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Background Baseball was going through a time of transition as the 1968 Winter Meetings approached. Most dramatically, the major leagues were about to add four new teams beginning in 1969, and had recently held two expansion drafts to stock the new clubs. On Monday, October 14, the National League held its draft for the Montreal […]

Several times in the past there have been movements to establish a Minor League Hall of Fame to honor the great players who, for one reason or another, never made it in the majors. That dream probably will never be realized now because the structure and the role of the minors have changed so much […]

Both Chicago and Troy fielded strong baseball nines in the baseball’s post-Civil War pioneer days. With the advent of professional baseball after the 1868 season, the fortunes of Chicago and Troy became intertwined by happenstance and the loosely-knit structure and highly unstable nature of nineteenth century baseball. Both cities played a major part in the […]

In 2018, a country auction in Maine handling the estate of major leaguer Harry Lord put a photograph up for bid they touted as the “First Ever All-Star Game.”1 The 1910 photo pictured an American League team of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Big Ed Walsh, and ten others including Lord, the former Red […]

Stars of Soul of the Game, Mykelti Williamson (l.), Blair Underwood (c.), and Delroy Lindo (r.) at an event honoring the film at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. (Courtesy of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum)   Soul of the Game premiered on April 20, 1996, on the Home Box Office (HBO) cable network. The docudrama […]

Introduction and Context America was engulfed in the Great Depression when the 1932 Winter Meetings arrived, and like everything else, its greatest pastime was affected negatively. For lack of funds, only 16 minor-league circuits completed the 1932 season, down from the 25 that did so three years prior.1 As a result, many baseball players were […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth and Boston Braves executives in a Copley Plaza Hotel room, after signing with the Boston Braves, February 28, 1935. (l to r): Charles F. Adams, Babe Ruth, and Judge Emil Fuchs. (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   When George Herman “Babe” Ruth arrived in St. Petersburg in 1935 for […]

As late as the 1980s, the softball/baseball Minneapolis Millerettes were one of Minnesota’s forgotten professional sports teams.1 Eventually, the Millerettes and other female ballplayers in the 1940s and 1950s got the spotlight they deserved. Reunions and the development of a players association led to an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, […]

Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]