In the pre-1900's days of professional baseball teams did not travel all that far to play games which often were played on Sunday afternoon. By 1901 with the birth of the American League, teams traveled by train and even by boat. No other sport to this day has scheduled road trips like baseball. With a 162 game schedule, players still leave home and go on the road for as long as 2 weeks. Sportswriters no longer get to travel on the team plane as they once did on the trains that would carry teams from city to city until air travel for MLB teams became the standard in the last 1950's.
The writers and players had a very different relationship during the days of train travel and some of the most quotable characters were baseball players providing juicy nuggets for famous and aspiring sportswriters.
Yogi Berra, Dizzy Dean, and Ralph Kiner are just a few of the most quotable players from the first half of the 20th century. Today of course it's all about social media posts.
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