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Photographs make history come alive, and baseball images enhance books and articles on the national pastime. While there are terrific collections at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and The Sporting News in St. Louis, less obvious sources include public libraries. Two of the best are the Detroit Public Library (DPL) and the Cleveland Public […]

Some sportswriters in the 1960s worried that Willie Mays was actually hurting the Giants. One magazine headline asked, “Is Willie really worth $105,000?” (SABR-Rucker Archive)   If we didn’t have proof, we probably wouldn’t believe it. If there hadn’t been hundreds of magazines published in the 1960s about baseball, a large percentage of them containing articles […]

During the 1940s National League baseball was largely dominated by the Cardinals and the Dodgers. St. Louis won four pennants in the decade while finishing second five times. Brooklyn took three flags and were runner-ups three as well. Besides a horrendous 1944 season, “dem Bums” were third the rest of the time. It was the […]

The structure of baseball provides rare performances that can secure any game’s place in baseball history. No one will forget having seen a no-hit game (or a perfect game!), a high strikeout game, or a batter going 6 for 6 or hitting four home runs. Nor will it be forgotten who made these singular achievements. […]

Unhappy with the team’s contract offer for 2003 and beyond, Philadelphia’s All-Star third baseman Scott Rolen was threatening to become a free agent at the end of the 2002 season. Taking those threats seriously, the Phillies chose to get what they could for Rolen and traded him to the Cardinals two days before the July […]

Several years ago when the Texas Rangers explored the idea of moving their spring training headquarters from Port Charlotte, Florida, one option they briefly considered was building a spring training complex in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Of course, for the move to be feasible, at least three other teams would have to be […]

One of the most famous scandals of baseball history is the O’Connell-Dolan bribe fiasco of September 1924. It was the last of the cycle of “fixes” or attempted fixes that afflicted the game in the period 1917 to 1924. It is distinguished from most of the earlier ones because in those cases we were reasonably […]

Led by Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio’s brother Vince, who belted 21 homers and knocked in 100 runs, the 1941 Pittsburgh Pirates under future Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch finished in fourth place with an 81-73 record, 19 games behind the National League champion Brooklyn Dodgers.  Two months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the country […]

This article was originally published in the 1991 SABR convention journal (New York City).   Upstate New York has certainly enjoyed its share of splendid baseball memories, but one of the warmest, enduring and most small-townish has been that of a vanished Class C circuit known as the Canadian-American League. Formed in 1936 just as […]

Serious baseball research has refuted the earlier contention that Abner Doubleday laid out the first baseball diamond at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839 while a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy. But this should not diminish the relationship that developed between baseball and the military over the last century. Both the effort to credit General Doubleday […]