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On June 30, 1909 a new era in baseball began with the opening of Forbes Field, Pittsburgh. It was the first decade after the peace agreement between the American and National Leagues. The owners of the ball clubs were in a period of prosperity. They might have simply deposited their profits in their bank vaults, […]

By 1942 World War II was already impacting the Philadelphia Phillies’ spring training activities as they prepared for the regular season in the soft sands of Miami Beach, Florida. Air corps stunts were observed above Flamingo Park; the players inspected fighters and bombers at a nearby base; and manager Hans Lobert, who had run the […]

It’s the top of the 10th inning, and there is one out in this hotly contested All-Star Game. A runner is on third by way of the triple, another on first via the intentional walk, but now the pitcher has this batter on the ropes with a 2–2 count. The crowd is evenly split between […]

In 1946, the West Coast Negro Baseball League was organized to exhibit black baseball to the Pacific region. The teams includ­ed the Portland Rosebuds (owned by Jesse Owens), Oakland Larks, San Diego Tigers, Los Angeles White Sox, San Francisco Sea Lions, and Seattle Steelheads. The ”Steelies,” named after the salmon runs, were actually the Harlem […]

It started with a radio broadcast and a baseball glove. In late 1946 my father, my pregnant mother, and I lived in Chicago with my grandparents. World War II over and business picking up, my father decided to request – actually, I was told later, it was more a demand – a transfer to his […]

December 1933 in Philadelphia was a time of anxiety and anticipation. In the city, as in the rest of the country, there was a sense of hope as the measures of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal started to have an effect on the worst of the Great Depression. Money became a bit more available, jobs opened […]

By consensus, it has been deemed that the Negro Leagues died in 1948. The last Negro League World Series was played that year. SABR’s book on the 1948 Homestead Grays and Birmingham Black Barons was titled A Bittersweet Goodbye. Seamheads, an authority on Negro Leagues history, does not go beyond 1948. When Retrosheet began doing […]

When the first black All-Star Game was played in 1933, shortly after the first white classic, Satchel Paige came in third in the vote of the fans for starting pitcher. The top vote-getter, and thus honored with starting the first game, was a stocky little lefthanded spitballer who still lives in Pittsburgh – Sam Streeter, […]

A number of apparently pennant-bound teams have collapsed in the closing weeks of a season, most recently the 1978 Red Sox, but the most dramatic nosedive in recent decades was that of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies. By losing ten straight games in the season’s final two weeks, Gene Mauch’s Phils blew a 6½-game lead and […]

Introduction and Context In 1938, the major leagues returned to New York City for the winter meetings, while the minor leagues held their meetings in New Orleans for the first time since 1916. The minor leagues sought to promote uniformity, and with the nation’s economy beginning to emerge from the Great Depression, several minor leagues […]