When did newspapers start covering high school sports?

A hanging curveball that nobody swung at...
The 1870s? ;D
(sorry -- couldn't resist)

 

If it's the Columbia Missourian, you are false. Everyone knows they don't put out all-area teams.

 

And how many 1820s kids went without scholarships because of it?

 

Awesome.

 

But how could the Missourian even have A-A teams back then, let alone print, if Mizzou's Jschool is just 100 years old?

 

It was swung at a few posts above. How could you not swing for the fences?

 

Close. It wasn't a game-winner -- Gehrig's team, Commerce High in Manhattan, was ahead 8-6 with two outs in the top of the ninth when Lou hit a grand slam over the right field wall.

Commerce beat Chicago's Lane Tech 12-6 in the first New York-Chicago Intercity Championship in 1920. (There were six of them, including one that drew 57,000+ to Yankee Stadium in 1925).

The blast was so shocking for a 17-year-old that sports writers referred to him as "Babe Ruth Gehrig". (For comparison, the major league Cubs only hit 19 home runs at home all YEAR in 1920, and I'm not sure how many of those were inside-the-park.)

And his name was indeed misspelled "Gherig" in the box score of the Chicago Tribune.

http://www.ihsa.org/initiatives/hstoric/baseball_intercity.htm

 

That was back when sportwriters were crazy and fun and creative. Not like those boring young whippersnappers of today [/garycartwrightcrossthreading]

 

Jamestown was dominating until those stinking Pilgrims invaded us.

 

Tom Sawyer didn't have a mom. But Huck Finn's dad was a drunk bastard who would beat his kid if he didn't get a hit every at-bat. Mr. Finn was eventually found beaten to death by fungos in a shipwrecked riverboat.

 

Fungo, I love that word. And, flummoxed, too.

 

OK here's one -- Anyone know that Bill Laimbeer was once a sleastak on Land of the Lost? True as can be.