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Baseball was introduced into Japan in 1873 by an American teacher in Tokyo, Horace Wilson, and the game caught on very quickly through much of the island nation. Most Americans are, in fact, surprised to learn that the history of baseball in the land of Nippon goes back for more than a century. At first, […]

On November 9, 1894, the Boston Globe reported, “At 9:55 PM last night, King Kelly heard the decision of the Great Umpire from which there is not appeal.”1 The best loved ballplayer of the nineteenth century was dead. Even after he retired from major-league baseball in 1893, Mike “King” Kelly was arguably America’s biggest sports […]

BACKGROUND: The 2010 SABR convention publication, The National Pastime: Baseball in the Peach State, included an article entitled “That Was Quick” describing a professional baseball game that lasted a mere 32 minutes. Based on information in “The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball”1 and a Google-based search for any quicker game (as unlikely as that seemed), […]

Introduction In the months following the first year of play in the Federal League, the two established major leagues showed different approaches to this new rival. While a desire for peace persisted throughout the winter months, it was tempered by fervent desires for one entity to be a clear loser in any compromise. Though the […]

“But then Clyde Sukeforth is an unusual fellow. He is a medium-sized, lithe-limbed chap with the expression of eternal youth in his sharp but regular features. He hails from up in the state of Maine and leads a rugged outdoor life the year round.” — Tommy Holmes1   Clyde Sukeforth shrugged off his importance to […]

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the following book. The Runmakers: A New Way to Rate Baseball Players by Frederick E. Taylor Johns Hopkins University Press (2011) 272 pages “Hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sport. . . . A hitter . . . is expected to hit […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   On October 15, 1988, with a runner on first, Kirk Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers jerked a slider from the Oakland A’s Dennis Eckersley into the stands for a 5-4 victory. Newspaper reports noted that it was the first […]

September 28, 1941. Shibe Park, Philadelphia. The Red Sox split a Sunday doubleheader with Connie Mack’s Athletics on the final day of the 1941 season. These were meaningless games in the standings; the Red Sox were in second place but 17 1/2 games behind the Yankees and the Athletics were dead last, 37 1/2 games […]

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. Babe Ruth was presented with flowers before a game during the 1934 baseball tour of Japan.   November 20, 1934; Shizuoka, Japan With a flick of his wrist, the boy received […]

As November rolled into December 1923, Organized Baseball found itself with much on its plate, including a National League owner who had been indicted for perjury by a federal grand jury in the E.M. Fuller & Company bankruptcy case,1 and a Pacific Coast League president who had been ousted by a controversial majority vote but […]