Charles Dryden

Who was Charles Dryden?

Charles Dryden was an American baseball writer and humorist. He was reported to be the most famous and highly paid baseball writer in the United States during the 1900s. Known for injecting humor into his baseball writing, Dryden was credited with elevating baseball writing from the commonplace. In 1928, The Saturday Evening Post wrote: "The greatest of all the reporters, and the man to whom the game owes more, perhaps, than to any other individual, was Charles Dryden, the Mark Twain of baseball."

Dryden originated many of the expressions used in baseball writing, including the terms "pinch hit," "ball yard," and "old horsehide." He also coined the nicknames "The Hitless Wonders" for the 1906 Chicago White Sox, Fred "Bonehead" Merkle, Frank "The Peerless Leader" Chance, and Charles "The Old Roman" Comiskey. In describing the last-place 1909 Washington Senators, he famously wrote: "Washington – first in war, first in peace and last in the American League." When Ed Walsh won 40 games in 1908, Dryden memorably described him as "the only man I've ever known who could strut sitting down."

In 1965, Dryden was posthumously inducted into the "writers' wing" of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the fourth person to receive the honor. His biography at the Baseball Hall of Fame notes that he was "often regarded as the master baseball writer of his time."