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Pitcher Faber Walked Seven Times in Row As Batter On July 14, 1915, Urban “Red” Faber of the White Sox defeated the Philadelphia Athletics 6-4 at Chicago. In the fourth inning of that game Faber was hit by a pitched ball by Joe Bush and then stole second, third and home to become one of […]

How does a man of modest background become a billionaire Hollywood player? For Thomas Tull, his status as a Tinseltown powerhouse is the result of a combination of fortuity, hard work, and relentless drive. It is the byproduct of his forming his own film company and producing or executive-producing such box-office blockbusters as The Dark […]

At SABR’s 2006 convention one speaker analyzed the commissioners of baseball and rated Judge Landis the best of all. In the question-and-answer session that followed, a member of the audience challenged the speaker: “How can you stand here in the year 2006 and praise Landis, who was so instrumental in keeping blacks out of Major […]

Professional baseball’s first Baltimore Orioles played in the American Association (AA) in 1882. Another franchise of the same name played in the AA from 1883 until joining the National League (NL) for nine seasons, from 1891 through 1899, but the NL vacated four cities after the 1899 season. The following season, the Western League’s owners […]

The intersection of Grand Avenue and Dodier Street on the north side of St. Louis is one of the fabled locations in baseball history. Amateurs began playing on a sandlot there as far back as the 1860s. In 1875, the first professional team in the Gateway City, the Brown Stockings of the National Association of […]

When I approached Robin Roberts in 1992 about writing a book on the famous Whiz Kids team that won the 1950 pennant on the last day of the season, he was immediately all in.  Since I’d never written a baseball book (although heaven knows I’d read enough of them), I felt a little like the […]

A quarter century has passed since Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball. His appearance in a Brooklyn Dodger lineup in 1947 and the outstanding performance which he gave also opened, the door wider for players from Latin America, who previously had never appeared in significant numbers. The Society for American Baseball […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. In early 2007 major league baseball marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers, bringing an end to a sixty-year ban on black players in the major […]

If the business of baseball seemed bleak following the previous season, the 1893-1894 offseason started from a different place in attitudes toward the business of baseball. Following the upheaval of recent seasons, Sporting Life proclaimed, “Both artistically and financially the season was the most successful since 1889.”1 Just as the negative outlook following the 1892 […]

Why would you want to squander a few hours taking up space in your behind-home-plate seat at a World Series game? For after all, you’ve been invited to a screening of a spanking new 35 mm print of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Why bother wasting time watching Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Bang […]