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Many baseball fans of a certain age remember with some nostalgia the 1955 Bowman “TV set” of baseball cards, which featured a number of umpires. Television was new for many Americans at that time; it was maybe three years earlier that my family got the first set in the neighborhood I grew up in and […]

  Arguably the greatest catch in the history of baseball was the basket catch Willie Mays made of a long fly ball in center field in the Polo Grounds in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, on September 29, 1954. The score was tied 2–2 in the top of the eighth. With runners on […]

“Although he never hit more than 47 home runs in a season…” was a common refrain in the eulogies that marked Henry Aaron’s passing on January 22, 2021. Intended as a nod to Aaron’s workmanlike virtue, the suggestion that his peak fell short of the more spectacular feats of other sluggers set up the inevitable […]

So much emphasis has been placed on home runs in recent years that few fans know or care who collects the most singles.   That may change because players who hit a lot of singles can also wind up with batting titles.   In 1973, for example, both Pete Rose and Rod Carew led their respective leagues […]

National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues The citizens of Asheville, North Carolina, rolled out the red carpet for the minor-league meetings in 1926. The 25th annual meeting of the National Association was held December 7 to 9, with a record number of executives from both the big leagues and the NAPBL descending upon the Southern […]

One of the most fascinating aspects about the Study of baseball history is the diverse group of people who have played the game. Professional baseball has consisted of illiterates, criminals, deadbeats, doctors, lawyers, professionals, and everything in between. From Ron LeFlore, a tough kid from the ghetto who went from prison to baseball, to Wes […]

Thomas Edward George never made much of a splash in the major leagues. His longest stay was the full 1911 season, when as a rookie, he compiled a 3-10 won-lost record for the St. Louis Browns. His greatest moment came on September 11, 1915, when he bested a fading Christy Mathewson 4-0 in a seven-hitter […]

   When you ask a man who has made an unassisted triple play what his biggest thrill in baseball was, you expect him to say “making an unassisted triple play.” But this is not the case with Glenn Wright, star shortstop with Pittsburgh and Brooklyn from 1924 to 1933. “It was before the opening game […]

From SABR member Warren Corbett at The Hardball Times on February 20, 2014: The Yankees made them do it. That’s the time-honored explanation for the American League’s decision to move the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City in 1954. After strong-arming the rest of the league to install a friendly, compliant owner in Kansas City, the […]

SABR members Dick Rosen, working with the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society (and an organizer of the 2013 SABR convention), and Norman Macht (author of two published volumes on Connie Mack) both took part in “Connie Mack Day” on September 14 and 15 in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. The town took the weekend to celebrate the 150th […]