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BACKGROUND In 2008 the Fresno State Bulldogs beat the heavily favored Georgia Bulldogs in the NCAA College Baseball World Series. That Fresno State squad finished with a 47–31 record, the most losses ever for an NCAA baseball champion. The Bulldogs were the fourth seed in their regional with Long Beach State as the top seed. […]

The excitement was electric, as crowds filled Yankee Stadium to capacity on October 10, 1923. For the third consecutive year, the Fall Classic was an all-New York affair, pitting the dominant National League Giants against the upstart Yankees, representing the American League. The latter fittingly christened their magnificent new ballyard in the Bronx by going […]

Even though Minneapolis had been home to a professional club for most of the previous 20 years, it would not be until 1896 that it won its first pennant. The closest any club had been to a flag was in the 1890 Western Association, when Minneapolis finished a game back of Kansas City. After not […]

Introduction and Context Baseball’s 1943 winter meetings were held in New York City from November 29 to December 3. The minor leagues and the major leagues took care of their business at the New Yorker Hotel, marking the first time in 24 years that both the majors and minors sat down together in New York. […]

When the movers and shakers of the baseball world descended on the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas for the 2008 Winter Meetings, the sport and the country faced economic uncertainty not witnessed since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic downturn that became known as the Financial Crisis or the Great Recession began rumbling […]

    In August 2022, the Williamsport Crosscutters plan to commemorate Dave Bresnahan’s trick by renaming the team for a night and selling Great Potato Caper collectibles, including the shirt shown here. (Courtesy of the Williamsport Crosscutters)   Roger Bresnahan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945 for his achievements as a […]

Haskell Institute baseball team, ca.1910. (Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University)   The idleness and rhythm of baseball were a spring rite at the federally-operated Indian boarding schools of the late nineteenth century. Played passionately by the students on fields carved out of forests, the schools used baseball as another tool to impose […]

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 […]

There is beauty in finding that beneath a complex system, one so large and entrenched that it seems to operate under its own power, there is a history that is quite human. The work of a person, perhaps a small band of people, fueled by energy and sweat equity, and perhaps a dollop of obsessiveness, […]

PREFACE By Tom Larwin This article is a summary of observations from seven individuals who watched a ball game in an unusual way: We watched the umpires—the umpires only—and not the players. Our observations and resulting viewpoints were augmented the following day in an informal meeting with two of the umpires, who discussed certain aspects […]

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)   […]

Current defensive statistics are far less meaningful than batting or fielding  statistics,  mostly because  the  correct  information  is  not  collected. Statistics that do exist tend either to be not revealing or incredibly complex. I propose the collection of a single new piece of information that I think might change popular understandings of defense and allow […]

After their on-field exploits of 1961, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were sought by film producer Tom Naud for a Hollywood feature. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Occasionally, baseball films spotlight sequences or storylines that are Florida-centric. Not surprisingly, they primarily are linked to spring training—and some even have real-world connections. Slide, Kelly, […]

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 […]

The 1976 renovation of Yankee Stadium removed the columns that obstructed views on the lower decks and the seats in center field that obstructed batters, but it also relegated the recognizable frieze to above the outfield wall. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In the spring of 1976, the Yankees celebrated a grand reopening of Yankee Stadium.1 It […]

Unlike major leaguers from the Bambino to Turkey Mike, Roberto Clemente never forged a career on the silver screen. But his one celluloid connection is worth probing because of his legend—and because it is a textbook example of the manner in which simple anecdotes and truths of any kind may be twisted beyond recognition. The […]

1998 New York Yankees (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Baseball is unique in that its postseason has existed for over 110 years, enough time for teams to have many ups and many downs. This produces a vast trove of data with which to examine franchise success and failure. The history is deep enough […]

Choices … Decisions: A player has already connected for one double, one triple, and one homer in the game and needs only a simple single in his next plate appearance to achieve the cherished cycle—one of baseball’s rarest accomplishments and one that will inscribe his name permanently in the record books. If he comes through […]

In the fall of 1944, Jackie Robinson’s life was at a crossroads. A few days after Thanksgiving, he was honorably discharged from the US Army, where he’d made headlines for refusing to move to the back of a military bus. Dismissed from his barracks at Fort Hood, Texas, he found himself with no job, no […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

Dodger Stadium has been home to the Los Angeles Dodgers since 1962 (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Dodgers)   Baseball is at one and the same time an idyllic game for children and a gravely serious business for adults. A sport that can be played on a pastoral commons requires, in the world of commerce, […]