Jacob Morse was the first noted Jewish sportswriter. He was also the founder of Baseball Magazine and the author of Sphere and Ash: A History of Baseball. Born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1860, his family moved to Boston shortly after in 1866. A baseball fan from childhood, Morse began writing about college baseball while at Harvard. Although he earned a law degree, he accepted a position at the Boston Herald shortly after. Morse also contributed to other Boston papers, such as the Globe, Post, Advertiser, and Courier.
Morse did more than cover baseball games. He is credited as having invented the modern style of scorecards, although he never benefited from it financially. He also developed a type of scoring shorthand that baseball writers use to this day. Morse left the Herald in 1907 and founded baseball’s first magazine, aptly named Baseball Magazine. Al Spink, co-founder of The Sporting News, wrote that “Mr. Morse’s name is known wherever the big game is read or spoken.”