To mark the sad end of Grantland (named in honour of the great American typewriter-belting sports writer Grantland Rice), here's a look at 91 US sports writers and their typewriters from over the years. Grantland, the sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN, was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons (above), who remained as editor-in-chief until May this year. ESPN announced on Friday it was suspending the publication of Grantland.
This, seemingly, is how the modern-day sports writer desports her/himself. (It's Mexican Ines Sainz taking a break from the hard slog of sports reporting in 2010.) The image below is a lot more like I remember it, squashed up on unsteady benches, uncomfortable seats, sometimes no seats at all.
Or sometimes this, perhaps
Looking through these images, can you pick which brands were the indoor (offices, homes) and outdoor (ball park press boxes, press rooms) favourites of the sports writers? Indoors, I'd say it's a toss-up between Royal and Underwood, while outdoors, Remington on top, but the Hermes Baby seems to have done quite well. My favourite image is the one of Harry Grayson, followed by Stan Isaacs.
Al Stump
Al Thomy
Arthur Daley
Babe Young
Barney Kilgore
Barney Kremenko, centre
Bill Corum (with Joe Louis and an Underwood 5, right)
Bill Cunningham
Bill Heinz
Bill Nicholls
Bill Saroyan
Bob Considine
Bud Shaver
Charles Beane
Charles Doyle
Dick Young
Westbrook Pegler (another of my favourites)