And Then There Were None

I sucked it up yesterday morning, drove to the nearest Barnes and Noble bookstore and made my way to the magazine rack.  It wasn’t so much a matter of scanning the titles as running the gauntlet of Cub-this and Cub-that, Cub-blah-blah-blah.  Naturally, the Lindy’s Baseball Preview I wanted featured the Cubs’ Kris Bryant on the cover.  I bought it anyhow.  So what if they haven’t picked the White Sox right two years running (first in the Central Division, 2015, and third last year)?  What’s baseball without prognostications, including Lindy’s pegging the White Sox for fourth, just ahead of the Twins? 

For that matter, what’s my season going to be without Who’s Who in Baseball?  It was nowhere to be seen, so I asked at customer service; you would’ve thought I wanted the Sanskrit Review from the look on the person’s face.  Back home, I checked at amazon.com; again, no luck.  Then, I did a few searches and found the magazine went out of business shortly after printing the 2016 issue, which constituted 100 years.

I didn’t even like Who’s Who that much; it was merely a substitute for the Baseball Register.  Now, there was an almanac chock full of tidbits; Who’s Who was two-thirds the size, if that, with less info and fewer players.  According to the story I read, the likes of baseballreference.com was the culprit.  Apparently, who wants hardcopy when a screen will do?

Never mind the screen—technically, the site—has yet to come up with a scroll function and the hardcopy never needs charging, though it’s advised to keep both away from water.  All I know is I could work the Baseball Register, the Baseball Encyclopedia and Who’s Who faster than I can a stat website.  But no one asked me.

Now I know how the dinosaurs felt.