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World’s All Nations, 1912, barnstorming club sponsored by the Hopkins Brothers sporting goods company of Des Moines, Iowa. John Donaldson, pitcher (front, third from right), was known as “The World’s Greatest Colored Pitcher” throughout his 30-plus years on the mound. After his playing career Donaldson was hired as the first Black scout in the major […]

The recent disclosure that Lou Brock had never stolen home in his 900 successful thefts came as quite a surprise. Modern players are still stealing home — Rod Carew has done it more than a dozen times in his career — but Brock, the greatest base stealer of this century, has never done it. Get […]

Many fans and researchers recall that the Brooklyn Dodgers, to stimulate gate receipts, played 7 games in Jersey City in 1956 and in 1957. For the same reason, the Chicago White Sox played 9 games in Milwaukee in 1968 and 11 in 1969. That was in the period when Milwaukee did not have a team […]

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:1 The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,2 And then when Cooney3 died at first, and Barrows4 did the same, A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game. A straggling few got up to go in deep despair.5 […]

The Society launched a research project in 1976 to gather information about — what is now a rather rare baseball occurrence — the inside-the-park home run (IPH). Some of the questions raised at the outset of this project v re rather basic in nature. How many inside-the-park homers are being hit at the present time […]

Once upon a time, A.J. Liebling, consummate Manhattanite and writer for The New Yorker, dubbed Chicago America’s Second City.1 But in relation to New York-centric baseball movies, this AAA-league rating is extremely generous. Across the decades, baseball films with Chicago references have been relatively scarce. For every on-screen image of Wrigley Field, there are scores […]

On June 29, 1947, the New York Yankees began a 19-game winning streak to set a franchise record and tied a 41-year-old American League mark for consecutive wins.Fans of the New York Yankees awoke on June 29, 1947, with their team in first place in the American League with a 39-25 record. Striving to return […]

This is a study of the relationship between major league player ethnicity and both overall participation and fielding position — from 1947, Jackie Robinson’s debut year, to 2018.1 I use the term “ethnicity” as an umbrella term encompassing the concept of “race” because the presence of Hispanics as a separate grouping invalidates a simple racial […]

They were decades apart in time and hundreds of miles apart in where they played, but they had some things in common. Both were outfielders who set enduring records, one of them among the oldest in Organized Baseball. And both were involved in unusual incidents en route to their crowns. What Joe Wilhoit did was […]

Honus Wagner, or Hans as he was almost universally called, was relieved the season was over. His 20th campaign in the big leagues and 17th with the Pittsburgh Pirates had been physically and emotionally draining. The 1916 season had been troublesome even before it started and had only gotten worse. Many had predicted Wagner would […]