{"id":5085,"date":"2015-03-11T05:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T10:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/?p=5085"},"modified":"2015-11-09T19:58:41","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T00:58:41","slug":"john-gruber-pittsburghs-pioneering-sports-editor-and-scorekeeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/thedigs\/2015\/03\/11\/john-gruber-pittsburghs-pioneering-sports-editor-and-scorekeeper\/","title":{"rendered":"John Gruber, Pittsburgh’s pioneering sports editor and scorekeeper"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"John <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"John <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Forbes <\/a>
Forbes Field’s press box, where John Gruber spent many of his later years. This photo, from 1939, is the earliest of the press box that exists in our archive. (We previously thought it was from the 1950s; it was republished in The Pittsburgh Press in 1957 for a Sunday magazine feature and improperly filed in the newspaper’s photo archive.) <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

It was an arrangement that wouldn’t fly today.<\/p>\n

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ official scorekeeper also working as a sports editor for the local paper?<\/p>\n

John Gruber served as both\u00a0at the turn of the 20th century. It was an era when the Pittsburgh baseball club and newspaper sports sections were in their infancy.<\/p>\n

“Uncle John,” as he was known to colleagues, friends and fans, came to\u00a0Pittsburgh by train from Baltimore in the mid-1800s. Baltimore was where he learned his printing craft, and in Pittsburgh he started with\u00a0the Beobachter, a German language newspaper.<\/p>\n

When it went defunct, he latched on with The Pittsburgh Times, and there he began to give Pittsburgh baseball fans a primitive way to follow professional leagues. When\u00a0pro ball started in the 1880s in Pittsburgh, sporting\u00a0news was barely a blip in the papers. He thought people might like to see some\u00a0baseball standings.<\/p>\n

But he didn’t like how they looked alone on the page, he later said. “So I says to myself, ‘I’ll write a few lines of introduction.'” [1. “Gruber, Pittsburgh’s First Sports Editor.” W.G. Lytle, Feb. 4, 1929, The Pittsburgh Press.]<\/p>\n

For a man who never played baseball beyond the school yards near his boyhood home in\u00a0New Albany, Ind., he sure loved the game.<\/p>\n

He started to make his mark beyond the printer’s shops at the Times and The Pittsburgh Post. The Pirates hired him as scorekeeper in 1893, their third season as Pirates<\/em> and not Alleghenys<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Gruber’s moonlighting as scorekeeper overlapped both his tenure as sports editor at The Pittsburgh Post (1890-1905) and at the Gazette (1905-1911).<\/p>\n

And it coincided with his entanglement in a\u00a0famous baseball card story. Honus Wagner’s T-206 card remains the most valuable ever made, selling for more than any amount Wagner made in a season \u2014 even when adjusted for inflation. Tim Wiles delved into the story for the Baseball Hall of Fame<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[American Tobacco Company] signed players up for inclusion in the set by hiring local sportswriters to get the players to sign contracts. Wagner returned his contract to sportswriter John Gruber, along with a check for $10, writing \u201cI don\u2019t want my picture in cigarettes, but I don\u2019t want you to lose $10, so I\u2019m enclosing check for that sum.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gruber made $10 in 1909, and owners of the cards went on to make\u00a0thousands.<\/p>\n

As he aged, he remained a fixture in Forbes Field’s press box and a beloved figure in Pittsburgh sports circles.<\/p>\n

“He has a sense of humor touched by the golden glow of sympathetic age,” W.G. Lytle wrote in 1929 for The Pittsburgh Press. “He is a conversationalist who can talk so entertainingly that one forgets the passage of the hours, which is remarkable in a period which has almost permitted the radio and kindred diversions to kill the art of conversation.”<\/p>\n

Yikes. What would they think of today’s styles\u00a0of conversation?<\/p>\n

John Gruber, Pittsburgh’s singular sports hybrid, died Dec. 17, 1932, at his home on 50 Fordham St. in West View. After his death, Sam Waters, vice president of the Pirates and one of Gruber’s friends, gave the go-ahead to hang this plaque in Gruber’s honor in the Forbes Field press box.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

If any readers of The Digs know where it is today, we’d love to see a photo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update, Oct. 27, 2015:\u00a0<\/strong>During a slow day last week at her home in Colorado, Mary Beth Kelley looked over at something hanging on a wall.<\/p>\n

Kelley, the great-granddaughter of John H. Gruber, has always had difficulty finding information about him online, even on sites like Ancestry.com. She decided to pop his name into a search engine\u00a0once more, and up came the above story.<\/p>\n

And that something hanging on her wall?<\/p>\n

\"20151025_114430\"<\/p>\n

Looks familiar.<\/p>\n

Mary Beth Kelley told\u00a0her mother, Patricia Kentzel Gotsch, about this story on The Digs, and they each reached out with a few memories. Among them:<\/p>\n