John Holway
John B. Holway (1929-2024) researched baseball for more than eight decades and few may boast of as long and noteworthy a contribution to baseball research. Looking at baseball beyond America’s major leagues, he wrote the first book in English on Japanese baseball, Japan Is Big League In Thrills, in 1954. He also published many important books on the Negro Leagues, most notably perhaps Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues (1975), a collection of interviews with the then virtually unknown Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, Bill Foster, Willie Wells, and The Complete Book of the Negro Leagues (2000). Holway saw his first Negro League game — Satchel Paige’s Monarchs against Josh Gibson’s Grays — in Washington, DC in 1945. He also researched intently and written frequently about Ted Williams, whom he saw strike two home runs in the 1946 All-Star Game. A former chairman of SABR’s Negro Leagues committee, Holway received SABR’s Bob Davids Award and the CASEY Award for Blackball Stars, voted the best baseball book of 1988.
Click on a link below to read some of John Holway’s early articles for SABR.
SABR BioProject biographies written by John Holway
SABR Games Project stories written by John Holway
SABR Journal Articles written by John Holway
- Dottie Kamenshek, All-American: Was This Baseball’s Greatest Fielding First Baseman?
- 1930 Negro National League
- Judy Johnson: A True Hot Corner Hotshot
- Oscar Charleston No. 1 Star of 1921 Negro League
- Sam Streeter: Smartest Pitcher In Negro Leagues
- Louis Van Zelst In the Age of Magic
- One Day at a Time: Leon Day Waits For Hall of Fame Call
- Dobie Moore
- Dandy at Third: Ray Dandridge
- Cuba’s Black Diamond
- The Cannonball
- Louis Santop, The Big Bertha
- Charlie “Chino” Smith
- The Black Bomber Named Beckwith
- Spottswood Poles
SABR Research Topics written by John Holway
SABR Research Articles written by John Holway
SABR Ballparks written by John Holway