Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jerome Holtzman dies

Chicago Tribune ^ | 07/21/08 | Paul Sullivan

[Borges]

Former Tribune baseball writer Jerome Holtzman, who rose from copy boy to Hall of Famer in an illustrious career as a Chicago sportswriter, passed away this weekend after a long illness. He was 82.

Holtzman, a baseball beat writer and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times before moving to the Tribune in 1981, was the author of six books, including "No Cheering in the Press Box," a best-selling oral history of the game as told by 24 old-school sportswriters.

Known as "the Dean" in baseball press boxes, Holtzman chronicled the seasons of the White Sox and Cubs for more than 40 years at Chicago newspapers, beginning in 1957 at the Sun-Times. He was also responsible for the institution of the "save" rule to acknowledge effective relief pitching in 1966, the first major statistic recognized by Major League Baseball since the RBI was added in 1920.

Holtzman was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989, and became baseball's first official historian under Commissioner Bud Selig after retiring from the Tribune in 1999.