Search Results

The Great War in Europe had finally reached the shores of the United States in 1917, and when the time came for baseball leagues to plan for the following season, many able-bodied young men had already signed up to serve their country. With a short age of players and finances, many leagues had folded by […]

Rube Waddell started the 1902 campaign with Los Angeles of the California League. He was 25 years old and had some success in the big leagues, but in parts of four seasons, his won-lost mark was only 28-33. Pittsburgh had let him go early in the previous season after two bad outings. He was picked […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Badger State,” the 2001 SABR convention journal.   Ask a baseball fan, what is the only city that has been the home of two different teams in the American League and two in the National League, all since 1900? Without thinking, many will say New York—which […]

Many Baseball Hall of Fame inductees are associated with the American League Philadelphia Athletics and Philadelphia Phillies by way of career accomplishments, or by wearing the team ball cap on their Hall of Fame plaque. Many others in the Hall have connections to the city of Philadelphia and the city’s baseball teams since the 1860s. […]

Baker Bowl it was a wonderful place! More action probably took place on those Philadelphia grounds than at any other athletic facility in our country. For half a century the place was packed with action. There was major league baseball, championship boxing and wrestling, and professional football — say nothing of such extra-curricular activities as […]

It has become almost as rare as the major-league Triple Crown, and even more so than its statistical opposite of a pitcher winning 20 games in a single season. Since 1980, there has been only one pitcher who lost 20 games in a single season—21 to be exact—and there is no reason to think baseball […]

Not many fans are still around who remember when the Chicago Cubs compiled the best ten­-year record in major league baseball history over the past century. That’s because it happened from 1903 through 1912. The Windy City Cubs—yes, those Cubs who haven’t made it to the World Series since 1945—won 980 games way back then […]

This article was originally published in “The Northern Game—And Beyond,” the 2002 SABR convention journal.   While many believe that the darkest day in Boston sports history was the day Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees, January 19, 1900, may well qualify as its most tragic. It was in the early hours of that […]

Connie Mack’s wartime Athletics were coming off a 1941 season in which they finished dead last in the American League, with a record of 64-90, a slight improvement over 1940’s 54-100 mark.  They were six games behind the seventh-place Washington Senators, and the season’s attendance was just 528,894. The A’s had declined rapidly after Mack […]

    To include all of the many and varied statistics of baseball, references in the record books must be brief. Thus, much factual information that would help vivify a playing performance must, of necessity, be omitted. Of all the topical subdivisions in the record book, one of the most enigmatic is:  “No-Hit Games-Less Than […]