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How does a man of modest background become a billionaire Hollywood player? For Thomas Tull, his status as a Tinseltown powerhouse is the result of a combination of fortuity, hard work, and relentless drive. It is the byproduct of his forming his own film company and producing or executive-producing such box-office blockbusters as The Dark […]

A top Texas high school, semipro, and college pitcher, Pete Donohue excelled with the Cincinnati Reds for several years before his effectiveness fell off, possibly due to overuse. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Pete Donohue pitched 100 years ago and his career is worth exploring, as he was one of the mainstays of the Cincinnati Reds pitching […]

The 2011 season marks Billy Blitzer’s 29th consecutive year scouting for the Cubs, a rarity in these days of rapid turnover when too many owners and team managements are looking for quick fixes and think the development process can be miraculously speeded up. The Reds’ Gene Bennett probably holds the modern record for scouting longevity, […]

Many Blue Jays fans will forever remember the television play-by-play call after the final out of the 1992 World Series: “For the first time in history, the World Championship banner will fly north of the border. The Toronto Blue Jays are baseball’s best in 1992.”1 In defeating the Atlanta Braves and becoming the first Canada- […]

He was forever young on his baseball card—6-foot-2, with a square jaw, and a passing resemblance to Mickey Mantle. He was 24, and I was in the third grade. It was the summer of 1963. I never minded that he set a record for strikeouts in a single season that year, which is how many […]

How much control, if any, does a pitcher have over whether a batted ball in play falls in for a hit? What if something that had traditionally been regarded as the pitcher’s responsibility was simply the residue of luck? Asking himself these questions,1 Voros McCracken, a paralegal who participated in a Rotisserie league in his […]

Al Kermisch, who joined SABR in 1971, was a baseball researcher for over 60 years. His paper, “Walter Johnson: King of the 1-0 Hurlers,” appeared in the first SABR Baseball Research Journal in 1972, and in 1975 he debuted “From a Researcher’s Notebook”: seven small stories covering 4½ pages. This became a regular feature and […]

In October 1999, as part of the merging of the National League and American League into Major League Baseball, the decision was made to create a unified approach to look after the health and wellness of major-league umpires. Under the auspices of the Office of the Commissioner, Sandy Alderson and Ralph Nelson reached out to […]

PREFACE By Tom Larwin This article is a summary of observations from seven individuals who watched a ball game in an unusual way: We watched the umpires—the umpires only—and not the players. Our observations and resulting viewpoints were augmented the following day in an informal meeting with two of the umpires, who discussed certain aspects […]

Five former Yankees players and staff shared their thoughts on working in the renovated Yankee Stadium. I chose them because of the wide-ranging and different perspectives they had working and playing in the Stadium during their careers in baseball. Some of these players and staff were on teams that won the World Series and others […]

1953 Eddie Lopat All-Stars (Rob Fitts Collection)   Eddie Lopat was a fine, soft-tossing southpaw during a 12-year baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and most famously the New York Yankees. Called the Junkman because of his assortment of off-speed pitches, Lopat was also something of a baseball entrepreneur. He not only ran a […]

One of the key elements of drama for a baseball miracle is that the team in question should walk out on stage for the first time as if nothing has changed, as if nothing ever will change. So the 1969 Mets lost to the brand-new Montreal Expos with their star pitcher on the mound on […]

In 2010, the Twins’ Justin Morneau sustained a concussion in a play at second base that abruptly truncated his season before the All-Star break. At that stage, he was hitting .345 with a 1.055 OPS. He had just played in his 81st game—exactly half a season. Interestingly, in Morneau’s American League MVP season, four years […]

The idea that there are batters whose hits are more noteworthy for their timeliness than for their quality is probably as old as the game itself. Efforts to measure “clutch-hitting” systematically include the RBI, one of the three most universal batting statistics, and more recently, the “game-winning hit”. It is my own belief that clutch […]

U.S. All-Star outfield from the 1962 game have their bats locked and loaded. The players are (L–R) Tony Conigliaro, Ron Swoboda, and James Huenemeier. Conigliaro and Swoboda starred for the Red Sox and Mets, respectively. Huenemeier signed with the White Sox, but never got beyond Class A. (HARRY RANSOM CENTER/JOURNAL-AMERICAN ARCHIVES)   Set against the […]

    Minnie Minoso’s appearance in three games for the White Sox in September 1976 at age 53 serves as a reminder that major league baseball has had some pretty old performers over the years. The only distinction Minoso gained in his brief stint was to be the oldest player to collect a hit in […]

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig formed the most feared batting twosome in the history of baseball. Batting third and fourth, they served as the heart of the great Yankee teams that won three World Series between 1927 and 1933. Despite their heroics, Ruth and Gehrig played a different type of baseball, led decidedly different lives, […]

One of America’s oldest commercialized sports spectaculars, major league baseball has adjusted repeatedly and dramatically to significant ideological and technological changes. Indeed, so cumulative have been these forces of change that each passing decade of baseball history reveals profound changes in the game’s social organization and in the behavior of the players. Thus, to scrutinize […]

The 2014 baseball season’s adoption of expanded instant replay review not only introduced another wrinkle into our national pastime, it opened the door into a brand new arena of statistical analysis over 50 years in the making. Thanks to the adoption of a manager’s challenge system—which MLB has confirmed will remain in place for the […]