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Some professional baseball teams did not include dates on regular season tickets before 1974. Therefore, many stubs exist as a tangible part of sports history, but remain unidentified and have lost their historical significance. This study attempts to identify pre-1974 regular season grandstand and bleacher tickets issued by the New York Yankees. Numerous unique details […]

The first night game in the history of Organized Baseball took place in Independence, Kansas, on April 28, 1930. The Independence Producers, a Class C team in the Western Association, had installed permanent lights on their field, Producers Park. They played a total of fifty-five night baseball games at home in 1930.1 One part of […]

More than any other sport, baseball as we know it today is infatuated with numbers. Every movement, whether from defensive positions, the pitcher’s mound, or the batter’s box, is examined, analyzed, and quantified. As a result, we are treated to “quality starts,” “holds,” and batting averages with two-strike counts or on artificial turf in night […]

Since the dawn of free agency, there has been increasing affection paid to players who spend their entire career with the same team. From the ballpark statues of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn to the retired numbers of Robin Yount and George Brett, baseball fans in recent years have celebrated star players who rose through […]

Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey The Dodger infield that came to stay Nothing flashy, but steady and true Dating way back to Seventy-Two No, there’ll never be a real poem written about these four players, but they do deserve some recognition as the major league team infield that played together the longest. They just finished […]

A recap of the 1967 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Boston Red Sox.The Boston Red Sox were in the World Series for the first time since 1946, matched against the same team that beat them in seven games 21 years earlier. The 1967 Cardinals clinched early, surprising most observers as Red Schoendienst […]

In a scene from the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers”, Chico and Harpo attempt to switch a priceless painting with a copy. After the usual mayhem, the duo turns to exit, stage left. When they open the French doors, there’s a caterwauling of thunder, with lightning and sheets of rain. The pair close the doors, head […]

The batting out-of-turn (BOOT) rule has been a continuing source of confusion to players, managers, and umpires. Even a league president had trouble with it on one occasion after the May 24, 1945, Tigers at Athletics game, which was notable in other respects.1 The current BOOT rule (6.07), which has been in place since 1957, […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   You and I embark on a wondrous journey as we are magically whisked away to a long-ago time and place. We stand on the corner of State and Madison. The familiar iron-facade entrance of Carson, Pirie, Scott’s is behind us […]

When the 1941 major-league baseball season ended, the Chicago White Sox were in a familiar spot: for the third straight year and the fifth time in six seasons, the White Sox had finished in the American League’s first division under manager Jimmy Dykes. While the team’s first pennant since 1919 still seemed a long way […]