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Ford Frick, president of the National League in 1947, is not the first person who comes to mind concerning Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball, though he deserves more consideration than he has been given. While no other individual rivals the role played by Branch Rickey in breaking the game’s color barrier, other than […]

April 6, 1987, was a slow news day. President Reagan spoke to the Canadian Parliament, hardly a reason to stop the presses. Republican former quarterback Jack Kemp announced his candidacy to succeed Reagan in 1988. The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 2,400 for the first time. It was Opening Day for 16 of the 26 […]

No one can doubt the immense courage shown by Jackie Robinson when he took his position at first base at Ebbets Field on Tuesday afternoon, April 15, 1947. The first play of the game was a groundball to third base, a throw across the diamond to Robinson at first base, and the first putout of […]

Baseball is great theatre. Indeed, baseball stories have been fodder for Hollywood since the era of silent films, both dramatic and comedic. But baseball biographies in movies and TV-movies often sacrifice facts to move the story forward at a watchable pace, increase drama, or provide comic relief. For a sport whose patrons guard its history […]

The year 1947 was a banner one for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the same time as the newly desegregated Dodgers seized the National League pennant, the team expanded its appeal to a demographic not traditionally served by organized baseball. It was also a banner year for the advertising industry. With the abatement of wartime shortages, […]

Bent for Blood at Ebbets Field Do you remember when a gun for hire almost shot Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field from behind the dugout on the first-base line? Of course, you do. How could you forget a moment like that? Everybody was there: Dixie Walker, Ralph Branca, Clyde Sukeforth, Eddie Stanky, Pee Wee Reese, […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   Those of us who discovered baseball during our formative years in the 1950s confronted a paradox which our youthful minds could not quite appreciate. We knew of Jackie Robinson and his heroic efforts to end segregation, and we gloried in […]

Most casual baseball fans are familiar with such well-known movies as the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees, the myth-making twosome of The Natural and Field of Dreams, and the irreverent Bull Durham, but there are numerous films that have been largely forgotten even by diehard baseball and film aficionados. The 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer […]

Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, the shortstop of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, first met the morning of August 28, 1945, in Rickey’s fourth-floor office at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, New York. Clyde Sukeforth, a Brooklyn scout, told Robinson that Rickey was interested in signing the ballplayer […]

Second base. It might not have the pizzazz of shortstop. It also might not have the glamour of third base, which is known as the “hot corner.” Fans don’t normally expect the same power numbers from a second baseman that they see in others who play the infield, like the stereotypical slugger who plays first […]