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Professional baseball players and coaches shrug off questions from reporters about the future with responses such as “all our focus is on winning today’s game” or “we’ll worry about the next series when we get there.” The media and fans, however, are mesmerized by historical statistics and records, with particular attention paid to streak records […]

  This essay will explore the subject of racial and economic integration during the period of approximately 1945 through 1965 by studying the subject of Negro League baseball and the African American community of Kansas City, Missouri, as a vehicle for discussing the broader economic and social impact of desegregation. Of special import here is […]

Introduction After what some call the greatest baseball season of all time, the winter meetings of 1908 produced much thunder, especially on the minor-league level, that had implications for the majors. Two minor leagues looking to be ranked almost on the level of the major leagues dominated the minor-league proceedings. Two major issues during the […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989).   Good afternoon, students. I am Professor Hailey, and this is Industrial Organization 162, “Baseball as a Business Enterprise” — which is better known around campus, I understand, as “Bats, Balls, and the Bottom Line.” In 1914 a New York court […]

Keio University with the New York Giants and Chicago White Sox on December 7, 1913. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division)   INTRODUCTION On January 27, 1913, John McGraw of the National League champion New York Giants and Charles Comiskey, owner of the American League Chicago White Sox, announced their plans for a world […]

The Yankees arrive in Japan on October 20, 1955. (Rob Fitts Collection)   On Thursday, October 20, 1955, the New York Yankees and their entourage landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to begin a three-week, 16-game goodwill tour of Japan. There, they were mobbed by kimono-clad young women bearing bouquets, an eager press corps, and a […]

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. Introduction In his December 29, 2005 internet blog, John Thorn, the noted baseball author and SABR member, mentioned that the shotgun that killed Ty Cobb’s father in 1905 had been part […]

Babe Ruth, right, battled fiercely with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and manager Miller Huggins over the years. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   He filled the ballpark with fans who craved to see him hit the long ball. His home runs forever changed the game from scientific baseball to power hitting, and he helped […]

One aspect of amateur baseball that is largely unexplored is the baseball played in our nation’s prisons. Prison games are easily overlooked by historians because few in the general public witnessed these games and they are seldom documented. One exception is the Stillwater State Prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, whose prison newspaper—The Prison Mirror, managed and […]

Early 1950s Japanese publication featuring Jackie Robinson. (Author’s collection)   There was a saying in Japan during the late 1950s: Kamisama, Hotokesama, Inaosama (God, Buddha, Inao). The 19-year-old Kazuhisa Inao was out there on the mound. The kid wasn’t that big, at least not by American standards – about 5-foot-9, 185 pounds. But he was […]