Alfred Henry Spink (August 24, 1854 – May 27, 1928) was a Canadian-born
American baseball writer and club organizer based mainly in
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
. In 1886, he established a weekly newspaper, ''
The Sporting News
The ''Sporting News'' is a website and former magazine publication owned by Sporting News Holdings, which is a U.S.-based sports media company formed in December 2020 by a private investor consortium. It was originally established in 1886 as a pr ...
'' (TSN), that emerged from World War I as the only national baseball newspaper or magazine.
Biography
Born in the city of
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, Canada, Al Spink and his two brothers learned baseball's English cousin,
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...
. The family of ten moved to
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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after the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
and the boys moved to baseball, whose boom was continental in scope. In 1869 or 1870, the Spinks founded the amateur Mutual club on the West Side, named after the professional
Mutuals of New York. Probably there were dozens of amateur clubs in Chicago beside the professional White Stockings.
Older brother Billy (William C.) became sporting editor of the ''St. Louis Globe-Democrat'' and persuaded Al to move to that city in 1875, where he was soon covering baseball for the Missouri, later St. Louis ''Republican''. The city's first fully professional baseball team, the original
St. Louis Brown Stockings were then in operation, contesting the championship of the U.S. in the
National Association and then the
National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...
.
Not long after the Browns went out of business in December 1877, the Spink brothers began thinking about how to restore professional baseball in their city. Unfortunately, spectator interest in the game had been damaged by the scandal that persuaded the Browns to drop out, and they struggled to organize a team of former pros playing cooperatively.
Al Spink helped turn the trick in 1881, establishing the Sportsman's Park and Club Association with Chris von der Ahe, whose first work was to acquire and renovate the old Grand Avenue ballpark (as
Sportsman's Park
Sportsman's Park was the name of several former Major League Baseball ballpark structures in St. Louis, Missouri. All but one of these were located on the same piece of land, at the northwest corner of Grand Boulevard and Dodier Street, on th ...
). Spink organized a new Brown Stockings team and booked games with other western teams, especially one organized by Cincinnati baseball writer O.P. Caylor and billed as the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The success of independent commercial baseball in 1881, especially in St. Louis, inspired organization of the
American Association American Association may refer to:
Baseball
* American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891
* American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997
* American Association of Profe ...
league for 1882, with Sportsman's Park and Club its member from St. Louis. The writers Spink and Caylor remained influential although the clubs were owned by men of "greater substance".
Al Spink founded ''The Sporting News'' in March 1886. Each number was 17 by 22 inches, eight pages, price five cents (Cooper 1996). The leading baseball newspapers were then based in the East, the weeklies ''Clipper'' and ''Sporting Life'' in New York and Philadelphia. By World War I, ''TSN'' would be the only national baseball newspaper. Al Spink had long turned it over to his younger brother Charles, hiring Charles as business manager in the 1880s, selling his stock in 1894, and finally departing from writing and editorial work in 1899 (Cooper 1996).
His son,
J. G. Taylor Spink, took over ''The Sporting News'' in 1914.
Some time after leaving ''TSN'', Al moved to Chicago where he would eventually write for the ''Evening Post''. In 1910, revised in 1911, he published one of the first baseball histories, ''The National Game''. One section organized by city is full of detail on early amateur and independent organizations and players, including 20 pages for his adopted city, "The Game in St. Louis". Another section consists of short entries on more than one hundred baseball writers with dozens of portrait photos. The sections on players organized by fielding position are not unique, but they remain a treasure trove because Spink did not focus exclusively on major league players or major league spans of careers.
Spink died 1928 in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...
, almost 74 years old. He was the uncle of
sportswriter
Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism started in the early 1800s when it was targeted to the social elite and transitioned into an integral part of the n ...
Ernest J. Lanigan, who compiled the first encyclopedia of baseball, ''
The Baseball Cyclopedia
''The Baseball Cyclopedia'' was the first encyclopedia covering major league baseball. It was compiled and published by sportswriter Ernest J. Lanigan, who served as the editor of the sports section of the ''New York Press''. The nephew of '' ...
''.
References
*Cooper, Mark (1996). "Alfred Henry Spink". ''Baseball's First Stars''. Edited by Frederick Ivor-Campbell, et al. Cleveland, OH: SABR.
*Spink, Alfred H. (
911
911 or 9/11 may refer to:
Dates
* AD 911
* 911 BC
* September 11
** 9/11, the September 11 attacks of 2001
** 11 de Septiembre, Chilean coup d'état in 1973 that outed the democratically elected Salvador Allende
* November 9
Numbers
* 91 ...
2000). ''The National Game: Second Edition''. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. . (The first edition was 1910.)
External links
* (one "from old catalog")
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spink, Al
1854 births
1928 deaths
American newspaper editors
Baseball developers
Baseball writers
Writers from Missouri
Writers from Chicago
Sportswriters from Illinois