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The 1936 Black Panthers. Charlie Culver is the first on the left, sitting. (Jerry Cohen, Ebbets Field Flannels)   The reception that Jackie Robinson received in Montréal is well known. A few years later, the Provincial League became a prime destination for Negro League veterans. Many factors can explain how that came to be, but […]

Since the 1967 season Reading, Pennsylvania, has been the home of the AA minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies.1 Now entering its 55th year, this affiliation between the major league Phillies and the “Reading Phillies” or “R-Phils” (changed a few years ago to the “Reading Fightin’ Phils,” but now commonly referred to as either […]

Frank Ego visits the Japanese lantern outside Dodger Stadium. (Courtesy Kimi Ego.)   For decades, the most intriguing and significant Dodger Stadium structure resided not inside the ballpark itself, but just beyond Parking Lot 6 (formerly parking lot 37) on a hill outside Dodger Stadium. On that hill lies a Japanese garden and, within that […]

“My favorite experience of ’em all – and I’ve seen baseball on all levels – was the Clowns at Crosley. I could swear I could smell the grass growin’ during a light rain. It was intimate. The style of play was nice and loose, the way I learned to play it.” – Moses Hudson, 1993.1 […]

Moses and Welday Walker played with the Toledo club of the American Association in 1884 and thereby became the only recognized Negroes to make the major leagues until Jackie Robinson did it in 1947. But what about the rest of Organized Baseball, the fledgling minor leagues of the 19th Century? Was it just as difficult […]

  Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 2 (1983). Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century. — Mark Twain . . . social inequality … means that in all the relations that […]

Introduction The 1884 professional baseball season demonstrated the nationwide baseball boom then underway.1 It was an exciting time to be a lover of baseball. The 1883 season concluded with most professional clubs in acceptable financial condition, with plans for higher salaries and improved baseball grounds for 1884. Like 1882, the 1884 season offered new associations, […]

The mythical baseball championship of the Northwest was the focal point of sporting interests in the Yukon summer of 1904. Over 400 Alaskan supporters joined the Skagway nine in traveling to Whitehorse on the Queen’s Birthday. The Americans were favored by the gamblers. No doubt one factor was Skagway’s reputation as a lawless point of […]

When tasked with discussing the first game in the history of the Montréal Royals, one must decide which one of the club’s first games he or she believes to be the real one. The conventionally accepted description of the Royals as having been around from 1897 to 1917 and from 1928 to 1960, although not […]