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Old Orioles’ Record for Triples Doubled Up The old Orioles of the 1890’s were one of baseball’s legendary teams. They played their home games in Union Park, Baltimore, one of the larger playing fields in the National League. As a result the Orioles did not hit too many home runs, but they got their share […]

“Joe Mendez is better than any pitcher but Christy Mathewson and Mordecai Brown — and sometimes I think he’s better than Matty.” — John McGraw   Little Jose Mendez, the wiry 20-year old Cuban fast-baller, startled the baseball establishment in November 1908 when the Cincinnati Reds arrived in the Islands and faced him for the […]

After two years of unlawful contract signings and other roster-jumping shenanigans that produced end­less lawsuits, baseball’s Great Tampering War settled down as the 1903 NL campaign began on Thursday, April 16, in Cincinnati and St. Louis. Though person­al disgust and distrust may not have subsided between all franchise owners, a signed truce between the long­ […]

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 […]

Was the Federal League of 1914 and 1915 a major league? Baseball authorities interested in the answer have been, and still are, divided in their opinions. Could a six-team independent league in 1913, generally regarded as no better than Class D, become an eight-team organization of major league quality a year later? The odds suggest […]

“It is no bad thing to be a king.” — Homer   On a cool October afternoon in Boston in 1914, the Red Sox hosted the Yankees at three-year-old Fenway Park. On the mound for the Sox was rookie left hander George Herman Ruth, already referred to as “Babe” by teammates and press. Ruth was […]

Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]

Editor’s note: All statistics are current through the 2016 season.   Playing in postseason is a special time for players. It is also special for umpires who are assigned to officiate. The first modern World Series in 1903 was umpired by two men: Hank O’Day and Tommy Connolly. O’Day, a retired player, had been a […]

Baseball fans love statistics. For more than a century, folks have talked about baseball numbers of all sorts around the water cooler and the hot stove, in the box seats and the bleachers, and, more recently, on call-in radio shows and the Internet. Batter numbers, pitcher numbers, and manager numbers have provoked discussions and arguments. […]

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s and ’50s was probably the greatest human tragedy of the nineteenth century. After a nearly total failure of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845, followed by successive years of poor harvests, more than a million and a half Irish—nearly 20 percent of the island’s population—died of starvation from 1845 […]