Hugh Fullerton
Hugh Fullerton was a prominent American sportswriter born on September 10, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio. He began his journalism career as a baseball reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer while still in high school and later worked for major Chicago newspapers, including the Chicago Record and the Chicago Tribune. Fullerton was known for his in-depth knowledge of baseball and was among the first writers to analyze game statistics, significantly influencing the field of sports journalism. His career highlights include accurately predicting the Chicago White Sox's victory over the Chicago Cubs in the 1906 World Series and uncovering the 1919 World Series scandal involving the White Sox, which was initially ignored by local media.
In the 1920s, he transitioned to New York, serving as the sports editor for the New York Mail and later editing Liberty magazine. Fullerton authored several books, including collaborations with athletes and novels centered on baseball themes. He returned to Ohio in 1928 but continued contributing to national publications. Fullerton passed away on December 27, 1945, in Dunedin, Florida. His impact on sportswriting was recognized posthumously in 1964 when he received the J. G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Writers' Association of America, honoring his significant contributions to the profession and to the sport.
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Hugh Fullerton
Writer
- Born: September 10, 1873
- Birthplace: Hillsboro, Ohio
- Died: December 27, 1945
- Place of death: Dunedin, Florida
Biography
Hugh Fullerton was born on September 10, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio. He was a baseball reporter for the nearby Cincinnati Enquirer while still in high school. He spent one year at Ohio State University, where he played baseball, but left college in 1892 and returned to the Enquirer. In 1893, he moved to Chicago to work on the Chicago Record, leaving the following year to become a sports reporter at the Chicago Tribune. In 1900, he married Edith Zollars and they had two children, Dorothy and Hugh Stuart, Jr.
At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Chicago newspapermen, including Finley Peter Dunne and Ring Lardner, gave birth to modern sports journalism. Fullerton was one of the best sportswriters in Chicago. His knowledge of baseball enabled him to get inside the sport and its participants. He also was one of the first baseball writers to study game statistics.
There were two high points in his career. The first was in 1906, when he predicted that the underdog Chicago White Sox would defeat the favored Chicago Cubs in the World Series, based on his statistical analysis of the two teams; his prediction proved accurate and gave him a national reputation. More than a dozen years later, Fullerton uncovered how some members of the White Sox had thrown the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. The Chicago newspapers refused to run this story, but it appeared in the New York Evening World in 1919. Fullerton was vindicated the following year, when several players confessed to fixing the game.
In the early 1920’s, Fullerton moved to New York, where he was sports editor for the New York Mail and later became an editor of Liberty magazine. Fullerton also wrote several books. In 1910, he collaborated with baseball player John J. Evers on Evers’s book, Touching Second. In 1915, Fullerton published a trilogy of novels centering on an adolescent baseball player named Jimmy Kirkland. Tales of the Turf, a collection of horse racing fiction, appeared in 1922, followed seven years later by a biography of boxer Jim Jeffries, Two-Fisted Jeff.
Fullerton returned to Ohio in 1928 to write for the Columbus Dispatch, but he also continued to produce features for national journals, including the Saturday Evening Post and Sporting News. He died in Dunedin, Florida, on December 27, 1945.
Fullerton was one of the sportswriters who helped call attention to America’s games, while at the same time turning writing about them into an art. In 1964, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America gave Fullerton the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for his contribution to the sport and to the sportswriting profession.