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The 2011 season marks Billy Blitzer’s 29th consecutive year scouting for the Cubs, a rarity in these days of rapid turnover when too many owners and team managements are looking for quick fixes and think the development process can be miraculously speeded up. The Reds’ Gene Bennett probably holds the modern record for scouting longevity, […]

Maury Wills attempts to turn a double play against the Yomiuri Giants (Robert Fitts Collection)   By 1966, the bloom was coming off the chrysanthemum of Japan tours by major-league teams. Rebuilding US-Japan relations was less worrisome as the Japanese economy surged and Tokyo proved a stout ally for American fears about Russian and Chinese […]

Speculating on ultimately unanswerable questions remains one of most fascinating aspects for those of us who study baseball history. For example, how might many of the all-time records differ if Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, and all of the other great Negro League stars had been eligible to play in white Organized Ball? How […]

The summer of 1947 was like few others before it in the annals of New York baseball. The month of August welcomed a heat wave as well as young men (ages 16–18) from all over the United States for two events: the Hearst Sandlot Classic and Brooklyn Against the World All-Stars. Each of the contests […]

The New York Mets and Houston Colt 45s were the first new franchises in the National League in 70 years. The last time the league had expanded was 1892, after the folding of the American Association led to the NL absorbing four AA clubs. The two new teams in 1962 had come from another league […]

Sixteen months ago, we were stuck in our homes wondering if, or under what circumstances, baseball would return. To some degree, as I began this essay in April 2021, things had not changed. There were encouraging signs during the summer of 2020. Once, as I was walking my dog, Buddy, we happened on a batting […]

Not long after D-Day, in June 1944, Esquire magazine summoned 16- and 17-year-old boys from all over the country to New York for the first Esquire All-American Boys Baseball Game. Chicago was one of 29 cities to send players to this game. A local newspaper would select a deserving local player and pay their travel […]

The Caguas Criollos won back-to-back Caribbean Series crowns in 2017 and ’18, beating Mexicali 1–0 in 10 innings on February 7, 2017, and defeating Aguilas Cibaeñas from the Dominican Republic on February 8, 2018. The Criollos’ fifth Caribbean Series title puts them in elite company: Only the Dominican Republic’s Tigres del Licey have won more […]

The mission of the California Angels in 1973 was to find a way to wrest the American League West Division title from their in-state neighbors to the north, the World Series champion Oakland Athletics. The Angels were counting on improvements engineered by General Manager Harry Dalton after the 1972 season. Now in his second season […]

The Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League was a Class-D (entry-level) minor league that operated from 1939 through 1956 before becoming the New York-Pennsylvania League. (Ontario no longer hosted any franchises.) The successor league operated from 1957 through 2020, when Major League Baseball restructured the minor-league system. As an entry-level league, its role as a pipeline to […]