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Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]

In the typical telling of the Jackie Robinson life story there are two acts. The leading figures in both acts are White men. Act I is the run-up to White baseball: Pasadena, UCLA, the United States Army, the Kansas City Monarchs, the scouting of Clyde Sukeforth. This Act concludes in Branch Rickey’s Ebbets Field office […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Cleveland,” the 1990 SABR convention journal.   More than two decades before the first interleague All-Star game, the elite of the American League’s players gathered at Cleveland’s League Park. They played the Cleveland team July 24, 1911, to celebrate the career of one of the game’s greats […]

In 1976, Reggie Jackson, then arguably baseball’s biggest superstar, joined my favorite team, the Baltimore Orioles, in a trade from the Oakland A’s. Accompanying him was gritty left-handed pitcher Ken Holtzman. Coming a year after the shocking change of teams from the A’s to the Yankees by free-agent pitcher Catfish Hunter, the trade brought excitement […]

Charles Victor (“Victory”) Faust left Marion, Kansas, in the early summer of 1911 to bring victories and a championship to the National League’s New York Giants’ Baseball Club. He intended to do it as a player, but instead accomplished this objective as the quintessential mascot. Many people at the time merely thought of Charley as […]

When the 2003 Boston Red Sox reported to Fort Myers, Florida, for spring training, state-of-the-art facilities, a battery of instructors, and a full staff of physical-training specialists awaited them. The minor league facility at City of Palms Park, where the team trains before the exhibition season begins, includes eight batting tunnels and sixteen pitcher’s mounds. Every […]

Keeping it Alive: The Proactive Clark Griffith  At age 72, Clark Griffith again faced the challenge of maintaining the operations and financial stability of his “small market” team, the Washington Senators, during a world war. The Senators, by population, were the smallest team in major-league baseball. During World War I, the major leagues continued to […]

Excerpted from The Cool of the Evening by Paula Kurman, to be published in the first quarter of 2024 by Rosetta Books.   Dear SABR members, My beloved late husband, Jim Bouton, asked three things of me if I were to outlive him: to make sure his archives were well and safely placed, to donate […]

Rod Carew, Vida Blue, and Big Klu Connie Mack, Stan Hack, Max Flack Guy Bush, Emil Kush, Heinie Manush Joe Rudi, Lyle Judy, and Howdy Doody Ty Cobb, Scotty Robb, Rusty Staub Rip Sewell, Bob Buhl, Joe Kuhel Hank Bauer, Vic Power, Hank Sauer Tris Speaker, Roy Meeker, and a streaker Lyn Lary, Charlie Berry, […]

The 2014 major-league season ended with the San Francisco Giants winning their third World Series in five seasons, beating the Kansas City Royals in a dramatic seven-game series on the shoulders of a staggeringly dominant performance by their 25-year-old southpaw, Madison Bumgarner. The Giants had established themselves as the decade’s model franchise, the Royals emerged […]