Chicago Tribune to Biographer of Racist Early Chicago Baseball Star: Drop Dead; Another Victory for 'Old Boys Network' Publishers that Stress Style over Substance

Since 2006, the Chicago Tribune has been sitting on the first-ever definitive biography of longtime Chicago captain-manager Cap Anson, who played for the local National League club for 22 seasons, 19 as captain-manager. Also in 2006, the Tribune, in a bid to project a "hip" image to its coveted younger readership, didn't quibble when the Cubs' front office bypassed Anson in naming the five most significant players in franchise history, as part of a Major League Baseball-wide contest. Most recently, the Tribune's annual book fair earlier this month rejected the Anson biographer's application to speak, even though Anson is one of just two people to have been called a "son of a bitch" on the pages of either of Chicago's two main dailies in the past 15 years (the other is Saddam Hussein).

Arlington, VA (PRWEB) May 23, 2007 -- Near the top of some lists for removal from the National Baseball Hall of Fame is Cap Anson, a 22-year Chicago baseball player and the person most often blamed for the advent of the most famous color line in sports, the one Jackie Robinson broke in 1947. But if you read the Chicago Tribune in 2006 and so far in 2007, you would never know much about Anson's significance--even though 2006 marked publication of the first definitive biography of him: Cap Anson 4: Bigger Than Babe Ruth: Captain Anson of Chicago.

For two decades, Anson dominated the Tribune's sports section like no other Chicago sports figure, and yet the best the Tribune has done to date with the book was a May 2006 written assurance from its associate managing editor for sports to the author, Howard W. Rosenberg, that "I'm sure there will be an appropriate time in the near future to feature it in the Tribune, either in sports or the books section. Meanwhile, I look forward to finishing it. Best regards, Dan McGrath, Chicago Tribune sports."

No article has run as of May 2007, even though McGrath has for years been the main author of Tribune sports features related to baseball Hall of Famers--albeit books that worship ones from the 20th century. For example, on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day, McGrath wrote a long feature about details in a new Robinson book called Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season, and made just one editorial comment about its quality, calling it "superb." However, the Robinson book had previously been criticized by syndicated newspaper book reviewer Allen Barra for not being a particularly substantial addition to public knowledge about Robinson.

Cap Anson 4 stressed substance over style, for example, by packing Anson's racism mostly into a 24-page appendix entitled "Anson and Blacks." In addition, the book's central thesis--and most baseball bios don't have one--is heavily concentrated in its first 36 pages. The central thesis is that Anson drew the most interesting coverage of any baseball star over a long career and post-career; his public career spanned from 1871 to 1922 and, in the 19th century, overlapped with what the book argues was the wittiest age of baseball writing: the Victorian Era. His post-career included a term as city clerk of Chicago, the city's then-number three post, and the longest vaudeville run of any future baseball Hall of Famer.

Meanwhile, the Tribune's annual book fair recently informed Rosenberg that his application to speak at its June 2007 two-day event had been rejected; the fair in 2006 had 230 speakers. And yet, Rosenberg's application to speak, besides containing a copy of Cap Anson 4 and a wide range of clippings, including favorable reviews, prominently highlighted that Anson, for his racism, has been called a "son of a bitch" on the pages of the city's other major daily, the Chicago Sun-Times. That comment was made in 2003 by Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago author Studs Terkel. According to full-text databases of the Tribune and Sun-Times, only one other public figure has been called an SOB on any page of either paper since 1992, in comments made to one of its reporters: former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, in a remark also by Terkel, days after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Tribune, by the way, also misplaced Rosenberg's application to have a table at its 2007 book fair, which in 2006 had around 130 vendors. Rosenberg did, however, appear last summer on Chicago's WGN Radio, which is owned by the newspaper's parent company.

When Rosenberg spoke to Associate Managing Editor McGrath last fall about Cap Anson 4, McGrath did not raise any objection to the book itself, just that he had not had time to get further to it, and said he passed it along to a colleague. However, when contacted two weeks ago, McGrath informed Rosenberg that he himself didn't think much of the book, and that, for that reason, he had done nothing with it; an assistant later confirmed that McGrath had absolutely no future interest in its contents.

Meanwhile, Terkel, who just turned 95, was quoted earlier this month by Sun-Times columnist Roger Ebert as saying, "I'd like to stick around long enough to work on my memoirs," and, "I've got a working title: The Great American Lobotomy. I think this country suffers from National Alzheimer's." The Tribune is like many major newspapers in trying to appeal to younger readers, through edgy stories, and sports sections can be utterly ahistorical. The Tribune's focus group-like thinking on Anson may also stem from fear of offending Chicago's sizeable minority population. That said, one significant change in Anson's behavior 100 years ago this year was entering a team in a Chicago semi-pro league that had an all-black team led by the future founder of the first of the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster. And yet, McGrath also rejected the idea of doing a feature related to that anniversary.

For major newspapers, featuring sports or entertainment figures who have never appeared on television is becoming increasingly problematic, even in a major subject area for them such as baseball. That timidity was fully on display in 2006, when the Cubs' front office--likely in a public relations mode--omitted Anson from its five finalists for all-time franchise "Hometown Hero." And yet, Anson arguably should have scored exceptionally well according to the contest's three criteria:

(1) On-the-field performance: He captained and managed the Chicago National League team simultaneously for 19 seasons, with five pennants to his record. He also was the first player in baseball history to attain 3,000 hits. That 19-season run is the longest tenure of any captain-manager or player-manager with the same team in major league history; the next-highest total is 12, by Pittsburgh's Fred Clarke.
(2) Leadership quality: Historians have noted that he elevated baseball in the public esteem by insisting on good behavior by his players off the field. His players dressed remarkably well and included future evangelist Billy Sunday.
(3) Character: Despite being a racist, he was also a huge symbol of the honesty of baseball, by observing a strict wall between gambling on games (which players could do in the 19th century) and consorting with gamblers. Later breakdown of that wall led to the 1919 throwing of the World Series by the city's other big league team, the Chicago White Sox.

Rosenberg's attempts at drawing the Tribune's attention to the omission were not acted on, even though Cap Anson 4 had been released in early 2006, was in the hands of the Tribune's sports department, and is the single most comprehensive source for evaluating Anson. The Tribune did call the contest, which was held in big league cities throughout the country, "a farce," but never said anything about Anson. It did write a string of articles noting the omission of a recent ex-Cub, Sammy Sosa, and interviewed Sosa at length.

The author has written four books, all related to 19th-century baseball and released only as hardcovers. They were researched mainly at the Library of Congress, the largest repository of primary material on the subject, by poring through virtually all available primary sources. The author also learned computer programs for laying out a book and cropping graphics, Adobe PageMaker and Photoshop, and contracted with top-of-the line printers. One superior quality of the books is that graphics in them appear adjacent to the text they relate to, whereas in most baseball bios, they are stuck en masse in two or three areas. Publicity for Cap Anson 4 noted that it contains a likely record number of graphics for a Hall of Famer's definitive bio, 180. In total, the book has 560 pages and full endnotes.

While books from larger publishers invariably are easier to read--in large part because editors take pride in making stories "sound" compelling--a book that is done without outside influence can be a lot more honest and educational (and be more graphically appealing). And yet, major newspapers and library review journals that also ignored Cap Anson 4 seem far less concerned with honesty than, in effect, if a book went through established hoops. In the author's case, a huge benefit of bypassing such a process was being able to make lots of late editorial and layout changes.

When a major local publication gives the cold shoulder to a topic of special local relevance, it can try to defend itself by saying it has exercised "editorial judgment" consistent with its First Amendment rights. But how can the Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore Sun defend a policy that, as explained to the author by two senior staffers, keeps it from acknowledging a finding from the author's 2005 book (Cap Anson 3: Muggsy John McGraw and the Tricksters: Baseball's Fun Age of Rule Bending) that the sport of duckpin bowling did not originate in Baltimore? The Sun has been wrong on the subject for more than 50 years, although it now is hedging itself while not clearly admitting its error. But other publications, Baltimore and national, have more plainly referred to the author's research.

Similarly, in 2003, the New York Times and New York Daily News shunned research stemming from the author's first book (Cap Anson 1: When Captaining a Team Meant Something: Leadership in Baseball's Early Years) that Derek Jeter, upon being named New York Yankee captain, was not, as touted, the 11th in franchise history. However, this past March, the Times did run a lengthy feature on the author and his Yankee captains research. Perhaps the only reason why the Times ran the feature was because it was a natural fit with a weekly column it instituted in 2006 called "The Cheering Section," which features sports fanatics of various stripes.

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