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The East-West All-Star Game was the highlight of the Negro Leagues’ season, bigger even than the Negro World Series. Begun in 1933 at the Chicago White Sox’ Comiskey Park, in the same year as the All-Star Game in the then-segregated White major leagues, the Black game regularly outdrew its counterpart during World War II, when […]

“How good was Stan Musial? He was good enough to take your breath away.” — Vin Scully, on-air radio broadcast (1989)1   Early in the 1957 season, the St. Louis Cardinals were off to a sluggish start. But their star first baseman, Stan Musial, at 36 years old and playing in his 16th season, was […]

“I would not rate myself a great ballplayer, but I think I do a lot of things well – things which beat the other team.”1 – Jim Gilliam   Just before the start of the 1964 season, The Sporting News featured a full-page story on Los Angeles Dodgers utilityman Jim “Junior” Gilliam. Under the headline […]

As the New York Yankees gathered for spring training in February 1968, manager Ralph Houk shared his take on the team’s outlook. “The strength of our club is the pitching staff,” he told New York Daily News columnist Gene Ward. Later in the interview he admitted that hitting was the club’s greatest weakness.1 As if […]

On the morning of July 15, 1887, the New York Herald boldly titled one of its front-page stories, “THE COLOR LINE.” The story under the headline, from New Orleans, involved a claim by former Union Army “negro soldiers” that they were being denied admission into the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic, […]

Steve Barr pitched parts of 24 games in the major leagues. Though he was unable to carve out a longer career, he was nonetheless able to achieve more at this game than most of the rest of us. Born in St. Louis on September 8, 1951, Barr, a left-handed pitcher, was signed fresh out of Carson […]

“[He] is what every boy wants to become and every mother dreams their daughter will bring home,” gushed sportswriter Phil Musick. “Tall, blond, handsome. Bright, articulate and personable. … He is Everyman’s vision of himself if he had been a little stronger, taller, handsomer, luckier, whatever.”1 Add to that list big-league pitcher and surgeon, too. […]

 Clarence Waldo Blethen was an “eternal busher” who spent 19 years pitching in the minor leagues, well into his 40s but never higher than Class A baseball, highlighted by two very brief stints in the majors – five games for the 1923 Boston Red Sox and two appearances for Brooklyn in 1929. He was a […]

George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960, the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series. After a slip to third place in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For this accomplishment The […]

“He was a beautiful person. Yes he was. Cool Papa Bell. He was a lovable person. And still is. And always has been. I love him. My goodness, that’s one beautiful man.” – Dave Barnhill (hard-throwing ace pitcher and all-star of the New York Cubans)1 “He had time for everybody. Never hurried. Signed autographs, talked […]

Decades before Michael Jordan stepped away from the National Basketball Association to play minor league baseball, another former first-round draft pick made a similar decision. Dick Ricketts was a two-sport athlete in high school and college, excelling at baseball and basketball. Taken number one overall in the 1955 NBA draft, Ricketts spent three seasons in […]

Infielder Syd O’Brien was one of three brothers, all of whom signed to play baseball for the Boston Red Sox. Syd was the first to sign, and the only one of the three to make it to the big leagues. His mother helped land three men on the moon. Syd was born in Compton, California, […]

Dave Cole, a gregarious right-hander who spent six seasons in the big leagues with the Braves, Cubs, and Phillies, was the kind of pitcher who has been frustrating scouts and managers for over a century: he couldn’t control the lively fastball and sharp curve that he possessed. Cole pitched only 237 2/3 innings in the […]

In spring 1912, the assets that accompanied 20-year-old middle infielder Bill Stumpf onto the roster of the New York Highlanders included defensive versatility, a strong and accurate throwing arm, and the promise exhibited the previous year during his professional debut campaign with a mid-tier minor league club. One spring later, a powerless bat, an erratic […]

Max Nichols knelt in an on-deck circle beside Jackie Robinson, had his picture taken with Pee Wee Reese, and watched Satchel Paige throw strikes over a matchbook — and all that by the age of 15. As a sportswriter he would meet hundreds of players, write thousands of columns about them, cast the worst vote […]

Across the decades, various New York Yankee, New York Giant, and Brooklyn Dodger baseball names have acted on-screen. Babe Ruth, for one, appeared in silent-era features; played himself in The Pride of the Yankees (1942), the Lou Gehrig biopic; and starred in various short subjects. Gehrig was toplined in Rawhide (1938), a B-Western. Jackie Robinson […]

Of all those who proudly wore the uniform of the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League, Monte Irvin was one of the last surviving players. He went on to a Hall of Fame career as a pioneering African American player in the major leagues. Montford Merrill Irvin was born in Haleburg, Alabama, on February […]

In the sizzling summer heat of the 1957 National League pennant race, Fred Hutchinson turned philosophical. “Baseball doesn’t have many naturals, a lot less than you might imagine,” said the Seattle-born-and-bred skipper of the St. Louis Cardinals. “The ones who work the hardest are the ones who make it, the ones who win. Sometimes that’’s […]

Joe Quinn’s 17 seasons between 1884 and 1901 marked the first appearance by an Australian in major league baseball. For 102 years, Quinn was the only player from “Down Under” to feature at the top level of American pro ball, and he remains the only Australian to manage in the major leagues. He played on […]

Eddie Dyer was one of the “Rickey men” who built baseball’s first farm system. He managed the St. Louis Cardinals to their last World Series championship of the Branch Rickey era. Edwin Hawley Dyer was born October 11, 1899, in Morgan City, Louisiana, the fourth of seven children of Joseph M. and Alice Natalie Dyer. […]

When Jackie Robinson debuted with the Montreal Royals on April 18, 1946, he became the first Black player to appear in what was then known as Organized Baseball in nearly 47 years. Canadians feel a special connection to Robinson because of his year spent in Montreal. What many Canadians don’t know is that they have […]

In over a century of existence, through 2016 the New York Yankees have been run by only five different ownership groups.1 To their great fortune and that of their fans, the three longest tenured were well-capitalized and committed to winning. They also had a terrific knack for finding great baseball men to work for them. […]

Here are the full SABR Defensive Index™ rankings, through games of August 17, 2014. The SABR Defensive Index draws on and aggregates two types of existing defensive metrics: those derived from batted ball location-based data and those collected from play-by-play accounts. The three metrics representing batted ball data include Defensive Runs Saved from Baseball Info […]

The SABR Quebec Chapter held its spring meeting on May 23, 2020. The pandemic forced us to do so virtually, but this first experience was nonetheless quite successful. Christian Trudeau, one of our chapter’s founding members in 2005, who had been prevented from attending our meetings in person in recent years after moving 1,000 km […]