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It wasn’t so long ago that sports historians spent little if any time researching the young women who played baseball in previous generations. The best-known histories of the game barely gave them a mention.1 This is not surprising, since the common wisdom about female ballplayers was that most of them weren’t very good at it, […]

In 1513, explorer Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in Florida, according to fable in search of the Fountain of Youth. Ever since, Florida’s menu of sun, fun, beaches, and citrus has symbolized renewal and regeneration, an “enchanted reality,” per state historian Gary Mormino, ripe for second chances amidst a constantly shifting dreamscape.1 Since the early […]

This article was originally published in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry R. Gerlach and Bill Nowlin. Bernice Gera, center, makes a call at the Jim Finley umpire school in 1967. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   “Are you blind?” is a familiar cry for fans sitting in […]

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 […]

South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin […]

The more Hall of Famers a team owns, the more championships it wins, right? Research suggests a far different picture. For one thing, those Famers may be finished.   ALTHOUGH MUCH IS WRITTEN about Hall of Fame players, little is written about the teams they have played on together. Fans who know the answer to […]

Jerry Sullivan as a teenager.   The city of Baltimore has hosted a number of historic baseball events. Although this story barely qualifies as such, it is nevertheless an interesting aside involving Jerry Sullivan, a 32-year-old, 3-foot-11 stage actor who appeared in an Eastern League game in Baltimore in 1905. Forty-six years later, the St. […]

Carl Mays is unfortunately remembered for two incidents. To some, he is remembered as the man who threw the pitch that felled Ray Chapman. To others, he is remembered as the man who lost a suspicious game during the 1921 World Series. He should be remembered for much more. Mays’s career accomplishments from 1915 through […]

Background Baseball was going through a time of transition as the 1968 Winter Meetings approached. Most dramatically, the major leagues were about to add four new teams beginning in 1969, and had recently held two expansion drafts to stock the new clubs. On Monday, October 14, the National League held its draft for the Montreal […]

“Crack! The ball hits the bat. Smack! That ball hits Edith Houghton’s waiting glove at short who quickly throws to first to get the batter and all in a twinkling of an eye. These women play the game in a manner that would no doubt delight the heart of many a manager who ever saw […]

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 […]

One of the best-known pieces of advice in baseball is to keep your eye on the ball. In a recent survey, former college baseball players were asked whether they had been told to keep their eye on the ball when batting.1 Ninety-eight percent of the players answered yes. Despite the widespread use of this phrase, […]

This appendix is related to the article, “Honus Wagner: Baseball’s Prototypical Five-Tooler?” by Herm Krabbenhoft.  This appendix is related to the article, “Honus Wagner: Baseball’s Prototypical Five-Tooler?” by Herm Krabbenhoft.   Tables A-1 through A-8 provide the career performance results for each Hall of Famer whose career commenced before Willie Mays began his Big League […]

Ken Boyer. (SABR-Rucker-Archive)   Introduction The Hamilton Cardinals of the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League experienced a rapid rise and fall between 1955 and 1956. The team won the 1955 PONY League championship in September 1955, yet ceased operations in May 1956. The Hamilton team was the primary reason for the “O” in the PONY acronym; […]

SABR member Gordon H. Fleming has written a highly praised book about the 1908 National League pennant race called THE UNFORGETTABLE SEASON. The book is excellent and the season he wrote about, hinging as it does on the unfortunate Fred Merkle base-running blunder, was certainly unforgettable. In 1884, 24 years earlier, there had been another […]

“Something about Canada seemed to agree with him … on an intriguing psychological level. He spent years telling people all sorts of odd fibs about his supposed Canadian connections.” — David Giddens, CBC Sports1   In support of the Canadian war effort, Ruth flew to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 1942 to take […]

Triple Crown Winners: Champions of three different leagues for 1938. (Nikkei National Museum 2010-30-1-3-15 ab)   A curving pitch appears in slow motion from a hurler not in focus. The voice-over is somber, an older man, remembering. “We were born in Canada,” says Kaye Kaminishi. “We spoke English.” On screen, a batter pushes a bunt […]

Major League Baseball implemented a package of rule changes for the 2023 season designed to address complaints that the game had become tedious to watch.1 Those complaints centered on pace of play and lack of action, with fans and media noting fewer balls in play and stolen bases and more strikeouts and home runs.2 Some […]

A look at the Dodger way of scouting, tracing its roots back to Branch Rickey. 

Editor’s note: A version of this article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s February 2015 newsletter. This article expands upon a well-received presentation at SABR 44 in 2014 in Houston. Supporting documentation and other aspects of the research upon which this article is founded has been posted on the SABR website […]

Ever the celebrity, Babe Ruth doffs his cap. (Library of Congress.)   Of any athlete from any sport who does double duty on the big screen and the ballyard/gridiron/basketball court, none has been written about, analyzed, and overanalyzed as much as Babe Ruth. Not Jim Brown. Not Michael Jordan. Not Willie, Mickey, or The Duke. […]

In 1937 most of baseball’s headlines went to slugging exploits of Joe Medwick in the National League and to Lou Gehrig, Joe DiNaggio, Jimmy Foxx, and Hank Greenberg in the American League.   Little attention was paid to a bench-riding rookie of the Tigers named Rudy York, not at least until he worked his way into […]

Whenever a Negro Leagues veteran is asked about James “Red” Moore, the response is almost automatically: “He could pick it!” Then the player adds anything else that he has to say. Such is the reputation that the Atlanta-born former baseball star earned during his career in the Negro Leagues. Described by Atlanta Daily World sports […]

Seventy-three home runs in a single season would have been considered absurd only a few years ago, yet Barry Bonds accomplished this astounding feat in 2001. Bonds’ record-breaking season, eclipsing the mark of 70 set by Mark McGwire only four years earlier raises the question of which ballplayers truly own the greatest single-season home run performances […]