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ROBERT EMERSON is a lifelong resident of Massachusetts. Red Sox fandom has been a dominant gene in his family; he’s been a fan as long as he can remember, his first favorite players being Trot Nixon and Carlton Fisk. He enjoys time spent with his many pets and cooking for his family and/or friends. He […]

Ray Birch lives in North Kingstown, RI. He is a retired school teacher where he co-taught a class on baseball to students. He has been a member of SABR since 2000. He wrote the article about Rick Burleson for the SABR book on the 1975 Red Sox, and the articles about George Thomas and Joe […]

Edgar Renteria started the Marlins’ walkoff “tradition” with the game-winner off Roberto Hernandez in the first game of the 1997 NLDS. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The Marlins won the World Series both times they qualified for the postseason in 1997 and 2003. This was not accomplished without a little drama: Five of […]

One of baseball’s highest-regarded feats is the cycle: “A single, double, triple, and home run (not necessarily in that order) hit by a player in the same game.”1 In the history of major league baseball (1876–2023) there have been 351 documented regular-season cycles, including seven in the Negro Leagues.2 The distribution of the starting defensive […]

When Animal, sometimes known as Brad Lesley, decided to go to Japan in 1986, he was apprehensive. “I don’t speak the language. I don’t know the food,” he thought. “Thank God baseball is baseball.” After two months, he concluded, “The food is great, the people are wonderful. It’s the baseball that’s ass backwards!” Many writers […]

Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame for the past 10 years, wrote an entertaining article, “The Joy of Foul Balls,” in issue #25 of The National Pastime. At a recent SABR board meeting, Norman Macht read a couple of paragraphs aloud and the room convulsed with laughter for a […]

This article was selected as a finalist for a 2017 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award. In the immediate aftermath of the exciting Game Seven between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants in 2014, the baseball world fixated on one question: should Alex Gordon have been sent home with two outs in the bottom […]

On April 24, 1943, Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey sent a confidential memo to his top scout with instructions to begin searching for “colored” ballplayers, thus setting the wheels in motion that would result in the signing of Jackie Robinson. This document, and those that followed shortly thereafter, are historically significant yet have remained a […]

About 20 members and guests of the Flame Delhi Chapter gathered in Tucson, Arizona, on June 15, 2013 for a meeting at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium (formerly Tucson Electric Park) in its third — and final — season as home of the Tucson Padres, the San Diego Padres’ Triple-A affiliate, before they move to El […]

From SABR member Ed Sherman at the Sherman Report on October 15, 2015, with SABR member Doug Wilson: Carlton Fisk takes center stage every October. During baseball’s postseason, there are multiple replays of his iconic homer in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. It ranks near the top as one of the game’s most […]