Known as the "Bible of Baseball," The Sporting News helped to expand the popularity of baseball among Americans in the first half of the twentieth century, before coverage of the sport was saturated by daily newspapers, radio, and television. A weekly newspaper, The Sporting News provided in-depth coverage of baseball that reflected its close connections to the game's inner circles and thoroughly informed its readers, helping to elevate baseball to its status as the national pastime. For many years, the tagline "The Base Ball Paper of the World" ran on the paper's front-page masthead.

" The Sporting News ' coverage of baseball issues, ranging from the reserve clause and the farm system to night baseball, radio, and the major leagues' color barrier, represents more than an incidental source of information about baseball," G. Edward White wrote in his book Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms...