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Historical Backdrop Although the first all-professional baseball organization, the National Association, was established in 1871, only six years after the Civil War, Major League Baseball began with the establishment of the National League in 1876. MLB’s first seven decades took place against of backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings, and MLB was a […]

In 100 years of major league’ baseball, there have been nearly 117,000 home runs hit in regulation games. Less than 2 percent of these, or 2150, have been hit in extra innings. Yet, these overtime homers have been very important. About 90-95% of the time they provide the winning margin. In 1975, for example, there […]

The odds on the Boston Red Sox winning the 1967 American League pennant were 100-1 at the beginning of the season. But when they completed the Impossible Dream, it was “Pandemonium on the field!”The Boston Red Sox embarked on their 1967 season with a five-man rotation that had collectively won only 25 major league games […]

There still is one career home run record that Henry Aaron has not taken from Babe Ruth, but probably not for long! That is most home runs hit on the road. Ruth hit 367 and Aaron, going into the 1976 season, is right on his heels with 366. Aaron, of course, leads with most roundtrippers […]

The main subjects considered by the magnates during the National League winter meetings of 1900-1901 were: (1) the ever-increasing threat of competition posed by the fledgling American League; (2) possible recognition of a revived American Association as a counterbalance to the AL, and (3) player contract modifications proposed by the latest incarnation of the players […]

This book came to be because in 2020 a significant change took place in the way the Negro Leagues were viewed by the mainstream baseball establishment. A movement had been underway for some time at that point, with a vanguard of historians—notably Todd Peterson—making the case that the Negro Leagues were major leagues. The Society […]

If the most iconic sports-related Coca-Cola television ad features a child offering a Coke to an injured football star—Mean Joe Greene, the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer—countless hurlers and hitters have hawked the product across the decades. The Greene spot first aired in 1979; however, starting in the early 1950s, the Coca-Cola Company has produced […]

At the SABR National Convention in Milwaukee in July 1983, one of the baseball research questions was: Who was the only major league player to hit a home run before his 20th birthday and after his 40th birthday? It would have to be someone with a long career. Was it Rogers Hornsby? (No.) Al Kaline? […]

The term “hero” has come to mean a fictional or actual figure known for his bold exploits or daring adventure. As a youngster in the early fifties I was impressed with the cinematic heroics of John Wayne, as he battled the forces of world aggression and the romanticized bravado of Gene Autry and Roy. Rogers, […]

Bonnie McCarroll riding Morning Glory, Tex Austin’s Rodeo, Yankee Stadium. (Courtesy of National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.)   The same year in which the House That Ruth Built began to house baseball games, it also hosted events of a very different sort. That summer, workers laid down 100,000 square feet of mats made from […]