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With the rapid spread in popularity of baseball across North America after the Civil War, St. Thomas, Ontario, was among the many burgeoning communities to use the game as a prominent civic community and promotional enterprise. The seat of Elgin County grew slowly until the arrival of the Canadian Southern and the Great Western railroads […]

The start of the 1979 season served as a good reminder of the interesting and significant role brothers have played in major league baseball. First there was Jesus Alou, back for his 15th season in the Big Time. This gives the three Alou brothers (Felipe 17 and Matty 15) a record 47 manyears in the […]

In Game Seven of the 2014 World Series, Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants entered the contest in the fifth inning with his team leading the Kansas City Royals, 3–2. Bumgarner, working on two days’ rest after a complete-game shutout victory over the Royals in game five, proceeded to pitch five scoreless innings to […]

Baseball, more than any other sport, has had a central role in American life and regularly finds itself in court. As a result there are now more than 10,000 published judicial decisions regarding baseball.1 While many writers have examined these decisions from a national or holistic perspective, this article will discuss many of those cases […]

The history of baseball in America has always been closely tied to the history of race in America. The progression of baseball from an exclusionary sport to a beacon for integration and eventually to a global game has paralleled our country’s movement from slavery to the civil rights movement to modern day multiculturalism. While the […]

Hilda Chester and her famous cowbell (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The New York Yankees have their Bleacher Creatures. The crosstown Mets had Karl “Sign Man of Shea” Ehrhardt, while “Megaphone Lolly” Hopkins was the super-fan of the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles rooters […]

One could pen a book or perhaps even an encyclopedia on the manner in which baseball and television have merged across the decades. Such a volume not only would explore the manner in which ballgames have been broadcast on TV both locally and nationally and the celebrated sportscasters who announce them. It would feature everything […]

One of baseball’s highest-regarded feats is the cycle: “A single, double, triple, and home run (not necessarily in that order) hit by a player in the same game.”1 In the history of major league baseball (1876–2023) there have been 351 documented regular-season cycles, including seven in the Negro Leagues.2 The distribution of the starting defensive […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 23 (1994).   Red Smith once wrote: “Ninety feet between bases is the nearest to perfection that man has yet achieved.”1 Technically, this statement is incorrect: there has never been 90 feet between bases. In fact, in the nineteenth century, the distance between bases […]

Overture Adrian C. Anson’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt end on February 1, 1898, when Chicago Club president James Hart unceremoniously sacked him without notice. Anson had made his living playing baseball since 1871, had been a member of the Chicago Club since 1876 and, as their captain since 1879, had risen to […]