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This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   A native Louisvillian, Louis “Pete” Browning was born June 17, 1861, in the first summer of America’s Civil War. One of eight children (four sons and four daughters) born to Samuel and Mary Jane Sheppard Browning, Pete grew […]

“In the ’80s we had a terrible cocaine problem. Did we have a policy? Did anything happen? No. We have a (steroid) policy.” — Commissioner Bud Selig, July 13, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle Lonnie Smith had batted leadoff in hundreds of major league games, but on September 5, 1985, he was at the top of […]

Hilda Chester and her famous cowbell (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The New York Yankees have their Bleacher Creatures. The crosstown Mets had Karl “Sign Man of Shea” Ehrhardt, while “Megaphone Lolly” Hopkins was the super-fan of the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles rooters […]

Referral to the glossary of statistical terms in the first edition (1989) of Total Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer allows one to easily find not only the meaning and utility of numerous baseball statistics but also the persons credited with inventing them.1 For example: Assist average. Assists divided by games played. Stat created […]

Cover of the January 1929 issue of Yakyukai showing Ty Cobb with Keio players Takayoshi Okada and Saburo Miyatake (Coutesy of Robert Klevens, Prestige Collectibles)   On an off-day on the road in Cleveland, Tyrus Raymond Cobb, hailed for much of his career as the greatest player the game had ever known, announced his impending […]

From left to right: George Foster, Sadaharu Oh, Pete Rose, Isao Harimoto, and Johnny Bench. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York)   Pete Rose basked in the attention he was receiving from the Japanese press on Opening Day, April 6, 1978. His Cincinnati Reds were facing the visiting Houston Astros in a […]

L to R top row: Ken Medlock, Bobby Darwin, Mike Sgobba, Phil Pote. Middle row: George Genovese, Dick Wiencek, Joe Stephenson, Roger Jongewaard. Bottom row: Dick Cole, Angel Figueroa, Edward James Olmos, Jesse Flores. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library).   The heroes of baseball movies usually are brawny power hitters who bash ninth inning […]

If Bob Sheppard, longtime public address announcer for the New York Yankees, was class personified, Tex Rickards, who held a similar slot with Dem Bums, reflected the spirit of the “woiking” class Brooklynite.1 And while Robert Merrill, the classy Metropolitan Opera baritone, often sang “The Star Spangled Banner” at Yankee Stadium, at Ebbets Field the […]

“Kill him! Kill the umpire!’ shouted someone on the stand; And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.”   Even people not interested in the national pastime are familiar with that homicidal exhortation from Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem, “Casey at the Bat.” While murderous rhetoric has never become a reality, […]

If a baseball fan scanned the list of National League batting leaders in the New York Times on September 15, 1940, they would note a tight race among the top five hitters. Three points separated them with just two weeks left in the season1: Cooney, Boston, .319 Mize, St. Louis, .318 Hack, Chicago, .317 Gleeson, […]

According to the official averages reported in the November 28, 1912, issue of The Sporting News, Heinie Zimmerman won the 1912 National League batting championship with a .372 average and the home run title with 14.1 Five weeks later, The Sporting News reported that—according to the research of baseball writer Ernie Lanigan—Zimmerman also had the […]

A third of a century has passed since the Dodgers commemorated their centennial – 100 years since joining the National League in 1890, the year they consider their founding. The anniversary was highlighted by a midsummer Old-Timers Weekend held at Dodger Stadium, which included a private luncheon for former players and coaches on Saturday, June […]

The 1884 New York Gothams, featuring catcher Jack Humphries (front row, far right). Humphries’ improbably journey took him from the hamlet of North Gower, outside Ottawa, to Cornell for Latin and Greek, then to New York to catch Mickey Welch and Tip O’Neill. (COURTESY OF DAVID McDONALD)   On September 6, 1993, Denis Boucher pitched […]

After the St. Louis Cardinals captured the sixth and clinching game of the 1944 World Series, Browns owner Don Barnes and general manager Bill Dewitt made their way to the victor’s offices to extend congratulations. As related in Bill Mead’s Even the Browns, they found Cardinals owner Sam Beardon, who responded boorishly: “If we’d lost […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   Exactly a hundred years ago, on June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Baseball and the written word have been on good terms ever since. It was not until 1981, however, […]

Speculating on ultimately unanswerable questions remains one of most fascinating aspects for those of us who study baseball history. For example, how might many of the all-time records differ if Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, and all of the other great Negro League stars had been eligible to play in white Organized Ball? How […]

The highly regarded “five-tool” label is a relatively modern term in baseball’s lexicon, usually traced to Leo Durocher proclaiming the greatness of his star player of the early 1950s, Willie Mays.1 The five tools are: hit for average, hit with power, run with speed and prowess (particularly on the basepaths), catch the ball, and throw […]

In 1971, the year SABR was founded, the analysis of baseball statistics was still in its infancy, and computers were in the hands of few. Sabermetrics developed alongside the information age, with personal  computers enabling those who did not work where computers were easily  available to develop their algorithms and analyze data at home. In […]

Opening Day in Toronto, April 7, 1977, as a snowstorm blankets the field at Exhibition Stadium. (Courtesy of Elliott and Helene Wahle)   The date was September 4, 1967. As Canada’s centennial summer drew to a close, a sparse crowd of 802 gathered at Maple Leaf Stadium to watch the hometown Leafs of the International […]

The Ball It all started with a baseball. My wife Marilee’s otherwise wonderful family are not big baseball fans. With the exception of my father-in-law Robert Belliveau’s golf club and ball design expertise (he was an innovative design engineer with Spalding), sports are not typically the topic of conversation at family gatherings. Marilee’s late grandmother […]

Psychologists have long known that perceptions impact the way humans interact with each other. Stereotypical beliefs are attempts to organize the world and classify individuals into neat, predictable groups. For example, there is a tendency to generalize college professors as liberals and construction workers as conservatives. Of course, these far- sweeping generalizations may or may […]

The Big Red Machine reached its destiny when Cesar Geronimo closed his glove around Carl Yastrzemski’s fly ball on October 22, 1975 at Fenway Park to end the World Series. In that moment of ecstasy and exhaustion the Cincinnati Reds became world champions, finally grasping the ring that had eluded their reach in the first […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   The literature on the New York Yankees is presumably indicative of baseball literature generally, except’ of course, that Yankee literature, like Yankee tradition, Yankee Stadium, Yankee uniforms and Yankee hot dogs, has a pinch or two of special interest, the […]

Wilbur Rogan, pictured here second from left in the front row, compiled a 20-3 pitching record for Jamestown in 1932, batting .315 and leading the team in RBIs. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Jamestown, North Dakota, fielded Class D minor-league teams in 1922 and 1923, and again in 1936 and 1937.1 But between those two excursions into […]