For 20 years sports editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Spink was the first baseball writer and booster of the game in the West. A reporter for the Cincinnati Gazette in the 1860s, he may have been the first to call the local team the Reds in 1869 ; he was known to have tagged the St. Louis club the Browns and the Chicago club the White Stockings. He was the first official scorer for the St. Louis NL club, and later he dubbed their grounds Sportsman’s Park.
