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The Swiss founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, visited the United States on at least three occasions between 1909 and 1925. It is not recorded whether he ever saw a baseball game. He did not mention the sport in his voluminous writings. He did write about his conviction that psychological health is promoted by the […]

(Photograph by Duane Rieder.)   In the immediate aftermath of Roberto Clemente’s New Year’s Eve plane crash while on a mercy mission to Nicaragua, there were calls for him to be inducted by acclamation into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His qualifications were never questioned; he was only the 11th player to reach 3,000 […]

“If there’s a greater day in the history of Tampa Bay, I don’t know what it is,” proclaimed Tampa Bay Devil Rays principal owner Vince Naimoli on March 20, 1995, the day the American League awarded a franchise to the group he headed.1 After many years of city leaders striving to bring a team to […]

Johnny Davis. His teammates called him Cherokee. The Homestead Grays called him Geronimo. In Puerto Rico they called him El Gaucho. In the Pacific Coast League they called him The Big Chief. But by whatever name he was called, he WAS a ballplayer. There was no doubt about that. The big, hard-hitting outfielder demonstrated his […]

In a recent paper entitled “On the Potential of a Chemical Bonds: Possible Effects of Steroids on Home Run Production in Baseball,”1 physicist Roger Tobin develops a systematic analysis showing how performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) taken by an already highly skilled player could produce a dramatic increase in home-run production. Tobin starts by looking statistically at […]

I follow a photographer on Twitter with the handle “Abandoned America,” whose oeuvre includes many asylums, resort hotels and schools, dotting the landscape of the continental US, mapping the ebbs of communities and commerce. It didn’t occur to me until I sat down to write this, though, that I’ve yet to see a ballpark in […]

Preemptive Measures by the Senior League Before the 1902 season ended, the National League presidents met to strategize their approach to the burgeoning American League. The year-old AL already had four teams in National League cities (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, and Chicago) and was threatening a move to the NL stronghold of New York. For […]

The renovation of Yankee Stadium created Monument Park as a permanent home to monuments to Lou Gehrig, Miller Huggins, and Babe Ruth, as well as plaques to general manager Ed Barrow and others that previously sat in fair territory. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)   Here’s a thought exercise: Get a piece of paper and a […]

For a batter or pitcher, the best—or worst—of the “Three True Outcomes” is a home run or a strikeout.1 The rates of the both home runs and strikeouts have increased substantially over the years. To illustrate, let’s compare 1949 and 2019. In the National League in 1949, 42,711 at bats resulted in 935 homers and […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 17 (1997). For a tradition-minded American baseball fan fed up with ear-piercing Diamond Vision entertainment, cavorting cartoon-style mascots, shopping-mall stadia, luxury-box extravagance, inflated beer and parking prices, plastic-grass fields, and spoiled ballplayers, a trip around the Cuban ballpark circuit in mid-Febru­ary — during the […]