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“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, from Four Quartets   If it hadn’t been for my mother Jaqueline’s suggestion that I apply for a job as a Little […]

Amidst the current upsurge of social activism among professional athletes, it is worth recalling the enormous contribution of Jim Bouton, one of the most politically outspoken sports figures in American history. Among professional team sports, baseball may be the most conservative and tradition-bound, but throughout its history, rebels and mavericks have emerged to challenge the […]

Editor’s Note: On this page, Parts One and Two, which were published separately in the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 issues of the Baseball Research Journal, are combined into one article as the author intended. Sandy Koufax (SABR-Rucker Archive)   American Jews have long had a love affair with baseball. They have played baseball since […]

Henry Chadwick, baseball’s first historian, tried to capture a game in a chart for his newspaper readers. It was called a box score, and as it evolved over the years, it offered the raw material for the statistically minded to analyze, understand, and appreciate the game. There were dozens who followed, from Ernie Lanigan, longtime […]

Baseball-Reference.com includes “A note about statistics from 1887 and 1876,” signed in 2001 by Sean Forman. In it, the inimitable site founder explained: 1887—During this year, Major League Baseball and the guides reporting on that season decided that a walk was equivalent to a hit. This was the only season in which this was true. […]

The Canadian Military Headquarters team defeated their American opponents before a huge crowd at Wembley Stadium on June 3, 1944. The hero of the day, Ed Smith, is back row, third from the right. (Library and Archives Canada)   Ed Smith was twice a hero during Canada’s Second World War. Smith, working at the Canadian […]

Rock and roll is the métier of choice at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (a.k.a. O.co Coliseum since 2011). For example, the Allman Brothers Band’s hit “Ramblin’ Man” can often be heard at the baseball Athletics’ 35,067-capacity home. It is fitting, given the franchise’s peregrination from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland […]

“Kill him! Kill the umpire!’ shouted someone on the stand; And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.”   Even people not interested in the national pastime are familiar with that homicidal exhortation from Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem, “Casey at the Bat.” While murderous rhetoric has never become a reality, […]

The San Diego Padres had a miserable start to their existence. In their first 13 seasons, only once did they finish above .500, in 1978, when they finished 84–78. The second time they would accomplish this feat, their reward would be the 1984 World Series. It was part of the Padres first Golden Era, 1982–85, […]

Wesley Branch Rickey — even the name is wonderfully quirky and unique. And the man himself lived up to the matchlessness of his name. He was another Lincoln; he was Simon Legree; he was a saint and he was a grievous, unrepentant sinner; he was one of baseball’s best executives and innovators, or he was […]