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In 1951 my father, Lance Richbourg, was named one of three outfielders on the all-time Boston Braves team. He was the regular right fielder and leadoff hit­ter for the Braves in the late 1920s, batting .308 over the course of eight seasons in the majors. Perhaps just as impressive is his lifetime .328 batting average […]

Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]

In keeping with one of SABR’s objectives—“To encourage further research and literary efforts to establish and maintain the accurate historical record of baseball”—the Society has promoted numerous research initiatives. One such effort, the BioProject (archived online at SABR.org/bioproject), has generated large amounts of information in its mission to publish biographical articles about everyone who ever […]

From the mid-1970s until the Angels won the World Series in 2002, frequent stories of an Angels “curse” or “jinx” appeared in the local and national media. Typically blamed on a rumor that Anaheim Stadium was built on a Native American burial ground, the curse persists to the present day despite the fact that several […]

The Houston Astrodome was the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned major-league ballpark. It was formally unveiled in an exhibition game that pitted the Houston Astros against the American League champion New York Yankees on April 9, 1965. Unlike previous sports venues, the Astrodome was built to be a massive all-purpose, climate-controlled facility that would serve as […]

The renovation of Yankee Stadium created Monument Park as a permanent home to monuments to Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, and Babe Ruth, as well as plaques to general manager Ed Barrow and others that previously sat in fair territory. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)   Here’s a thought exercise: Get a piece of paper and a […]

The slugger stands at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, the score tied. The crowd rises in anticipation. The windup. The pitch and…there it goes! We’ve all seen them. Game-ending or “walk-off” home runs are shown on SportsCenter almost every night and many fans consider them to be among the most exciting plays […]

On June 29, 1947, the New York Yankees began a 19-game winning streak to set a franchise record and tied a 41-year-old American League mark for consecutive wins.Fans of the New York Yankees awoke on June 29, 1947, with their team in first place in the American League with a 39-25 record. Striving to return […]

When Mark McGwire handily surpassed Roger Maris’s single-season home run record during his incredible 1998 season, it raised a good bit of discussion about where his stellar season ranked among the game’s greatest individual performances. Indeed, rankings of this kind are frequent, as the Baseball Research Journal articles by Bill Szepanski, in 1996, and Joe […]

Nineteen twenty-one was a remarkable baseball season, one that signaled that a seismic shift in how the game was played was underway. Baseball was moving from low-scoring contests dominated by pitching to a power game with more hits, runs, and home runs. It was the year that New York City rose to the top of […]