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Jackie laughed. “Baseball isn’t all about home runs,” he said. “It’s a team sport. You have to trust the other players as much as you trust yourself.”1   A Big Day For Baseball (2019), written by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Sal Murdocca. (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)   When Jackie Robinson debuted for […]

In my years as a traveling baseball writer, namely 1946 through 1958, I believe I bridged the gap between the yesteryear of hero worship and the modern adversary era. When I came along, writers were just beginning to find warts on athletes’ faces. Now? Heck, they’re apt to see nothing but. Somewhere, of course, there […]

A few days before the 1879 season closed, the Chicago Inter Ocean reported the local White Stockings (who would finish fourth in the National League standings) would probably generate $2,000 to $3,000 profit for the season. Pennant-winning Providence would “make a trifle.” Fifth-place Cincinnati was estimated to lose not less than $8,000. First runner-up Boston […]

Shorty Fuller (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   What is a catch? A player grasps the ball. At some instant the catch is completed. If the player drops the ball before this instant, a catch has not occurred. If he drops the ball after this instant, this does not change the fact of the […]

Seattle Nippon and Keio University in 1914. (Rob Fitts Collection)   INTRODUCTION Between 1890 and 1910, over 100,000 Japanese immigrated to the West Coast of the United States. Many settled in the urban centers of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Within a few years, each of these immigrant communities had thriving baseball clubs. The […]

Historical Backdrop Although the first all-professional baseball organization, the National Association, was established in 1871, only six years after the Civil War, Major League Baseball began with the establishment of the National League in 1876. MLB’s first seven decades took place against of backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings, and MLB was a […]

June 29, 1979, was a night unlike any other at San Diego Stadium. Fans were gnarled in a four-mile-long traffic jam and the start of the game was delayed 36 minutes.1 Gaylord Perry was scheduled to face Houston’s Joaquin Andujar that night. But the capacity crowd of 47,022 was not necessarily there to see baseball.2 […]

The 1984 Winter Meetings in Houston, Texas, took place in the midst of important leadership transitions for both major-league baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Baseball had a new commissioner — Peter Ueberroth, an outsider best known for founding First Travel Corporation and for his role in the highly praised and financially successful […]

  The major league baseball clubs of Cleveland and Cincinnati have much in common. They call the same state home. Both have established a proud tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century, and have enjoyed success and endured failure. They are mid-market teams who can afford to compete when managing resources wisely, but can’t […]

Introduction The most important labor arbitration decision of all time involved baseball, two pitchers and one of the finest labor arbitrators of all time, a true arbitration “superstar.” His 1975 decision in baseball’s Messersmith case still reverberates throughout the multibillion-dollar sports industry. Arbitrator Seitz set the players free. Peter Seitz was a role model for […]

Harry Passon, the Jewish owner of a sporting goods store, played a strategic role in promoting both black and white semi-pro baseball in Philadelphia. (Courtesy of the Passon Family)   Semi-professional baseball, black and white, flourished in Philadelphia in the first half of the twentieth century. Harry Passon (1897–1954), a Jewish owner of Philadelphia’s leading […]

On November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president, ushering in an era of political comity and refreshed vision. Not to be outdone, the major-league owners were busily ushering in their own visionary plans, culminating in the historic Winter Meetings of 1960. On December 7, the final day of the meetings at the Park […]

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 […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Journalism History, Vol. 32, No. 1, Spring 2006.   Had baseball card collecting been popular in the 1920s, fans of the nascent Negro leagues likely would have coveted the cards of Andrew “Rube” Foster, C.I. Taylor, Ed Bolden, and John Blount. Because these men were team owners and […]

As major league baseball grew throughout the late nineteenth century, a limited number of players earned national recognition for their on-the-field prowess. From that small group emerged an even smaller number who also had charisma and became the equivalent of today’s rock stars. Especially noteworthy was Paterson’s Mike “King” Kelly, considered by some to be […]

Jean Faut, a child of the mid-1920s, was destined to become one of two All-American Girls Base Ball League players to earn MVP honors twice.  She noted that during the Depression and the beginning of World War II, there wasn’t much for kids to do in East Greenville, Pennsylvania, except play ball or go swimming […]

For better or worse, leisure and tourism have become big business. In the second half of the twentieth century, the modern concept of spare time evolved greatly. As people became more mobile, they demanded more places to go and things to see. Ballparks that were once shoehorned into old neighborhoods like Flatbush were abandoned in […]

Small-market teams often complain about the unfairness of baseball’s financial structure, contending that teams in large markets have disproportionate access to money to spend on players, giving them an unfair competitive advantage. Big-market teams disagree. But when it comes to the movies, there can be no argument. At the cinema, big-city teams such as the […]

Two seasons ago, I witnessed the Florida Marlins attempt to execute a classic Earl Weaver maneuver. It was the fifth inning of a game in Milwaukee. The Marlins, down 1–0, had runners on first and third with two outs. As the pitcher was winding up for the next batter, I nudged my buddy in the […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 2 (1983). Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century. — Mark Twain . . . social inequality … means that in all the relations that […]

During the 2007 baseball season, Jim Reisler interviewed nine former major-league players about baserunning. Following are transcripts of his interviews with three of them—Tim Raines, one of the game’s leading basestealers; Tommy John, a pitcher; and Butch Wynegar, a catcher.   TIM RAINES With 808 career stolen bases, Tim Raines is one of the top […]

Introduction By contemporary accounts, the 1883 championship season was a grand success, noteworthy for the nationwide baseball boom, establishment of new professional joint-stock clubs, and organization of professional baseball associations. The offseason business meetings prepared professional baseball for an orderly championship season. No doubt this was due to a desire for the established National League […]

Warren Ballpark in Bisbee, Arizona, has hosted baseball games since it first opened in 1909. (Courtesy of Jacob Pomrenke)   Today, the term “Cactus League” refers to an annual rite of spring: affiliated professional baseball’s preseason in Arizona. But MLB’s Cactus League was not the first! In 1910, a league far removed from the slick […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 4, No. 1, in Spring 1985.   THE COURT HOUSE This is that theater the muse loves best. All dramas ever dreamed are acted here. The roles are done in earnest, none in jest. Hero and dupe and villain all appear. Here falsehood skulks […]