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Sandy Koufax shared his baseball insight on the NBC Game of the Week after retiring from the Dodgers. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   When Sandy Koufax retired on November 18, 1966, many people were surprised. Not Buzzie Bavasi–the Dodgers pitcher had told him over the phone the day before. Others within the organization probably had at least […]

R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?” TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?” Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In […]

Charlie Dressen. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   As soon as the last pitch of a baseball season is thrown, owners of major-league franchises and executives in front offices focus on the year ahead. Offseason decisions, even from clubs that have experienced success, occasionally surprise outside observers when prominent players are traded, sold, or released—or when managers and […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   From what he says in his autobiography, A Measure of Independence, John R. Tunis had no particular interest in baseball. He does remember fondly attending baseball games in Boston at the age of ten or eleven, but the impulse to […]

Other than being eaten alive and shot at, Waycross was great. — Hank Aaron (1953)   On March 18, 1953, the Boston Braves did something no club had managed to do since 1903, when the Orioles fled Baltimore to become the New York Highlanders. They moved. To Milwaukee. Among the goods and chattels they brought […]

Fans come from miles around—families in wheezing Model Ts, farmers by horse-drawn wagons, folks of all ages on bicycles and on foot. Down flat, dusty roads past fertile fields of potatoes, melons, and corn ripening fast in the late summer sun. Their destination—the sleepy little town of Parksley, Virginia, hard by the Maryland state line […]

This is a list of all pitchers from 1969 to 2010 who have made an appearance at another position in the field. It is supplemental material to Philippe Cousineau’s article, “Pitchers in the Field: The Use of Pitchers at Other Positions in the Major Leagues, 1969–2009″, in the Fall 2011 Baseball Research Journal.   Date […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   In his wonderfully compact and brilliant Take Time For Paradise, the late Bart Giamatti says, “If baseball is a narrative, an epic of exile and return, a vast, communal poem about separation, loss and the hope for reunion — if […]

Next to a perfect game, the no-hitter may be the most alluring event in baseball, attracting the attention of researchers, historians, and fans alike. Historians are keen to understand every detail related to a no-hitter—easily done for recent games, but not for the games of the nineteenth century. We were told in the movie Field […]

  Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito trying out VR during spring training in 2016. (ARTURO PARDAVILA III / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)   A NEW KIND OF BATTING PRACTICE Mariano Rivera wasn’t always destined to be the greatest closer of all time. He entered the majors as an old rookie at age 25 and took a […]

Very little has been written about Deadball Era umpires who established the foundations of the modern umpiring profession — the implementation of umpire signals, the two-umpire system, and more support from league authorities for umpires. And yet this group of men who umpired during the Deadball Era established the traditions, rules, and procedures by which […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   If you spent most of your formative years in Nebraska, as I did, the major leagues were like a fairy tale. In the late 40’s and early 50’s the closest major league park was in St. Louis. Harry Caray’s voice […]

When I did The Hidden Game of Baseball with John Thorn, I came up with a total player rating involving batting, pitching, base running, and fielding. Some notes on total player rating1: Each player was rated on runs above or below average, with runs turned into wins, using a variable factor based on league data, […]

Entering the postseason, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds were widely considered to be baseball’s best team — but there was still the matter of winning the World Series. The Reds had lost the 1972 World Series and the 1973 NLCS to teams considered their inferior by most observers, and neither Sparky Anderson nor his veteran stars […]

The cover of the second issue of the Fawcett Publication of Jackie Robinson.   A new publication appeared on magazine racks as the first game of the 1949 World Series neared. It had a bright yellow cover with garish red letters at a jaunty angle spelling out Jackie Robinson’s name with a subdued subheading declaring him […]

Old Orioles’ Record for Triples Doubled Up The old Orioles of the 1890’s were one of baseball’s legendary teams. They played their home games in Union Park, Baltimore, one of the larger playing fields in the National League. As a result the Orioles did not hit too many home runs, but they got their share […]

“In the ’80s we had a terrible cocaine problem. Did we have a policy? Did anything happen? No. We have a (steroid) policy.” — Commissioner Bud Selig, July 13, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle Lonnie Smith had batted leadoff in hundreds of major league games, but on September 5, 1985, he was at the top of […]

When Roy Hofheinz took charge of the Astrodome project, he envisioned a venue that would host a broad range of activities. Before moving forward with the project, Hofheinz, a former state representative, judge, mayor, and entrepreneur, had worked with Buckminster Fuller to plan and design an indoor shopping mall that would feature a unique dome […]

Major-league rules have stipulated since 1950 that the home team always bats last. However, as Gary Belleville relates in a recent Baseball Research Journal article, an exception has been added to the rulebook: Starting in 2007, any team that had to relocate a home game to another city would still bat last. … MLB’s revised […]

Nate Colbert set a single-season RBI record in 1972; hardly anyone noticed. Even today – ten years after the fact – few fans and fewer record books are aware of the big right-handed slugger’s accomplishment. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his performance on August 1 of that year – the best single day […]

Every batter has unique psychological approaches, swing mechanics, habits and characteristics. Even so, one thing about hitting is true for every hitter: Every time he walks up to the plate, he has only one tool to work with. In 1920 and 1927, Babe Ruth hit more home runs than every other team in the American […]

After winning three pennants in a row from 1891 to 1893, the Boston Beaneaters were denied a fourth consecutive championship during the 1894 season when the brawling Baltimore Orioles earned their first National League title. The team’s prospects for 1894 were derailed early that January when veteran catcher Charlie Bennett lost both of his legs […]

Shortly after the invasion of Normandy in 1944, cities throughout the United States selected players to appear in the first Esquire All-American Boys Baseball Game in New York. From the time the first Pittsburgh player, Bill Herstek, was selected for the Esquire game in 1944 to the time Glenn Beckert was selected for the Hearst […]

Here is the appendix for Pete Palmer’s article “Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing by Catchers” in the Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal.