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The Yankees traveled to Florida for spring training in 1947 seeking their first American League pennant in four years.The spring of 1947 was one that saw the three New York area baseball clubs range far and wide geographically. The New York Giants held their spring training in faraway Phoenix, Arizona—the first major-league club to be […]

Roberto Clemente and Bill Virdon receiving Gold Gloves in 1962 from Rawlings employee Guy Palso. (Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   Roberto Clemente had gained many admirers of his defense as a right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates since his major-league debut in 1955. Clemente’s strong right arm and an array of running catches, basket […]

The Players’ National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, or Players’ League, completed only one season of competition, 1890, but was the culmination of labor disputes that arose between 1879 and 1889. Professional baseball players were willing to risk future employment — their livelihood — to pry agency from the fists of club owners. The […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 31 (2002).   John McGraw was one of the most successful baseball managers ever, leading the New York Giants to ten pennants in his 30 years with the club. His arrival in mid-1902 marked the turning point in the fortunes of the Giants, a […]

In addition to 1976 being the Nation’s Bicentennial, it also is a big year for celebration in each of America’s major baseball organizations. The venerable National League, being born in New York, February 2, 1876, is celebrating its proud centennial. Its once upstart junior, the American League, is accepting congratulations on surviving 75 tempestuous seasons. […]

Canton, Ohio, the defending champions of the Tri-State League, assembled for spring training at home on April 9, 1890 with five rookies on hand for the first practice. Included was a six foot two inch, 200 pound, 23-year-old pitcher seeking his first professional baseball job. Denton T. Young and four companions made the jaunt 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 […]

The researchers at Protoball — the de facto authorities on baseball’s ancestral and descendant games — unsurprisingly categorize the popular recreational sport of kickball as a baseball derivative.1 But how did kickball originate? In On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody’s Favorite Games, authors Gary Belsky and Neil Fine […]

2014 Suzuki Nichibei Yakyu program (Robert Fitts Collection)   On June 10, 2014, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association announced that the Nichibei Yakyu All-Star Series would be held in the fall after an eight-year hiatus. In 2006 the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association had voted not to participate in the […]

I hang out in cemeteries. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. I go to cemeteries. A lot of them. As of February 15, 2019, I have gone to more than 2,750 cemeteries in 41 states and the District of Columbia in order to find more than 6,200 baseball-related graves. Since the cemeteries are not all along […]

Taken on Labor Day in 1902 during a doubleheader between the Phillies and Chicago Orphans, the photo shows the edge of the grandstand and bleachers along the third base line where the collapse would take place less than a year later. (Author’s Collection)   Introduction “From the lips of a frightened little girl came a […]

In the spring of 2017, Quinnipiac University put out a poll that led the media to proclaim that New York was (back to being?) a “National League city” because, although the poll showed the Yankees holding a 48-43% preference among fans upstate, in the city the poll swung 45-43% in favor of the Mets.1At about […]

Mike Piazza, Sadaharu Oh and Tommy Lasorda (Courtesy of Mark Langill)   What felt like a nostalgia trip unexpectedly served as a dress rehearsal for the next frontier of professional baseball when the 1993 Los Angeles Dodgers staged a modest five-game “Friendship Series” in Taiwan and Japan. Nobody could’ve predicted a “Tornado” on the horizon, […]

While the 1951 pennant race was raging between the Dodgers and Giants, dozens of writers and broadcasters covered the dramatic proceedings and turned out classic prose and award-winning broadcasts. The National Football League was just an afterthought. The NBA was not covered in some dailies, and others just listed scores. Besides the classic confrontations and […]

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. […]

In 2001, Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants had arguably the greatest individual season in the history of major league baseball. He set the record for home runs in a season with 73. He hit for the highest slugging percentage ever at .863, breaking Babe Ruth’s 1920 mark of.847. He knocked in 137 runs, good […]

Vin Scully served as Dodgers broadcaster from 1950 through 2016. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   For 55 of his 67 years as a broadcaster for the Dodgers, Vin Scully went to work at the same place: Dodger Stadium. In 2001 the area from which he broadcast became the Vin Scully Press Box. In 2016, his final season, […]

Roberto Clemente won MVP honors during the 1971 World Series with a .414 batting average (12-for-29), with two home runs, a triple, and two doubles. (Courtesy of the Clemente Museum)   In baseball, there is only one goal. Each season teams play 162 games, plus up to 15 more in the playoffs, to earn the […]

I think that no players in the majors today could conceive of going through what Negro Leaguers did for a chance at a baseball career. At the same time, however, most of the veterans of baseball’s black leagues will say that, if given the chance, they would do it all over again. A statement like […]

Among the more noteworthy events in major-league baseball in 2010 were a) the San Francisco Giants winning their first World Series since 1954 (when the franchise was based in New York) when they defeated the Texas Rangers in five games; b) the in-season retirement of several stars, including future Hall of Famers Randy Johnson, Frank […]

Jerry Sullivan as a teenager.   The city of Baltimore has hosted a number of historic baseball events. Although this story barely qualifies as such, it is nevertheless an interesting aside involving Jerry Sullivan, a 32-year-old, 3-foot-11 stage actor who appeared in an Eastern League game in Baltimore in 1905. Forty-six years later, the St. […]

May 1, 1951: Minnie Minoso debuts for Sox and homers in first at-bat On April 30, 1951, the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Athletics, and Chicago White Sox orchestrated a trade. Philadelphia sent Lou Brissie to Cleveland, which in turn shipped Sam Zoldak and Ray Murray to Philadelphia and Orestes “Minnie” Minoso to Chicago. The Athletics also […]

  Numerous talents from the Negro Leagues made their way into the employ of the American and National League franchises in Chicago. Integration did not come to these clubs until four seasons after the debut of Jackie Robinson with the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and even then, the pace of integration was frightfully slow. […]

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. […]