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Jack Allen (Tartleton State University Athletics)   Jack Allen, former head coach at Ranger College and Tarleton State University, is a member of the National Junior College Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame (inducted 1986) and the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame (inducted 2000). Allen served as head coach for 23 years at Ranger […]

The major-league portion of the 1907 winter meetings were held by both leagues on the same days, Tuesday through Thursday, December 10-12. It was the second year they’d met simultaneously. The National League met in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria while the American League met in Chicago. New York was the home of […]

The year 1906 was one of change for minor league baseball in Ohio. The previous season, independent teams from Ohio and western Pennsylvania had joined organized ball as the Class C Ohio Pennsylvania League. By early spring, the unmanageable number of teams was reduced to eight, six of them in Ohio. New Castle was one of […]

One of the best books ever written about baseball was Baseball in Cincinnati, A History, by Harry Ellard, copyrighted in 1907. It is rich in details, anecdotes, human insights, descriptive passages, poems, songs, and excellent photographs of all the leading personalities. It also has an error or two. An example of the latter, which has […]

It could be compared, in a way, to a romance novel — first they hate each other, then they start to learn more about each other to where they like each other, and finally they fall in love and get married. Unlike the two protagonists in this popular style of fiction, though, the National and […]

Between 1951 and 1966, the Chicago White Sox outdrew the Chicago Cubs by a wide margin: 18,966,405 fans to 12,636,867. The White Sox proved the picture of on-field consistency during this period, never finishing below a .500 winning percentage. The Cubs proved nearly as consistent during these 16 years: only once did they finish above […]

The “Astros Better Halves” prepare to play their husbands under the Dome in the 1970s. (PHOTOS COURTESY OF HOUSTON ASTROS)   Although the earliest of American baseball clubs in the mid-1800s were organized as exclusively male social organizations, spectators were soon drawn to their games, and plenty of women were among them. The Knickerbocker Base […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Badger State,” the 2001 SABR convention journal.   Ask a baseball fan, what is the only city that has been the home of two different teams in the American League and two in the National League, all since 1900? Without thinking, many will say New York—which […]

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army built dozens of military forts on the Great Plains. As the railroads pushed westward, settlers soon followed, and the first cities on the western frontier were established. From the earliest days, the playing of base ball was a favorite pastime, first by the soldiers and later by the […]

The SABR 19th Century Committee recently polled its members to determine the top ten players of the pre-1900 era not in the Hall of Fame. Heading the list in a three-way tie were Jimmy Ryan, Harry Stovey, and George Van Haltren. My favorite is Ryan, the great Chicago outfielder. A brief review of his life […]