Search Results

Birmingham Black Barons center fielder Willie Mays was not originally who scout Ed Montague was looking at for the New York Giants.1 On Alex Pompez’s recommendation to the Giants’ director of minor league operations, Jack Schwartz, he was looking at Barons first baseman Alonzo Perry for the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos, the Giants’ Class-A affiliate […]

Introduction and Context In 1938, the major leagues returned to New York City for the winter meetings, while the minor leagues held their meetings in New Orleans for the first time since 1916. The minor leagues sought to promote uniformity, and with the nation’s economy beginning to emerge from the Great Depression, several minor leagues […]

How does one assess an individual player’s contribution to his team’s score? Baseball statisticians have attempted to answer this question countless times. It’s not just the runs he scores himself because that often relies on who batted him in. And it’s not just the runs he bats in, because that depends on who batted previously. […]

Researchers have compiled the entire home run records of outstanding batters like Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Babe Ruth, listing the park, game, inning, men on base, and opposing pitcher. By that means we know that Rube Walberg was the hurler who Ruth tapped for the most roundtrippers (18), that Warren Spalin was the chief […]

When it came to his involvement in the corruption of the 1919 World Series, Shoeless Joe Jackson rarely told the same story twice. When the fix first came to light in late September 1920, Jackson, along with teammates Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, abjectly admitted that he had agreed to join the conspiracy to throw […]

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 […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs played one of the most remarkable games of all time on September 16, 1975 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The game wound up 22-0 Pittsburgh. By the time the game had reached 41/2 innings, the score was already 18-0. The 22-0 score marked the largest shutout score since […]

An explanation of why Walter O’Malley was right in his decision to move the Dodgers to the West Coast.

BASEBALL BATS OUTSIDE THE BOX There are a number of different ways to reach first base safely, one of which is by hitting a baseball. Applying the expression “thinking outside the box” to the art of hitting, one will eventually conclude that there is a better baseball bat out there just waiting to be discovered. […]

In the late nineteenth century, Philadelphia was a hotbed of baseball activity, and specifically of idiosyncratic match-ups. For three weeks in October 1866, Philadelphia was the scene of two “world” championship series that helped determine the future course of baseball in the areas of professionalism and race. The 1860s were a decade of rapid social […]