60 Pages of 1930 Baseball Preview

From The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 15, 1930

60 Pages of 1930 Baseball Preview

While I was browsing 1930 newspapers the other day, I came across this, from The Cincinnati Enquirer:

This was part of the first page of the newspaper on April 15, 1930. And, as luck would have it, newspapers.com has the entire section archived.

Now, you’ve got to realize that this was in addition to a sport section that was already pretty big. It featured artwork like this:

A picture of the club, like this:

A really nice advertisement for the second game of the season:

And, of course, an editorial cartoon that also highlighted baseball:

Now, there’s really not enough room here to cover everything that was featured in that supplemental section. I will point out a few things, though.

The Reds, of course, go back to 1869, long before the National League itself was formed. And the interesting thing is that The Cincinnati Enquirer devoted a lot of its coverage that day to talk about the real old days of baseball in the city:

There were a lot of interesting historical stories, some of which I had forgotten about. This is a good example:

There’s also this one, that I’m sure most of you have never heard of:

Or how about this storied long home run from the 1890s?

There were also stories of the then-rare feat of striking out 9 batters in a row:

And this one about “freak scoring games,” a section that surely had to be rewritten from scratch after the craziness of 1930:

And then there were the pictures. Not just any pictures, mind you. Pictures that really evoke memories of the past. Pictures of famous people like this controversial gentleman:

And pictures of old Redland Field:

And, fortunately, there was also at least one picture of the fans:

Now, you couldn’t have a 60 page section without a ton of advertisements, could you? The big story in 1930 was radio, of course, and this is just one of many full page ads for the newest trend:

It’s kind of hard for me to imagine spending $200 of today’s money on a radio. $200 in 1930 was the equivalent of $3,829.93 today.

There was an editorial that highlighted just how popular the sport of baseball was in 1930:

And then came my favorite cartoon of all — the one that demonstrated the obvious supremacy of baseball at the time:

It’s not the same anymore, I know. But it sure is nice to remember.