To the editor:

My first attendance at a Major League Baseball game, August 1971, with parents and brothers featuring the great Harmon Killebrew, got me hooked on baseball. After all of the games I have attended, I have cut out the box score from the city I was visiting or The Messenger when I arrived home and put it in a scrapbook.

Recently, I attended my No. 188 MLB game in Minnesota, and since the game was not completed until after 10:30 p.m., I was afraid the local paper, if I could even find one, would not have the completed box score. I stopped at four stores before obtaining a paper and sure enough there was no box score, just a “game in progress” note.

I arrived back in Fort Dodge a week later and the carrier had left a bundle of papers. I nervously went to the date, and there was not only a complete box score, but a game summary as well. Thanks Fort Dodge Messenger sports department for continuing to print box scores in your paper. I’m amazed that my local paper continuously out-performs USA Today and the Des Moines Register not only in MLB action, but NFL game summaries and stat lines, basically the entire sports section.

We all know the plight of the newspaper is dwindling. For example, last year while in Tampa Bay, I discovered that the city’s newspaper is only printed on Wednesdays and Sundays.

So huge kudos to the entire Messenger team, for daily news around world, country, state and local — plus who doesn’t get a smile when reading the comics page.

Bruce Pedersen

Fort Dodge