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A slide of Henry Aaron’s baseball card from the 1954 Johnston Cookies reprint set. The card features a color portrait of Aaron smiling and a sepia background. He is wearing a Milwaukee Braves uniform. Below this image is the name Henry Aaron, the Milwaukee Braves logo, and a facsimile signature reading Henry L. Aaron. Note […]

A slide of Henry Aaron’s baseball card from the 1954 Johnston Cookies reprint set. The card features a color portrait of Aaron smiling and a sepia background. He is wearing a Milwaukee Braves uniform. Below this image is the name Henry Aaron, the Milwaukee Braves logo, and a facsimile signature reading Henry L. Aaron. Note […]

A quarter century has passed since Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball. His appearance in a Brooklyn Dodger lineup in 1947 and the outstanding performance which he gave also opened, the door wider for players from Latin America, who previously had never appeared in significant numbers. The Society for American Baseball […]

Most modern-day fans see a close connection between large numbers of home runs and equally impressive runs-batted-in figures in a given season. There are certainly sound reasons for this perception, based both in the ancient rules (a four-base hit scores all runners ahead of the batter) and six decades’ evidence parading Ruth, Gehrig, and their […]

“Although he never hit more than 47 home runs in a season…” was a common refrain in the eulogies that marked Henry Aaron’s passing on January 22, 2021. Intended as a nod to Aaron’s workmanlike virtue, the suggestion that his peak fell short of the more spectacular feats of other sluggers set up the inevitable […]

The intentional base on balls was a part of professional baseball long before it became a part of baseball’s official statistics. The Sporting News’s Baseball Record Book lists Napoleon Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League as the first player to receive an intentional walk with the bases full, in the ninth inning […]

This interview by Ron Anderson was originally published in SABR’s “Can He Play? A Look at Baseball Scouts and Their Profession” (2011), edited by Jim Sandoval and Bill Nowlin. Interviews were conducted on October 12, 2006 and March 3, 2007. RA: When we talked before you had mentioned that when you first discovered Hank Aaron […]

Wow! Look at all those bright colors. The baseball field at the Astrodome suddenly resembled a Tequila Sunrise. Yellow, red, and orange floated over jade green Astroturf as the players took their positions. Perplexed fanatics couldn’t take their eyes off the gaudy new 1975 uniforms on the backs of their Houston Astros. Thankfully, the back […]

It’s hard to believe but the ML official averages show that 40-year old Willie Mays had the beat base stealing percentage in 1971. He was thrown out only 3 times in 26 tries. This marks the fifth tine that Mays has led his league in this department since the ML started “caught stealing” records on […]

Asked what it was like to face Sandy Koufax, Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks said, “It was frightenin’.” (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Sandy Koufax faced 512 different batters during his Hall of Fame career, from Dick Groat (145 plate appearances, or PA), to Vinegar Bend Mizell (one PA, along with 63 other batters). Along the […]

At the SABR National Convention in Milwaukee in July 1983, one of the baseball research questions was: Who was the only major league player to hit a home run before his 20th birthday and after his 40th birthday? It would have to be someone with a long career. Was it Rogers Hornsby? (No.) Al Kaline? […]

In addition to an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team, the Magnolia Chapter selected an All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star team. While acknowledging the talent of any number of players who served the Braves franchise during its time in Milwaukee and Boston, we wanted to restrict this team to players who actually played in Atlanta. We suggested that […]

Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison wound up as the game’s hero, hitting a dramatic walk-off three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to give the NL a 7-4 victory.Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison […]

In 2001, economist George Akerlof won a Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on the theory of the “market for lem­ons.” The idea is this: suppose in the population of otherwise identical used Chevrolets, some will be defective “lemons,” while some will be very reliable “cherries.” The owner of the car knows, from his […]

When the lively ball era was launched in 1920 there were few players who displayed the combined ability of speed and power. If a player were to accumulate a lot of extra bases it would be with his bat and not his feet. Thus it was automatic that when we thought of extra bases it […]

Baseball aficionados often argue that certain records will never be broken. A classic example is Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive-games-played streak. However, for the most part, the arguments given to support an assertion that a particular record will never be broken are subjective and not analytically rigorous. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine […]

In the early 1960s, each of the recent expansion cities played host to the MLB All-Star Game, New York in 1964, Anaheim in 1967, Houston in 1968, and Washington DC in 1969. The 1968 baseball season took place against a backdrop of racial violence. The late 1960s trembled with social and political turbulence, with the […]

One measure of player endurance is consecutive games played. Another measure, which could be considered a superior one, is highest percent of scheduled games played in ten consecutive years. Only five of the highest rated players in the percent calculation compiled long consecutive game streaks. Lou Gehrig is unquestionably the highest ranking player using either […]

Introduction and History I have taught or co-taught sabermetrics in the mathematics department at the United States Military Academy several times. We covered all the metrics but what always interested me most was the direction student projects took to solve or analyze various issues in baseball. In one of these courses, for example, the group […]

Now that Henry Aaron has closed out his illustrious career and there is no home run hitter of note around to challenge his record, it is a good time to sum up his contributions in the context of an over-all home run review. As practically every baseball fan knows, Aaron closed out with 755 roundtrippers. […]

Power-Plus and Thunder and Lightning are just two of the names given to a select group of players who are capable of generating offense via the home run or the stolen base. A great emphasis has been placed on this dual prowess in recent years. For a single season there is the 30 home run […]

The yardstick for enshrinement in Cooperstown is generally determined by a player’s ability to dominate a decade. Dale Murphy more than met that standard. Crippled by recurring knee problems that required mid-career surgery, Murphy retired with 398 home runs—one fewer than first-ballot inductee Al Kaline and 16 more than 2009 inductee Jim Rice. When he […]

Lou Gehrig, born 101 seasons ago, would never have made the claim, but let’s credit him with the best 10-season batting record in major league history if you don’t mind. It happened from 1927 through 1936 when baseball offense had a heyday. In a compilation of the finest 10-season performers from 1901 through 2003, Gehrig places in seven of […]

“They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays.” – Ted Williams1   Willie Mays played in a record 24 All-Star games. Here, he talks with, left to right, Charlie Neal, Henry Aaron, Ted Williams, and Stan Musial before the second game of 1959. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   It starts with the numbers, […]