Search Results

    The big fellow lit his cigar and leaned back in the couch. “Even though I was a Milwaukee boy playing for the Brewers,” he said, “I had my bad days and the fans got on me. You know, the best hitters have their bad days and since I didn’t hit homers or get […]

Johnny Evers (left) on the Braves in 1914 with his manager, George Stallings (right). As player-manager of the Cubs in 1913, Evers took himself out of the lineup against left-handers, but George Stallings (right) used handedness substitutions in the Braves’ lineup regularly for strategic advantage starting in 1913. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   The Fall 2014 […]

The National League started off without too much fanfare in 1876. Only one game was scheduled on its opening day on Saturday, April 22, with Boston playing at Philadelphia. Of course, that was 34 years before a President of the United States attended an opening game, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult for President […]

With the nation’s colleges playing a greater role in the training of players for the major leagues, it is possible that we may see an increase in the number of stars who bypass the minor leagues on the way up. And since the days have passed when big leaguers go down to the minors toward […]

Introduction and Context Now fully invested in the Great War taking place in Europe, the United States was burdened by a shift in its political and economic conditions that demanded a sharp focus on a mobilization of the nation’s armed forces.  On the home front, Americans were implored to sacrifice for the good of the […]

Poems have been written about Mel Allen. Red Barber is in a James Thurber short story. But the man who was the featured announcer for the first years of the only national network of live daily baseball-game broadcasts in this country is almost forgotten. That man was the late Al Helfer, the “sports voice” of […]

Most articles written about Craig Biggio or Jeff Bagwell will contain a statement similar to the following: “Biggio and Bagwell are the last of a dying breed. In these days of free agency, it is rare for players to remain with the same team for their entire career. It isn’t like the old days.” Is […]

It was an unlikely time for a post-game riot, even in a baseball-crazy city like Philadelphia. Yet that is exactly what occurred at newly-minted Shibe Park on the afternoon of August 3, 1909. Moments earlier, the hometown Athletics had completed an exciting come-from-behind 10–4 victory to sweep a doubleheader from the Chicago White Sox. The […]

As a Little Leaguer in Southern California, I was thrilled when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. I saw a few games at the Coliseum, but when I went to Dodger Stadium for the first time, I thought I was in heaven. Six years later I pitched a game at Old Colt Stadium in Houston […]

Though war clouds were gathering, it dropped peacefully out of the sky of Japan, seven years before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and eleven years before atomic blasts destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It landed softly on the other side of the fence in right center field at a ballpark in Sendai, a city on the […]