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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 […]

Prologue The American National Leagues each held individual annual meetings on December 9, 1930, in New York City. Although the National League was bound by its constitution to meet in New York City, its American League counterpart had originally planned to meet in Chicago. However, league President E.S. Barnard later changed this arrangement so the […]

In addition to an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team, the Magnolia Chapter selected an All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star team. While acknowledging the talent of any number of players who served the Braves franchise during its time in Milwaukee and Boston, we wanted to restrict this team to players who actually played in Atlanta. We suggested that […]

The 1950 season was a momentous for me because I finished my clinical and course work at the Tulane Medical School in April and was scheduled to receive my MD diploma with the Class of 1950 in May. The Yankees gave me permission to attend my graduation exercise and I was able to get a […]

The Almada family of Sinaloa, Mexico sought refuge from the civil unrest of the Mexican Revolution, emigrating to the United States in 1914. The Southern California city of Los Angeles offered Baldomero Almada a safe place for his family and a ranking position in the Mexican consulate. “My father always wanted us children to have […]

It was just the top of the first, and Willie Mays hit four home runs before Mickey Mantle could even step to the plate. Decades before it invaded the All-Star Game, Home Run Derby sprouted in the fertile soil of Hollywood. Home Run Derby was filmed at L.A.’s Wrigley Field, former home of the Pacific […]

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth on July 4, 1939 on Lou Gehrig’s last day at Yankee Stadium. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.)   Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig weren’t exactly best friends or worst enemies, weren’t exactly master and pupil, weren’t exactly equals on or off the field. Half a generation apart in age1 […]

All baseball fans are familiar, if not from the movie, then from the grainy newsreel footage, with Lou Gehrig’s legendary speech at Yankee Stadium home plate on July 4, 1939. Yet that was not the first nor the last time a speech would have a dramatic impact at The House that Ruth Built. Baseball, football, […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). Editor’s Note: Why are Cub books different? Because Cub fans are different. No team in baseball has such a long-term tradition of efficient losing as the Cubs. So Cub fans don’t write books full of poetry about Babe Ruth (or about […]

The 1956 Winter Meetings of the two major leagues were scheduled to be held December 10-12, 1956 at the Palmer House in Chicago. As was customary, the minor leagues met before the major leagues, and in 1956 the National Association Winter Meetings were held in Jacksonville, Florida, from December 3 to 6 at the George […]

Roy Mack affixes his signature to an agreement selling the Athletics to the Philadelphia syndicate on October 17, 1954—a commitment Roy would betray just a day later in a backroom deal with Arnold Johnson. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Bill Renna was playing winter ball for the 1953–54 San Juan Senators, managed by […]

The odds on the Boston Red Sox winning the 1967 American League pennant were 100-1 at the beginning of the season. But when they completed the Impossible Dream, it was “Pandemonium on the field!”The Boston Red Sox embarked on their 1967 season with a five-man rotation that had collectively won only 25 major league games […]

Vancouver Asahi players bound for Japan on the SS Kashima Maru (Courtesy of the Nikkei National Museum 1997.8.9)   The Vancouver Asahi team was formed in 1914 with players who were mostly graduates of the Vancouver Japanese Community National School. Ihachi Miyasaki (a.k.a. Matsujiro Miyasaki), who ran a transportation business, became the manager of the […]

Cy Young said he didn’t have the speed he once had but could still “lob a hook up there.” (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The reader probably knows that Cy Young is baseball’s all-time winningest pitcher with 511 victories and that his 22-year career ranks as one of the greatest in baseball history. […]

Jimmy Piersall’s death on June 3, 2017, provided an occasion to recall his rookie season of 1952 that he began playing a new position—shortstop—for the Boston Red Sox, continued with AA Birmingham, and ended in a mental hospital. His is the inspiring story of a young man overcoming a serious health problem to craft a […]

After a World Series appearance in 1965 and finishing second to the Baltimore Orioles in 1966, there were many reasons to believe the Minnesota Twins had a good shot at the American League pennant in 1967. Decades later, this remains one of baseball greatest and most historic pennant races. On September 30, 1967, a Saturday […]

“Boys,” recalled the oldest living former ballplayer, “I got the best hit I ever had off Walter Johnson. It was in the late innings of a close game, and I was on deck. Johnson wanted to walk the guy ahead of me, but the manager said ‘pitch to him; the next man (meaning me) is […]

Aquino Abreu in the uniform of the 1968–69 National Series champion Azucareros ball club, three seasons after his miraculous three-game pitching string. (Author’s Collection)   Aquino Abreu—a diminutive right-handed fastball specialist who labored for a decade and a half during the formative years of the modern-era post-revolution Cuban League—remains entirely unknown to North American and […]

The 1874 Guelph Maple Leafs, George Sleeman center. (Harper’s Weekly, September 12, 1874)   Baseball’s rise in the nineteenth century featured a storied cast of characters in a variety of locales. It is perhaps a reflection of the prototypically humble Canadian persona that the early “dynasties” north of the border were not from the larger metropolitan […]

The players on the train carrying the St. Louis Cardinals back to Union Station should have been vibrant and fun-loving as it rolled through the Land of Lincoln on October 2, 1949. The Redbirds had thumped the Chicago Cubs, 13-5, at Wrigley Field in the season finale that afternoon. Thanks to a thrilling pennant race, […]

Lobby card for “Kill the Umpire” (1950) starring William Bendix. (Author’s collection)   Most baseball fans would agree that the best umpire is the invisible umpire. Sure, the umps on the field ensure that the rules of the game are followed. They call balls and strikes. They determine if the fielder who dives for the […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume II (1987).   I asked Cappy Gagnon, former SABR president and aficionado extraordinaire, what he thought the best baseball novels were. Without hesitation, Cappy replied, “That’s easy. There aren’t any. Baseball fiction is not as interesting as baseball history. Why make up stories, […]

On Larry Tye’s 2009 biography of Paige and Timothy M. Gay’s 2010 book on the barnstorming tours of Paige, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.