Some Notes on the New Social History

Some time ago I picked up a magazine that contained an article by Red Smith, a man whose work I try not to miss. The article was about the job of sports writer for a metropolitan newspaper and it opened with an account of an overnight journey from New York to a World's Series game in St. Louis. This was an eon or so ago, when Smith was a young man and I was a boy, and people travelled in sensible conveyances, such as railroad trains. The trip was a merry one, the activities including, among other things, much pleasurable and instructive chat. Smith didn't report the latter in any detail. But the point was that it was pleasurable and instructive and it lasted the whole night. Smith went on to say that sports writers are not paid much, in money, but that if you threw in the psychic income of pleasant afternoons in the sun and nights spent in the company of affable and intelligent eccentrics, they did pretty well.