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There have been a number of baseball pennants and world championships in the Philadelphia and nearby New Jersey area over the last 120 years. The Phillies have participated in seven world championships, the A’s won nine pennants and participated in eight world championships, and the Philadelphia Stars won the 1934 Negro National League championship. However, […]

October 3, 1999. Dateline-St. Louis. This was a weird one. Only on the last day of the season could something as truly remarkable as this happen. And, of course, it had to involve the Cubs. In a meaningless game that had no possible effect on the pennant races, the 67-94 Chicago Cubs visited the 74-86 […]

The dominant characteristics of the Texas Rangers’ early history were inept management, pitiful baseball, and terrible attendance. The team proved incapable of coming up with a workable plan and sticking with it. This premise was stated well by a presumably neutral observer, veteran Chicago sports columnist Bernie Lincicome: “Texas has been a franchise governed by […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime (2004), No. 24.   The collapse of umpire John McSherry at home plate on April 1, 1996, recalled immediately the fatal beaning death of Ray Chapman in 1920. The latter is, we are told, the lone instance of a game-related fatality in major-league history. To […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   “They’re making me feel famous and I love it!” — Chet Laabs in July After suffering through one of the most dismal decades in baseball history in the 1930s, the St. Louis Browns began to turn things around in […]

I was inspired to write this article by Jonah Gardner’s Sports-Reference.com post “Remembering Mike Piazza’s 8 Amazing Days with the Florida Marlins,” about Hall-of-Famer Piazza’s short 1998 Florida Marlins stint before getting traded to the New York Mets.1 New York City’s major league teams have a storied history but I was curious: how many Hall-of-Famers […]

Pat Gillick once observed that it should take 10 years for an expansion team to emerge into a contender.1 The Hall of Fame executive would know; he oversaw the burgeoning of two of the 14 expansion teams. On one hand, his Astros were still a few years away from contending when he left Houston for […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 1985.   “It is always wrong to consider that something which begins in a small way cannot rapidly become important.” — Plutarch On June 5, 1942, Doreston Luke Carmen Jr. became the thin end of a very large wedge. That […]

Baseball’s 1950s are remembered by different people in different ways: stagnant, brilliant, racist, progressive — it all depends on the perspective of the fan. But one thing is certain and incontrovertible: baseball during the ’50s became a contest of raw power. Sixteen players have hit 500 or more career home runs. Seven of them played […]

L to R top row: Ken Medlock, Bobby Darwin, Mike Sgobba, Phil Pote. Middle row: George Genovese, Dick Wiencek, Joe Stephenson, Roger Jongewaard. Bottom row: Dick Cole, Angel Figueroa, Edward James Olmos, Jesse Flores. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library).   The heroes of baseball movies usually are brawny power hitters who bash ninth inning […]