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A Hot Stove League question was the impetus for this study. “Why have batting averages declined since the 1920-1940 era?” A popular answer was the rise of relief pitching. Formerly, the argument runs, batters during their fourth and fifth game appearances faced a tiring pitcher, whose stuff and delivery they had had a chance to […]

Ed Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars existed for almost exactly 20 years. They were formed in February 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression and the transition from Herbert Hoover to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Stars formally ceased operations in the spring of 1953, in the middle of the National and American Leagues’ imperfect yet steady […]

Catcher Wilson Ramos is one of many athletes who have undergone LASIK surgery during their professional careers. He had the surgery performed in 2016, according to published reports. (Trading Card Database)   Since the 1990s there have been increased reports of prominent athletes undergoing refractive surgery including laser assisted in situ keratomileusis (LASIK). Some refractive […]

In 1938 the Baltimore Elite Giants had taken part in the Negro National League II playoffs and were looking forward to the 1939 season under a new manager. George Scales had led the team in 1938, when the Elite Giants finished third in the seven-team league, with a NNL II record of 26-23 but winning […]

Four members of the 1935 Detroit Tigers were later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Three of them were among the finest players of their era, while the fourth was a very good player whose election was the subject of debate. All were instrumental in the Tigers’ winning the 1935 championship, their first.Four members […]

Editor’s note: An abridged version of this interview was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s October 2020 newsletter.   David Crawford Jones is a former chairman of the Deadball Era Committee and the editor of Deadball Stars of the American League, published by Potomac Books in 2006. With a master’s degree in U.S. History […]

Pat Gillick once observed that it should take 10 years for an expansion team to emerge into a contender.1 The Hall of Fame executive would know; he oversaw the burgeoning of two of the 14 expansion teams. On one hand, his Astros were still a few years away from contending when he left Houston for […]

Introduction The offseason after the 1913 championship season was one of turmoil. It saw the players taking formal steps to improve their working conditions, the ouster of a league president, and the opening salvos of a new war with an “outlaw” major league. American League Because of the impending world tour, set to depart on […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 31 (2002).   John McGraw was one of the most successful baseball managers ever, leading the New York Giants to ten pennants in his 30 years with the club. His arrival in mid-1902 marked the turning point in the fortunes of the Giants, a […]

  New Yorkers love baseball. Their passion for the national game (and its bat-and-ball precursors) can be traced back into the earliest decades of the nineteenth century. Prior to the Civil War, scores of juvenile and adult teams in New York vied for bragging rights or trophy balls on emerald fields and dusty lots.1 Boys […]

BASEBALL BATS OUTSIDE THE BOX There are a number of different ways to reach first base safely, one of which is by hitting a baseball. Applying the expression “thinking outside the box” to the art of hitting, one will eventually conclude that there is a better baseball bat out there just waiting to be discovered. […]

According to conventional baseball wisdom, the home team enjoys a significant advantage in batting last. But in the early days of big-league baseball, it was not uncommon for teams to choose to bat first.1 By the time the American League declared itself a major league in 1901, home teams batting first had become a rarity, […]

There was one sentence that I read in Ted Williams’ autobiography, My Turn At Bat, which set me off on a personal research journey that took me some unexpected places and raised a few eyebrows along the way. It was a 44-word sentence about his mother, which I really only focused on the third time […]

The 1957 American Legion Central Catholic Team. The author is in the front row, furthest to the left. (Author’s collection)   Attend most high school baseball games in Texas today, and you will encounter a beautiful stadium with a staffed food shack. The walled outfield is most likely carpeted with neatly trimmed artificial turf, and […]

Missed, bad or wrong calls are part of nearly every game and can have an influence on the run of the play as well as the final score. Emotions can run particularly high when a player perceives a pitched ball is out of the strike zone but the umpire calls “strike.” Is it possible that […]

For many Dominican children, a future in the sugar cane fields, the hotel or travel industry, or some other low-paying job may seem inevitable. But when Major League Baseball (MLB) began obtaining talent from the Dominican Republic (D.R.), Dominican boys could dream of making heaps of money hitting home runs. For a few, baseball became […]

Who invented baseball? This question has held a niche in the American consciousness since the 1880s. The most widely known answer is that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. The casual observer who knows one thing about baseball’s origin knows the Doubleday story. The next answer is that Alexander Cartwright invented […]

On November 9, 1953, the United States Supreme Court issued a one paragraph opinion in Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc.1 The decision affirmed three lower federal court decisions that turned aside lawsuits challenging the Court’s 1922 ruling regarding the application of the nation’s antitrust laws to Organized Baseball.2 The concluding sentence succinctly declared that […]

Babe Ruth meets Yale baseball player George H.W. Bush in 1948. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   George Herbert Walker Bush began the first year of his term as the 41st President of the United States of America on January 20, 1989. Then, just seventy-three days later (on April 3, 1989), he carried out […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   On October 15, 1988, with a runner on first, Kirk Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers jerked a slider from the Oakland A’s Dennis Eckersley into the stands for a 5-4 victory. Newspaper reports noted that it was the first […]

In the summer of 1948, two of the nation’s premier major-league pitching prospects were Georgia boys—Willard Nixon of Lindale and Hugh Radcliffe of Thomaston. Both were multisport stars with a special talent for baseball. Both were big, strong, righthanded pitchers who had dominated opposing batters wherever they had pitched. Both attracted the attention of almost […]

Advertising billed The Great American Pastime as a comedy that would “keep us all in stitches.”   Following the Second World War, the baseball genre film enjoyed considerable popularity with Hollywood filmmakers hoping to recapture the commercial success of The Pride of the Yankees (1942). As that film re-told Lou Gehrig’s life story, many of […]