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When a team is going through a disappointing season, its fans are likely to plead for changes. Since acquiring new players may be impossible because of trading deadlines or lack of quality players to offer in exchange, and since general managers and owners usually do not wish to replace themselves, the team often will fire […]

The position of league president is a sinecure. All he has to do is preside over league meetings, make some public appearances, approve player contracts, handle other routine duties and attend games. Nothing to it. At least that is what many fans doubtless believe. But what about protests of games? They can present extremely sticky […]

The year 2000 was not just the beginning of a new century for humanity but also marked a new era in Major League Baseball’s relationship with Japan as the New York Mets and Chicago Cubs opened the season in Tokyo. US major-league squads had been touring Japan since 1908 but the 2000 Opening Day Series […]

Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]

After the passing of nearly 40 years, as is the case since World War II, we are inclined to recall events differently than the way they really happened. Now, there’s nothing wrong with fantasizing a little or adding color to actual events, but the amount of distortion and misleading material that has been published in […]

Cy Young didn’t have a problem when asked to choose his biggest thrill in baseball. Old Cy quickly picked his 1904 perfect game against Rube Waddell and the Philadelphia Athletics. Young’s perfecto was the first in modern major league base­ball history. Also rating high on Young’s list of personal favorites was another masterpiece against Waddell […]

1981 Kansas City Royals Goodwill Tour advertisement (Robert Fitts Collection)   For decades it had been the hope of Matsutaro Shoriki, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun Group, a conglomerate that produces the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper and owns the Yomiuri Giants baseball team, that there would one day be a “true world series” played between […]

Baltimoreans strolling on Eutaw Street outside Oriole Park before a home game may stop for a bite to eat and kibbitz with owners of the establishments. It’s not an unusual sight. But one owner happens to be a civic icon—John Wesley Powell. Boog. The slugger who bashed 339 home runs in the majors does more […]

The mentor-mentee relationship is a bedrock of Hollywood storytelling: Dr. David Zorba and Dr. Ben Casey. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso. Mickey Goldmill and Rocky Balboa. Three movies and one TV-movie set in baseball’s minor leagues exemplify the dynamic.   Stud Cantrell (William Petersen) and Dixie Lee Boxx (Virginia Madsen) […]

George Herman Ruth is probably the most well known of all American baseball players. He may also have been the best. There has never been another player who had such an effect on the sport. He revolutionized it from a pitcher’s game to a hitter’s game, and it has remained that way ever since. Ruth […]