Baseball DIY

Thanks to a brief mention in the current issue of Vanity Fair (the one with the picture of the Desperate Housewives on the cover...oh joy), I spent a little time today researching the life of sportswriter Shirley Povich. Povich, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, was a sportswriter for The Washington Post back when baseball was first played in DC. He was in many ways the voice of the Nationals and clearly someone who loved the sport for what it could be and should be. I love the quote they pulled for the piece in VF that Povich wrote in 1939: "There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose," he wrote. "Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues - the pigmentation of their skin."

Clearly, he cared little for the game's bullshit and more for its true glory.

Last month a collection of Povich's columns was published by PublicAffairs. Read and remember.