Search Results

A circa 1912 portrait of Chief Bender probably taken for advertising purposes when he was a sporting goods salesman/consultant at Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. The shotguns in the background have price tags dangling from strings attached to their trigger guards. The gold pendant hanging from a fob on Bender’s waist was given to players by the Athletics’ club for winning the 1911 World Series. […]

The 1912 Ottawa Senators Baseball Team. (City of Ottawa Archives, MG946-3)   In the early decades of the twentieth century, baseball was by far the most popular sport in North America. By 1911 about 400 cities in Canada and the United States had professional baseball. But not Ottawa. Ottawa, pop. 87,000, was reportedly the only city […]

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 […]

When the 2003 Boston Red Sox reported to Fort Myers, Florida, for spring training, state-of-the-art facilities, a battery of instructors, and a full staff of physical-training specialists awaited them. The minor league facility at City of Palms Park, where the team trains before the exhibition season begins, includes eight batting tunnels and sixteen pitcher’s mounds. Every […]

Supreme Court Involvement On November 9, 1953, a month after the close of the season, the US Supreme Court chimed in on major-league baseball for the second time in history. George Earl Toolson, a longtime pitcher in the New York Yankees farm system, sued the team, claiming the reserve clause violated federal antitrust laws. Toolson […]

The National Football League and baseball have enjoyed a close relationship from the beginning. To capitalize on the popularity of baseball, pro football teams have, at times, adopted major league names: Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, New York Yankees, and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Jets picked their name to rhyme with the […]

In 1944, three years before he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson was court-martialed at Fort Hood, Texas. Robinson had volunteered for combat with the segregated 761st Tank Battalion. Although he had signed a waiver for a previous football injury, he was required to undergo extensive medical tests before being transferred […]

The Hollywood Stars baseball club, which was a member of the Pacific Coast League from 1926 to 1935 and again from 1938 to 1957, was “a fun deal” that gave me “the best years of my life,” according to Robert H. Cobb, its last president. The club was truly a civic venture which was both […]

Jeff Bagwell, Mike Bordick, Pie Traynor, Carlton Fisk, Mickey Cochrane, Tino Martinez, Eric Milton, Mark Mulder, Frank Thomas, and Mo Vaughn all have something in common. They are just a few who competed in the Cape Cod League, the premier amateur baseball program in the nation since 1885. In 2002 there were over 180 former […]

Introduction and Context Once again the American and National Leagues met in New York City, December 7 to 9, 1925. The stormy drama that engulfed the winter meeting proceedings in 1924 gave way to clear skies this winter, and it was expected to be business as usual based on last year’s understood agreements. Hence the […]

The 1946 season had been a deep disappointment for the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians. Hopes had been high for both organizations. After two dismal war years when NY finished third and fourth in 1944 and 1945, the Yankees were looking forward to securing their normal perch on top of the AL pack, […]

“Something about Canada seemed to agree with him … on an intriguing psychological level. He spent years telling people all sorts of odd fibs about his supposed Canadian connections.” — David Giddens, CBC Sports1   In support of the Canadian war effort, Ruth flew to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 1942 to take […]

The more Hall of Famers a team owns, the more championships it wins, right? Research suggests a far different picture. For one thing, those Famers may be finished.   ALTHOUGH MUCH IS WRITTEN about Hall of Fame players, little is written about the teams they have played on together. Fans who know the answer to […]

My home town of Virginia, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range, is best known for its iron ore and as the home of the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company, for a time the largest white pine sawmill in the world. Sadly, growing up I had no knowledge of Virginia’s rich baseball past. It was […]

Probably almost everyone has heard of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) thanks to the movie A League of Their Own. Of course, the film did not deal with other professional leagues or an international girls’ baseball league. The idea for an international league was first proposed by Arthur Meyerhoff, a Philip K. Wrigley […]

The time was shortly after 7 AM. The place was a stretch of seashore on the Normandy coast of France designated Omaha Beach. The date was June 6, 1944. Less than sixty minutes had passed since H-Hour, when the first wave of men from the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, the only […]

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 […]

The year 2022 marked the official 150th anniversary of Japanese baseball. Tradition states that Horace Wilson, a baseball fanatic from Gorham, Maine, introduced the game in 1872 to his students at Daiichi Daigaku (renamed Kaisei Gakko the following year). Since that time, the United States and Japan’s shared love of baseball has spawned thousands of […]

The year 2022 marks the official 150th anniversary of Japanese baseball. Tradition states that Horace Wilson, a baseball fanatic from Gorham, Maine, introduced the game in 1872 to his students at Daiichi Daigaku (renamed Kaisei Gakko the following year). Since that time, the United States and Japan’s shared love of baseball has spawned thousands of […]

Chicago is a city of icons. A hotbed of popular culture, the Windy City owns a curriculum vitae rarely paralleled concerning characters, real and fictional, responsible for defining the American experience. Al Capone rose to kingpin status in Chicago’s underworld during Prohibition in the 1920s. His was a household name, a celebrity status recognizable nearly […]

Referral to the glossary of statistical terms in the first edition (1989) of Total Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer allows one to easily find not only the meaning and utility of numerous baseball statistics but also the persons credited with inventing them.1 For example: Assist average. Assists divided by games played. Stat created […]

  Red Springs, North Carolina, was a unique place for a 1960s minor-league baseball team. It is a small town of approximately 3,000 people in historically impoverished Robeson County, in the southeast part of the state. Robeson County, a unique place itself, is the homeland of the Lumbee Tribe, the largest tribe east of the […]

Early days with the Montreal Royals. March 6, 1946. (Courtesy of Rachel Robinson and the Estate of Jackie Robinson)   On Tuesday, October 23, 1945, 15 of Montreal’s sportswriters and broadcasters were invited to a press conference at the home of the Montreal Royals, Delorimier Stadium, and were promised “a major announcement.” The Triple-A International […]

Carlos Bernier was 26 years old when he broke the Pittsburgh Pirates’ color line on April 22, 1953, nearly one year before Curt Roberts played his first game with the Pirates.1 The controversial and temperamental outfielder was one of two Bucs, with Lino Donoso, a Cuban pitcher, who encouraged Roberto Clemente to refrain from emotional […]