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This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   When Miller Huggins found he couldn’t own the Cardinals—or at least a good hunk of them—he opted for a job for which he had been recommended by Ban Johnson, the founder of the American League, and endorsed by J. […]

Some History Baseball is a superstitious sport. Players skip over foul lines on the way to the dugout, refuse to change their socks during a hitting streak, and avoid talking to a pitcher while he is hurling a no-hitter. Some superstitions have as their subject not only an individual player but an entire team. For […]

A number of apparently pennant-bound teams have collapsed in the closing weeks of a season, most recently the 1978 Red Sox, but the most dramatic nosedive in recent decades was that of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies. By losing ten straight games in the season’s final two weeks, Gene Mauch’s Phils blew a 6½-game lead and […]

December 1933 in Philadelphia was a time of anxiety and anticipation. In the city, as in the rest of the country, there was a sense of hope as the measures of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal started to have an effect on the worst of the Great Depression. Money became a bit more available, jobs opened […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   You and I embark on a wondrous journey as we are magically whisked away to a long-ago time and place. We stand on the corner of State and Madison. The familiar iron-facade entrance of Carson, Pirie, Scott’s is behind us […]

People of a certain age know where they were when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt died, and Bobby Thomson swung. “The most famous sports moment of all time,” Jon Miller termed Thomson’s October 3, 1951, pennant-winning blast. We still recall the Shot Heard ’Round the World: Russ Hodges five times crying, “The Giants […]

The telegram was brash and a bit disrespectful. Simply stated, it read “DEAR MOOSE: TOLD YOU SO. JOE PEP”. 1 The New York Yankees needed pitching help—specifically a boost to their rotation—following the 1962 season. They set their sights on Stan Williams, a right-handed twirler for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had won 14, 15, […]

Introduction and Context America was engulfed in the Great Depression when the 1932 Winter Meetings arrived, and like everything else, its greatest pastime was affected negatively. For lack of funds, only 16 minor-league circuits completed the 1932 season, down from the 25 that did so three years prior.1 As a result, many baseball players were […]

Pitcher Dick “Turk” Farrell was selected in 1962 to represent the expansion Houston Colt .45s franchise at both All-Star Games. In the expansion draft to fill the rosters of the new clubs in New York and Houston, the Mets elected to go with veterans, while Houston built on youth. Under manager Harry Craft and general […]

Pitcher Faber Walked Seven Times in Row As Batter On July 14, 1915, Urban “Red” Faber of the White Sox defeated the Philadelphia Athletics 6-4 at Chicago. In the fourth inning of that game Faber was hit by a pitched ball by Joe Bush and then stole second, third and home to become one of […]

Connie Mack’s wartime Athletics were coming off a 1941 season in which they finished dead last in the American League, with a record of 64-90, a slight improvement over 1940’s 54-100 mark.  They were six games behind the seventh-place Washington Senators, and the season’s attendance was just 528,894. The A’s had declined rapidly after Mack […]

In the run-up to the 2015 All-Star Game, Kansas City Royals fans caused a stir when early rounds of announced vote totals showed a potential American League lineup dominated by their hometown team. Over the course of the remaining weeks of balloting, other fan bases had time to mobilize and counteract the early trends. Though […]

Calamitous. Catastrophic. Disastrous. None of these adjectives would look the least bit out of place alongside the noun “hurricane.” And yet, a hurricane proved helpful for the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. With Bob “Hurricane” Hazie on the team, the Braves swept the National League pennant and even won the World Series. This was the only Series […]

Jackie Robinson with the Kansas City Monarchs, October 23, 1945 (COURTESY OF RACHEL ROBINSON AND THE ESTATE OF JACKIE ROBINSON)   A brief and often forgotten chapter in the legendary life of Jackie Robinson was the five months he spent as the Negro Leagues batting star for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. This era […]

As a young southpaw, I naturally felt an affinity for major league left-handers. Lefties, by nature, are outsiders. The consensus of sources spanning more than three decades states that only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, making we portsiders indeed a rare breed.1 I, personally, never experienced the forced switching of penmanship meant […]

This appendix accompanies the article “Player Win Averages” written by Pete Palmer and published in the Spring 2016 Baseball Research Journal. To scroll down to pitchers, click here.   Player Win Averages-Batters Player Games PW RW Barry Bonds 2986 120.3 123.2 Henry Aaron 3298 97.2 94.6 Willie Mays 2992 95.7 87.5 Mickey Mantle 2401 92.4 […]

Jaime Jarrin, the Dodgers Hall of Fame Spanish-language broadcaster, tells the story that Walter O’Malley wanted to tap the growing Latino market in Southern California by finding a Mexican Sandy Koufax. O’Malley was not alive to see his dream realized when Fernando Valenzuela broke in with the Dodgers in late 1980.1 Valenzuela’s two wins, one […]

National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues The citizens of Asheville, North Carolina, rolled out the red carpet for the minor-league meetings in 1926. The 25th annual meeting of the National Association was held December 7 to 9, with a record number of executives from both the big leagues and the NAPBL descending upon the Southern […]

If Earl Weaver’s retirement repose is ever disturbed by nightmares, chances are a recurring one bears the dateline: Toronto – June 26, 1978. That night the fledgling Blue Jays, losers of 102 games in their second year of existence, handed Weaver the most humiliating loss of his career. The 24-10 rout also inscribed the late […]

In 1943 the New York Giants, a perennial first division team, finished last.  The next year, 1944, the St. Louis Browns, who had owned a winning record only once in 13 seasons, won the team’s only pennant.  World War II upset the baseball world, too. By won-lost record, World War II did not transform the […]

As November rolled into December 1923, Organized Baseball found itself with much on its plate, including a National League owner who had been indicted for perjury by a federal grand jury in the E.M. Fuller & Company bankruptcy case,1 and a Pacific Coast League president who had been ousted by a controversial majority vote but […]

The New York Yankees have finished with a .700 winning percentage three times, most recently in 1998 when they went 114-48 and swept the World Series against the San Diego Padres. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The inspiration for this article was the play of the St. Louis Cardinals at the start of […]

From left to right: Takehiko Bessho, Eddie Lopat, Joe DiMaggio, and Tetsuharu Kawakami. (Rob Fitts Collection)   In 1951 American troops still occupied Japan, but their mission had shifted. Rather than seeing the country as a former enemy to be subjugated, Japan was now viewed as an ally in the fight against communism. As the […]

Baseball fans love numbers — 755, 511, 2,632, for instance, or .300 batting averages, winning 20 games, stealing 100 bases, hitting 100 mph on the radar gun — all are part of the lore of the game. Sometimes those numbers include specific years, generally the year we started watching or the year our favorite team […]