Runyon

Dispute is the stuff of which Hot Stove Leagues are made. With or without the cup that cheers, the boys (and girls) will argue over anything in the off season from who's gonna win next year's pennant to which player has the best crack at Bonds' homer record. However, one issue breaches no contention among sabrmetricians: the start of sportswriting's Golden Age.

1910 or thereabouts spawned the greatest single infusion of talent the craft ever knew. Ring Lardner and Hugh Fullerton ruled Chicago, and The Big Apple also had some heavy hitters. Franklin P. Adams (Tinker to Evers to Chance) arrived in 1907, Grantland Rice in '08, Dan Daniel about the same time, and 1911 saw two more join them: Fred Lieb (The House that Ruth Built), plus one from Pueblo, Colorado who wrote for Hearst's New York American - Damon Runyon.

Unlike his bretheren, he focused more on who played baseball than on the game itself. It was good strategy. Besides giving readers what they didn't find elsewhere, the 20 or so Hall of Famers in action around that time kept Damon in good copy. Those factors, plus a real knack for arranging words, made him a hot item among fans and colleagues alike.

A hard drinker and highflyer, Runyon (mostly) stayed on the wagon after he hit New York. He had long, narrow feet, and got other people to break in every new pair of shoes, which were bought with rapidity because Damon was a nightwalking imsomniac who drank coffee by the potful. When he wasn't writing a column or (reportedly) philandering on his wife, he hung out in pool halls, around crap tables, or at the Saratoga race track, taking in details that appeared in the later works that endeared him to so many.

After a few years covering the Giants, Damon left the daily baseball arena and eventually wrote columns about the people he met- his 'Guys and Dolls'. Out of those pieces came short stories about some of the most unforgettable characters in literature or movies: Dave the Dude, Sky Masterson, The Lemon Drop Kid, Sorrowful Jones, Little Miss Marker, and Apple Annie.

Since Runyon's style defies description, here's a sample from 'Cemetary Bait':

"They are vexed with me because one night I take Lou Adolia's automobile out on the salt meadows near Seacaucus, NJ, and burn it to a crisp, and it seems that I forget to remove Lou Adolia first from same."

Cancer claimed Runyon in 1946, and although he made almost a million apart from covering baseball, he never completely left the game behind. 'Baseball Hattie' is such a fine work it's included in every diamond anthology worth owning. He spotted the subject into several other tales, and left a view of gambling on the game in the same story that Hornsby followed and Rose should have:

"Personally I will not bet you four dollars on a baseball game, because in the first place I am not apt to have four dollars, and in the second place I consider horse races a much sounder investment..."

Dan Grey Taylor Jr.