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According to conventional baseball wisdom, the home team enjoys a significant advantage in batting last. But in the early days of big-league baseball, it was not uncommon for teams to choose to bat first.1 By the time the American League declared itself a major league in 1901, home teams batting first had become a rarity, […]

“I Must Go Dear and Talk to Father” She had just finished saying goodbye to some luncheon guests and was walking past her husband’s study. She realized something was terribly wrong. His secretaries were scrambling, and two phones were in use. She overheard the phone conversations, and knew there had been an attack. She returned […]

Prologue The American National Leagues each held individual annual meetings on December 9, 1930, in New York City. Although the National League was bound by its constitution to meet in New York City, its American League counterpart had originally planned to meet in Chicago. However, league President E.S. Barnard later changed this arrangement so the […]

The 1934 baseball winter meetings could very easily have just gone to the dogs. The talk leading up to the convention was the desperate attempt of the Boston Braves owner, Judge Emil Fuchs, to pull his team out of the red by requesting that Braves Field host nightly greyhound racing. These were desperate times during […]

October 11-12, 1899 Great Northern Hotel, Chicago On October 11 and 12, 1899, the Western League held its annual meeting at Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel. After much discussion that was finally settled by a unanimous vote, the circuit chose a new name — the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Though some balked at the […]

Introduction In the months following the first year of play in the Federal League, the two established major leagues showed different approaches to this new rival. While a desire for peace persisted throughout the winter months, it was tempered by fervent desires for one entity to be a clear loser in any compromise. Though the […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, 1921–22. Back row, left to right: Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James McReynolds, and John H. Clarke. Front row, left to right: William R. Day and Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Willis Van Devanter. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)   […]

The 1954 Winter Meetings opened on December 6 at New York’s Hotel Commodore with an agenda filled with issues that had plagued the sport for years. They included the ongoing decline of the minor leagues, the increasing misalignment of major-league franchises with the national population, and player-management conflicts. Owners left the meeting two days later […]

President Warren G. Harding shaking hands with  New York Yankee Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium. April 25, 1923.  (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   In the wake of the 1919-20 Black Sox scandal, baseball got lucky. Luck’s name was George Herman Ruth, who entered our vernacular in a long-ball way and […]

Of the major league teams that trace their history before 1960, most started out with several short-term unofficial nicknames or even no nickname at all. Although several reputable sources provide a history of these nicknames, there are numerous contradictions between the available sources, and sometimes even when these sources agree, they conflict with the original […]