Modeling Perfect Games and No-Hitters in Baseball

Through Major League Baseball’s first 134 years, 1876–2009,…

Now I Can Die In Peace

You the living, you’re stuck here with the Cubs, So it’s…

Why A Curse Need Not Be Invoked To Explain The Cubs’ Woes

The most striking facet of the Chicago Cubs’ long-term underachievement…

29 Years and Counting: A Visit With Longtime Cubs Scout Billy Blitzer

The 2011 season marks Billy Blitzer’s 29th consecutive year…

Growing Up With The 1950s Cubs

For a youngster passionately devoted to baseball and living on…

The Chicago Cubs and ‘The Headshrinker’: An Early Foray into Sports Psychology

The 1937 season had been frustrating for the Chicago Cubs. After…
Fans depart Wrigley Field via the diamond. Note the temporary bleachers set up beyond the left field wall on Waveland Avenue as well as the “jury box” section in left-center field.

Wrigley Field: A Century of Survival

Fans depart Wrigley Field via the diamond. Note the temporary…

Weathering Spring Training: The Chicago Federals in Shreveport, Louisiana, 1914

INTRODUCTION Someone should have told Charles H. Weeghman to…
The defensive heart of the 1906–10 Cubs.

The 1906-10 Chicago Cubs: The Best Team in National League History

Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance — the defensive…

Chicago’s Role in Early Professional Baseball

Chicago’s first professional baseball club was founded following…

The Cubs Fan Paradox: Why Would Anyone Root For Losers?

Cubs fans raise a fundamental question about the nature of games…
Fans, he observed, “never blamed their team for a loss, it was always the umpire. A player could have bobbled a ball or made an errant throw and the fans would blame the umpire. ... The fans would always find something that had happened in the game, no matter how badly their team may have got beaten, and find fault with the umpire. As sickening as it sometimes was, I was always impressed by their dedication.”

“No, I’m a Spectator Like You”: Umpiring in the Negro American League

Bob Motley umpired in the Negro American League from 1947 through…
Longtime historian at the Baseball Hall of Fame, and himself a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge, spent three decades compiling biographical data on players. David S. Neft and his team of twenty-one researchers took Allen’s accumulated research as the basis of their massive reference work that was published as the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia in 1969.

The Macmillian Baseball Encyclopedia, the West System, and Sweat Equity

There is beauty in finding that beneath a complex system, one…
Crackers first baseman, whose mother, sister, and brother Joe traveled from New York to Atlanta to watch his team in a crucial game against the rival Birmingham Barons on July 8, 1954.

It’s Not Fiction: The Race to Host the 1954 Southern Association All-Star Game

For the first eleven days of July 1954, the Atlanta Crackers,…
With the election of Connie Mack (center) as president of the Athletics in January 1937, the Mack family, including Earle (left) and Roy (right), now controlled all of the senior leadership positions in the club’s front office.

Departure Without Dignity: The Athletics Leave Philadelphia

  With Connie Mack’s election as president of…
The vacant lots around the Brooklyn ballpark accommodated only 700 automobiles. After World War II, city-dwellers flocked to outer Long Island and New Jersey, and the lack of vehicle access threatened to cut ties with the longtime Dodger fan base.

Field of Liens: Real-Property Development in Baseball

Baseball is at one and the same time an idyllic game for children…
received warm praise from New Yorker editor William Shawn for “Hub Fans,” but “the compliment that meant most to me,” Updike wrote, “came from Williams himself, who through an agent invited me to write his biography. I declined the honor. I had said all I had to say.”

Review: Brilliant Specialists

On "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams" Hub…
whose retirement in 1968 rather than his death in 1995 marked what biographer Jane Leavy describes as “the end of America’s childhood.”

Review: The Dark Side of a Baseball Dynasty

Four books on the Bronx Bombers. The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle…
ranked exceptionally low among club owners and presidents on measures of demonstrating respect for members of the organization, according to Steve Weingarden. He was 42 when he bought the A’s. Would the character of his ownership had been better had he been more mature when he entered the “owners’ clique”?

Review: Charlie Finley

On "Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super…

Is There Racial Bias Among Umpires?

Is there widespread racial bias among umpires? In August 2007,…

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