Search Results

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

John Galbreath, left, and his fellow Pittsburgh Pirate coowners, Frank McKinney and Thomas Johnson, shown in 1959, were adamant that minor-league baseball had to be stabilized. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Prior to the complete overhaul in 2020, the biggest shakeup of the minor-league baseball structure came in 1963 with the introduction of the Player Development Plan. […]

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 […]

The result of the prior year’s conflict between the two major circuits ended with the demise of the American Association.1 It was also the death of a favorable two-league balance for all concerned. Specifically, that meant the interleague rivalry both on the diamond and through the turnstiles that previously produced the ballplayers’ edge in the […]

In 1912, Chicago was under consideration by two upstart baseball leagues. On February 12, John T. Powers’s Columbian League awarded a franchise to Chicago (along with Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, and St. Louis), but the venture failed to materialize due to a lack of money. On April 3, an official announcement was […]

“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 […]

Joe Torre’s frustrating 1975 season was “highlighted” by the July 21 game against the Astros where he grounded into four consecutive double plays. Batting ahead of him was Felix Millan, who had 4 singles, but was wiped out each time Tone hit the ball. For Torre, it was a National League record for grounding into […]

Stan Hack, who spent his entire big-league career (1932 –47) with the Chicago Cubs, was one of baseball’s all-time top leadoff batters.1 In 1931, playing with the Sacramento Solons, he compiled a .352 batting average and earned the nickname “Smiling Stan.” As Edward Burns wrote in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, “No matter how hard […]

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: used in logic to describe the fallacy of thinking that a happening which follows another must be its result.” — Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)1 By long-standing consensus, a 21-year-old show girl […]

This article was selected as a winner of the 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. Harry Saisho, promoter of the 1921 Sherman Indians tour. (Courtesy of Jesse Loving, Ars Longa Art Cards)   In the late nineteenth century as the American frontier closed, the myth of the Wild West began. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, dime […]

Sherman Institute, the new federal Indian boarding school at Riverside, California, as it appeared in the popular national Leslie’s Weekly in 1902. (COURTESY OF TOM WILLMAN)   On May 3, 1905, much of California discovered that Native Americans really could play baseball. On that day the team from Sherman Institute, the three-year-old federal Indian boarding […]