Tag Archives: sfchronicle

Lost art of the complete game

Since I’ve been on a baseball rampage since the new season started, I’ve had a few baseball articles I’ve been geeking over. An interesting one is from the SF Chronicle contesting the micromanagement of high pitch counts in baseball.

New York Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity, known as “Iron Man,” didn’t start pitching in the major leagues until he was 28. Five times, he pitched both ends of a doubleheader. He worked an astounding 434 innings in the 1903 season, and over his 10-year career racked up 247 wins and 314 complete games. Get this, though: Wandering through the minors until he was 52, McGinnity collected 204 more wins.

It’s interesting how inflated payrolls and contracts changes the perception of stamina and the spirit of the game against the practicality of protecting your financial investment. Pitch count has been an issue, apparently, for major league umpires as well.

Posted on May 5, 2009 in Sports · Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Rocky Mountain News prints final edition

Much like the rumored shutdown of the San Francisco Chronicle, Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, experienced the same in December. After 149 years and 311 days, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on February 27th, 2009. If you can, watch through the entire video. It’s heartbreaking.

Posted on February 27, 2009 in Internet · Also tagged , | Comments closed

San Francisco Chronicle faces closure

This is heartbreaking news. The newspaper I grew up reading, SF Chronicle, is facing closure in the wake up continued annual deficits.

Hearst said that the Chronicle lost more than $50 million last year and that this year’s losses to date are worse. The Chronicle has had major losses each year since 2001.

Beyond my own personal attachment to reading the Chronicle, they’ve been around for quite some time. In fact, the closure of such a well-known paper could be a slow actualization of print media losing it’s ground to declining readership and increased Internet resources. Yahoo! News has more in-depth statistics of the Chronicle’s performance and it’s ranking through nationwide circulation.

The paper employs 275 news staff and is the 12th-largest in the United States, according to the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations, with average weekday circulation of 339,430. It is the 19th-largest paper by Sunday circulation.

I never realized how big the Chronicle was and had always looked at it like my small local paper. Something else to be proud about as a San Franciscan.

Posted on February 25, 2009 in San Francisco · · Comments closed