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Introduction and Context The National Association didn’t just survive during the summer of 1935 — it flourished. “The past season,” recalled promotional department head Joe Carr, “was one of the very best that minor league baseball has experienced in years.”1 For the Association’s 34th annual meeting, about 2,000 baseball people convened in Dayton, Ohio, to […]

  Between May 24, 1935 and August 7, 1988, Wrigley Field had hosted 4,193 regular season games, nine World Series games, two League Championship Series games, and three All-Star games, only one of which—a 1943 All American Girls Professional Baseball League contest lit by a small set of portable lamps—was played at night. That all […]

More than any other sport, baseball as we know it today is infatuated with numbers. Every movement, whether from defensive positions, the pitcher’s mound, or the batter’s box, is examined, analyzed, and quantified. As a result, we are treated to “quality starts,” “holds,” and batting averages with two-strike counts or on artificial turf in night […]

The life of Jimmie Reese as described by Tom Willman, journalist and friend.

  Chocolatier William Klein Sr. of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, had a problem. The year was 1918. Soldiers were returning from the war in Europe. Klein was looking to expand to a national market for his “Lunch Bar,” a three-cent candy bar that was in direct competition with the chocolate bars produced by Milton Hershey at his […]

“I started at the bottom in this business,” said actor Art Carney, Ed Norton in television’s seminal The Honeymooners, “and worked my way right into the sewer.” By contrast, the 1970s Athletics worked their way from baseball’s top to its bottom. The 1972-74 A’s won three World Series. The 1977 club made the American League […]

An All-American on the gridiron in 1905, Ralph Glaze spent three seasons in the majors before launching a 21-year career as a college baseball and football coach and athletic director.   In 1889 Walter Chauncey Camp (1859-1925) initiated the practice of honoring the best college football players of each season by naming them to an […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Buckeye State,” the 2004 SABR convention journal.   On Saturday, October 15, 1892, Charles Leander Jones of Cedarville, Ohio, pitched a no-hitter for the Cincinnati Redlegs against the Pittsburghs. It was Jones’ first major league game and the first National League no-hitter for the Reds. Additionally […]

The Phillies and their fans hated New York Giants manager John McGraw. This fact must be clearly understood if readers are to truly appreciate the story that follows. Nicknamed “Muggsy” and “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw was an easy man to detest. Sportswriter Grantland Rice observed, “There were many who hated John McGraw and to many […]

“I cannot see why they should object to playing with me in the game as they have played nine of us in Rockville, and I have pitched against them.”1 — Billy Holland after not being allowed to pitch for Manchester against Rockville on September 1, 1906   Barnstorming independent teams and semipro leagues were common in […]