@ Joseph M:
I was a TSN guy too back in the day. 1970′s, 1980′s and a good part of the 1990′s – until Baseball America and USA Today Baseball Weekly phased them out for me.

Baseball Digest? Hell yeah! Well back in high school I wanted to move to Evanston, Illinois and take over George Vass’s job when he retired. That didn’t happen for me, obviously. But hey, the BD turned down an articled by Bill James in the 70′s (that turned out to be eerily prophetic, btw), so who am I?

Oh, and I still have a subscription today. (Haven’t flunked a “quick quiz” yet )

I use to read Baseball Digest although I never subscribed to it. The thing I found fascinating about the cover was the bar code. I didn’t think bar coding went back that far.

I remember subscribing to the Sporting News in the mid 70′s, now that was a deal. A full year subscription was $17.50 in 1974. $17.50! But that’s not all, you’d get a free book, in 74 I remember getting the Baseball Register, a 5 dollar value. In an era before stats this book was loaded with them. One year I got $8 dollars worth of books (Baseball, Book of Records, Knotty Problems Of Baseball, and the Baseball Annual). In those days the Sporting News was still the “baseball bible” so the paper alone was worth more than the subscription price let alone all the extras.

Great memories.

Big thanks, Steve. Before the days of fantasy baseball, MLB Network, the internet, and yes, blogs, if you wanted to be an informed and knowledgable baseball fan, The Sporting News, Baseball Digest & Strat-O-Matic were musts.

If you like that check out Baseball Digest’s website at http://www.baseballdigest.com. It is run by Gotham Sports Media the people that run Gotham Baseball Magazine.