Charles Dryden

Charles Dryden (March 10, 1860 – February 11, 1931) was an American baseball writer and humorist. He was reported to be the most famous and highly paid baseball writer in the United States during the 1900s. Known for injecting humor into his baseball writing, Dryden was credited with elevating baseball writing from the commonplace. In 1928, The Saturday Evening Post wrote: "The greatest of all the reporters, and the man to whom the game owes more, perhaps, than to any other individual, was Charles Dryden, the Mark Twain of baseball."

Early years

Dryden was born in March 1860 in Monmouth, Illinois. Dryden did not attend college and worked as a young man as a moulder in an iron foundry. At the time of the 1880 United States census, Dryden was living with his father in Monmouth, and his occupation was listed as a "moulder." Several accounts indicate that he wrote humorous sketches while working at the foundry and was urged to pursue a writing career by a friend who read his sketches.

Dryden later published an autobiographical account of his years on the road. The book, titled "On and Off the Bread Wagon: Being the Hard Luck Tales, Doings and Adventures of an Amateur Hobo" was published in 1905.

Baseball writer

San Francisco and Tacoma Dryden wrote his first baseball story in 1889. He had reportedly never seen a regular game of baseball before the assignment. Freedman was angered by the account and had Dryden banned from the hotel where the Giants were staying. The next day, Dryden ran an article noting that he had been informed of the ban while trying to put a tablespoon of soup in his mouth at the hotel restaurant. Freedman escalated the punishment by banning Dryden from the Polo Grounds. When Dryden continued to make Freedman the butt of his jokes, calling him "Andy" in a series of articles, Freedman announced publicly that "this here feller Dryden had better look out because he's standing on the brink of an abscess [sic] and the first thing he knows I'll push him in."

Unlike most sports writers of the day, who worked year-round and covered a full range of sporting events, Dryden limited himself to baseball and spent the winters living in a bungalow on the Gulf of Mexico in Mississippi. A profile of Dryden published in 1905 noted: “He goes down there at the season's close and loafs, with occasional spells of writing, going fishing for the greater part of every day.” He was the highest paid sports writer in the United States at the Chicago Daily Tribune. He remained in Chicago for several years and worked variously for the Chicago Examiner and the Chicago Herald-Examiner, as well as the Chicago Daily Tribune. Stanley Walker, the editor of the New York Herald Tribune wrote that Dryden "probably deserves to be called the father of modern sports writing." In 1928, The Saturday Evening Post wrote: "The greatest of all the reporters, and the man to whom the game owes more, perhaps, than to any other individual, was Charles Dryden, the Mark Twain of baseball."

At the time of Dryden's death, Associated Press writer Charles W. Dunkley called him "the man who originated nearly all the expressions used in writing baseball today." The Sporting News called him "a master of style and color" and noted that "he created a vogue that lifted baseball accounts out of the commonplace and gave the game a distinctive language all its own." Another colleague, Edgar Brands, wrote that baseball writing before Dryden was dull and prosaic and credited Dryden with having "lifted baseball out of the commonplace and made it almost a religion at whose shrine thousands worshiped."

He was also responsible for coining phrases that became a part of baseball's lexicon. According to The New York Times, he was the first person to refer to a baseball park as a "ball yard." He was also the first writer to refer to baseball scouts as "ivory hunters."

The 1904 Washington Senators were playing so poorly in the summer of 1904 that Dryden famously wrote, "Washington – first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League," a play on the famous line in Henry Lee III's eulogy for President George Washington as "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen".

When the Chicago White Sox won the 1906 World Series despite having a .230 team batting average (the lowest in the American League), Dryden dubbed the team "The Hitless Wonders."

After a controversy involving an attempt to bribe a scorekeeper to give Nap Lajoie the 1910 batting championship (see 1910 Chalmers Award), Dryden wrote that the incident led him to regard fishing as "the only honest sport" and noted that, even there, "the men who engage in that are liars."

Dryden was also known for engaging in a "battle of wits" with editors and proofreaders as he tried to weave double entendres into his work. In his autobiography, Fred Lieb recalled an instance involving a rookie pitcher named Gene Krapp. Dryden wrote a piece describing the pitcher's success in working his way out of a jam: "Krapp squeezed his way out of a tight hole when, with the bases loaded, he induced Rollie Zeider to line to Bill Wambsganss for an inning-ending double play."

He was also known to spice his game coverage with fanciful yarns. In August 1903, Dryden wrote that, during a game in Boston, Rube Waddell hit a towering foul ball that landed on the roof of an adjacent beanery and became jammed in a valve. According to Dryden's account, a steam cauldron exploded, showering the fans in the right field bleachers with 2,000 pounds of scalding beans. Dryden's account was so vivid that even Harry Davis, who played in the game, recalled the incident 50 years later as the "freakiest thing I ever saw happen at a ballpark."

Later years In June 1921, Dryden suffered a stroke at age 61 while visiting Chicago to receive treatment from an eye specialist. The stroke left one side of Dryden's body paralyzed, and he was unable to speak for the remainder of his life.

Dryden died in February 1931 at a hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi. According to one account, "he died a broken scrivener, who, for years, sat all day motionless in a chair, helpless, uncomprehending, with only the tick of a clock to remind him of the passing of time." His body was brought to Monmouth, Illinois for burial.

Posthumous honors In November 1965, Dryden became the fourth writer selected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America to receive the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for distinguished baseball writing. Recipients of the Spink Award are recognized at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in what is commonly referred to as the "writers wing" of the Hall of Fame.