1908 Baseball Newspaper Guide: Sporting Life
A Look At A Forgotten Weekly
1908 Baseball Newspaper Guide: Sporting Life
Sporting Life is a rarity among 1908 newspapers. It’s not unusual because it was a weekly publication; after all, we’ve also got The Sporting News, which is much better known.
No — Sporting Life is unusual because it’s available for free. The LA84 Foundation offers a nearly complete run of scans for free, ranging from the first issue on April 15, 1883, to the December 30, 1916 issue.
History
I’m not entirely sure when the final issue of Sporting Life’s original run was. Wikipedia vaguely lists the end of the run as 1917, noting that there was a brief attempt at a revival from 1922 to 1924.
The reason for the end of Sporting Life is also not clear. The Sporting News First Hundred Years claims that the folding of the Federal League ultimately led to the demise of Sporting Life:
Meanwhile, an online review of the life of Sporting Life editor Francis Richter claims that the outbreak of World War I was the real culprit:
I’m not quite sure which is correct. It would be easier to figure this puzzle out if we had access to the full Sporting Life archives, instead of an archive that ends abruptly in 1916. If you know more, please write a comment or drop me a line.
Baseball Coverage
Both Sporting Life and The Sporting News had a similar approach to coverage in the old days. Correspondents reported weekly from each of the major league cities, their work flanked by various editorials, notes on the higher level business of baseball, as well as boxscores and game summaries.
As you can see, Sporting Life was focused more on photographs than the cartoons that would later play a famous role in The Sporting News.
There is also an emphasis on the business of baseball in the pages of Sporting Life that you normally don’t find in the daily sports section of the time. This extends back through the early 1890s at least; I haven’t spent much time looking through the issues of the 1880s.
Naturally, this emphasis on baseball as a business means that certain long-forgotten controversies received extensive coverage in Sporting Life, making for an absolutely fascinating window into the past.
Boxscores
As far as boxscores are concerned, Sporting Life is really a godsend for replayers. The boxscores are clear, the game summaries are easy to read, and the coverage is actually quite good.
There’s also quite a bit of minor league coverage — particularly exciting if you want to see how Reading and Trenton did in the Tri State League in 1908.
Not everything got the full boxscore treatment, of course. However, the little that exists is certainly welcome. At the very least, it gives us an idea of just how limited certain information was to fans and owners alike at the time.
Other Sports
Sporting Life was also the paper of marksmanship, if you are interested in that:
It doesn’t make for gripping reading, in my opinion, but you might find it somewhat interesting.
In my limited perusal of the 1908 issues, I’ve been unable to find mention of any sports other than baseball and shooting. There doesn’t seem to be any college football coverage, for example — something that did receive coverage in The Sporting News up until the first years of the 20th century.
All in all, it’s a great resource, especially if you’re looking for easy-to-read original articles and boxscores.