The Sporting News

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Note: TSN redirects here; for the Canadian sports network often called by that abbreviation, click here

The Sporting News (often abbreviated as TSN) is a United States-based sports weekly magazine, book publisher, and radio network headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. It was established on March 17, 1886 by Al Spink and would remain in the Spink family for 91 years. Although it began as a general sports publication, in the first half of the 20th century it was the premier publication covering baseball and earned the nickname "The Bible of Baseball".

History[edit]

The first issue was published on March 17, 1886. Spink sold the newspaper to his brother Charles in 1895. Charles ran the paper as owner/editor until his death in 1914. His son J.G. Taylor Spink inherited it; he too would run until he died on December 7, 1962.

During the tenure of Charles and J.G. Spink, TSN was decidedly non-glamorous, consisting of black-and-white newsprint with staid graphics on a broadsheet of only eight to ten pages. However, it was also the only paper to follow baseball teams from around the nation. At the time, it printed a box score for not only every major league game played each week but for most of the top minor leagues. Each issue also had a report on each major league baseball team, usually written by a local newspaper's beat writer for that team. Only Baseball Magazine would come close to achieving the same fame as TSN.

C.C. Johnson Spink would be the last Spink to run the paper, overseeing it from 1962 until he sold it in January, 1977, to the Times Mirror Corporation for $18 million. The advent of national sports media in the 1980s such as USA Today and ESPN, and the proliferation of the internet, deprived TSN of its unique role. Consequently, the late 2000s, TSN switched to a magazine format from a tabloid newspaper with a more diverse coverage of sports. TSN was then sold to Advance Magazine Publishers, who have made further changes with the format, experimenting with an electronic-only publication. After some years in the wilderness, following the discontinuation of its formerly essential Baseball Guide and Baseball Register after the 2005 season, the publication forged a new partnership with Major League Baseball in the early 2010s, and some of its traditional awards once again became recognized by the wider industry.

Awards and Lists Sponsored[edit]

Over the years, The Sporting News introduced a number of awards to honor the best players and top executives in the game. In most cases, these non-monetary awards preceded the official awards introduced by Major League Baseball by many years. Almost all were eventually eclipsed by their official equivalents, and faded out as the magazine's importance declined. When the Sporting News stopped publishing its annual Baseball Guide after the 2006 edition, the awards ceased having any broader relevance in the baseball world, until TSN revived its partnership with Major League Baseball a decade later.

Quotations[edit]

"When baseball wanted to speak, The Sporting News cleared its throat. It was also popular for featuring a week of box scores when box scores from west coast games were not readily available in the east." - Bill James

External Links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://www.baseball-reference.com/bpv/index.php?title=The_Sporting_News&oldid=1061092"