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[He] could watch a player plow a field and tell whether there was baseball in his bones. — said of baseball coach Frank Anderson at Oglethorpe University    On May 11, 1963, the loyal alumni of Oglethorpe University gathered at historic Hermance Stadium on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, for a joyful occasion. They dedicated […]

In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof wrote about the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “Many players of less status got almost twice as much on other teams. … (Charles Comiskey’s) ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst.” This passage sums up the entire foundation of Asinof’s thesis: Low salaries and […]

A subject that animates baseball fans is ranking its greatest players, particularly regarding membership in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (HOF). In the past decade or two, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has moved to the forefront of this discussion among analytically minded fans. Unlike many “traditional” stats (wins, losses, saves, runs, RBI), […]

The recent disclosure that Lou Brock had never stolen home in his 900 successful thefts came as quite a surprise. Modern players are still stealing home — Rod Carew has done it more than a dozen times in his career — but Brock, the greatest base stealer of this century, has never done it. Get […]

Minor-league baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is virtually synonymous with Texas League professional baseball in the region. The small parts not connected to the Texas League are the rise and fall of black baseball in the area and the brief sojourns of the Fort Worth and Dallas teams in other leagues. (The Metroplex is […]

April 6, 1987, was a slow news day. President Reagan spoke to the Canadian Parliament, hardly a reason to stop the presses. Republican former quarterback Jack Kemp announced his candidacy to succeed Reagan in 1988. The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 2,400 for the first time. It was Opening Day for 16 of the 26 […]

In December 2007, a huge collection of documents, most related to the Black Sox scandal and all of them originating in the offices of the lawyers of White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, was purchased at auction by the Chicago History Museum for nearly $100,000. Among the documents are the reports from the detectives whom Comiskey […]

True baseball fans thrive on trivia. Here are four questions, the first three of which almost nobody can answer. The fourth probably will also stump even sportswriters, broadcasters and knowledgeable club officials. 1 -Who was the Saint who was traded for a date and later became an Angel? 2-Name the player who was riding the […]

When the 1941 major-league baseball season ended, the Chicago White Sox were in a familiar spot: for the third straight year and the fifth time in six seasons, the White Sox had finished in the American League’s first division under manager Jimmy Dykes. While the team’s first pennant since 1919 still seemed a long way […]

Sixteen months ago, we were stuck in our homes wondering if, or under what circumstances, baseball would return. To some degree, as I began this essay in April 2021, things had not changed. There were encouraging signs during the summer of 2020. Once, as I was walking my dog, Buddy, we happened on a batting […]