His father had been a deputy sheriff, and his brother John also had a career in law enforcement, rising to the position of Winsted's police superintendent.

[1] After attending high school at St. Thomas Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut,[2] Bill Slocum decided on a career in journalism, and gravitated toward sports.

[4] Slocum spent more than twenty-five years covering baseball for New York newspapers that included the Times, Tribune, Sun, [5] and American.

[8] In fact, during the 1920s, some of his columns were syndicated, and his reports on the Yankees, as well as on major league baseball's pennant races, were read in numerous cities.

[9] In 1921, he was named to the board of directors of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, a position to which he was re-elected several times.

Slocum, who was reporting for the New York American at that time, had taken the Yankees to task for what he saw as secretive business practices, especially a lack of transparency on the reasons why certain trades were made.

In April 1938, Slocum left sports writing to take a job as a 'contact man' with General Mills, helping with publicity, and arranging the broadcasts of baseball games that the company sponsored.

"[23] Slocum's funeral was attended by dignitaries (including Ford Frick, then-president of baseball's National League), radio executives, and fellow journalists.