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The dominant characteristics of the Texas Rangers’ early history were inept management, pitiful baseball, and terrible attendance. The team proved incapable of coming up with a workable plan and sticking with it. This premise was stated well by a presumably neutral observer, veteran Chicago sports columnist Bernie Lincicome: “Texas has been a franchise governed by […]

“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 […]

It is one of the most widely reproduced photographs in baseball history and probably the best known of all baseball pictures from the opening of the twentieth century. The picture is especially relevant in 2003 because it was taken one hundred years ago on October 3, 1903. The site is the Huntington Avenue Base Ball […]

It was an event The Sporting News said featured “Paul Bunyan hospitality.”1 Bringing nearly 1,200 visitors to the North Star state, the 48th annual gathering of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues was held in Minneapolis December 8-10, 1948. Prior to the convention, Charles Johnson, sports editor at the Minneapolis Tribune, wrote in his […]

Baseball fans love statistics. For more than a century, folks have talked about baseball numbers of all sorts around the water cooler and the hot stove, in the box seats and the bleachers, and, more recently, on call-in radio shows and the Internet. Batter numbers, pitcher numbers, and manager numbers have provoked discussions and arguments. […]

My first exposure to International League baseball came in Baltimore in 1944 when I was only 7 years old. It was a pennant year for Baltimore. And my dad (early in the season) took me out to old Oriole Park to see the beloved Birds. The hated Syracuse Chiefs provided the opposition in this my […]

In 1971, the year SABR was founded, the analysis of baseball statistics was still in its infancy, and computers were in the hands of few. Sabermetrics developed alongside the information age, with personal  computers enabling those who did not work where computers were easily  available to develop their algorithms and analyze data at home. In […]

The Hagerstown Hubs, the 1920 Class D Blue Ridge Champions, featured two pitchers from the 1916 Class D Potomac League, Charles Dye (second from left), star pitcher for the Cumberland Colts, and Tommy Verecker (behind seated boy), who starred for the Piedmont Drybugs. Verecker also pitched one game in the Federal League in 1914. (AUTHOR’S […]

“Something about Canada seemed to agree with him … on an intriguing psychological level. He spent years telling people all sorts of odd fibs about his supposed Canadian connections.” — David Giddens, CBC Sports1   In support of the Canadian war effort, Ruth flew to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 1942 to take […]

Walter Johnson Wasn’t That Wild When Phil Niekro, the Braves’ ace knuckleball pitcher, mad four wild pitches in the sixth inning of the second game at Houston on August 4, 1979, he set a new modern major league record. The baseball record books also list Walter Johnson with four wild pitches in the fourth inning […]

Carlos Bernier was 26 years old when he broke the Pittsburgh Pirates’ color line on April 22, 1953, nearly one year before Curt Roberts played his first game with the Pirates.1 The controversial and temperamental outfielder was one of two Bucs, with Lino Donoso, a Cuban pitcher, who encouraged Roberto Clemente to refrain from emotional […]

  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 […]

Major league baseball relies on a steady infusion of fresh talent in order to retain its vitality and popularity. Young players of each generation make their mark on the sport and then move on, replaced by the next. The point men of each generation, the very first to reach the major leagues, have often carried […]

The Yankees arrive in Japan on October 20, 1955. (Rob Fitts Collection)   On Thursday, October 20, 1955, the New York Yankees and their entourage landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to begin a three-week, 16-game goodwill tour of Japan. There, they were mobbed by kimono-clad young women bearing bouquets, an eager press corps, and a […]

In anticipation of hosting SABR 40, the Magnolia Chapter has selected an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team. Any major-league player born in the state of Georgia was theoretically eligible; no residency requirement was stipulated. In order to make the process more efficient, the author screened the master list of players to eliminate most “cup of coffee” […]

Roland Hemond joined the Los Angeles Angels’ on the ground floor in 1961, remaining with the Halos until 1970. Here is Hemond in 1961 with prospects Dan Ardell (l) and Tom Satriano (Courtesy of Angels Baseball)   Responding to six decades of demographic change, the National and American leagues moved to expand as the 1960s […]

For 21 years Theodore Amar Lyons pitched for the Chicago White Sox, endearing himself as no other player to South Side fans. He was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1955. Yet for all of his honors, two major aspects of Lyons’ career have never been properly assessed: the superiority of his own record […]

On July 8, 1949, the New York Giants became the fourth major-league team to put a black player on the field when Hank Thompson started at second base and Monte Irvin pinch-hit in the eighth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers. All of the five black players who would play in the […]

In 1958, three years before a major-league expansion team took the field for the first time, Milwaukee Braves owner Lou Perini, one of the lone voices in baseball’s hierarchy pushing for extending into other regions of the country, complained, “Baseball men have always been averse to changes. … They simply can’t continue to sit back […]

Forty years ago, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) took a step to provide long overdue recognition for the top players in minor-league baseball history. SABR surveyed its members in 1983 to select the top 10 minor leaguers of all time. The next year, a review committee revised the plan by expanding the list […]

William Shuttleworth and Harry Sweetman of the Maple Leaf Baseball Club of Hamilton, 1860. (Toronto Globe, August 15, 1903)   After quietly resting in the backroom of Canadian sports history for over a century, William Shuttleworth is now fully recognized for his role in establishing the country’s first formal team, the Young Canadians (later Maple […]

  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 […]

Can there be a star quality team without any All­ Stars? Can a team compiled entirely of All-Stars be mediocre? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes, at least theoretically. Kirk Gibson won an MVP Award but was never named to a single All-Star roster during bis entire career. John Denny won the […]

The 1959 Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant despite a league-average offense. Under manager Al Lopez, the “Go-Go” Sox combined speed, fielding, and—especially—pitching to shatter the New York Yankees’ four-year run of AL championships. The 1959 pitching staff was anchored by starters Early Wynn (age 39), Billy Pierce (32), and Dick Donovan (31). […]