Sportswriters

Henry Chadwick (1824–1908)

Chadwick was the first to make a full career of sports writing, and he promoted baseball as our “national pastime.” Chadwick's father was a social reforming English journalist who fell so far out of favor that the family moved to New York when Henry was 13. Just four years later young Chadwick had his first journalism job, reporting cricket scores to The New York Times. By 20, he [Page 1334]was a regular contributor to the Long Island Star, reporting on all manner of sport and diversions: sailing, horse racing, cricket, billiards, and even chess and theater. He was 31 when he found his life's passion. In 1856, on his way home from a cricket match, he came across a baseball game at Elysian Fields in Brooklyn. “It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans,” he wrote afterward. “From this game of ball, a powerful lever might be made by which our people could be lifted into a position of more devotion to physical exercise and healthful out-door recreation than they had hitherto, as a people, been noted for” (Orodenker 2001). In 1858, Chadwick became the world's first baseball editor, at the New York Clipper, and he published the first book of “Base Ball Rules.” Chadwick developed the box score, and in 1867, he unveiled the first system for scoring a baseball game, with letters denoting every batter's outcome, including the still-used S for sacrifice and K for strikeout. He also devised the first player statistics: batting average and earned run average.

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