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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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

  In recent decades, rules in several professional sports have been revised with a goal of reducing the length of games or matches. Both pro and college football have changed their timekeeping rules repeatedly to shorten games. In hockey, five-minute overtime periods, often followed by shoot-outs, have become routine in non-playoff games. Tie-breakers are played […]

This article was selected as the winner of the 2017 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. So, turn the key with me and enter Room 509 of the [Hotel Carlos], the most famous place in Chicago that you barely knew existed. — (Kankakee, Illinois) Daily Journal and (Ottawa, Illinois) Daily Times, April 10, 2010 1 The 1932 […]

Back in the mid-1990s, I published Great Baseball Films (Citadel Press), which charts the manner in which the sport has been depicted onscreen from the late 1890s to early 1990s. Twenty years ago as today, even the most obscure films with obvious baseball themes were readily accessible to researchers. However, seeking out films in which […]

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 […]

Who’s the batter? Nowadays, fans attending a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park can just look at the player—his name and assigned number are on the back of his uniform, and his name is displayed prominently on a huge scoreboard. However, a hundred years or so ago, Tigers fans attending a baseball game at Navin […]

Color postcard view of Sherman Institute, c. 1903. (Collection of the author)   On February 21, 1903, a warm and sunny Saturday, the baseball team of the nation’s newest Native American boarding school played its first game. The Sherman Institute was set among citrus groves outside Riverside, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. The […]

As the 1875 baseball season approached, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago White Stockings, was livid. Chicago’s entry in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) had attempted, prior to the end of the 1874 season, to sign their star shortstop, Davy Force, for the next year. Such a move violated the […]

“Most of what I learned about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.” — John Sayles, filmmaker   A ballplayer’s life is rarely if ever finely crafted finish-work carpentry; rather it is almost always rough framing, with all the gaps and gouges exposed to critics and admirers alike. Polishing and puttying and sanding the rough edges […]

The famous city of Philadelphia totes the title the City of Brotherly Love for many reasons. One intention might refer to a friendship between a pitcher and a catcher that would last for 19 years. The catcher was Jimmie “Ace” Wilson, a backstop born and bred in the great state of Pennsylvania. In the fateful […]

With a little luck and considerable pluck, the 1898 Boston Beaneaters were able to overcome injuries to three of their regulars to capture the National League pennant. While injuries would figure in 1899 as well, none matched the far-reaching consequences of the deteriorating mental health of one of the team’s most popular players. During the […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 29 (2000).   Imagine if a young major-league pitcher, like Andy Pettitte of the Yankees, decided, for whatever reason, to become an outfielder in the year 2001. And imagine if he hit over .300 for the next five years, culminating in 2005 by winning […]

(Photograph by Duane Rieder.)   It was fitting that Nelson Cruz received the Roberto Clemente Award in 2022 as the 50th anniversary of Clemente’s untimely passing approached. Both Clemente and Cruz hailed from Caribbean islands, and each used his wealth and status derived from playing major-league baseball to help improve the lives of the less […]

Ebbets Field: Great, Historic, and Memorable Games in Brooklyn’s Lost Ballpark Edited by Gregory H. Wolf Associate Editors: Len Levin, Bill Nowlin, Carl Riechers Publication Date: November 9, 2023 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960819-16-1, $9.99 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-960819-17-8, $39.95 8.5″ x 11″, 416 pages Ebbets Field is one of the most cherished of baseball’s lost ballparks. This […]