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Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!): A Midwest League Field Guide by Dave Hoekstra Can’t Miss Press (2009) $24.95 (hardcover); 289 pages Jeremy Justus became a ballpark beer vendor because “I wanted to give something back to the fans … be part of the team.” But although he liked vending, he missed being able […]

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 […]

Old Orioles’ Record for Triples Doubled Up The old Orioles of the 1890’s were one of baseball’s legendary teams. They played their home games in Union Park, Baltimore, one of the larger playing fields in the National League. As a result the Orioles did not hit too many home runs, but they got their share […]

Dick Hall’s trade to the Baltimore Orioles — with Dick Williams — on April 12, 1961, for Jerry Walker and Chuck Essegian, was influenced by Charles Finley’s resolve not to trade with the Yankees, a team he despised. Finley once pointed a school bus in the direction of New York and burned it to symbolize […]

If you had asked fans prior to the 1969 baseball season which scenario was more likely—man landing on the moon or the New York Mets wining the world championship—they would probably have been hard-pressed to choose, both being equally improbable. Casey Stengel, original Mets manager and overseer of the ugliest launching of a franchise in […]

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. It all started as a lark. Back in the mid-1990s, during the Internet’s infancy, Usenet bulletin boards were the virtual water coolers we all gathered around to discuss our favorite topics. […]

Baseball folklore abounds with pronouncements as to what areas of the game are most important to winning. These are put forth by venerable veterans and the greenest of rookies, but more commonly these “pearls” of diamond wisdom emanate from those sagacious ex-big leaguers, stars, and scrubs alike. The pronouncements include: “Pitching is 90% of the […]

On April 15, 1983, pitcher Mitt Wilcox of the Detroit Tigers came within one out of a perfect game when pinch hitter Jerry Hairston  of the White Sox, batting for shortstop Jerry Dybzinski, hit a clean single through the middle with two down in the ninth inning. Imagine the deep disappointment for hurler Wilcox, who […]

On January 1, 1971, the chairman of the board of the Baltimore Orioles, Jerold C. Hoffberger, with the approval of Commissioner of Baseball Bowie Kuhn, accepted an invitation from Yomiuri Shimbum President Mitsuo Mutai to play an 18-game, 25-day schedule versus Japanese Central and Pacific League teams in October 1971. Ten games would be versus […]

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. Most statistical analyses of baseball have been concerned with evaluating offensive performance, with pitching and fielding coming in for less attention. An important area that has been little studied is the […]