John was born on November 6, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, the son of Charles Claude Spink and Marie Taylor. Two years before his son's birth, Charles Spink had abandoned a homesteading venture to assist his brother Alfred in founding Sporting News, a St. Louis-based weekly journal of sporting and theatrical news.
Taylor Spink spent his early years training to succeed his father as publisher. Since both parents worked on Sporting News, his interest was encouraged, and he was permitted to leave high school in the tenth grade to further his apprenticeship.
Spink served stints as office boy, copy boy, writer, and assistant editor. Spink attained a responsible position with Sporting News in 1912, at a time when circulation had fallen to 12, 000 a week. Blaming his father's ill-advised support of the interloping Federal League for alienating major league officials, he tried to contravene that policy.
When weekly circulation dropped to 5, 000, American League president Johnson, a family friend, rewarded Spink's loyalty by buying 150, 000 copies each week for distribution to servicemen. After the war, baseball and Sporting News prospered. By working seven days a week, Spink made it indispensable, the "Bible of Baseball, " the best source for statistics, box scores, records, and coverage of all levels of professional play. To gather detailed information, Spink deployed an army of correspondents and stringers in every baseball town, tirelessly directing their activities by persistent phone calls and telegrams. As a result, by 1942 Sporting News, with its sixteen pages of small type and its colorful headlines, boasted a weekly circulation of 100, 000 copies.
By then Spink was wealthy, but most of his earnings came from ancillary publications such as Sporting Goods Dealer, yearbooks of baseball facts and statistics, and books and pamphlets on various aspects of the game. Among these The Baseball Register, first published in 1940, annually sold more than 500, 000 copies. Nevertheless, the heart of Spink's publishing empire was Sporting News, which thrived under his fussy leadership. He himself wrote sparingly, delegating even his bylined columns to others. (This was true also of his biography of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. )
His strengths were providing imaginative story leads for others to pursue and his martinet style of editorial direction. Unlike his father, Spink supported baseball's status quo, preferring to inform, enlighten, and amuse readers rather than undertake crusades.
He died in 1962.
John George Taylor Spink acquired The Sporting News from his brother and became its head. During his tenure, the company published its first Baseball Register, that became extremely popular. The paper even was called "the Bible of baseball". Following his death, the Baseball Writers' Association of America inaugurated the J. G. Taylor Spink Award in his honor, awarded annually at the induction ceremonies of the Baseball Hall of Fame; Spink was the first recipient. In 1969, Spink was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame.
He married Blanche Keene on April 15, 1914. The Spinks had two children.
