Search Results

  Chocolatier William Klein Sr. of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, had a problem. The year was 1918. Soldiers were returning from the war in Europe. Klein was looking to expand to a national market for his “Lunch Bar,” a three-cent candy bar that was in direct competition with the chocolate bars produced by Milton Hershey at his […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 29 (2000).   Imagine if a young major-league pitcher, like Andy Pettitte of the Yankees, decided, for whatever reason, to become an outfielder in the year 2001. And imagine if he hit over .300 for the next five years, culminating in 2005 by winning […]

1908 Reach All-Americans with Mike Fisher (Rob Fitts Collection)   The “King of Baseball” was on the prowl for a new opportunity. Mike Fisher, known by everybody as Mique, was a bom promoter and bom self-promoter. He was a risk taker, tackling daunting projects with enthusiasm and usually succeeding. He was the quintessential late-nineteenth-century American […]

In the old days of professional baseball, players fist-fighting on and off the field was not uncommon. Players would scream at each other. Some would tease. Many others were just downright mean. One player in particular earned a nickname that perfectly described his slick dugout demeanor. The handle followed him throughout his days in the […]

The 1927 New York Yankees, featuring Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, et al., are generally considered the greatest team ever to play the game. This superb club won the American League pennant by 19 games, then went on to crush the Pittsburgh Pirates in four straight games. Across the Harlem River that year, John McGraw’s Giants […]

Amidst the current upsurge of social activism among professional athletes, it is worth recalling the enormous contribution of Jim Bouton, one of the most politically outspoken sports figures in American history. Among professional team sports, baseball may be the most conservative and tradition-bound, but throughout its history, rebels and mavericks have emerged to challenge the […]

Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners. (Photo by Dave Wilkie)   Since baseball’s introduction to Japan in 1872, the Japanese game has evolved from being primarily an amateur sport with large fan bases for high-school and collegiate competitions to its teams being ranked tops in the world.1 Throughout the last 150 years, there have been […]

As the 1875 baseball season approached, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago White Stockings, was livid. Chicago’s entry in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) had attempted, prior to the end of the 1874 season, to sign their star shortstop, Davy Force, for the next year. Such a move violated the […]

Individually and collectively, baseball and advertising may be said to hold a mirror up to America. The image in the glass, however, is not always pretty. For the first century of its history, with very few early exceptions, “American” as defined by Organized Baseball, did not extend to those of African descent. As has been […]

Early baseball teams in Minneapolis and St. Paul played in a number of hastily built and short-lived ballparks before settling on a pair that each lasted 60 years, longer than any other park or field used for professional baseball in the Twin Cities.  NICOLLET AND LEXINGTON Opened and closed a year apart, Nicollet Park in […]

Click here to read Part II of this article on Roberto Clemente’s Puerto Rico winter league career. Jim “Junior” Gilliam and Roberto Clemente with Santurce. (Photograph courtesy of Jorge Fidel López Vélez.)   In 1952 Pedrín Zorrilla, a native of Manatí, one of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities and the owner of the Santurce Crabbers, a […]

What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]

The Broadview Buffaloes in front of the Broadview, Saskatchewan, CPR Station, 1937. Back row: Buck Eaton, John Isaacson, Chris Edwards, Dick Webb, Gene Bremer, Mack Sinclair. Front row: Lionel Decuir, Red Boguille, Roy Schappert, Kitchie Bates, Ronnie Bates (manager). (Thora Anderson, Broadview)   Broadview is a Saskatchewan town of fewer than 1,000 people, 90 miles […]

An industrial lot on the eastern edge of downtown Greenville, Texas, covered with heavy equipment, gives no sign of its grand history, except for one feature: a brick and concrete arch still stands with the welded metal inscription “Majors Stadium,” coated with a layer of primer paint, across the top. It takes an excellent imagination […]

The White major leagues held their first All-Star Game on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Taking place in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, the game was the brainchild of Chicago’s Mayor Edward Kelly with help from the Chicago Tribune to hype the Fair and spur interest in baseball, whose fortunes had […]

The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, featured Yankee Stadium transformed into a football field. (20th Century Fox)   “Baseball stadiums are never only about baseball. Their utility is both more dynamic and more poetic.”1 Some landmarks are so burned into our collective mind’s eye that their image tells the story of their […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   “They’re making me feel famous and I love it!” — Chet Laabs in July After suffering through one of the most dismal decades in baseball history in the 1930s, the St. Louis Browns began to turn things around in […]

As the 1867 baseball season drew to a close, the sport was meeting and exceeding the goals that were anticipated by players and journalists alike. The anticipation that the “game of nines” would become the pastime of the United States had been predicted, and even perhaps prematurely proclaimed, for close to a decade. Now, with […]

A quick perusal of the performance of the Boston Braves during the war years of 1942-45 might lead one to conclude that the team’s destiny suffered few, if any, ill effects from the loss of ballplayers to military service.  The Tribe had been mired in the National League’s second division since 1935 and finished in […]

This veteran observer saw his first big league game at old Columbia Park, Philadelphia, in 1904, and saw the Philadelphia Athletics win the game, 3-0, from the Detroit Tigers. It was the season before the immortal Ty Cobb played his first game in Detroit. But I saw Hall of Famer San Crawford and lesser Tigers […]

When General William D. Eckert was elected to the office of baseball commissioner in 1965, Larry Fox of the New York World-Telegram is reported to have been one of the first to utter the phrase, “They’ve named the Unknown Soldier.” But Eckert, a retired three-star Air Force general, was not the first military man elected to […]

Publicity photo issued by Philco. Connie Mack (center) and Boake Carter (right) are shown conducting the interview. Note the television camera and how primitive it is by today’s standards.   Baseball’s relationship with the media can be traced back to the earliest days of the game. It started with newspapers in the nineteenth century, broadened […]