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Sometimes a pitcher and a catcher (battery) come together as a fully charged duo outperforming all other battery combinations for either player. In some cases the result of this pairing has been a full point or more below both the pitcher’s and the catcher’s individual ERA. On the other hand, the battery can fall a […]
Introduction and Context The 2006 baseball Winter Meetings were held in Orlando, Florida, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. The size of the resort — an 87-acre facility featuring two hotels with over 80 meeting rooms and 300,000 square feet of meeting space — matched the big names on the market heading […]
In 1994, Dave Eskenazi traveled to Yoncalla, Oregon, to visit one of the Pacific Coast League’s all-time great pitchers, Harold “Hal” Turpin. As a ninety-first-birthday present, Eskenazi handed Turpin a packet of letters written to him by some of his former Seattle Rainiers teammates.1 A quiet, reserved man who shunned publicity, Turpin was visibly touched […]
One of baseball’s highest-regarded feats is the cycle: “A single, double, triple, and home run (not necessarily in that order) hit by a player in the same game.”1 In the history of major league baseball (1876–2023) there have been 351 documented regular-season cycles, including seven in the Negro Leagues.2 The distribution of the starting defensive […]
When the delegates to the annual convention of the National Association of Base Ball Players gathered at New York’s Grand Central Hotel in December 1870, they didn’t know they were attending the final meeting of the old organization, or that by the following spring the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players would be the […]
Kevin Costner’s place in the Hollywood-baseball paradigm is as evident as a thunderclap during an Iowa rainstorm. In four movies, Costner uses the national pastime as a cornerstone for stories about love and regret. He’s a retired ballplayer hosting a sports radio show and pursuing love with Joan Allen’s character in The Upside of Anger. […]
The 2014 major-league season ended with the San Francisco Giants winning their third World Series in five seasons, beating the Kansas City Royals in a dramatic seven-game series on the shoulders of a staggeringly dominant performance by their 25-year-old southpaw, Madison Bumgarner. The Giants had established themselves as the decade’s model franchise, the Royals emerged […]
One of the most exciting accomplishments in major league baseball is exciting because of its rarity. When a batter hits for the cycle, he gets a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game. From 1876 through the end of the 2017 regular season, there have been only 319 instances of a batter […]
Atlanta’s baseball history is dominated by names such as Hank Aaron, John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, Dale Murphy, and Chipper Jones. The Braves also dominated their division in the 1990s, but that is only a small part of Atlanta’s long and storied baseball history. Anyone can look up the history of the Braves and their players […]
Advertising billed The Great American Pastime as a comedy that would “keep us all in stitches.” Following the Second World War, the baseball genre film enjoyed considerable popularity with Hollywood filmmakers hoping to recapture the commercial success of The Pride of the Yankees (1942). As that film re-told Lou Gehrig’s life story, many of […]
Here is the appendix for Pete Palmer’s article “Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing by Catchers” in the Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal.
Interview with Kevin Gregg conducted by Bill Nowlin on September 8 and 22, 2015. Red Sox Director of Media Relations Kevin Gregg (since 2013) is son of former National League umpire Eric Gregg, who first worked in the majors in 1976 until the umpire strike in 1999. Eric Gregg’s autobiography, Working the Plate, written with […]
In the first years of the American League, its eight clubs added to their ranks by drawing away players from the older National League. Baseball had been slumping, a situation stemming from the country’s economic depression and the failed leadership of team owners. Attempting to snap out if it, the NL magnates had pared down […]
In 2015, I acquired booklets containing scoresheets for all games played by the Québec City team in the 1938 and 1939 Provincial League. Handwritten neatly by somebody who was clearly involved with the team, these booklets contained tons of information, and led me to try to discover as much as I could about the league. […]
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). “In the vast range of baseball novels boys’ books written by men like John Tunis to adult novels written by men like Bernard Malamud, women for the most part have been either complaisant wives or stupid bimbos — or perhaps sexual […]
He was known as “The Tall Tactician” and was baseball’s grand old gentleman for more than a generation. Statuesque, stately, and slim, he clutched a rolled-up scorecard as he sat or stood ramrod straight in the dugout, attired in a business suit rather than a uniform, a derby or bowler in place of a baseball […]
A list of hit sequences for players who completed a cycle during the 1920-2017 period.This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s “‘When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It’: Who Took the Cycle or Quasi-Cycle?” Click here to scroll down for Table A-2: Sequences for Players Who Completed a Quasi-Cycle […]
A recap of the 1935 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs.On the eve of the 1935 World Series, pitting the National League champion Chicago Cubs against the two-time American League champion Detroit Tigers, Mickey Cochrane was asked his thoughts on the outcome. “From what I have seen and heard,” the Detroit […]
Between May 24, 1935 and August 7, 1988, Wrigley Field had hosted 4,193 regular season games, nine World Series games, two League Championship Series games, and three All-Star games, only one of which—a 1943 All American Girls Professional Baseball League contest lit by a small set of portable lamps—was played at night. That all […]
The problem of measuring batting skill is as old as baseball itself. The earliest statisticians were content to count the hits and runs scored by each batter, but the unfairness of this simple method to the stars of weak teams soon prompted invention of the batting average. Since then statistics have proliferated to the point […]
“The main quality a great third base coach must have is a fast runner.” — Rocky Bridges, California Angels coach “It’s frustrating. Your job is not to get in the way of a rally.” — Rich Donnelly, Dodgers third base coach after Game One of the 2006 NLDS Most readers will remember what was […]
The Phillies and their fans hated New York Giants manager John McGraw. This fact must be clearly understood if readers are to truly appreciate the story that follows. Nicknamed “Muggsy” and “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw was an easy man to detest. Sportswriter Grantland Rice observed, “There were many who hated John McGraw and to many […]
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988). This past February, the city of Chicago finally yielded to massive pressure from the Commissioner’s office and the Tribune company and decided to put lights in Wrigley Field. The City Council tried to mask the significance of the move by […]
The baseball season of 1868 ended with the National Association crown changing hands twice in the final month. The 1867 champs, the Unions of Morrisania, maintained their status for most of the season, thanks to playing weaker Eastern clubs during the early months and then taking an extensive Western tour in July and August. When […]