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Even if he had never gone on to own the New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner would have had a proud legacy in his hometown of Cleveland. By the early 1970s, he was one of the city’s captains of industry, having taken his family shipping firm to new heights and used it to leverage a purchase […]

Introduction and Context With the inauguration of free agency in 1976 and the introduction of a second interleague trading period in 1977, the baseball winter meetings had become agonizing to attend. The traditional exchange of players between teams became more limited now that players could bargain for long-term contracts and no-trade clauses. However, the 1980 […]

A note from the editor of The National Pastime.

After a 1985 season in which he hit 29 home runs and drove in 97 runs, Detroit Tigers outfielder Kirk Gibson was the top position player of that winter’s free-agent class. So when he accepted an invitation to go bird hunting with people from the Kansas City Royals, he believed the outing would be a […]

Four books on the Bronx Bombers.

The Yankees headed to Baltimore for a three-game series beginning on September 20, 1985. They had just lost three games in Detroit while being outscored, 24–6, and their losing streak was now seven games. While still in second place in the American League East, they had trailed the Blue Jays for much of the season […]

During the late 1960s and the ’70s, stadium concerts became quite popular. Bands could play for much larger crowds and make lots more money. New York City and its surrounding area had a few stadiums for the bands to choose from. Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Downing Stadium, Roosevelt Stadium, Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the Singer […]

Despite the picturesque setting of Honolulu, baseball’s owners were a largely dispirited lot as they headed into the 1982 winter meetings. They were a year and a half removed from a brutal strike in which they had failed to achieve their main objective of direct player compensation for free agents; many teams were losing money; […]

“Equal parts carnival barker, professional bully, world-class tightwad, and uncanny builder of championship baseball teams, Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley left a stamp on baseball that can still be seen more than 30 years after his departure from the game.”1 So wrote reviewer Alan Moores for the magazine Booklist in his 2010 review of G. […]

The 1976 renovation of Yankee Stadium removed the columns that obstructed views on the lower decks and the seats in center field that obstructed batters, but it also relegated the recognizable frieze to above the outfield wall. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In the spring of 1976, the Yankees celebrated a grand reopening of Yankee Stadium.1 It […]

One could pen a book or perhaps even an encyclopedia on the manner in which baseball and television have merged across the decades. Such a volume not only would explore the manner in which ballgames have been broadcast on TV both locally and nationally and the celebrated sportscasters who announce them. It would feature everything […]

On “Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super Showman”.

The 1972-73 A’s were the first team not named the New York Yankees to win back-to-back world championships since, well, the A’s. Some four decades and two franchise relocations earlier, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics had claimed the 1929 and 1930 world championships. His team reached a third straight World Series in 1931, but the A’s […]

The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, featured Yankee Stadium transformed into a football field. (20th Century Fox)   “Baseball stadiums are never only about baseball. Their utility is both more dynamic and more poetic.”1 Some landmarks are so burned into our collective mind’s eye that their image tells the story of their […]

Move over, Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck – the old Browns’ owner was baseball’s first great promoter. And move over George Steinbrenner – Von der Ahe was a meddler supreme.   PERHAPS THE GREATEST DAY of Chris Von der Ahe’s life occurred in the spring of 1882, when he dedicated his new Sportsman’s Park on […]

This excerpt is from the SABR book, Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark. We are honored to include this reminiscence by longtime Stadium tour director Tony Morante of his time working in baseball.   As a New York Yankees employee from 1958 to 2018, I had the good fortune to witness or par take […]