Search Results

Defining baseball’s best all-around players begins with Branch Rickey. The maverick executive instrumental in integrating baseball, Rickey was also a pioneering sabermetrician. He invented the category “five-tool players” for the rare talents who excelled at hitting for average, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing.1 Since Rickey tagged Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle as the […]

Unhappy with the team’s contract offer for 2003 and beyond, Philadelphia’s All-Star third baseman Scott Rolen was threatening to become a free agent at the end of the 2002 season. Taking those threats seriously, the Phillies chose to get what they could for Rolen and traded him to the Cardinals two days before the July […]

Introduction and context The 1988 Winter Meetings were held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, from Sunday, December 4, until Wednesday, December 7. These meetings came at the tail end of the collusion cases, as teams were beginning to open their wallets and spend money again, and a lot of teams were looking […]

The Saint John Royals, Maritime Black Champions 1920. (New Brunswick Museum)   Although the origins of Black baseball in the Maritimes remain obscure, it is likely that the game was being played informally as early as the 1870s. Operating independently, but often in association with the African Baptist and Episcopal churches, black teams like the […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

Nineteen people attended the monthly roundtable of the Bob Broeg SABR Chapter on June 24, 2013. It was held at the usual location, the Original Crusoe’s in South St. Louis. Members discussed the recent weekend sweep of the Cardinals by the Texas Rangers, the future of Cardinals rookie first baseman Matt Adams, and whether the […]