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CY YOUNG’S STRING OF HITLESS INNINGS Several SABR researchers shuddered last season when Dennis Eckersley of the Indians was building his string of hitless innings dangerously close to the 1904 record established by Cy Young. It wasn’t that they disliked Eckersley, who had pitched near perfect ball over a period of 10 days. It was […]

Although the Boston Bees were a weak-hitting second division ball club going nowhere, they caused some surprise around the National League in 1937 when they came North with a pair of “aged” rookie pitchers on their roster, Jim Turner, 32 and Lou Fette, 30. Turner, from Nolesville, Tennessee, toiled for four years in the Piedmont […]

Sir Ray Davies of The Kinks wrote and sang in Over the Edge: “Everybody is a victim of society, Comedy, tragedy, vaudeville, variety, Pantomime players in the grand tradition, Forced into roles that leave them totally driven.”1 The melodic lyric unknowingly described the phenomenon of professional wrestling in the United States. On the amateur level, […]

“Kill him! Kill the umpire!’ shouted someone on the stand; And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.”   Even people not interested in the national pastime are familiar with that homicidal exhortation from Ernest Thayer’s 1888 poem, “Casey at the Bat.” While murderous rhetoric has never become a reality, […]

Four books on the Bronx Bombers.

The Winter Meetings of 1999 were held at the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, California, just down the road from Disneyland. However, “I’m not coming to Anaheim to go to Disneyland,” Reds GM Jim Bowden said, stating that his sole goal for going to the winter meetings was to acquire Ken Griffey Jr.1 Indeed, Griffey was […]

The Hollywood Stars baseball club, which was a member of the Pacific Coast League from 1926 to 1935 and again from 1938 to 1957, was “a fun deal” that gave me “the best years of my life,” according to Robert H. Cobb, its last president. The club was truly a civic venture which was both […]

The search for data on nineteenth-century minor leagues to be used in compiling league records has led to the discovery of stories about the accomplishments of individuals, teams, and even leagues which have long been forgotten, completely overlooked, or in some cases attributed to others. In 1887 Walton Goldsby assembled one of the premier teams […]

The Philadelphia Phillies’ travail during World War II is mind-boggling: Within four seasons their owners, managers, players, and fans came and went.  From 1942 to 1945 the Phillies had three owners, four managers, and 124 new players. New players averaged nearly 31 per year! Attendance doubled in 1943, dropped 100,000 in 1944, and dropped another […]

Baseball is one of the few sports not dictated by a time clock, but its beautiful symmetry is what makes it unique: the ultimate game of equal opportunity. Countless contests in history have extended into extra innings. In some cases, overtime matchups have turned into drawn-out affairs leaving only the most ardent fans waiting for […]