RIP Jerome Holtzman

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Armchair_QB

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Didn't see this anywhere yet. I imagine a lot of folks on here knew him.

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/cs-080721-jerome-holtzman-death,1,4234699.story

Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jerome Holtzman dies
By Paul Sullivan | Tribune staff reporter
2:06 PM CDT, July 21, 2008

Former Tribune baseball writer Jerome Holtzman, who rose from copy boy to Hall of Famer in an illustrious career as a Chicago sportswriter, passed away this weekend after a long illness. He was 82.

Holtzman, a baseball beat writer and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times before moving to the Tribune in 1981, was the author of six books, including "No Cheering in the Press Box," a best-selling oral history of the game as told by 24 old-school sportswriters.

Known as "the Dean" in baseball press boxes, Holtzman chronicled the seasons of the White Sox and Cubs for more than 40 years at Chicago newspapers, beginning in 1957 at the Sun-Times. He was also responsible for the institution of the "save" rule to acknowledge effective relief pitching in 1966, the first major statistic recognized by Major League Baseball since the RBI was added in 1920.

Holtzman was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989, and became baseball's first official historian under Commissioner Bud Selig after retiring from the Tribune in 1999.

"He was the consummate writer," said George Vass, a former colleague and friend who collaborated with Holtzman on two books. "No one was ever more dedicated and clear-minded about the sport, and those who played it and wrote about. He was a great writer, but more important, a great friend."
 
I can still smell his cigar from the Pittsburgh press box in 1992.
RIP.
 
I met him once. At the 95 All-Star Game in Arlington. He was helping Bob Broeg go thru media check-in at the hotel.
 
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Armchair_QB said:
I met him once. At the 95 All-Star Game in Arlington. He was helping Bob Broeg go thru media check-in at the hotel.

Another all-timer. Never has a man done more for seersucker suits than Bob.
 
Oh man, that sucks. Disagreed with him vehemently on one particular issue, but always respected his work. He was one of the great ones. RIP.
 
A Hall of Famer if ever a writer was one. RIP. Three letters I'm getting tired of typing on this board.
 
RIP. Hell, I remember reading his stuff on the wires when places I worked didn't have space to put it in. Yeah, I'm getting tired of writing RIP too, Michael_Gee.
 
With the cigar, the suits, the eyebrows, Jerome looked like an old-time sportswriter right out of central casting.

His "No Cheering in the Press Box" was a great resource. I always wished he had done a follow-up with the writers of the next generation who were his peers -- **** Young, Phil Pepe, Maury Allen, Joe Falls, Bob Hunter, Ray Kelly, Earl Lawson, Bob Stevens, Phil Collier, Joe McGuff, Charley Feeney, etc. to show how the business had changed further.

Too many of them are gone and now Jerome is, too. RIP.
 
I noticed on Saturday that his Wikipedia page already mentioned his passing, and immediately checked Google and came here to find nothing.

Thought that a bit odd.

"No Cheering ..." should be in every hotel room.
 
In 1978 or 1979, I was in a Florida paper newsroom working the night shift in advance of the next day's PM, and Mr. Holtzman was using our work space and phones and such.

He was minding his own business when I proceeded to regale him with what a hot-**** young writer I was (23) and I had won some awards, blah, blah, blah.

To his everlasting credit, he did NOT tell me to shut the **** up. He simply ignored me in such a stony way that I wound down after about 90 seconds and went back to typing in the dog-track agate, leaving him to his work.

Despite the way my career has turned in the past 10 years, I will always be a print guy at heart, and these are the kinds of men and women I longed to work with and for and be around, no matter how grumpy they could be. Rooms full of those kinds of people are what made me fall in love with the business.

Fewer and fewer of them left.
 
I still hear him humming, using that old porta bubble, and smoking the cigar. I remember one time in the post-season it was in a town where they were replacing the porta bubble's and he called over to IT and arranged to buy the surpplus porta bubbles so he would have replacement parts at home to fix his, which the paper phased out.
 
According to his Wikipedia page, Holtzman was born Dec. 11, 1926, which would make him 81. Turns out he was about 11 months younger than my grandfather, who died about a month ago.

A sad day for amateur baseball historians everywhere.
 
RIP.
Can't help noting Sullivan used "passed away" in his story. I thought people died in the Chicago Tribune (as in the headline).
 
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