There's room for a range of quality within any publication, and I'm not saying everything the NYTimes produces has to be worthy of a Pulitzer; but this obituary seems a little flat to me. More than one sentence feels like it could've been extracted from the first draft of a middle schooler's book report. Like this, the second-to-last sentence in the piece:

Irving Franklin was particularly pleased about his batting gloves because the name of his company was so easy to see when television cameras closed in on a hitter.

I will say, to the writer's credit, that the last sentence is worth the slog it takes to get there.