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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

On the afternoon of Sunday, June 20, 1965, New York Mets announcer Ralph Kiner described for listeners on WHN Radio in New York one of the more awesome sights in major-league baseball in the mid-1960s: “Sandy Koufax, one of the top left-handers in the history of baseball …”1 Baseball Hall of Fame writer Roger Angell […]

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 […]

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), […]