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Although the last decade of the Steroid Era was associated with an increase in the number of players sustaining productive MLB careers beyond age 32 — including Barry Bonds, who set a single-season record with 73 home runs in 2001 at age 36 — it is not clear that PEDs were actually responsible for this […]

On the morning of May 11, 1953, the fair citizens of Waco, Texas woke up to a muggy day. Many prepared themselves for the beginning of the work week by downing their daily cup of coffee and reading the latest edition of the Waco Tribune–Herald. Sprawled across the front page were reports of intense tornadoes […]

From the beginning of professional baseball in the nineteenth century and continuing through the first decades of the twentieth, Georgia was a popular site for major-league spring training. Between 1871 and 1953, more than 20 major-league baseball franchises from 14 cities held their spring training in the state (see table 1).[fn]In order to prepare these […]

Although he was known as “Mr. Golf,” Fred Corcoran served as agent to Ted Williams and other players. For a time, he and Frank Scott were the only agents working with baseball players. (COURTESY OF JUDY CORCORAN)   Fred Corcoran was the go-to guy in golf circles, starting in the late 1930s. He had successfully […]

Introduction and Context Baseball’s 1943 winter meetings were held in New York City from November 29 to December 3. The minor leagues and the major leagues took care of their business at the New Yorker Hotel, marking the first time in 24 years that both the majors and minors sat down together in New York. […]

1951 Hazard Bombers. From L-R, top row: J. Ravelo, D. Hayling, E. Bobrik, J. Podres. Second row: K. Johnson, R. Coluni, L. Isert, M. Sanders, R. Torres. Third row: M. Macon, Max Smith (team owner). Fourth row: R. Dacko, J. Tondora, J. Chapman, K. Cox, E. Catlett. Bottom row: C, Crook Jr. (batboy), H. Snyder, […]

Baseball is called America’s national pastime, but in Cuba baseball is a way of life. In the late 1890s during the war of independence, baseball unified the Cuban people in opposition to Spaniards, who looked down on the sport and preferred traditional European bullfighting. Sixty years later when Fidel Castro came to power, he knew […]

During the long segregated era between 1887 and 1947, from the year that Moses and Welday Walker played for Toledo of the old American Association until the arrival of Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn, the most visible racial minority in major league baseball, apart from an occasional suspiciously swarthy Cuban, consisted of American Indians. While the […]

1960 San Francisco Giants Goodwill tour program featuring Willie Mays (Robert Fitts Collection)   The San Francisco Giants enjoyed a banner year in 1960. After almost five years of planning by the city’s mayor and Board of Supervisors and two years of problem-plagued construction, the Giants’ new ballpark, Candlestick Park, opened in time for the […]

A group of boys hung over their dorm’s balcony railing, hardly believing that their hero was playing catch in the courtyard below with some of their schoolmates. The tall, rangy man throwing the ball to some of the older students was barely in his twenties, moving with the strong but casual grace common to athletes.1 […]