William ecenbarger biography

I had the good fortune to grow up on Long Island, not far from New York, at a time when there were seven city daily newspapers plus two Long Island dailies. My father was a commuter and reader, and there was a continuous flow of newspapers into my home. The habit of newspaper reading, which began as a cobweb, is now a cable, and I still read five or six newspapers every day. I was a regular visitor to Ebbetts Field and Yankee Stadium, but my boyhood heroes were in the press box rather than on the field. It seemed to me that there could be no better life than to get paid for writing about baseball. I would go to games and then at home write stories about them, comparing my efforts with those of Dick Young, Joe Trimble, Dan Daniels, Red Smith, and other sportswriters. My first newspaper job was at sixteen for the Suffolk Journal, a weekly in my hometown that succumbed to circulation problems the following year. My title was "assistant editor" and my duties were driving galleys to the printer, getting coffee for the entire staff, which consisted of the editor and a photog

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