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In a stunning development on September 29, 1953, the city of Baltimore went from being the home of the minor league Orioles of the International League to having the major league Orioles of the American League.1 On that historic day, Bill Veeck, president of the St. Louis Browns, announced “a Baltimore group headed by attorney […]

This article was selected as the winner of the 2017 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. So, turn the key with me and enter Room 509 of the [Hotel Carlos], the most famous place in Chicago that you barely knew existed. — (Kankakee, Illinois) Daily Journal and (Ottawa, Illinois) Daily Times, April 10, 2010 1 The 1932 […]

The 1950 season was a momentous for me because I finished my clinical and course work at the Tulane Medical School in April and was scheduled to receive my MD diploma with the Class of 1950 in May. The Yankees gave me permission to attend my graduation exercise and I was able to get a […]

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: used in logic to describe the fallacy of thinking that a happening which follows another must be its result.” — Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)1 By long-standing consensus, a 21-year-old show girl […]

One day in the late summer of 1947, my mom and I were listening to Harry Caray on the radio describe a very exciting play at the plate during a game between the Cardinals and Dodgers. My mom, who had been clipping sliding action photos from the newspapers for many years, said to me: “That […]

This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s “Howie Fox: Baltimore’s Unique Oriole.” Click on a link below to scroll down to that section: [A-1] Where the 1953 Baltimore Orioles Played in 1954 — The Men Who Participated in the 1953 Playoffs [A-2] Where the 1953 Baltimore Orioles Played in 1954 — The Men Who […]

Some History Baseball is a superstitious sport. Players skip over foul lines on the way to the dugout, refuse to change their socks during a hitting streak, and avoid talking to a pitcher while he is hurling a no-hitter. Some superstitions have as their subject not only an individual player but an entire team. For […]

Roomie – that’s Monte Irvin. He and I room together when the ball club’s on the road. Many’s the time I’ve hollered for him to get me out of what I’m in. Like the time we were posing for the team picture and a guy came up to me and said “Willie, I’m Jumble from […]

When Brandon Nimmo took his position in right field on September 26, 2018, in a game at Citi Field, he was wearing his usual number nine and would bat ninth in the batting order. It seemed to me that this was an interesting confluence of facts: a player whose uniform number matches his fielding position […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). “In the vast range of baseball novels boys’ books written by men like John Tunis to adult novels written by men like Bernard Malamud, women for the most part have been either complaisant wives or stupid bimbos — or perhaps sexual […]