Editors note: Rick Hummel is retiring from the Post-Dispatch this week after serving as a sportswriter for 51 years, most of it on the baseball beat. However, plans call for him to still contribute stories occasionally. The following is a profile on his career written by Dan Caesar that appeared in the paper in July 2021, when Hummel was celebrating his 50th anniversary at the P-D:
Rick Hummel never aspired as a kid growing up in Quincy, Illinois, to be a baseball writer. He wasn’t even pursuing that career after graduating from the University of Missouri’s esteemed journalism school.