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On the theory that everyone has a little bit of the New York Knights in him, the motion picture character of Roy Hobbs, alias Robert Redford, in “The Natural” can be regarded as one of the most pleasant surprises of the 1984 season. His feat of leading a cellar-dwelling team to the pennant brings to […]

Most major-league teams have retired one or more numbers worn by the best players in franchise history. The New York Yankees have retired 19 numbers, the Cardinals 12, and the White Sox, Braves, and Dodgers have each retired 10. Only the Seattle Mariners are yet to retire a number. The Marlins retired the “number” of […]

One aspect of amateur baseball that is largely unexplored is the baseball played in our nation’s prisons. Prison games are easily overlooked by historians because few in the general public witnessed these games and they are seldom documented. One exception is the Stillwater State Prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, whose prison newspaper—The Prison Mirror, managed and […]

After a World Series appearance in 1965 and finishing second to the Baltimore Orioles in 1966, there were many reasons to believe the Minnesota Twins had a good shot at the American League pennant in 1967. Decades later, this remains one of baseball greatest and most historic pennant races. On September 30, 1967, a Saturday […]

He spent 20 years as a professional umpire, baseball’s loneliest profession, passing judgment on the performances of the game’s great athletes and egos. Many people have pursued this particular job, but Emmett Ashford had the added burden of breaking racial barriers throughout his career, as a black man whose job required maintaining authority over white […]

The telegram was brash and a bit disrespectful. Simply stated, it read “DEAR MOOSE: TOLD YOU SO. JOE PEP.”[fn]William J. Ryczek, The Yankees in the Early 1960s, McFarland and Co, Jefferson, N.C., 2008, p. 5.[/fn] The New York Yankees needed pitching help—specifically a boost to their rotation—following the 1962 season. They set their sights on […]

The 1979 edition of the Baseball Research Journal contains a well researched article by Larry Gerlach focusing on those long-overlooked cornerstones of the game, the umpires. “Umpire Honor Rolls” points out that only a small percentage of the long service umpires, or even those who served 5-10 years, had significant backgrounds as major league players. […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

Jerry Sullivan as a teenager.   The city of Baltimore has hosted a number of historic baseball events. Although this story barely qualifies as such, it is nevertheless an interesting aside involving Jerry Sullivan, a 32-year-old, 3-foot-11 stage actor who appeared in an Eastern League game in Baltimore in 1905. Forty-six years later, the St. […]

On May 7, 1929, the American League announced it had abolished the “League Award,” the most valuable player honor that it had awarded annually since 1922, ostensibly because “it tended to create ill-feeling among the players.”1 The National League followed suit on June 8, eliminating its League Award, which had been given annually since 1924, […]