By TEDDY ALLEN/ Designated Writers

It is gone now, a newsprint DoDo Bird, another casualty of time and technology.

But it was alive once. And it made a big difference for me.

The Sporting News is now Sporting News, an all digital publication that covers all major sports. And good for them.

But back in the day, in the 1960s of my youth, it was “The Bible of Baseball,” a welcomed weekly visitor to the mailbox on Rt. 1, Lake View, South Carolina.

Established in the 1880s in St. Louis, The Sporting News was maybe 80 pages thick when I met it. I just knew I read it cover to cover.

It was tabloid-sized and whatever you needed to know, the “deep background,” was in it. This is hard for youngsters to believe but the Baltimore Orioles, my team — this was pre-Atlanta Braves so the Orioles were geographically my closest team — were the winningest team in baseball at the time. From 1960-1990, no franchise won more games than the O’s.

You could look it up.

The Sporting News kept you up to date on every team. The Orioles’ notes were titled “BIRD DROPPINGS,” I believe, and they were presented to you like that, in boldface. All the big league teams had clever notes lede-ins.

It was a glorious time. Information was precious, and this publication gave you what you needed. I was a cover-to-cover man, as was most of my generation.

No telling what I would give for one more day of my 8-year-old legs almost touching the floor, sitting at my old kitchen table and grinding The Sporting News while my momma cooked supper.

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