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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. My interest in the Black Sox Scandal began at summer’s end in 2002, and by the following June, I was sufficiently addicted to the subject that I simply had to visit […]

As the 1959 Winter Meetings approached, both the nation and baseball were on a roll. For America, the postwar economy was firing on all cylinders. The Space Race against the Soviet Union was on, and a burly, proud nation was confident of ultimate victory. Television ratings toppers like Father Knows Best reflected a culture that […]

    The big fellow lit his cigar and leaned back in the couch. “Even though I was a Milwaukee boy playing for the Brewers,” he said, “I had my bad days and the fans got on me. You know, the best hitters have their bad days and since I didn’t hit homers or get […]

This article chronicles the waning days of the 1966 season, including the event-filled season-ending doubleheader in Philadelphia three days before the start of the World Series. Seldom are the occasions when a team emerges as back-to-back champions in the National League. Rarer still when that team’s manager could call upon a well-heeled mound corps that […]

With an attack on a future Hall of Famer’s batting average, a lifetime ban handed down to a minor-league executive, and a power struggle between the American League president and the commissioner, the 1922 baseball winter meetings did not lack for story lines. Controversy abounded even before the meetings started, as there was serious concern […]

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for Our Hero. After a dozen years in the majors with some success, he was coming off a subpar year and had just been traded for three minor leaguers, who would remain so. Little did he know that along with his manager, he would change the way baseball was played. He […]

Robert “Bob” Addy’s Canadian baseball success story begs a really big question. Why are we only hearing about him now? In the last 10 years, thanks to researcher Peter Morris, Addy’s Canadian roots have been highlighted, but this knowledge has taken its sweet time spreading to all corners of the baseball world.1 Now additional details […]

On October 10, 1961, the National League held the expansion draft to provide players for the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets. While the American League had held a seemingly similar expansion draft on December 14, 1960, the National League draft had the following distinctions: It was held earlier in the year. There […]

Here is the appendix for Pete Palmer’s article “Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing by Catchers” in the Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal.

Many casual baseball fans and serious sabermetricians alike hold the belief that the home run was not a terribly important part of the game until the arrival of Babe Ruth in the outfield of the New York Yankees in 1920. Just the year before, Ruth had hit 29 homers to slip past Ned Williamson’s single […]