I dream of box scores

I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream in which I was struggling to fit a collection of box scores in the paper. Dreams -- at least my dreams -- seldom make logical sense, and that is so in this specific instance; without going into detail, none of the issues that arose in last night's dream are factors in the Free Press world of 2011. The dream would have made more sense in 1988 -- heck, the dream was practically a documentary of the headaches that accompanied newspaper production in 1988.

I don't wish to use the methods of the '80s to put out the paper today, but I do harbor a nostalgic fondness for the box score.

The olden days, before the Internet ... The Free Press was an afternoon paper, and we took a certain pride in ensuring that we had all of the previous day's boxes. Terry Steinbach, New Ulm native, was catching for the Oakland A's, and the New Ulm paper (a morning paper) seldom had his team's home games; we did.

The Sporting News used to devote pages of newsprint to the previous week's box scores. So did the Gannett publication now called Sports Weekly. I subscribed to both, and dropped both when they dropped the boxes; I took the decision as not merely economic but as symbolic of a de-emphasis on baseball. The Free Press, too, no longer prints columns of agate type summarizing the Cubs-Pirates or Angels-Orioles games of the previous day.

Economically, it makes sense. By the time we downgraded our stats package from The Associated Press, even I had stopped scrutinizing the printed lines and gone online for my fix. The Internet killed the newspaper box score -- not just by making the material more rapidly available than print can, not only by presenting it in larger, more readable type, but by making so much more information available that the old-time box score is almost obsolete.

We still get, and run, the Twins box score, but that's it. That's enough.

Still ... There was a time when I could study Henry Chadwick's ingenious invention and deduce from nothing but the lines of agate type that Toronto's starter had been knocked out of the box in the fifth inning when Eddie Murray hit a three-run double -- but I don't have to do that anymore. The play-by-play is readily available.

I'm just not sure I'm better off this way.

Newspapers and the World Series, Part II

A few days ago I noted that neither of the Twin Cities metros were staffing the World Series, and I speculated that they were not alone in skipping the event.

I'll say not.

According to Murray Chass — who used to cover baseball for the New York Times before losing his job in an economic move — 29 of the 60 papers that cover major league teams home and away are skipping this year's World Series.

Newspapers and the World Series

The Star Tribune isn't staffing the World Series this year. Nor is the Pioneer Press — indeed, from what one can glean from the St. Paul paper's Internet home page, there wasn't a game played last night.

They're probably not alone. MLB this year held its first "media day," patterned after the NFL's media day early in Super Bowl week, with the express hope that it would entice more news outlets to the Series. The NFL's faux event often comes off as a joke, and I can't imagine why an attempt to duplicate it would be seen as a plus, but I'm not running MLB's media relations.

It's no secret that the world of traditional media is in turmoil. Newspaper circulation is down — the 25 biggest U.S. papers, which includes the Strib but not the PP, lost about 10 percent of their collected circulation in the past quarter. Local TV news stations are struggling as well; a recently fired director at WCCO TV was quoted in the Star Tribune: It's a dying industry ... and quite honestly I don't think that they have the smarts to reinvent themselves.

(Wandering off on a tangent ... in that context, I'm a bit puzzled by the Glen Taylor-Vance Opperman bid for a minority share in the Star Tribune. There have been cases of a deep-pockets guy buying a failing paper in order to push his political agenda, but Taylor and Opperman are partisan opposites, so that's not the case here. And as an investment — well, I'm no high-finance guy, but there have to be more lucrative places for them to put their money.)

I'm not sure what LaVelle Neal or Kelsie Smith would provide from the Yankees-Phillies Series that the wire services can't, and I suppose the decision makers at their papers had the same conclusion. Plus — let's face it — sending a reporter to New York racks up the expenses faster than sending one to almost any other city.

I'm not really surprised the Twin Cities metros aren't at the Series, just a bit saddened. It's another minor surrender. They have bigger battles to fight.