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Willie Mays hit 22 home runs in extra innings, tops among all major leaguers, and four more than the second batter on the list. When you rank in the top 10 home-run hitters of all time, it’s not surprising that you would also rank high among those who hit home runs in extra innings. As of […]

The White major leagues held their first All-Star Game on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Taking place in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, the game was the brainchild of Chicago’s Mayor Edward Kelly with help from the Chicago Tribune to hype the Fair and spur interest in baseball, whose fortunes had […]

On-Base Performance is very important — it is the absolute prerequisite for the most critical aspect of playing winning baseball — scoring runs. In order for a team to score a run, at least one of its players must get on base. The conventional metric for On Base Performance is On Base Average (OBA), oftentimes called On Base Percentage […]

The World Series is the capstone of each baseball season. It ties up the annual package that was the pennant races, crowning an ultimate champion and providing fans with memories and associations that continue to live: the Called Shot, Al Gionfriddo, Bill Mazeroski. The special events of the World Series have a parallel in the […]

In a scene from the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers”, Chico and Harpo attempt to switch a priceless painting with a copy. After the usual mayhem, the duo turns to exit, stage left. When they open the French doors, there’s a caterwauling of thunder, with lightning and sheets of rain. The pair close the doors, head […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. My interest in the Black Sox Scandal began at summer’s end in 2002, and by the following June, I was sufficiently addicted to the subject that I simply had to visit […]

Rising from the prairie grass, a few miles south of downtown Houston, from the grazing land that only recently, in half-century terms, had been the longtime home to large herds of beef cattle, the brand-new Astrodome now stood boldly on those same plains as a spot-on caricature of every large incoming spaceship depicted in all […]

Prince Edward Island native and H&D League alumnus Vern Handrahan with the Kansas City Athletics in 1966. (Prince Edward Island Sports Hall of Fame)   The Halifax and District (H&D) Baseball League was a postwar offspring of the Second World War when Nova Scotia, and Halifax in particular, served as a major debarkation point for […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley brought his team out west in 1958. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   To Walter O’Malley, Dodger Stadium was never just a building, or a place to sell tickets. It was “a monument to the O’Malleys.”1 As such, he took an almost obsessive interest in its design and construction, from innovations in precast concrete to […]

  Like 9/11, the sinking of the Titanic clings to American memory, slicing across sex, race, age, geographical, and class divides. Generations later, mental snapshots of the disaster develop at the briefest mention. An iceberg on a moonless night. The Law of the Sea: women and children first. The fortunate watching from insufficient lifeboats while […]

Summers in Minnesota are short but wonderfully pleasant. During the short season Minnesotans spend much of their time outside, and baseball has long been an important part of their summer schedule. Even before the inception of statehood in 1858, Minnesota’s residents played and watched baseball. In this volume of The National Pastime you will find […]

Babe Ruth meets Yale baseball player George H.W. Bush in 1948. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   George Herbert Walker Bush began the first year of his term as the 41st President of the United States of America on January 20, 1989. Then, just seventy-three days later (on April 3, 1989), he carried out […]

  Mother’s Day, 1972. Willie Mays had just smacked his 647th home run. For the 35,505 fans braving the rain at Shea Stadium on Mother’s Day in 1972, it signaled that, for a brief moment, the aging Mays could still delight fans. The 5-4 victory for the home team over the San Francisco Giants was […]

Whitey Lockman and Willie Mays made Giants manager Leo Durocher a happy man. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The ties linking superstars and managers follow patterns often beginning as mentee-mentor before changing into relationships of equals, then deference to the player based on his status, and, finally, awkwardness as the star’s skills (but not […]

One of baseball’s most exciting plays comes when a batter unexpectedly drops a bunt down the third base line. The third baseman charges in frantically and, with no margin for error, usually tries to barehand the ball. The batter is tearing down the first base line as fast as his legs will carry him, and […]

With the weather turning crisp in October of 1916, sports fans across North America were looking forward to the World Series. There had been great pennant races in both leagues, and the upcoming battle between Brooklyn and the Boston Red Sox looked like a good one. Though Toronto was still more than sixty years away […]

“Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth.” – Roberto Clemente1 Even at the field, Roberto Clemente took time for the fans. (Les Banos photograph courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   Death comes to us all. It may happen […]

On June 30, 1909 a new era in baseball began with the opening of Forbes Field, Pittsburgh. It was the first decade after the peace agreement between the American and National Leagues. The owners of the ball clubs were in a period of prosperity. They might have simply deposited their profits in their bank vaults, […]

After two years of unlawful contract signings and other roster-jumping shenanigans that produced end­less lawsuits, baseball’s Great Tampering War settled down as the 1903 NL campaign began on Thursday, April 16, in Cincinnati and St. Louis. Though person­al disgust and distrust may not have subsided between all franchise owners, a signed truce between the long­ […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   The city of Louisville has a rich baseball history. Louisville was a charter member of the National League as well as the major league American Association. Pete Browning, perhaps the greatest hitter not in baseball’s Hall of Fame, […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, 1921–22. Back row, left to right: Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James McReynolds, and John H. Clarke. Front row, left to right: William R. Day and Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Willis Van Devanter. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)   […]

As the 1959 Winter Meetings approached, both the nation and baseball were on a roll. For America, the postwar economy was firing on all cylinders. The Space Race against the Soviet Union was on, and a burly, proud nation was confident of ultimate victory. Television ratings toppers like Father Knows Best reflected a culture that […]

George Thomas Seaver and George Herman Ruth shared the same unused first name and the distinction of being the greatest players in the history of their respective New York teams. Shea Stadium opened while Tom Seaver was still in school, so “The House that Seaver Built” was never a suitable sobriquet—but it could have aptly […]