3. The Sporting News became America’s first national newspaper
On St. Patrick’s Day, 1886, The Sporting News first appeared on American newsstands, selling for a nickel. Published in St. Louis, Missouri, by an executive of the St. Louis Browns Baseball Club, the weekly newspaper primarily focused on three American sports, horse racing, professional wrestling, and baseball. By 1901, the year the modern American League came into being, The Sporting News was considered the “Bible of Baseball” among its fans. The newspaper played a major role in the development of the American League, touting its teams and players in its columns. By the time the World Series began in 1903, The Sporting News was a major influence on both Major Leagues. The newspaper advocated cleaning up the sport, including banning alcohol sales during games and restricting fan access to the playing field.
Baseball writers and fans from coast to coast came to rely on The Sporting News for statistics, box scores, inside information, trade rumors, and all things baseball by the time of the First World War. During the first three decades of the 20th century, the newspaper could be found at newsstands, railroad stations, drug stores, ball parks, and race tracks. Not until 1942 did the paper begin coverage of football. Instead, it remained focused on baseball, and its World Series coverage featured reports by writers which included Grantland Rice, Dick Young and Damon Runyon. It was The Sporting News which howled the loudest over the suspicious 1919 World Series, and it was The Sporting News which brought the Fall Classic to America outside of Major League Baseball, where local newspapers had no team to support with their own writers.