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Willie Mays with the Minneapolis Millers in 1951. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The New York Giants purchased the Minneapolis Millers in 1946. It took five years for Minneapolis fans to fully process the impact. A charter member of the American Association in 1902, the Millers had a rich history that extended to the final decades of […]

As a kid pitcher he was called “School Boy” Hoyt — for he was only 15 years old when he signed to pitch for the New York Giants in the National League.  The year was 1915.  Not wanting the youngster to develop a swelled head, the Giants gave him a snappy bonus of $5 for […]

“These men couldn’t do what I did because they didn’t have the chance. But they dreamed the dreams I did when they were 15, too. And they taught me and they gave me the combat training so that I could do it.” – Willie Mays on the Birmingham Black Barons.1   Performance can mean two […]

Whitey Lockman and Willie Mays made Giants manager Leo Durocher a happy man. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The ties linking superstars and managers follow patterns often beginning as mentee-mentor before changing into relationships of equals, then deference to the player based on his status, and, finally, awkwardness as the star’s skills (but not […]

April 14, 1925 was a typical opening day of the baseball season. At least it seemed that way at the time. A quarter of a million fan watched the opening games. This included the 45,000 who watched the Yankees, led by Babe Ruth’s stand-in Ben Paschal, beat the Senators 5-1. Babe was hospitalized suffering from […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. In the last two decades of the 19th century, some 30 Negro players saw service in leagues in Organized Baseball. After 1898, however, the doors of the majors and the members […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Twelve managers have won more games than Bill McKechnie. None has won more respect. Deacon Bill McKechnie was the first to lead three different teams to the World Series and the […]

To see anybody in Shelby, NC, on a Saturday afternoon in the 1940s was easy enough: head toward one of the cotton mills that sponsored a baseball club. Folks packed the stands to talk about wars and depressions, family matters, and local politics. But it was baseball that commanded center stage. Sometimes the game even […]

The 1979 edition of the Baseball Research Journal contains a well researched article by Larry Gerlach focusing on those long-overlooked cornerstones of the game, the umpires. “Umpire Honor Rolls” points out that only a small percentage of the long service umpires, or even those who served 5-10 years, had significant backgrounds as major league players. […]

A look at the Dodger way of scouting, tracing its roots back to Branch Rickey.