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This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1). When a team of Japanese collegians defeated their American counterparts to claim the 1984 Olympic gold medal for baseball, stunned American fans realized what the Japanese have felt for years: Baseball is as truly theirs as ours. Japan’s […]
A crowd heads toward Braves Field. The ticket and administration building (shown at left) still stands and today serves as the headquarters for the Boston University police. Note the trolley tracks in the foreground, indicating the path of transit vehicles exiting from within the ballpark itself. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) The best stories […]
Baseball aficionados often argue that certain records will never be broken. A classic example is Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive-games-played streak. However, for the most part, the arguments given to support an assertion that a particular record will never be broken are subjective and not analytically rigorous. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine […]
The Union Association of 1884 can seem puzzling. It is classified as a major league, yet it lasted but one season, with a low level of play, absurdly poor competitive balance within that low level, and an odd selection of cities, several of them changing over the course of the season. Some people question its […]
On the afternoon of Saturday, December 14, 1996, a 700-foot, 70,000-ton bulk cargo ship, fully loaded with grain, lost engine power and glided ominously toward a shopping mall along New Orleans’ Mississippi River. Acting quickly, the cool-headed pilot dropped his anchors in an attempt to slow the massive vessel and blasted the emergency horn. As […]
Baseball leagues flourished in American shipyards during World War I as legions of workers built warships and troop transports to safeguard the Atlantic sea lanes and carry men and materiel to Europe. Among the best of these circuits was the Delaware River Shipbuilding League of 1918. Centered in Philadelphia, it represented eight shipyards operating along […]
He was known as “The Tall Tactician” and was baseball’s grand old gentleman for more than a generation. Statuesque, stately, and slim, he clutched a rolled-up scorecard as he sat or stood ramrod straight in the dugout, attired in a business suit rather than a uniform, a derby or bowler in place of a baseball […]
For more than 40 years I have exhaustively researched marathon games by time and by innings played at all levels of professional and amateur baseball. Last year the Baseball Research Journal published part of that research: marathons lasting 20 or more innings. Continuing that effort, I now present the research on games lasting six hours or […]
The last official game of the 1871 National Association season took place on Monday, October 30, at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn, New York. The Chicago White Stockings, temporary nomads since the destruction of their home park in the Great Chicago Fire three weeks earlier, were the nominal “home team” on the occasion, but it […]
Most baseball fans are familiar with historian Jacques Barzun’s famous 1954 quotation, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball,” but they may not know the rest of the sentence: “…the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”1 If […]
Editor’s note: This article, originally published in “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner. Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]
How important is the subject of pitchers’ fielding? Just ask Jim Leyland, manager of the 2006 Detroit Tigers, who lost the World Series. Five errors—four of them throwing errors—committed by four different pitchers, one in every one of the five games of the series, led to seven unearned runs for the opposing St. Louis Cardinals. […]
From the beginning of professional baseball in the nineteenth century and continuing through the first decades of the twentieth, Georgia was a popular site for major-league spring training. Between 1871 and 1953, more than 20 major-league baseball franchises from 14 cities held their spring training in the state (see table 1).[fn]In order to prepare these […]
When Negro National League officials agreed to close operations for 1932 due to the hard realities of the Great Depression, the usually minor Negro Southern League and the newly created East-West Colored League became black baseball’s “major leagues.” Low attendance figures, disillusionment with the National League collapse, doubts about the ability of the leagues to […]
A Kekionga Base Ball Club collectible card from 1871. (SABR-Rucker Archive) The National Association of Professional Baseball players was formed in 1871 in New York City leading to the first all-professional baseball organization. While many of the founding clubs were no surprise, one addition might raise eyebrows: the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne. Compared to […]
Jim Bouton (right) and John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s Official Historian, sharing the stage at SABR’s 47th annual convention in New York City in 2017. (Photo: Jacob Pomrenke) In the fall of 1976, CBS Television premiered the television series Ball Four, based upon the 1970 book by former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton, a best-seller […]
On the morning of May 11, 1953, the fair citizens of Waco, Texas woke up to a muggy day. Many prepared themselves for the beginning of the work week by downing their daily cup of coffee and reading the latest edition of the Waco Tribune–Herald. Sprawled across the front page were reports of intense tornadoes […]
AN AMERICAN LEAGUE BIRTHDAY On January 10, 1918, The Sporting News published an article tucked away on page five celebrating the American League’s birthday. “If you are a believer in the Darwinian theory of evolution, then January 2 should be a day of interest to you for it marks the ‘birth of the American League,’ […]
A no-hitter turns a pitcher into an instant celebrity in the baseball world. Regardless of what he did before or what he does after, he’ll always be a member of an elite group, a fraternal brotherhood that links Cy Young and Nolan Ryan with the likes of Jose Jimenez, Mike Warren, and Bobo Holloman. What […]
This paper examines competitive balance in the free agent era by comparing the old reserve clause system versus the modern collectively bargained system. Baseball’s reserve system began modestly on September 29, 1879, when the National League owners introduced a new rule that would eventually be incorporated into every player contract and would allow each franchise […]