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“The unionization of professional athletes has been the most important labor relations development in professional sports since their inception.”1 Journalist Studs Terkel called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” long-time president of the United Mine Workers and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.2 Actually, he may have sold Miller […]

A circa 1912 portrait of Chief Bender probably taken for advertising purposes when he was a sporting goods salesman/consultant at Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. The shotguns in the background have price tags dangling from strings attached to their trigger guards. The gold pendant hanging from a fob on Bender’s waist was given to players by the Athletics’ club for winning the 1911 World Series. […]

The Philadelphia Phillies concluded July 1991 having lost seven straight games on a West Coast trip. A pair of wins on July 30 and 31 over the San Diego Padres at Veterans Stadium, however, moved them to within one game of the Montreal Expos, with whom they had usually rivaled for the NL East basement. […]

As 1869 was coming to a close, baseball and the nation at large were in the midst of rapid change. Americans still had the bloodstained fields of the Civil War fresh in their memories, and the horror of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on their minds. Reconstruction was ongoing, as attempts were made to restore a divided […]

“The disturbed state of the country and the fact that the baseball players are the most largely represented fraternity in the ranks of our volunteers, and to this may be attributed the small number of represented, there being sixty-one answering the roll call,” wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle,1 referring to the annual meeting of the […]

Ed Barrow (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The Toronto franchise of the International League was one of the strongest and had one of the longest tenures—from 1895 (when the league was called the Eastern League) until 1967. Ed Barrow had a lengthy, esteemed career as a baseball executive that ultimately landed him in the National Baseball Hall […]

It could be compared, in a way, to a romance novel — first they hate each other, then they start to learn more about each other to where they like each other, and finally they fall in love and get married. Unlike the two protagonists in this popular style of fiction, though, the National and […]

The Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal honors the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year. Not more than one Seymour Medal shall be given each year. If, in the judgment of the awards committee, a worthy candidate cannot be found, no medal shall be awarded. To learn the […]