Search Results

When I approached Robin Roberts in 1992 about writing a book on the famous Whiz Kids team that won the 1950 pennant on the last day of the season, he was immediately all in.  Since I’d never written a baseball book (although heaven knows I’d read enough of them), I felt a little like the […]

Birmingham Black Barons center fielder Willie Mays was not originally who scout Ed Montague was looking at for the New York Giants.1 On Alex Pompez’s recommendation to the Giants’ director of minor league operations, Jack Schwartz, he was looking at Barons first baseman Alonzo Perry for the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos, the Giants’ Class-A affiliate […]

Frank Shaughnessy (middle, second row) guided the 1913 Ottawa Senators to their second straight Canadian League title, nosing out the London Tecumsehs by a single game. First baseman “Cozy” Dolan (top row, third from left) led the Senators with a .358 batting average. (Alfred Pittaway of Pittaway & Jarvis Photographers, Ottawa)   For Frank Shaughnessy, […]

It’s often said that there are no ties in baseball. If a game is deadlocked after nine innings,1 you keep playing until someone wins.2 That’s the general rule, to be sure, but tie games have occurred in the past, for all sorts of special reasons.3 And the neck tie, the real subject of this essay […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   You and I embark on a wondrous journey as we are magically whisked away to a long-ago time and place. We stand on the corner of State and Madison. The familiar iron-facade entrance of Carson, Pirie, Scott’s is behind us […]

Ray Scarborough holds the first modern assigned win in baseball history, April 18, 1950.   A recurring question among SABR members in recent years involves the first modern win: when was the first win awarded to a starting pitcher incorporating a league-mandated rule requiring the five-inning minimum standard? On the SABR-L email list, historian David […]

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. Twelve managers have won more games than Bill McKechnie. None has won more respect. Deacon Bill McKechnie was the first to lead three different teams to the World Series and the […]

This paper examines competitive balance in the free agent era by comparing the old reserve clause system versus the modern collectively bargained system. Baseball’s reserve system began modestly on September 29, 1879, when the National League owners introduced a new rule that would eventually be incorporated into every player contract and would allow each franchise […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers, left, and manager George Stallings helped lead the 1914 Boston Braves to their first World Series championship. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)   This year marks a century since the historic run of the 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves. They were dead last in the National League on July 4, 15 […]