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As a young southpaw, I naturally felt an affinity for major league left-handers. Lefties, by nature, are outsiders. The consensus of sources spanning more than three decades states that only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, making we portsiders indeed a rare breed.1 I, personally, never experienced the forced switching of penmanship meant […]

Willie Mays with the Minneapolis Millers in 1951. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The New York Giants purchased the Minneapolis Millers in 1946. It took five years for Minneapolis fans to fully process the impact. A charter member of the American Association in 1902, the Millers had a rich history that extended to the final decades of […]

INTRODUCTION Pitchers are a breed apart. On average, they are taller and heavier than most players; contrary to their fielding brethren, they do not play every day; even the most resilient of relievers have to sit out half of their team’s games or risk burning out their arms, and most starters will work only every […]

It is highly unlikely that the Philadelphia Phillies would have won the 1950 National League Pennant without reliever Jim Konstanty, who was so dominant that he was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player. And so it is worthwhile to consider whether Konstanty would have won the MVP and had the year he had without […]

Over the past generation, sabermetricians have expended a great amount of time and energy studying the effects of free agency and long term contracts on player performance (Maxcy, Fort, and Krautmann 2002; Krautmann and Solow 2009; Krautmann and Donley 2009; Hakes and Turner 2011; Martin et al. 2011; O’Neill 2014; Paulsen 2020). How ever, they […]

Two pitchers emerged in the New York Yankees’ remarkable 1947 season who would lead the team to unprecedented success: Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi. The 1947 season for the New York Yankees was expected to be another step down in the decline of the franchise. Joe DiMaggio and Joe Gordon had returned from the military […]

The Outaouais — a unique region of southwestern Quebec situated along the Ottawa River—lives a double life. Though most of its communities began as administrative centers for the Quebec-based timber industry and the draveurs who worked the Gatineau River, the twenty-first century economy of the region is quite different. As anyone who has walked the halls […]

In general, the baseball Winter Meetings can be viewed as a watershed event, marking both the end of one season and the beginning of the next. Even before the 2007 Winter Meetings got under way in Nashville, however, the offseason had been launched with a major new initiative. Major-league general managers held their annual meetings […]

Speculating on ultimately unanswerable questions remains one of most fascinating aspects for those of us who study baseball history. For example, how might many of the all-time records differ if Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, and all of the other great Negro League stars had been eligible to play in white Organized Ball? How […]

In addition to setting the major league single season record with his seventy home runs in 1998, Mark McGwire set a National League record with 162 bases on balls. This tied him with Ted Williams, who did it twice (1947, 1949), for second on the major league single season list behind Babe Ruth’s 170 in […]

In the baseball season of 1932, Jimmie Foxx—known then and now as Double X—made a concerted assault on Babe Ruth’s home-run record of 60 in a season. The Philadelphia A’s strong boy came up two short, ending his season with a total of 58. There is a persistent legend that Foxx would have broken Ruth’s […]

Willie Mays with the New York Mets (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Willie Mays returned to New York in a trade on May 11, 1972.1 “It’s a wonderful feeling to be coming back here,” said the longtime Giants superstar, who left with the team for California after after the 1957 season. “I’ve always […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2025 newsletter.   The date was July 16, 1909, and there was baseball in the air.1 The catcher showed up in a Panama hat. The left fielder was clad in white flannel trousers with a black silk watch fob dangling from his belt. The […]

Lee Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 683 pp. Notes, bibliography, index, photographs. Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey’s Little Blue Book. Edited by John J. Monteleone. Preface by Stan Musial. New York: Macmillan, 1995. 142 pp. Index. Murray Polner. Branch Rickey: A Biography. Revised Edition. Foreword by Branch B. Rickey. […]

Gold Glove Awards, first presented in 1957, are given annu­ally to the best defensive players at each position in each league. Guidelines for Gold Glove Award voting now state that coaches and managers may vote for players in their league, but not for players on their own team. The guidelines do not suggest what characteristics […]

  Jimmie Foxx had 11 RBI flyouts in 1932, but only one in 1935. Would these achievements have changed the record books if today’s sac fly rule were in place? (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The official rules currently governing sacrifice flies in Major League Baseball have not always been in use, and […]

Growing up in New England, it was an article of faith that the 1967 Red Sox won the American League pennant with the help of divine intervention — that it was an “Impossible Dream.” With the passage of time, this depiction has become less satisfying, if for no other reasons than that it gives short […]

Pitcher Dick “Turk” Farrell was selected in 1962 to represent the expansion Houston Colt .45s franchise at both All-Star Games. In the expansion draft to fill the rosters of the new clubs in New York and Houston, the Mets elected to go with veterans, while Houston built on youth. Under manager Harry Craft and general […]

On October 13, 1985, a Pittsburgh resident by the name of Saul Finkelstein decided to personally commemorate the 25th anniversary of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. Finkelstein went to the corner of the University of Pittsburgh’s campus where Forbes Field was once located to listen to a tape recording of NBC’s broadcast […]

Silas Kenneth Johnson was born in Danway, Illinois on Friday, October 5, 1906. He shared his strong Norwegian heritage with older brother Alvin. Their parents, Nels and Tillie Johnson, added two more male siblings—Jesse and Tilman—to the family roster soon after Si was born. The clan soon migrated to the small town of Marseilles, Illinois, […]

  In recent decades, rules in several professional sports have been revised with a goal of reducing the length of games or matches. Both pro and college football have changed their timekeeping rules repeatedly to shorten games. In hockey, five-minute overtime periods, often followed by shoot-outs, have become routine in non-playoff games. Tie-breakers are played […]

Appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Babe Ruth’s RBI record.

Minneapolis Millers shortstop Andy Oyler topped a pitch into the mud in front of home plate at Nicollet Park. Before the visiting team could find the ball, Oyler raced around the bases for what may be the shortest home run in history. This story has been around for over 100 years. For more than half […]

Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement on which Jews fast, seek forgiveness from God and other people, and rehearse their deaths1 — occupies an iconic space in the annals of baseball and American Jewry. Jewish-American fans regularly contemplate and debate whether Jewish players will and should play on the holy day.2 Yom Kippur in […]