Losing a writer

A Casey Stengel story: It's 1954. The Yankees are in Cleveland late in September, and the Indians are having a historically great season. The Yankees have won five straight World Series, but they won't win a sixth straight pennant, and the writers aren't going back to New York. They're picking up the Tribe and covering them the rest of the way,

Stengel, who has insisted all along that his squad will catch Cleveland,  is dismayed: "We're losing our writers."

Well, we're loing a writer. Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press is jumping ship this week to join the Indianapolis Star. He'll be based in South Bend and cover Notre Dame sports.

I have linked to Berardino's stuff quite a bit over the years, partly because it's accessible and partly because he's good. I assume the Pioneer Press will have somebody covering the Twins going forward, but the PP newsroom is a shell of former glories -- the descrecration of that newspaper in the name of hedge fund profits is appalling -- and I don't expect that his ultimate replacement will be of the same caliber.

Berardino's had jobs vanish from under him before -- that's how he wound up in St. Paul to begin with -- and I certainly can't blame anybody for getting out of the Pioneer Press' continuing contractions when a promising opportunity arises. But as a reader, I will miss him. And I wish him well in his new post.