Sporting News Reader Gets Free Subscription
- Share via
Your excellent article on the Sporting News’ 100th birthday, and its colorful editor J.G. Taylor Spink, recalled for me my one and only contact with the man.
It was about 1958 and, as an elementary school student in Michigan, I had been given a subscription to the Sporting News. Near the end of the subscription period, I began receiving notices asking me to renew. I wrote a tearful letter explaining I was only 11 years old, didn’t have the money ($12, I think) to subscribe, but loved baseball and loved the Sporting News.
Shortly, I received a personal letter telling me it was understandable that I had no money, and that I was a fine lad for loving baseball, and that for such a fine letter I would be receiving a free one-year subscription to the Sporting News. The letter was signed by J.G. Taylor Spink, with an impressive Sphinx logo at the top.
Old J.G. might have been a tightwad around his office, but he certainly was not around a boy who loved baseball.
BILL STERMER
Oxnard
Go beyond the scoreboard
Get the latest on L.A.'s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
