Jack Lang, a Hall of Fame baseball writer who for two decades had the pleasant assignment of telling players they’d been elected to Cooperstown, died Thursday. He was 85.

Lang worked in the news business for more than a half-century and honored the reporter’s credo into his final days. This month, before entering the hospital and sensing he did not have long to live, he called a colleague to be sure all the biographical information for his obituary was correct.

A fixture on the New York scene, Lang was honored by the Hall in 1986 with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”

Many elite players knew Lang for another reason.

“As Billy Williams said, ‘You’re the good-news man,'” Lang said in his speech.

As secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America from 1966-88, Lang was in charge of counting the Hall of Fame votes and held the job of telling players when they’d been elected.

He called 44 in all, from Red Ruffing to Steve Carlton.

Lang often said his rule was simple: “Only call the winners.”

Lang began his baseball career with the Long Island Daily Press in 1946, covering the Dodgers a year before Robinson broke the major league color barrier.

When the Dodgers left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season, Lang switched to covering the Yankees, and he moved over to the Mets starting with their expansion season in 1962.

The Press closed while Lang was at spring training in 1977. Within four hours, the Daily News hired him to cover the Mets.

Lang retired from the News at the end of 1989, then wrote a column for SportsTicker until 1997. He was a correspondent for Sporting News for more than 20 years.

Lang was the author, with Whitey Ford, of “The Fighting Southpaw.”