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Overture Adrian C. Anson’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt end on February 1, 1898, when Chicago Club president James Hart unceremoniously sacked him without notice. Anson had made his living playing baseball since 1871, had been a member of the Chicago Club since 1876 and, as their captain since 1879, had risen to […]

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 1966 season was the culmination of several good seasons for the Orioles, a pattern that began with the 1960 team and the famous “Kiddie Corps” that made an unexpected great run at the AL pennant. From 1961 through 1965, they finished 3rd, 7th, 4th, 3rd, and 3rd — a solid run after the first […]

  The Washington Post described the so-called significance of the August 12, 2021, matchup between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox played in Dyersville, Iowa—where the movie Field of Dreams was filmed—this way: “Thursday night, 30 years and a pandemic after the release of that movie, the state will host its first […]

This article was originally published in “From McGillicuddy to McGwire,” the 2000 SABR convention journal.   It was 1947, and Branch Rickey had two spring training problems, both of his own making. Bud Holman had one, but it loomed large for him. It took Rickey and Holman a while to find each other, but they […]

Baseball traveled through rough waters beginning in the late 1960s, as it navigated increasing player unrest and the growing power of their union. Court cases, strikes, hearings, lawsuits — it was challenging to follow baseball in this period without a law degree. The off-field headliners — Curt Flood, Bowie Kuhn, Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Charlie […]

1960 San Francisco Giants Goodwill tour program featuring Willie Mays (Robert Fitts Collection)   The San Francisco Giants enjoyed a banner year in 1960. After almost five years of planning by the city’s mayor and Board of Supervisors and two years of problem-plagued construction, the Giants’ new ballpark, Candlestick Park, opened in time for the […]

One hundred years ago on Thursday, September 2, 1880, teams representing two of Boston’s prominent department stores, Jordan Marsh and Company and R. H. White and Company, played a game of baseball at Nantasket Bay on the oceanside of Hull, Massachusetts. This game would have held no historic value and would long since have been […]

Was Burt Shotton the best person to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Jackie Robinson’s historic rookie season? The “People’s Choice” is one person Branch Rickey may not have considered.

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 […]

Introduction and context It is a tale of precedent set and precedent broken. While the combined majors and minors confab would one day be called the winter meetings, minor-league meetings were first actually held in October, so Buffalo was among the first Northeastern cities to host the meetings in December (December 5, to be precise), […]

Though war clouds were gathering, it dropped peacefully out of the sky of Japan, seven years before bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and eleven years before atomic blasts destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It landed softly on the other side of the fence in right center field at a ballpark in Sendai, a city on the […]

Baker Bowl it was a wonderful place! More action probably took place on those Philadelphia grounds than at any other athletic facility in our country. For half a century the place was packed with action. There was major league baseball, championship boxing and wrestling, and professional football — say nothing of such extra-curricular activities as […]

Wilbur Rogan, pictured here second from left in the front row, compiled a 20-3 pitching record for Jamestown in 1932, batting .315 and leading the team in RBIs. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Jamestown, North Dakota, fielded Class D minor-league teams in 1922 and 1923, and again in 1936 and 1937.1 But between those two excursions into […]

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig formed the most feared batting twosome in the history of baseball. Batting third and fourth, they served as the heart of the great Yankee teams that won three World Series between 1927 and 1933. Despite their heroics, Ruth and Gehrig played a different type of baseball, led decidedly different lives, […]

The National League winter meetings of 1897-1898 were conducted during a period of good feeling among club owners, with Cincinnati Reds boss John T. Brush at the height of his influence. The gatherings were highly productive in terms of the adoption of new legislation and policy, although some initiatives, particularly the player-conduct commandments known as […]

Tip O’Neill was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. The opening sentence in the Hall’s online tribute reads: “James Edward ‘Tip’ O’Neill was a sensational hitter who slugged his way to the top of the American baseball ranks during the 1880s.”1 O’Neill was the most valuable batsman on the St. Louis Browns,2 […]

1960 Toronto Maple Leafs team photo. (Courtesy Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)   This is the story of the 1960 Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. It is a story that is worth telling because this team has been adjudged by Bill Weiss and Marshall Wright to be the 87th best minor-league team of […]

Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]

Mary Dobkin at age 77, while speaking to the press about the TV movie “Aunt Mary.” (Historic Images)   Nineteen-seventy-nine was quite a year for Baltimore. The Orioles returned to the World Series for the first time in eight years and one of the city’s most impactful residents got well-deserved national recognition. Her name was […]

Upon the conclusion of the 1889 season, attention in baseball shifted to preparations for the coming war between the owners and players. The Brotherhood, its complaints heard but basically unaddressed, positioned itself for a break with the principals of the National League and the American Association. Although the Association was clearly affected by the events […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   You and I embark on a wondrous journey as we are magically whisked away to a long-ago time and place. We stand on the corner of State and Madison. The familiar iron-facade entrance of Carson, Pirie, Scott’s is behind us […]

The Callaghan sisters, Helen (left) and Margaret. (British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame)   The young women gathered on the grass in Chicago shagged flies and fielded grounders. They played scrub games under the watchful eyes of coaches. Even the practice games were not without incident, as Gladys “Terrie” Davis, a batting star in Toronto’s […]

Excerpted from The Cool of the Evening by Paula Kurman, to be published in the first quarter of 2024 by Rosetta Books.   Dear SABR members, My beloved late husband, Jim Bouton, asked three things of me if I were to outlive him: to make sure his archives were well and safely placed, to donate […]