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With interim Commissioner Bud Selig calling an end to the 1994 season on September 14 because of the players strike, the baseball offseason commenced earlier than usual. The major feature of the annual winter meetings was, of course, the resolution of the strike, but the issues of offseason transactions and replacement players hung over the […]

In Baseball Research Journal 33 Fred Worth presented an intriguing article titled “Interesting Statistical Combinations,” analyzing combinations like high batting average and low walks or lots of losses but a low ERA. He concluded the article, “Obviously there are many more comparisons that could be considered.” I took this as a challenge and investigated a number […]

This appendix accompanies Bryan Soderholm-Difatte’s article “The 1914 Stallings Platoon” in the Fall 2014 Baseball Research Journal. Methodology for Determining Starting Line-Up Platoons A position “platoon” is defined as two (or sometimes three) players being used in the starting line-up at the same position by their manager on a regular basis depending primarily on whether […]

“With the bases full Foley caught the sphere fair on the end of his ash and away it went over the left field fence for a home run.”1 This first-inning grand slam on May 25, 1882, by Buffalo Bisons outfielder Charles “Curry” Foley sparked a 20–1 rout over the rival Cleveland Blues. Along the way, […]

Two years after bringing you the first pictorial issue of The National Pastime, that one devoted to the nineteenth century, we turn the century to what is the game’s most beautifully photographed and arguably most exciting period. Like conventional TNPs this is, as the logo proclaims, “A Review of Baseball History,” but with the key […]

Keio University with the New York Giants and Chicago White Sox on December 7, 1913. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division)   INTRODUCTION On January 27, 1913, John McGraw of the National League champion New York Giants and Charles Comiskey, owner of the American League Chicago White Sox, announced their plans for a world […]

  Several players on the 1919 Chicago White Sox agreed to lose that year’s World Series, earning the nickname “Black Sox.” Their manager William (“Kid”) Gleason said publicly after the Series that “something was wrong. I didn’t like the betting odds. I wish no one had ever bet a dollar on the team.”1 Gleason had […]

Baseball history is replete with games in which great pitchers have been called upon to face each other in mound duels.  Christy Mathewson versus Three Finger Brown; Carl Hubbell against Dizzy Dean; those two lefties, Gomez and Grove; Juan Marichal facing Sandy Koufax — each era has had its exciting match-ups.  But, no single such […]

COLLABORATOR’S NOTE: My friendship with James Fargo (Jimmy) Lanier went back approximately eighteen years, to a time when I helped organize a local baseball conference and learned that the man who had been Ty Cobb’s batboy and then lived in the Atlanta area. I contacted him, and he agreed to participate in the conference. We […]