Belleville native, sportswriter earns a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame
The 1964 World Series pitted the St. Louis Cardinals against the New York Yankees, and Redbirds second baseman Julian Javier was nursing a bruised hip. His innings and at-bats went to Dal Maxvill, a native of Granite City.
Another opportunity presented itself. Dick Kaegel, a young sportswriter for the Granite City Press-Record, suggested to his boss that the newspaper should cover the games and Maxvill in St. Louis.
A lifetime of baseball writing — which started at the Belleville News-Democrat and later continued at The Kansas City Star — started with that event. And now Kaegel’s career will be honored with the craft’s highest tribute, the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, following balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The award “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing” will be presented to the Belleville native during the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s induction weekend on July 23-26 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Winners of the award are permanently recognized in an exhibit in the Hall of Fame Library.
Other nominees for the award included longtime New York Yankees and New York Mets beat writer Marty Noble and Baseball America founder Allan Simpson.
“It’s an honor to be chosen for this award by my peers — fellow baseball writers that I worked with or, at times, competed against for stories,’’ he said in an email. “I just tried to do my job, work hard and respect others, including the ballplayers I covered.
“The fact that my hometown News-Democrat gave me my start at the tender age of 16 gave my career a great sendoff. It turned out to be a fun and I look forward to being part of Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown.’’
The Belleville Township High School graduate who began his career at the Belleville News-Democrat in 1956 and went on to become an associate editor at the Sporting News in St. Louis (1965-68), a writer and later the executive sports editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1968-79), editor-in-chief at the Sporting News (1979-85) and a sports columnist for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (1985-86).
Kaegel, 81, covered the Royals for The Star from 1988 to 2003, and for MLB.com from 2004-14. He retired after the Royals’ 2014 World Series appearance.
Fifty years earlier, Kaegel was covering Lou Brock, Bob Gibson and Maxvill.
“I went over there with a speed graphic camera (first produced in 1912) and a notebook,” Kaegel said. “I covered the games and got some great pictures.”
After Gibson’s complete-game victory in Game 7, Kaegel snapped a shot of Maxvill at his locker, standing between legend Stan Musial, who had retired a year earlier, and Red Schoendienst, who would soon be named the Cardinals’ new manager. The Press-Record had its lead image for the next day’s edition.
That coverage helped land Kaegel an associate editor’s job at The Sporting News.
When he arrived at The Star in 1988 to cover the Royals, Kaegel was asked why he wanted to return to a job as a traveling beat writer after holding editor and columnist roles.
“I said of all the things I’d done in my career, I loved covering baseball the most,” Kaegel said.
The daily interaction with players and managers made the job unique, but Kaegel said the circle was much wider than that.
“The bosses who allowed you to do this, the copy editors, the writers you work with, and some you worked against, and the people who work at the ballpark, running the elevator, serving food — it’s all been part of it, and I always appreciated them,” Kaegel said.
The appreciation was returned Tuesday as congratulations poured in from friends, colleagues, players he covered — like Salvador Perez and Mike Sweeney — and some he didn’t, such as current slugger Jorge Soler.
“In my wildest dreams,” Kaegel said, “I never expected something like this.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
