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One would guess that several factors influence a player’s ability to score runs, including speed, his position in the lineup, the batting ability of other players in his lineup, and his own power. Players who combine these factors could be expected to score a high percentage of the times that they reach base. Rare players […]

Excerpts from Cecil O. Monroe’s “The Rise of Baseball,” detailing the events between 1857 through 1870 that shaped baseball in Minnesota.

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   Sixty years ago there were no millionaire ballplayers in St. Louis. No night baseball, no artificial turf, no exploding scoreboards, no plane travel, no West Coast baseball teams, no television, no helmets, no batting gloves, no blacks in the […]

Was the Federal League of 1914 and 1915 a major league? Baseball authorities interested in the answer have been, and still are, divided in their opinions. Could a six-team independent league in 1913, generally regarded as no better than Class D, become an eight-team organization of major league quality a year later? The odds suggest […]

Forfeits were relatively commonplace in the early days of baseball. There was at least one forfeit in the major leagues every year from 1883 to 1907, including 13 in 1884. A review of the reasons for these forfeits reveals how ”bush league” the major leagues still were. In 1889, St. Louis’s American Association team failed […]

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, […]

Most baseball fans, and nonfans for that matter, would consider Beaneaters to be among the most interesting major-league team nicknames with longevity (i.e., multiyear usage as opposed to short-term fad). In 1883 the Boston NL team became unofficially recognized by various sportswriters as the Beaneaters, though like most major-league teams they were generally referred to […]

A Biography of Buck Rodgers and his journey to Anaheim. 

Introduction For a number of years, the Research Club of the National Baseball Library, under the leadership first of the late Lee Allen and now of Cliff Kachline, has been involved in a continuing project designed to acquire completed biographical questionnaires for all major-league players, 1871 to the present.  Names of almost 11,000 men have […]

As the 1867 baseball season drew to a close, the sport was meeting and exceeding the goals that were anticipated by players and journalists alike. The anticipation that the “game of nines” would become the pastime of the United States had been predicted, and even perhaps prematurely proclaimed, for close to a decade. Now, with […]

    Selecting an all-time baseball team is an extremely precarious pastime, fraught with difficulties and likely to induce mental anguish.  Therefore, we shall forego the best in favor of the jest.     We could be Poles apart in naming our all-time Ski team, but our squad prefers fastballs to snowballs and running bases to […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Badger State,” the 2001 SABR convention journal.   Ask a baseball fan, what is the only city that has been the home of two different teams in the American League and two in the National League, all since 1900? Without thinking, many will say New York—which […]

In the 1936-37 offseason, The Sporting News carried a series of articles on baseball’s groundskeepers. Among those featured was Matty Schwab, the longtime superintendent of Crosley Field. Reds baseball writer Tom Swope described how Schwab, respected as a “master groundskeeper” by his peers, carefully tended his field, including the elaborate system of drains Matty had […]

You the living, you’re stuck here with the Cubs, So it’s me that feels sorry for you! — Steve Goodman, from “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” (1983)   It’s getting on 30 years since Steve Goodman wrote those words. Steve died on September 20, 1984, less than two weeks before the Cubs won the […]

Wilbur Rogan, pictured here second from left in the front row, compiled a 20-3 pitching record for Jamestown in 1932, batting .315 and leading the team in RBIs. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Jamestown, North Dakota, fielded Class D minor-league teams in 1922 and 1923, and again in 1936 and 1937.1 But between those two excursions into […]

For those of you keeping score, the Oakland Athletics’ 1972-74 infield consisted largely but not exclusively of Sal Bando, third base; Bert Campaneris, shortstop; Tim Cullen and Dick Green, second base, 1972 and 1973-74, respectively; and Mike Epstein and Gene Tenace, first base, 1972 and 1973-74, respectively. Left field was Joe Rudi’s. Reggie Jackson and […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Twelve managers have won more games than Bill McKechnie. None has won more respect. Deacon Bill McKechnie was the first to lead three different teams to the World Series and the […]

Probably almost everyone has heard of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) thanks to the movie A League of Their Own. Of course, the film did not deal with other professional leagues or an international girls’ baseball league. The idea for an international league was first proposed by Arthur Meyerhoff, a Philip K. Wrigley […]

Long before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Angels sprang into being three years later, professional baseball and its rivalries had been a central part of the Southern California sports scene. Los Angeles had its first team of professionals in 1890, then joined the fledgling California League in 1892.  When this league folded […]

In Mark Armour’s SABR biography of Jim Brosnan he observes that Brosnan “wrote the first honest portrayal of the life of a ballplayer,” and that “Fifty years on, Brosnan’s books (The Long Season and The Pennant Race) remain the gold standard for baseball memoirs.” Brosnan allowed fans to gain a degree of understanding about the […]

The dictionary defines the word “Elysian” as “something blissful; delightful,”1 and for ballplayers, such a place has existed for 140 years in the city of New York. Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City and if considered as a separate entity would rank fourth in the country in sending players to […]

This appendix accompanies Bryan Soderholm-Difatte’s article “The 1914 Stallings Platoon” in the Fall 2014 Baseball Research Journal. Methodology for Determining Starting Line-Up Platoons A position “platoon” is defined as two (or sometimes three) players being used in the starting line-up at the same position by their manager on a regular basis depending primarily on whether […]

“Equal parts carnival barker, professional bully, world-class tightwad, and uncanny builder of championship baseball teams, Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley left a stamp on baseball that can still be seen more than 30 years after his departure from the game.”1 So wrote reviewer Alan Moores for the magazine Booklist in his 2010 review of G. […]

The 1963 baseball winter meetings were alive with discussion of important issues, including the permissible size of catcher’s mitts and the color of baseball bats. The clubs also made time to once again reconfigure the minor-league structure and adopt an amendment designed to assist the player-development efforts of expansion teams. The minor leagues kicked off […]