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Like raging dinosaurs in some prehistoric swamp, the Milwaukee Braves’ Warren Spahn and the San Francisco Giants’ Juan Marichal slugged it out for four hours, 10 minutes, and 16 innings, all through the night of July 2 and into the early minutes of July 3, 1963. Spahn, 42, personified an aging Tyrannosaurus rex defending his […]

The magnificent September sunset offered the perfect backdrop for the final game of a four-game series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals. A cool northerly wind blew. Autumn had arrived, and the postseason was rapidly approaching. Although that breeze provided a momentary chill, the battle on the diamond—along with the sold-out ballpark and deafening […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   Obviously, no history of major league baseball in Chicago could ignore the White Sox or Cubs. So, too, no account of the national pastime in Chicago would be complete if it did not include black baseball. The central role Chicago […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Although this quote is often attributed to Mark Twain, at least one Twain researcher claims […]

When the lively ball era was launched in 1920 there were few players who displayed the combined ability of speed and power. If a player were to accumulate a lot of extra bases it would be with his bat and not his feet. Thus it was automatic that when we thought of extra bases it […]

Pre-game ceremonies for the 2019 Opening Day Series (Courtesy of Shane Barclay, JapanBall.com)   The two-game 2019 “Opening Series” between the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners at the Tokyo Dome served as the eighth time – the fifth in Tokyo – that Major League Baseball opened the season abroad. To prepare for the season opener, […]

The job of a major league baseball player is to help his team win games, for the ultimate purpose of making the playoffs and winning the World Series. Since the early history of major league baseball, pitchers have been credited with wins and losses as official measures of the effectiveness of their pitching. Of course, […]

He was building a coffin. Thirty-one years old, the third youngest of seven children born of immigrant parents, barely five feet five inches tall and very stockily built, he was using the wooden slats from old vegetable crates to prepare a proper resting place for the symbolic remains of the New York Giants, stealing some […]

Walter Johnson. Lefty Grove. Bob Feller. Sandy Koufax. Nolan Ryan. Randy Johnson. Their names are synonymous with “overpowering strikeout pitcher.” Relative to their peers, however, none of them, nor any other pitcher, was as dominant in the “K-Zone” in any single season as Brooklyn’s Dazzy Vance in 1924.

The St. Louis Cardinals were the most successful major-league team during America’s involvement in World War II. Manager Billy Southworth led the Redbirds to three consecutive pennants and two World Series championships from 1942 through 1944, and to a second-place finish in 1945. Although they benefited from a remarkable level of continuity, especially among their […]