Circling the Drain

There are three ways to approach sports, by playing the game, watching the game played and reading about it.  #3 may not be long for the world in these parts.

I probably followed baseball in the newspapers more than the average kid, in large part because asthma kept me from playing anything until I was nearly twelve.  I’m not complaining, really.  Other kids were better players, I was the better student, so to speak.  And I loved box scores.  Henry Chadwick came up with the idea in 1859.  To condense an hours’ long contest into a few square inches of readable type was sheer genius on Chadwick’s part.  I can’t imagine baseball without box scores.  Too bad the Chicago Tribune doesn’t agree.

All this past baseball season, their sports’ section trimmed box scores to fit the space available. They might skip the time of game and attendance or who got the rbi’s.  It irritated me enough to send an angry email to the sports’ editor, not that he replied.  I won’t do it again even though it’s gotten worse, with out-of-town NBA and NHL box scores disappearing altogether.  Snip enough lines, drop enough scores, and you can shrink the sports’ section by a page or two.  Why?  There’s not enough ad revenue to keep doing stuff the old way.

From what I gather, the paper is hemorrhaging money and staff.  It won’t be long until the people left in Tribune Tower won’t know how to read a box score, let alone print one.