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Mark Belanger, winner of eight Gold Gloves in the last ten years, received more votes than any other player in SABR’s recent survey to determine the best fielders of the 1970s. The Baltimore shortstop received more than 90% of the nearly 400 votes cast for American League shortstop. Johnny Bench led all National League players. […]

On John Klima’s 2009 book about Willie Mays and the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons and James S. Hirsch’s 2010 book, “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.”

1953 Eddie Lopat All-Stars (Rob Fitts Collection)   Eddie Lopat was a fine, soft-tossing southpaw during a 12-year baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and most famously the New York Yankees. Called the Junkman because of his assortment of off-speed pitches, Lopat was also something of a baseball entrepreneur. He not only ran a […]

There are two main objectives for the hitter.  The first is to not make an out and the second is to hit for distance. Long-ball hitting is normally measured by slugging average. Not making an out can be expressed in terms of on base average (OBA), where:       OBA    =  Hits + Walks […]

Is Henry Aaron a greater player than Willie Mays? Was Joe DiMaggio better than Ted Williams? Those were just two of the tough decisions members of the Society for American Baseball Research were asked to make in a survey of the greatest baseball players born in the different states. Aaron and Mays were matched because […]

This spring, baseball attention will be focused on Henry Aaron as he strives to reach and pass that magic number in the home run summit of fame — 714.   There is another historic home run number that is being approached and soon some one will be achieving that milestone.   That will be the 100th home […]

Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, who played for the Cincinnati Reds 36 years before Jackie Robinson came along, should be credited with crashing the color barrier. — Felipe Alou1   On April 15, 1947, the story goes, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first black American to play baseball in the major leagues.2 […]

Yank Robinson’s One-Man Strike in 1889 When modern-day players go on strike against their owners they do so as a collective unit – the Major League Baseball Players Association – but back in 1889 it took a bit of courage for William (Yank) Robinson to stage a one-man strike against the owner of the St. […]

Carl Daniel Erskine, born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, but famed for his twelve seasons as a stellar right hander for the Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball’s postwar era, proved not only to be talented pitcher but also an exceptional teammate and person. One of the Dodgers of 1952-53 portrayed in Roger Kahn’s 1971 baseball classic, […]

Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey The Dodger infield that came to stay Nothing flashy, but steady and true Dating way back to Seventy-Two No, there’ll never be a real poem written about these four players, but they do deserve some recognition as the major league team infield that played together the longest. They just finished […]