A baseball life comes full circle. (My Turn).

This is where I came in.

In August 1934, I wrote my first piece for the SPORTING NEWS. Now, almost 69 years later, I'm at it again.

I didn't really deserve that job in 1934. I was 16 years old, still in high school. I had never written anything in my life. With the confidence and exuberance of youth, I mailed a letter to the SPORTING NEWS suggesting I should be the Atlanta correspondent. To seem more mature, I signed my name W. Earnest Harwell, instead of Ernie.

In a letter dated August 7, 1934, Editor E.G. Brands wrote back: "For some time we have had no correspondent in Atlanta. If you care to take a crack at it, we would be glad to have you submit a few stories to give us an idea of your ability. Then we could make arrangements for you to act as our representative in Atlanta. If this is satisfactory, will you shoot the stuff along?"

After laboring over my older brother's typewriter, I did "shoot the stuff along." On August 16, my first dispatch about the Atlanta Crackers was published in the SPORTING NEWS.

When my articles began to appear, Crackers President Earl Mann kept asking everybody who this guy Harwell was. Because I was too timid to mingle with the players, press or dub officials, I read the papers for my Cracker news and then re-wrote it. Mann finally discovered I was only a high school kid when I interviewed him for my first fun-length feature. That interview led to a lifelong friendship.

Until I left Atlanta in 1948 to join the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast team, I continued to cover the Crackers for the SPORTING NEWS. Even while I was overseas with the Marines' Leatherneck magazine in World War II, I kept contributing. TSN publisher J.G. Taylor Spink had always been a great supporter of mine, and during the war, he would phone my wife, Lulu, often to ask how I was doing. I was discharged in January 1946, and Taylor hired me to visit war veterans in the hospitals, show them movies and distribute Chesterfield cigarettes.