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Welcome, friends, to our “virtual visit” to Charm City. A book or magazine is always that, but our need to transport ourselves through the written word to other places and times is felt quite keenly in the year 2020, when the real-life 50th SABR convention has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you […]

The 1936 Black Panthers. Charlie Culver is the first on the left, sitting. (Jerry Cohen, Ebbets Field Flannels)   The reception that Jackie Robinson received in Montréal is well known. A few years later, the Provincial League became a prime destination for Negro League veterans. Many factors can explain how that came to be, but […]

It’s an article of faith these days that batting average is an old-fashioned statistic and that the new Holy Grail for batters is OBP—on-base percentage. The “walk’s as good as a hit” approach has a lot to recommend it. After all, the hitter’s goal is to get on base and, if possible, help score runs. […]

Introduction The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (minor leagues) and the National and American Leagues held their annual winter meetings one week apart in December 1929. Though there were different points of contention for both the minors and majors, some issues were relevant to all the organizations and leagues. The draft, the signing of […]

A generally accepted narrative of the early days of baseball integration is that White pitchers deliberately threw at Black batters. According to Ken Burns’ Baseball, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, “Pitchers threw at his head.”1 His counterpart in the American League, Larry Doby, stated, “I was knocked down in many games. I was […]

Granted, numerous screen biopics have charted the lives of ballplayers from Hall of Famers to major leaguers with unusual, marketable life stories.1 One legend – Lou Gehrig – has been portrayed twice, in 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees and A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story, a 1977 made-for-television movie. Another – […]

I think that no players in the majors today could conceive of going through what Negro Leaguers did for a chance at a baseball career. At the same time, however, most of the veterans of baseball’s black leagues will say that, if given the chance, they would do it all over again. A statement like […]

Following the 1895 season, and almost six weeks after the death of Harry Wright, the owners met in New York on November 13 and 14, at what was identified as the “Fifth annual meeting of the National League and American Association of Professional Baseball Clubs.”1 One paper predicted, “At tomorrow’s meeting … there may be […]

The headline in the March 13, 1903, edition of the New York Times read “Baseball Grounds Fixed.” The nonbylined article described an agreement, announced by American League President Ban Johnson, that a plot of rocky land was leased for the construction of a ballpark to be occupied by the newly minted New York American League […]

It may be the most famous baseball painting of all time. Created by Norman Rockwell, it goes by many different names, including The Three Umpires, Game Called Because of Rain, Tough Call, and Bottom of the Sixth. It depicts a baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. […]