1908 Baseball Newspaper Guide: The West

Exploring the old papers.

1908 Basball Newspaper Guide: The West

Interested in undertaking your own 1908 replay? If you are, look no further — I’ve created a guide to original newspapers for you.

I’ll keep this simple. We’ll go through all of the newspapers that we have access to for June 10, 1908. I chose this date because all Major League teams were in action on June 9. I’ll give you a quick rundown of the paper and the baseball coverage you can expect.

We’ll cover 4 western cities today, 4 eastern cities next time, and will follow that up with a few specials on cities with extensive resources.

Note that all of these papers are available on newspapers.com. I highly recommend getting a subscription if you are serious about performing this research. I use it every day.

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Detroit

Your best bet in Detroit is The Detroit Free Press.

The Free Press provides a good mix of national and local news, and seems in retrospect to be a classic local paper of general interest.

The sports coverage is good, though perhaps not exceptional:

Newspapers.com offers a full archive of all issues in 1908 (that I’ve checked, anyway). Most are generally readable, though there are some problems with fading, as you can see above.

Even with the fading, though, you can make most of the article out.

As usual, there were editorial comments and notes, many of which shed light on transactions that you might be missing in your project:

Overall, it’s a good paper in fairly good condition considering the age.

Alternatively, you can also go for The Detroit Times:

The sports pages are on the second page, which I think shows that this was a relatively low-brow publication:

There are usually at least two editions for every day, in keeping with the old tradition of publishing new papers as breaking news came in.

The coverage wasn’t horrible:

Overall, it’s not bad, though it’s also not the greatest I’ve seen. I’d use this as a backup source for times with The Detroit Free Press pages are illegible.

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Cincinnati

The best newspaper in the United States for 1900 baseball coverage is The Cincinnati Enquirer. Sadly, by 1908, the Enquirer largely lost its place as the premier daily baseball publication in the country.

Though the coverage wasn’t quite the same, the Enquirer still featured the same multiple column layout in 1908, though it’s not exactly the most pleasing thing to look at.

Missing here are the extensive notes from the rest of the country that once graced the pages of this publication. It’s not bad for Reds coverage, but it’s not quite the same as it once was.

The Cincinnati Post was the more economic alternative to The Enquirer.

As far as the sports coverage goes… you can have a look for yourself:

It’s not great, but there are a few interesting things here and there.

I think you get the idea.

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St. Louis

Your best bet in St. Louis is to start with the Post-Dispatch regardless of which season you’re playing.

Now, this was an evening paper, which means that you’ll get the game summary for June 10th, not the 9th. But it’s still worth taking a look at:

And, no, I didn’t inadvertently cut the boxscore off the bottom. There are no boxscores on the sports page, for whatever reason.

There are alternatives, of course. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat provides a good one.

This is a much cleaner sports section with at least some semblance of organization.

Unfortunately, though, I was not able to locate any of the editorial comments and other news tidbits that are so valuable to transaction research.

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Chicago

This one should be obvious.

The Chicago Daily Tribune probably had the best baseball coverage in the entire country in 1908.

In all seriousness, I’m not certain how you could perform meaningful and accurate baseball research into this era without consulting The Tribune.

Note the arrival of William Mack, who pitched twice in July.

You can sometimes find good details about other teams in these pages as well. Check this one out:

That pitcher was Jake Thielman, who pitched 5 more times for Cleveland after receiving the substitution before being traded to Boston. He would never pitch in the major leagues again.

As you can tell, I really love The Chicago Daily Tribune for 1908 baseball coverage. Above all, you simply can’t beat the sports section cartoons:

Newspapers lost a lot of charm when they went away from drawings and towards photographs.

The Inter Ocean isn’t quite as good, but does have its moments.

The sports section is a two page section stuck onto the end of the paper, almost as an afterthought.

I’ll have more from other cities in a few days.