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Observing the similarity between two celebrated dynasties — the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s and the Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s — is hardly original, and hardly new. But the comparisons between the two teams are worth exploring in some detail. They were a ballclub well-known then and well-remembered today not just for their victories […]

“But then Clyde Sukeforth is an unusual fellow. He is a medium-sized, lithe-limbed chap with the expression of eternal youth in his sharp but regular features. He hails from up in the state of Maine and leads a rugged outdoor life the year round.” — Tommy Holmes1   Clyde Sukeforth shrugged off his importance to […]

IN THE six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]

In the six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]

A star among stars, Jackie Robinson had an excellent batting record in six career All-Star appearances. The influx of Robinson and other African-American stalwarts for the National League helped reverse the course of the series. Prior to integration, the American League won nine of the first 13 contests. Surprisingly, Robinson played in neither the 1947 […]

  Actor Chadwick Boseman portrayed Jackie Robinson in “42: The True Story of An American Legend,” released in 2013.   Jackie Robinson was one of the most complicated men to ever play the game, and so it is no surprise that fictional representations of him largely fail to fully capture this nuanced hero. His is […]

By the spring of 1945, Jackie Robinson was well known to readers of the Kansas City Call, the Black-owned and -operated weekly newspaper that had covered the Kansas City Monarchs thoroughly since the team’s origin in 1920. The Call had reported on Robinson’s exploits as a UCLA football star,1 and even his winning a ping-pong […]

Jackie Robinson’s major-league debut was more than just the first step in righting an historical wrong. It was a crucial event in the history of the American civil rights movement, the importance of which went far beyond the insular world of baseball. Jackie Robinson’s major-league debut was more than just the first step in righting […]

This article was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   A National League players’ strike, instigated by some of the St. Louis Cardinals, against the presence in the league of Jackie Robinson, Negro first baseman, has been averted temporarily and perhaps permanently quashed. That’s the lede of Stanley Woodward’s story in the […]

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” – Jackie Robinson As people and events recede into the mists of the past, people and events that have resonated in our own times become as remote to the next generation as ancient history is to ours, and our task is […]