Lefty vs Lefty

An age old debate

Lefty vs Lefty

With all of this talk recently about 1932 in this blog, I decided to take a peek at some of the old issues of The Sporting News from that year.

You’ve got to remember that The Sporting News was essentially the only place for baseball fans to communicate with each other. There was no television, obviously, and we were a long way away from the eventual development of the internet. Radio did exist, but sports talk radio wouldn’t be a thing for decades to come.

And so the best fans could do is write to publications like The Sporting News and hope that their modest letters would be printed.

And, well, sometimes those letters would stir up a storm:

From The Sporting News, June 23, 1932, page 4

The key here is this talk about Lefty Gomez being put in during the “soft spots.”

Gomez had a heck of a year in 1932, of course. That’s the year he went 24-7. His 4.21 ERA probably wasn’t much to write home about, but he still managed to complete 31 of the 37 games he started despite giving up his fair share of runs.

Sugar Cain, by the way, lost that game to Gomez 5-1 in front of only 5,000 people at Shibe Park. That’s pretty disappointing, especially when you realize that the Athletics were three time defending American League champions.

Anyway, The Sporting News gave Gomez his due a week later with this short blurb on the front page:

From The Sporting News, June 30, 1932, page 1

But that wasn’t quite enough to satisfy the fans.

And so, on July 14th, the Gomez supporters came out in full force:

It’s a shame that the quality of these images isn’t much better. Regardless, this gives you at least a taste of what the age old debates were like even back in those days.