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The pregame ceremonies before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series included a giant American flag in center field and President George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch. (Courtesy of Scott Pitoniak)   At Yankee Stadium over the weekend of September 7-9, 2001, the Yankees had swept the visiting Boston Red Sox. Boston was […]

The use of nicknames in baseball has diminished greatly since the heyday of the practice in the first half of this century. Sacramento ball clubs shared in this rich American tradition. where telling honesty required a heavyset guy like George Lial to be called “Tubby” and another with a lousy disposition on the mound, “Grumpy” […]

Willie Mays played in more regular-season games in center field than anyone else in major-league baseball history (2,832). He also played 83 games at first base, 12 in right field, 2 in left field, 2 at shortstop, and 1 at third base. This article presents the positions in order by when Mays made his first regular-season […]

The .400 club is a select company to which no new member has been admitted for more than half a century. Even the casual fan knows that Ted Williams was the last player to bat over .400. The year was 1941, and Williams, who refused to sit out a season ending doubleheader to protect his […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

Four members of the 1935 Detroit Tigers were later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Three of them were among the finest players of their era, while the fourth was a very good player whose election was the subject of debate. All were instrumental in the Tigers’ winning the 1935 championship, their first.Four members […]

Nearly 300 no-hitters have been thrown in the major leagues since 1876, but none of them have been thrown by a San Diego Padre. The closest any Padres pitcher has come to pitching immortality since San Diego joined the National League was on July 18, 1972, when Steve Arlin pitched 8⅔ hitless innings against the […]

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 […]

In order for a baseball team to achieve its ultimate objective (winning the World Series), it must first, during the regular season, win the most games in its division (or, since 1994, have the best winning percentage among the second-place teams) and thereby proceed to postseason play. Moreover, the absolutely essential component for winning the […]

The Yankees traveled to Florida for spring training in 1947 seeking their first American League pennant in four years.The spring of 1947 was one that saw the three New York area baseball clubs range far and wide geographically. The New York Giants held their spring training in faraway Phoenix, Arizona—the first major-league club to be […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]