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The magic number for a batting average is .300. When a player hits .300 or better, he has had a good season. A .299 average just doesn’t look as good. Many record books list players with a career average of .300, but they usually their lists to players with 1,000 or more hits. What about […]

The last official game of the 1871 National Association season took place on Monday, October 30, at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn, New York. The Chicago White Stockings, temporary nomads since the destruction of their home park in the Great Chicago Fire three weeks earlier, were the nominal “home team” on the occasion, but it […]

Tuesday, June 14, 1870, was fair and warm in New York City. The mercury on this pleasant day climbed slowly and steadily until the thermometer at Hudnut’s popular pharmacy at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street registered 86 degrees at 3 P.M. Up the Hudson a few miles, at West Point, relatives and friends […]

The 1877 season did not turn out well financially for the National League. All six clubs lost money. St. Louis lost $8,000; Chicago $6,000; Hartford $2,500; Louisville, $2,000.1 Even the pennant-winning Boston Red Stockings, with Harry Wright at the helm, lost $2,230.85.2 The sixth NL club, the Cincinnati Reds, had been disbanded by owner Si […]

The 1878 baseball season was not financially successful for the National League. Financial reports for all teams are not available, but it is doubtful that any club made money. According to Harry Wright’s account books, the pennant-winning Boston Red Stockings lost $1,433.31.1 Indianapolis was more than $5,000 in debt and unwilling to continue.2 In late […]

The Philadelphia area is the birthplace of the United States flag as well as America’s first modern bank, zoo, electronic computer, volunteer fire company, farmers’ market, trade union, magazine, stock exchange, and professional surgery.  It is where the Declaration of Independence was signed, it was the nation’s first capital, and is the home of the […]

On the southwest side of Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, lies a plain granite marker with a slightly misspelled inscription, the gravesite pathetically guarded by a twisted sweet-bay magnolia tree. Buried there in lot #549 is Louis Rogers “Pete” Browning, whose occupation at the time of his death on September 10, 1905, at age […]

The passion of a baseball player at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles led to a career that included managing the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers and to enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Speaking with some of George Lee Anderson’s earliest friends in baseball, one learns of the fondness inspired by the […]

Baseball tradition before the Civil War favored the selection of respected, senior members of the community as umpires, to interpret rules and resolve disputes between opponents typically grateful for their help. Interjecting themselves only now and then into the conduct of games, umpires were pampered; “given easy chairs, placed near home plate [and] provided with […]

In 1916, former National League President Abraham G. Mills said at a banquet celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the National League, “I cannot doubt that all true lovers of Base Ball will always cherish and honor the memory of William A. Hulbert.”2 Twenty years later the first honorees were elected to the new Baseball Hall […]