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Carrier pigeons?
In this day and age of instant communications around a soccer match, imagine a time when the only updates came to newspapers via carrier pigeon. The Guardian's Paul Brown writes a fun article today that looks back at a book from 70 years ago: How to Become a Sporting Journalist. Written by BJ (Bill) Evans in 1946, the book is a memoir of sorts about some of the earliest sports, and in particular soccer, were covered in England.
When Evans was starting out as a young apprentice in the early 1900s, he would bicycle to games with a basket filled with two pigeons. He would write out by hand an update and then at half and at full time, attach the report to a carrier pigeon who would then fly back to the local newspaper.
Eventually phones were installed at area grounds.
The Portland Timbers themselves are celebrating their own #Timbers540 anniversary--five years in MLS, 40 since the club's founding--but carrier pigeons bring a whole other element to how a game could be covered by an aspiring sports journalist from many years ago.
Note: The image above, also from The Guardian, is of a young boy being crowd-surfed down to the front row to take in a West Ham match. Again: Olden times.
