Jerome Holtzman (1926–2008)

Jerome Holtzman was named the first official historian for Major League Baseball in June 1999 by Commissioner Bud Selig. He's the "dean" of America's baseball Boswells & was the baseball columnist & national baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune from 1981 until 1999. He joined the Tribune in 1981 after 38 years at the Chicago Sun-Times & the Daily Times. A member of baseball's Hall of Fame, he was assigned major league baseball in 1957 & traveled with the Cubs & the White Sox for 28 years, dividing his time equally between the two clubs. (Publisher Provided) Sportswriter Jerome Holtzman was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 12, 1926. After the death of his father when he was 10, his mother could no longer support the family and he spent the remainder of his childhood in an orphanage. At the age of 17, he worked as a copy boy at The Daily Times. He spent two years in the Marines and then returned to the paper to cover high school sports. In 1957, he became a baseball writer for The Sun-Times and in 1981 he became a columnist at The Chicago Tribune. In 1959, he invented the statistic known as the save, which in 1969, became the first new official statistic ackowledged by Major League Baseball since 1920. He published No Cheering in the Press Box, an oral history featuring the recollections of 18 of his colleagues, in 1974. He also wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on baseball and the year-end summary of the baseball season for the Official Baseball Guide for numerous years. In 1989, he was elected into the writers' wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He died from a stroke on July 19, 2008. (Bowker Author Biography) — biography from No Cheering in the Press Box… (mais)