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One measure of player endurance is consecutive games played. Another measure, which could be considered a superior one, is highest percent of scheduled games played in ten consecutive years. Only five of the highest rated players in the percent calculation compiled long consecutive game streaks. Lou Gehrig is unquestionably the highest ranking player using either […]

Yank Robinson’s One-Man Strike in 1889 When modern-day players go on strike against their owners they do so as a collective unit – the Major League Baseball Players Association – but back in 1889 it took a bit of courage for William (Yank) Robinson to stage a one-man strike against the owner of the St. […]

Professional baseball’s first Baltimore Orioles played in the American Association (AA) in 1882. Another franchise of the same name played in the AA from 1883 until joining the National League (NL) for nine seasons, from 1891 through 1899, but the NL vacated four cities after the 1899 season. The following season, the Western League’s owners […]

Stan Musial completes his swing on this 1948-49 Leaf trading card. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Stan Musial came into 1949 after what would turn out to be the best season in his Hall of Fame career. In 1948 he won his third (and, as it turned out, final) Most Valuable Player Award after leading the league […]

With its temperate Pacific Coast climate and rich baseball tradition, San Diego has long been a spawning ground for major-league talent, sending some 121 of her sons to the bigs. The second, and by far the greatest, of these San Diegans was Ted Williams, whose march to Cooperstown began with the 1939 Boston Red Sox. […]

Billy Harrell has had two careers: his first started in 1952, when he signed with Cleveland and lasted for the next 15 years, during which he played for the Indians, Red Sox, and Cardinals organizations. His second career began immediately after his 1967 retirement from baseball, when he took a position as a juvenile probation […]

The turbulence in the business of baseball reached its height in 1890. The players, through their Brotherhood association and chafing under the owners’ efforts to exert more control over them, assembled the financial backing to form their own league, the aptly-named Players’ League. The magnates of the National League and the American Association — particularly […]

The winter2 meetings of 1896-1897 were conducted at the height of National League factionalism, with club owners in the 12-team circuit divided into two camps. The Big Five franchises of Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg represented the League’s prominent, Eastern venues. At annual meetings, the concerns of the Big Five were most often […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth meets Yale baseball player George H.W. Bush in 1948. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   George Herbert Walker Bush began the first year of his term as the 41st President of the United States of America on January 20, 1989. Then, just seventy-three days later (on April 3, 1989), he carried out […]

65 players have had 80 or more extra-base hits in a season. Lou Gehrig did it ten times and Babe Ruth nine. Only once since 1941 have four achieved the feat in the same year.   Every fan has an idea of which players qualify as sluggers and which do not. Any definition of slugger […]

In the 1970s, the very time when players and umpires gained wealth and power, baseball’s field managers’ status declined as they became wretched scapegoats to be sacrificed to the bloodlust of victory-starved fans. True, sacking the manager was a time-honored ploy; whenever rumblings of fan discontent erupted, a manager was bumped off as virgins in […]

Who’s the batter? Nowadays, fans attending a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park can just look at the player—his name and assigned number are on the back of his uniform, and his name is displayed prominently on a huge scoreboard. However, a hundred years or so ago, Tigers fans attending a baseball game at Navin […]

It happens every spring. Those four words name both a popular motion picture and a formula for television programmers. Around the first of April every year viewers can see Lou Gehrig’s luck and Ike’s alibis and Stratton’s courage and that secret formula which causes objects to veer away from wood. Unfortunately, with all the cinematic […]

  Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” […]

Anyone researching National and American League playing managers soon realizes that unlike Gertrude Stein’s rose (“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”), a manager who also played may or may not have been a playing manager. Three examples will make this clear: On September 23, 1930 in a less- than-inspired move the […]

Racial discrimination did not miraculously disappear in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it cease with Civil War’s end in 1865. However, even as race relations remain a topic in 2011, the process for dealing with race faced an evolution. Speaking to this evolution, Jerry Malloy, in his Introduction to Sol White’s History of […]

    Baseball rules were amended in 1891 to allow for substitute batters for other than emergency conditions. That was 86 years ago; yet, from a recordkeeping standpoint, there are still many gaps regarding the performance of pinch hitters on a seasonal and a career basis. What pinch hitter had the most doubles, triples, or […]

Mark Belanger, winner of eight Gold Gloves in the last ten years, received more votes than any other player in SABR’s recent survey to determine the best fielders of the 1970s. The Baltimore shortstop received more than 90% of the nearly 400 votes cast for American League shortstop. Johnny Bench led all National League players. […]

The cold, pallid stone in Columbia, Pa., denotes his final resting place like an old, grey, weather-beaten scorecard. There are no crossed bats; no baseballs engraved on the damp, neglected slab. Nary a whisper of his forgotten fame. Just the stark sentinel and its silent speech: JAMES T. SHECKARD 1878-1947 The memories have been pushed […]

October 11-12, 1899 Great Northern Hotel, Chicago On October 11 and 12, 1899, the Western League held its annual meeting at Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel. After much discussion that was finally settled by a unanimous vote, the circuit chose a new name — the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Though some balked at the […]

Walter O’Malley, center, shown with Jersey City officials, announced that, in 1956 through 1958, the Dodgers would play seven games each season in Jersey City and would have the option to continue the agreement for three years beyond that.   INTRODUCTION  The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the […]