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The baseball fans of the 1930s and 1940s were a special breed, far removed from their counterparts of today. The “colorful” fans of recent years – the sign carriers, the inane and loud-mouthed drunks, the affluent junketeers who follow their teams on a road trip a year – are pale copies of their hardier predecessors. […]

Hilda Chester and her famous cowbell (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The New York Yankees have their Bleacher Creatures. The crosstown Mets had Karl “Sign Man of Shea” Ehrhardt, while “Megaphone Lolly” Hopkins was the super-fan of the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles rooters […]

“No sporting event so decisively enthralls the national consciousness as baseball’s annual October pageant.… There is something heroic about the pitched combat of two teams that are at once survivors and winners, meeting to decide the world championship.” – Donald Honig1 Even though the nature of postseason baseball has changed dramatically over the past 50 […]

In May of 1927, the Model T Ford was in its final year of production. Movies were silent, but would soon learn how to talk. Home radios were becoming so popular that supply could not keep up with demand. Calvin Coolidge was in the White House. In a Europe that seemed far away to most […]

Eddie Waitkus, the Fightin’ Phillies first-sacker, is best remembered not for his 182 hits and .284 average on the 1950 National League pennant-winners and not for any other on-field accomplishment. Instead, his name is inexorably linked to the plight and fate of the central character in an all-time classic baseball novel. One might imagine that […]

The Yankees traveled to Florida for spring training in 1947 seeking their first American League pennant in four years.The spring of 1947 was one that saw the three New York area baseball clubs range far and wide geographically. The New York Giants held their spring training in faraway Phoenix, Arizona—the first major-league club to be […]

Until the Dodgers and Giants come to their senses and return home to New York, Casey Stengel remains the only figure in history to have worn the uniform of these four New York City teams: the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and Mets. The coincidence of this was no small thing to Casey, who died in 1975, […]

Before the 1947 season began, the Yankees hired Dodgers coach Charlie Dressen away from Brooklyn. The incident precipitated such public animosity between the two clubs that Commissioner Happy Chandler was forced to intervene. Among the accusations were several that smacked of gambling. In the end, Chandler suspended Dressen for thirty days and Brooklyn manager Leo […]

The Ron Gabriel Award, given out by SABR’s Casey Stengel Chapter in New York, honors the author(s) of the best research, published or unpublished, on the subject of the Brooklyn Dodgers completed during the preceding calendar year. Eligible works include but are not limited to magazine and journal articles, previously unpublished chapters or articles in […]

Welcome to the Business of Baseball Committee!  The Business of Baseball Committee was founded in 1994 by the late Doug Pappas. Our mission is to study all aspects of baseball administration and off-the-field activity including economic, organizational, labor and legal issues. SABR MLB Team Employee Database: A historical database of Major League Baseball team employees — covering more […]