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In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof wrote about the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “Many players of less status got almost twice as much on other teams. … (Charles Comiskey’s) ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst.” This passage sums up the entire foundation of Asinof’s thesis: Low salaries and […]

It’s accepted wisdom today that the Chicago White Sox, in the final years of the Deadball Era, were on their way to becoming one of the greatest teams in baseball history. Led by Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Collins, and Ray Schalk in the field and Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, and Red Faber on the mound, […]

Jerry Reinsdorf has always wanted to win, both now and then. When the task of organizing the annual faculty-student softball game at Northwestern University School of Law fell upon Reinsdorf, then the law review’s managing editor, the 24-year-old senior wanted to give his side a legitimate shot at victory. Tradition dictated the umpire would be […]

October 11-12, 1899 Great Northern Hotel, Chicago On October 11 and 12, 1899, the Western League held its annual meeting at Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel. After much discussion that was finally settled by a unanimous vote, the circuit chose a new name — the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Though some balked at the […]

SABR members have selected all-star fielding teams for each decade since 1900. Wary of the dangers lurking for the baseball researcher, they have not ventured into the poorly charted territory of the 19th century. But the urge to explore is irresistible to those willing to rush in where wise men fear to tread. The selections […]

Although few of their fans realize it, the Chicago White Sox were once a minor league club. In fact, they had one of the finest lower echelon teams ever put together in their fledgling year of 1900, possibly the best assembled up to that time. The team that evolved into the White Sox got its […]

Much has been said about the Chicago Nationals’ “stonewall infield” of the 1880’s, both fact and fantasy. With Cap Anson at first base, Fred Pfeffer at second, Tommy Burns at short, and Ed Williamson at third, it was the most celebrated quartet of its day and an unbeatable combination for the Chicago champions of 1885 […]

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s and ’50s was probably the greatest human tragedy of the nineteenth century. After a nearly total failure of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845, followed by successive years of poor harvests, more than a million and a half Irish—nearly 20 percent of the island’s population—died of starvation from 1845 […]

“Even during the depression we could always count on a good crowd when the Saints and Millers played each other,” recalled Oscar Roettger, a pitcher and first baseman for St. Paul during the 1920s and 1930s. “Pay days – that’s what those games were.” The diamond rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul was in its […]

On November 11, 1918, minor-league owners from 40 teams, representing seven leagues, were preparing for a somber discussion about whether baseball would even be played in the 1919 season1 when word came down that the World War had ended. The “war to end all wars” had caused an existential crisis throughout the baseball world. The […]