certain nobility to covering the beat, but I think you're fetishizing it at the expense of what a guy like Angell does, which is worthy, too. Sometimes, a view from 10,000 feet is even more valuable than the latest update on the set-up man's blister.

Tangentially, on baseball writing in general, and I never thought I'd reach this point: Almost everything I read on baseball these days is written by guys who are not actually in the clubhouse. I just don't think it adds a great deal of value any more. That doesn't mean it adds no value. But not as much as it used to. Not even close.

 

Michael, agreed. I've voted every year with the feeling that whoever the winner is, he deserved to win (still waiting for the first female winner!)

Am I wrong, btw, or was this year's ballot unusual in that it carried no beat reporters? I've never been close enough to the BBWAA political process to know even how the chapter nominees are cut down to three for the final ballot, let alone how it's decided, "This year, columnists and essayists."