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Here is supporting evidence for the correction of errors in the official RBI record of Lou Gehrig through 1939.

Baseball is great theatre. Indeed, baseball stories have been fodder for Hollywood since the era of silent films, both dramatic and comedic. But baseball biographies in movies and TV-movies often sacrifice facts to move the story forward at a watchable pace, increase drama, or provide comic relief. For a sport whose patrons guard its history […]

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for Our Hero. After a dozen years in the majors with some success, he was coming off a subpar year and had just been traded for three minor leaguers, who would remain so. Little did he know that along with his manager, he would change the way baseball was played. He […]

One of many things that makes baseball the most enjoyable sport is statistics. Players are considered great because of their statistical achievements. We are all familiar with the records for home runs in a season or career. Career strikeouts. Pitchers winning 20 games in a season. Batters hitting .300. All of these are interesting and […]

In 1987, Stan Musial traveled to Poland. He is shown here during a baseball clinic in Kutno (wearing a Boston Red Sox cap borrowed from another American) with Waldemar Goralski and Moe Drabowsky. (Courtesy of Slawomir Podemski, with thanks to Josh Chetwynd)   Stan Musial’s father, Łukasz, believed in the American dream. Work hard, get […]

If a baseball fan scanned the list of National League batting leaders in the New York Times on September 15, 1940, they would note a tight race among the top five hitters. Three points separated them with just two weeks left in the season1: Cooney, Boston, .319 Mize, St. Louis, .318 Hack, Chicago, .317 Gleeson, […]

August 28, 1988, Angels vs. Yankees, was Jimmie Reese Day at Anaheim Stadium. Jimmie was then in his 17th year as the California Angels conditioning coach. He was 86 (born October 1, 1901), and still suiting up, still hitting fungoes the way a carpenter drives nails. He could “pitch” batting practice with his split fungo […]

Babe Ruth (with catcher’s gear) pictured with his team from St. Mary’s Industrial School, and three of the Xaverian brothers who ran the school (in the gazebo). (PUBLIC DOMAIN)   Babe Ruth began his professional baseball career in 1914 as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, a minor-league team in the International League. Long-time Baltimore […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s November 2015 newsletter.   Writing in January 1915, Ernest J. Lanigan suggested that if Gavy Cravath were only to play more regularly, the slugging Philadelphia Phillies outfielder might be able to challenge Buck Freeman’s longstanding record for home runs in a single season (25), set […]

As memories flow from the Fifties for an aging fan, Cleveland’s teams are recalled from that time span; Bridesmaids they were, far more often than not, Claiming six times in that decade the league’s second spot! The Yankees excelled during Stengel’s time at the helm, But the Indians were annually in the same realm; Though […]

Among the many statistical analyses of baseball that have been published during the last four decades, the single most important in my opinion is The Hidden Game of Baseball (1984) by Pete Palmer and John Thorn. Their research, based on a large-scale regression analysis of baseball statistics, led to the development of summary measures for […]

    Baseball is not only a “game of inches”, a thesis propounded by some mathematical phrase-maker, but it is also a game governed by inflexible rules. Throughout the history of the game, baseball’s lengthy code has caused or at least contributed to some of the most bizarre situations imaginable. Baseball has produced such oddities […]

The run is the most fundamental and the most important statistic in baseball. Regrettably, clerical (e.g., transcription) errors have been made in the process of crediting the runs scored by the individual players in MLB’s official records.1, 2 For example, according to the 1961 official American League records, New York Yankees Mickey Mantle and Bill […]

When Pete Rose hustled down to first base after rapping out base hit No. 4,192 on September 11, 1985, neither he nor the adoring crowd at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium knew that their hero had already passed Ty Cobb’s revised total of 4,189 career hits. Many baseball records are erroneously regarded as sacrosanct: these historic numbers […]

After their on-field exploits of 1961, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were sought by film producer Tom Naud for a Hollywood feature. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Occasionally, baseball films spotlight sequences or storylines that are Florida-centric. Not surprisingly, they primarily are linked to spring training—and some even have real-world connections. Slide, Kelly, […]

RBI have long been one of the staples of measur­ing a hitter’s contribution to his team’s success. Sometimes a player is said to be “a good RBI guy.” Newspapers and record books list the annual RBI leaders, scoreboards and broadcasters tell us how many RBI a hitter has, almost as if getting them is a […]

Fans of the Houston Astros are a long-suffering lot. While the Chicago Cubs have gone over a century without winning a World Series, the “Cubbies” maintain a loyal fan base and a national following. The Houston franchise, however, does not elicit the same national passion as the Cubs. In 2013 the Houston club, after fifty […]

Gavy Cravath led the National League in home runs six times in seven seasons. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   What more is there to say about Clifford Carlton “Gavy” “Cactus” Cravath, the enigmatic Deadball Era slugger relegated to the dustbin of baseball history by George Herman Ruth? How about this: He was likely the first player to […]

Babe Ruth didn’t do it; Hank Aaron didn’t do it; Harmon Killebrew didn’t do it; Willie Mays didn’t do it; even Frank “Home Run” Baker didn’t do it. But Clyde Volimer did do it; and Eddie Morgan did it; so did George Vico; and the most recent to do it was Gary Gaetti. Well, what […]

There are a number of reasons teams complete transactions in major-league baseball. While the goal is clearly to improve the team, the exact nature of that improvement varies considerably, based on the circumstances in which the team finds itself. A contending team will look for upgrades in the field or on the mound in the […]

Author Andy Strasberg and Barry Pepper, playing Roger Maris in 61* (Courtesy of Andy Strasberg)   As a kid growing up in New York during the 1950s, I was obsessed with the game of baseball. My all-time favorite player became Roger Maris, just after he was acquired in 1960 by my favorite team, the New […]

Somebody has to bat first — to help set the table for the sluggers in the heart of the lineup. And during the 75 years of the so-called “live ball” (i.e. since 1920), 35 different players have served as the principal leadoff batter for the Pirates in one or more seasons. This article takes a […]