Series Introduction: A TNOCS Review

As the calendar turned its back on the 19th century and entered the 20th:

Baseball leaders realized the origins of its sport and the memories of its pioneers were being lost to the mists of time.

A committee founded by A.G. Spalding began researching Baseball’s Origin Story (arriving at an imaginary tale about one Abner Doubleday,)

But Stephen C. Clark was inspired by the effort to preserve baseball’s history. He created the idea for a Baseball Hall Of Fame, and established its headquarters in Cooperstown, New York, home of that folklore. 

Sixty years after the first “major” league had played its season, the first class to Baseball’s HOF was elected.

Three years later the building in Cooperstown opened its doors, and the history of baseball on display for future generations.

On January 16th 2017, music critic Tom Breihan began writing his Number Ones column at the Stereogum website.

His style and subject attracted hundreds (if not thousands?) of people to read about Number One hits of yesteryear, and many commented on each entry.

The commenting system left a bit to be desired, so once Stereogum became a Scott Lapatine Production™ again in November of 2020, changes were made to the WordPress which… wasn’t better.  Efforts to search previous comments and interact with the TNOCS community in general became more difficult.

Since then, I’ve had moments when I recall something someone had written below a previous entry, and there is no way to search for it…until now.

I’m going to try to go back through ALL the entries, beginning with good ole Ricky Nelson in 1958 and track the following by year:

• When some of our favorite commenters arrived
• When some long-lost friends stopped commenting.
• When various series began (such as Crilley’s Comments), and ended, if they have.
• Comments that drew a lot of attention in the moment.

There may be a few years where there are simply too many #1s to document in a single entry (oh, hi 1974! Nice to see you again!), so I’ll break that year into a couple articles.

I hope you’ll join me in our little Cooperstown.

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