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An Ebbets Field of the mind was the only Ebbets Field I ever knew. And Babe Herman played there. If there is such a thing as “a fully matured baseball fan”, I was one when the Dodgers left New York. Unfortunately, I was only nine years old. Trapped in a child’s body, I couldn’t convince […]

Some sportswriters in the 1960s worried that Willie Mays was actually hurting the Giants. One magazine headline asked, “Is Willie really worth $105,000?” (SABR-Rucker Archive)   If we didn’t have proof, we probably wouldn’t believe it. If there hadn’t been hundreds of magazines published in the 1960s about baseball, a large percentage of them containing articles […]

“Death to Flying Things” is one of the all-time great baseball nicknames, routinely included in lists of such things. Indeed, it serves double duty, attributed to two players: Robert Ferguson and John Chapman. Ferguson joined the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn in 1866 and played for various clubs through 1884. He managed clubs into 1887 and […]

The Bambino awaits his at-bat at Braves Field. (Courtesy of Boston Braves Historical Association archives)   Some might be surprised to learn that Babe Ruth hit memorable regular-season home runs at the “Home of the Braves” while wearing the uniform of the New York Yankees as well as in his Boston Braves togs. Popularly referred […]

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 […]

After a 90-loss, ninth-place season in 1966, the Boston Red Sox entered spring training in Winter Haven, Florida, with a new manager and a new outlook.Spring training 1967 was quite different from spring training 1966 for the Boston Red Sox. We can remember 1966 as the year when Earl Wilson was turned away from the […]

Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, LARRY GERLACH remembers watching The Pride of the Yankees when he was seven years old or so. Lou Gehrig’s speech got to him—no surprise there—and he became a baseball fan and a Yankees fan simultaneously. Lincoln was home to a team in the Class A Western League, and Larry’s relatives, […]

This article presents those little known but important men who helped to launch so many players from the sandlots of Los Angeles to baseball stardom.  Southern California has long been fertile ground for major-league talent. Walter Johnson, Jackie Robinson, Bob Lemon, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale, George Brett, Tony Gwynn, and Ozzie Smith all began their […]

Editor’s Note: This is the introduction to SABR’s very first convention journal, produced for the organization’s 14th annual meeting held on July 6-8, 1984 in Providence, Rhode Island.   Tiny Rhode Island (40 miles long, 20 miles wide, population less than a million) has contributed more than its share to baseball lore. The Providence Grays […]

Coming off their fourth National League pennant of the decade and seventh overall, the Boston Beaneaters were not considered a lock for the 1898 championship. Baseball touts and prognosticators were divided as to whether the club was up to a repeat, or if Baltimore, which had upset Boston in the Temple Cup, or New York, […]

Lon Goldstein, who performed for some of baseball’s top managers including Bill McKechnie at Cincinnati in 1943 and ’46, does not hold back praise for Texas diamond legend Jimmy Adair. “Jimmy Adair was thorough and the best manager I ever played for,” Goldstein noted. “He knew the game inside and out and gave a reason […]

Is Henry Aaron a greater player than Willie Mays? Was Joe DiMaggio better than Ted Williams? Those were just two of the tough decisions members of the Society for American Baseball Research were asked to make in a survey of the greatest baseball players born in the different states. Aaron and Mays were matched because […]

The Chicago Cubs’ latest pennant near-miss continues to deny Sammy Sosa, a certain Hall of Famer, an appearance in the World Series. Sammy may yet share the dubious distinction of fellow Cub Ernie Banks, the best-known example of a Hall of Fame player who never played in the World Series. Actually, there have been 31 […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).   Hitting has been on the rise in ba8eball the past decade or so, and there is talk that today’s ball, the Rawlings Rabbit, has more spring than any hare of seasons past. This is shortsighted history. Let me […]

Move over, Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck – the old Browns’ owner was baseball’s first great promoter. And move over George Steinbrenner – Von der Ahe was a meddler supreme.   PERHAPS THE GREATEST DAY of Chris Von der Ahe’s life occurred in the spring of 1882, when he dedicated his new Sportsman’s Park on […]

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 […]

In the 1970s, the very time when players and umpires gained wealth and power, baseball’s field managers’ status declined as they became wretched scapegoats to be sacrificed to the bloodlust of victory-starved fans. True, sacking the manager was a time-honored ploy; whenever rumblings of fan discontent erupted, a manager was bumped off as virgins in […]

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 […]

In an article in the 1994 Baseball Research Journal, Charles Blahous explained a system to determine the probability of various players in various seasons putting together a 56-game hitting streak. I will describe some improvements to Mr. Blahous’s method, which I believe result in probabilities that are more accurate and, in almost all cases, lower […]

Babe Ruth, left, poses with Boston Braves teammates Wally Berger and Hal Lee in 1935. (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   The buildup had been tremendous, and for a few days, at least, the hype seemed completely justified. On April 16, 1935, the Boston Braves hosted the New York Giants in […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness …”  Novelist supreme Charles John Dickens was not a sportswriter and died (1870) 23 years before the 1893 Beaneaters season began, but the opening lines of his 1849 famed epic, A […]