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Every two years, the nation’s capital sees senators leave town and new senators arrive to take their place. After a while, the suits all begin to look the same; only the bodies filling them out are different. The dance of those coming and going is typically confined to Capitol Hill. But between October 1960 and […]
One of the most unusual baseball games in American League history took place at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, on May 18, 1912. Nominally a contest between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers, the men who suited up for the Tigers that day were locally recruited ballplayers, while the real Tigers players bought tickets to sit […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A Biography of Buck Rodgers and his journey to Anaheim.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1). Hitting has been on the rise in ba8eball the past decade or so, and there is talk that today’s ball, the Rawlings Rabbit, has more spring than any hare of seasons past. This is shortsighted history. Let me […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]