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Here is the appendix for Pete Palmer’s article “Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing by Catchers” in the Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal.

The 1985 Winter Meetings had showcased a then-record 62 free agents, but the 1986 free-agent class shattered that mark as 82 players filed for free agency by the deadline.1 Despite the uptick in the number of free agents, however, for the second year in a row none of them signed with a new club at […]

Ted Kluszewski measures up Earl Averill Jr., 1961. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   R.C. Stevens of the 1960 Pirates made several stops in the minors and majors from 1952 through 1963. In an article in the Quad City Times, he remembered a homer against the Giants at Seals Stadium on May 5, 1958.1 He had also hit […]

Individually and collectively, baseball and advertising may be said to hold a mirror up to America. The image in the glass, however, is not always pretty. For the first century of its history, with very few early exceptions, “American” as defined by Organized Baseball, did not extend to those of African descent. As has been […]

Pitching in relief in the final innings of a 12-2 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics on August 10, 1927, sore-armed Boston right hander “Ted” Wingfield notched the final strikeout of his major league career and the only strikeout he recorded in 74½ innings of pitching that season. Wingfield’s one strikeout in 74½ in­nings, or .12 […]

“Has anybody else told you about Dobie Moore? Well, I’ll tell you something about him. That Moore was one of the best shortstops that will ever live! That fella could stand up to the plate and hit right-handed, he could hit line drives out there just as far as you want to see.” — Casey […]

The .400 club is a select company to which no new member has been admitted for more than half a century. Even the casual fan knows that Ted Williams was the last player to bat over .400. The year was 1941, and Williams, who refused to sit out a season ending doubleheader to protect his […]

All managers think about strategy, but one can argue that no manager this side of John McGraw changed our prevailing understanding of baseball strategy as much as Earl Weaver. In his seminal work, Weaver on Strategy, and in various quotations uttered while holding court, Weaver presented insights that may have long been implicitly understood by […]

Nearly all accounts of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies’ epic collapse, which would etch itself deep in the city’s historical psyche, focus on the Phillies’ 10-game losing streak that started on September 21, when they had a 6½-game lead with only 12 games remaining, and ended with them having lost eight games in the standings in […]

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 […]

A mixture of fact arid fiction surrounds the legendary Penobscot’s career. Although he was an instant success in his debut with Cleveland, his great start was negated by an old drinking problem.     This is bounding Sockalexis,   Fielder of the mighty Clevelands.   Like the catapult in action,   For the plate he […]

How does one assess an individual player’s contribution to his team’s score? Baseball statisticians have attempted to answer this question countless times. It’s not just the runs he scores himself because that often relies on who batted him in. And it’s not just the runs he bats in, because that depends on who batted previously. […]

One of the many things that make baseball great is the ability to both objectively and subjectively compare which players are the best. These comparisons range anywhere from scholarly research1 to radio talk show discussions to barroom arguments. In comparing players, many times researchers have developed new statistics in an attempt to find one all-encompassing […]

On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the United States declared war. It was only 39 days after the September 28 doubleheader in Philadelphia when Ted Williams went 6-for-8 and elevated his batting average from .3996 to .406, the last time a major-league batter has hit .400. Baseball contined, and […]

In keeping with one of SABR’s objectives—“To encourage further research and literary efforts to establish and maintain the accurate historical record of baseball”—the Society has promoted numerous research initiatives. One such effort, the BioProject (archived online at sabr.org/bioproject), has generated large amounts of information in its mission to publish biographical articles about everyone who ever […]

R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?” TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?” Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In […]

When Mark McGwire handily surpassed Roger Maris’s single-season home run record during his incredible 1998 season, it raised a good bit of discussion about where his stellar season ranked among the game’s greatest individual performances. Indeed, rankings of this kind are frequent, as the Baseball Research Journal articles by Bill Szepanski, in 1996, and Joe […]

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in  “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]

Black ballplayers first set foot on the field at Shibe Park at the end of the 1919 season when the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, New Jersey faced off against the Hilldale club of Philadelphia on September 8.1 The Bacharachs, behind the pitching of Dick “Cannonball” Redding, won the game 10-0.2 It was the ninth […]

Were it not for the Chicago Defender, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, and other African American newspapers, there would have been scant coverage of Black professional baseball. White-owned and -run dailies like the Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Washington Post published few informative articles on the African American baseball […]

Fans of the 1958 Philadelphia Phillies had little to cheer about at the end of a rather dismal season. When the final standings were posted, the club was firmly planted dead last in the National League. One bright note was the team’s pinch-hitting performance: It led both major leagues with an impressive batting average of […]

Cincinnati’s Crosley Field: A Gem in the Queen City Edited by Gregory H. Wolf Associate Editors: Len Levin, Bill Nowlin, and Carl Riechers Publication Date: June 29, 2018 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-943816-75-0, $19.95 ISBN (e-book): 978-1-943816-74-3, $9.99 8.5″ x 11″, 311 pages April 11, 1912, marked a new era in the history of the Cincinnati Reds. On that […]

Willie Mays: Five Tools Edited by Bill Nowlin and Glen Sparks Publication Date: May 3, 2023 Associate editors: Len Levin and Carl Riechers ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960819-02-4, $9.99 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-960819-03-1, $29.95 8.5″ x 11″, 307 pages Willie Mays thrilled baseball fans for more than two decades. He could do it all—in the outfield, at bat, […]