There is no more invigorating place for an old sportswriter than the press box in a big-league ballpark.

You are there to cover a game played with pace and style, and with enough moments of minimal background noise to engage in conversation with colleagues.

It is a place where all generations of reporters come together to share yarns and laughs, and to aim insults at one another and at bumbling athletes.

There is no need to be serious -- as so many in this business seem to be when in an NFL press box -- since what you're covering here is one of 162.

There's always tomorrow in baseball, so let's yuk it up, hope for a 2 1/2-hour game, grab a couple of quotes and get those last 20 inches of copy sent to the editors posthaste.

I felt a bit of melancholy last week when the Twins were in this version of Yankee Stadium for the final time and I was stuck back here in Minnesota.

This regret was particularly strong on Wednesday when Twins second baseman Alexi Casilla neglected to take proper note of the outs, leading to two Yankees runs that broke up a scoreless game.

To not have been there as the Twins were besmirched from all corners of that historic press box for a final time ... I'm sure the nostalgia of the occasion would've caused tears to well.

There was no better evidence that stepping into a big-league press box can turn a reporter into what he used to be -- enthusiastic, irreverent, quick on the keyboard -- than Jerome Holtzman, the great Chicago baseball man and hunt-and-peck writer who died last weekend at 82.

He was called universally "The Dean" in baseball circles, and it wasn't until reading the obits that I discovered the nickname was given to him by Billy Williams, the Chicago Cubs' Hall of Fame outfielder.

The nickname was in place by the time I started covering the Twins and first met Holtzman in 1974. That was also the year that Jerome's book, "No Cheering in the Press Box," was published in hardcover.

This was more than a summation of the interviews with 18 great sportswriters who were mostly from the generation preceding Holtzman. This was a primer on how to do this job.

Take the opening of the first chapter -- Jerome's interview with Dan Daniel, a New York baseball writer for six decades:

"I was one of the fastest writers who ever covered baseball. If it didn't go fast, it was no good. I quit. It had to be fast ... There were times when I got tired of writing, but I enjoyed the fun of baseball and everything about it, until that damn night ball came in. That ruined the whole business."

Some of what Daniel had to say obviously was not applicable to a sportswriter of the '70s. But the "fast and fun" part -- that was and remains today the essence of baseball writing.

Holtzman's game stories on the Cubs or the White Sox didn't exactly cause goose bumps on a reader's arms. He embraced clichés as the next generation tried mightily to avoid them.

Dave van Dyck, a colleague and competitor with Holtzman in Chicago, wrote in his obit about The Dean: "... When editors would complain they were clichés, he replied, 'Yeah, but they are my clichés.'"

He was a magnificent reporter. When baseball's labor strife started in the '70s, Holtzman was wired in with Marvin Miller, the head of the players association, as was no other reporter in the country.

More than anything, The Dean was Example A that being in a baseball press box could make anyone young for a few hours. He would shuffle in with cigar ashes clinging to his white shirt and suspenders, with a loose tie and a loose suit, and below those bushy eyebrows would appear a mischievous twinkle.

The Dean could agitate with the best of them. And he also did this: He hummed as he hacked away on his ancient Teleram computer.

After he had been covering baseball for four decades, he was close to 70 and The Dean still hummed as he worked. That tells you all that's needed to know about life in a big-league press box.

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. preusse@startribune.com