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The end of the Brotherhood war restored the status quo ante: two major leagues, the National League and the American Association, atop the sport’s pyramid. Yet, the principals of both leagues spent more of 1891 continuing war rather than securing an enduring peace. The restoration of the two-league system proved untenable for the longer term. […]

In 1877, an auburn-haired 20-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, took the field for George McManus’s St. Louis Brown Stockings. The career of baseballist Thomas Joseph “Tom” Loftus parallels the story of the first 35 years of pro ball. Born on November 15, 1856, Loftus was a minor- and major-league baseball player, team captain, scout, manager, […]

When James Bentley “Cy” Seymour of the Reds stepped into the batter’s box on August 2, 1905, in Cincinnati, he was battling Pittsburgh Pirates great Honus Wagner for the National League batting crown. At start of play that Wednesday afternoon Wagner, 31, was batting .356, and Seymour, 32, was at .357.1 Wagner had won the […]

1. Who were the two Cincinnati pitchers who took a rowboat across the outfield wall of a flooded Crosley Field in 1937? 2. Where did the 1914 Boston Braves and the 1915-1916 Boston Red Sox play their home World Series games?3. In several World Series, all the games were played in one park; name the […]

A poem about the Dodgers’ relocation.

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   The 1986 season marks the 70th anniversary of the Cubs’ occupancy of Wrigley Field. Originally known as Weeghman Park, it was opened in 1914 for the Chicago Whales of the short-lived Federal League. The Cubs became residents in 1916, and […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for nearly half a cen­tury, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. Two recent books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Flatbush. Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They touch briefly on some […]

From SABR member Bob McGee at The National Pastime Museum on January 24, 2018: It was a snowy February 2 in 1876 when the National League was founded, just a few blocks east of Washington Square, in New York’s Broadway Central Hotel. It would be 14 years before the Brooklyn Baseball Club that became known […]

From Bob McGee at the New York Times on April 6, 2013: Charles H. Ebbets grew up on Spring Street in Manhattan, but he became inextricably linked with Brooklyn by the time he was a young man. Ebbets was a charter employee of Brooklyn’s baseball team, as an assistant secretary and handyman, when it played […]

SABR is pleased to announce that John G. Zinn’s Charles Ebbets: The Man Behind the Dodgers and Brooklyn’s Beloved Ballpark, published by McFarland & Co., has been selected as the winner of the Ron Gabriel Award in 2019. Zinn, from Verona, New Jersey, is the chairman of the board of the New Jersey Historical Society. […]