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Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig formed the most feared batting twosome in the history of baseball. Batting third and fourth, they served as the heart of the great Yankee teams that won three World Series between 1927 and 1933. Despite their heroics, Ruth and Gehrig played a different type of baseball, led decidedly different lives, […]

DAN SWEENEY WAS A SMALL MAJOR LEAGUE PLAYER Trying to determine who was the smallest player in major league history is a difficult task. In the old days statis­tics on the height of major league players were usual­ly inaccurate. Of course, Eddie Gaedel, the 3 foot, 7 inch midget who was used in one game […]

Throughout my tenure as Commissioner of Baseball, I often said that baseball was a social institution with important social responsibilities. In that context, I would mention Jackie Robinson’s entry into major-league baseball on April 15, 1947, which forever ended the game’s racial barrier, as, perhaps, baseball’s proudest and most defining moment. But baseball, as a […]

There still is one career home run record that Henry Aaron has not taken from Babe Ruth, but probably not for long! That is most home runs hit on the road. Ruth hit 367 and Aaron, going into the 1976 season, is right on his heels with 366. Aaron, of course, leads with most roundtrippers […]

Upon arriving in the United States in the spring of 1956, without knowing a single person, ignorant of the native language, customs, and food, and unaware of racism, Felipe Alou was armed with nothing but his mind, courage, determination, and talent. No Dominican had ever played in the major leagues, and there were as yet […]

A MANAGER DOESN’T NEED A nickname to make the Hall, but it helps. Fully fourteen of the 16 Cooperstown skippers had calling cards. See if you can guess the people from their nicknames: The Old Roman. When his White Sox won their first pennant in 1901, journalist Hugh Keogh began referring to their owner, who […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   In the late 1920s, John George Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News, a weekly newspaper produced then as now in St. Louis, embarked on a European vacation with his wife, Blanche. The Spinks were in the French port […]

Rod Carew, Vida Blue, and Big Klu Connie Mack, Stan Hack, Max Flack Guy Bush, Emil Kush, Heinie Manush Joe Rudi, Lyle Judy, and Howdy Doody Ty Cobb, Scotty Robb, Rusty Staub Rip Sewell, Bob Buhl, Joe Kuhel Hank Bauer, Vic Power, Hank Sauer Tris Speaker, Roy Meeker, and a streaker Lyn Lary, Charlie Berry, […]

Choices … Decisions: A player has already connected for one double, one triple, and one homer in the game and needs only a simple single in his next plate appearance to achieve the cherished cycle—one of baseball’s rarest accomplishments and one that will inscribe his name permanently in the record books. If he comes through […]

  This essay will explore the subject of racial and economic integration during the period of approximately 1945 through 1965 by studying the subject of Negro League baseball and the African American community of Kansas City, Missouri, as a vehicle for discussing the broader economic and social impact of desegregation. Of special import here is […]