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Seldom are the occasions when a team emerges as back-to-back champions in the National League. Rarer still when that team’s manager could call upon a well-heeled mound corps that includes three future Hall of Famers. These were the well-earned privileges of Walter Alston as his Los Angeles Dodgers entered as 8–5 favorites against the Baltimore […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   A native Louisvillian, Louis “Pete” Browning was born June 17, 1861, in the first summer of America’s Civil War. One of eight children (four sons and four daughters) born to Samuel and Mary Jane Sheppard Browning, Pete grew […]

Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, who played for the Cincinnati Reds 36 years before Jackie Robinson came along, should be credited with crashing the color barrier. — Felipe Alou1   On April 15, 1947, the story goes, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first black American to play baseball in the major leagues.2 […]

The Illinois-Indiana-Iowa baseball league started its ninth consecutive season of play in May 1909. While the league was better known then as the Three-I or Three-Eye league, the name was actually a misnomer. The eight teams in the league that year were located only in Illinois and Iowa. (This would not be the last time […]

When I approached Robin Roberts in 1992 about writing a book on the famous Whiz Kids team that won the 1950 pennant on the last day of the season, he was immediately all in.  Since I’d never written a baseball book (although heaven knows I’d read enough of them), I felt a little like the […]

Jackie Mitchell with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library).   On April 2, 1931 history was made in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That same day a mystery was also born. Seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell took the mound against the New York Yankees, striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig before walking Tony Lazzeri. […]

  Smile. Tilt your head. Lean back. A little more. You’ve got it. Right there. Beautiful! Snap! With each pose, each shutter click, Marla Collins crossed the line from Chicago Cubs ballgirl to Playboy model. Both paying roles relied on sexuality: one teased and implied, the other overt. And before you hyperventilate about “pornography,” know […]

Referral to the glossary of statistical terms in the first edition (1989) of Total Baseball by John Thorn and Pete Palmer allows one to easily find not only the meaning and utility of numerous baseball statistics but also the persons credited with inventing them.1 For example: Assist average. Assists divided by games played. Stat created […]

In 1969, his first season as manager of the Washington Senators, Ted Williams worked wonders. He gave instant celebrity status to a team formerly mocked and ignored, even in its own city. With essentially the same roster as the 1968 team that finished 65-96, the worst record in Major League Baseball, Williams’ Senators won 86 […]

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it […]

[I]n my book the most exciting play in baseball is a three-bagger. […] You used to see a fair number of them in the old days, but now they’re the rarest plays in baseball. For sheer excitement, I don’t think anything can beat when you see that guy go tearing around the bases and come […]

Jackie laughed. “Baseball isn’t all about home runs,” he said. “It’s a team sport. You have to trust the other players as much as you trust yourself.”1   A Big Day For Baseball (2019), written by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated by Sal Murdocca. (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)   When Jackie Robinson debuted for […]

San Francisco Giants Hall of Famer Willie Mays influenced the lives of two other Giants, Bobby and Barry Bonds, both of whom who had significant careers of their own. He was Bobby’s teammate with the Giants, while taking on the role of godfather for Barry as a youngster. When Barry later became a Giant, Mays continued […]

A no-hitter turns a pitcher into an instant celebrity in the baseball world. Regardless of what he did before or what he does after, he’ll always be a member of an elite group, a fraternal brotherhood that links Cy Young and Nolan Ryan with the likes of Jose Jimenez, Mike Warren, and Bobo Holloman. What […]

Cupid Childs was one of the best-hitting major-league second basemen during the late nineteenth century, not to mention a better than average fielder who possessed great range on the diamond. Only four other second basemen in the history of major-league baseball have averaged more total chances per game than Childs. His all-around outstanding play made […]

Willie Mays and Willie McCovey played together for 14 seasons, including in McCovey’s 1969 MVP campaign. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Willie Mays and Willie McCovey formed one of the greatest one-two power combinations in baseball history. The pair were teammates on the San Francisco Giants from 1959 to 1972. During that stretch, they won the 1962 National […]

Dodger Stadium hosted the Olympic baseball tournament in 1984. Japan beat the USA in the championship game. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Though baseball’s history as an “official” Olympic event is short and fragmented (1992-2008, 2020, 2028), the sport was on the roster as an “exhibition” game for various decades. Although a dozen […]

Henry Aaron hit home runs in most of the major-league cities during his illustrious 23-year career. He homered 755 times by the time his playing days ended in 1976, surpassing the legendary Babe Ruth in 1974. Yet one city that wasn’t on his major-league schedule, New Orleans, became the site of three unique Aaron home […]

We propose to measure overall offensive performance of a baseball player as the ratio of Bases Advanced to Outs Created. This new Overall Offensive Performance (OOP) statistic is deterministic, objective, readily calculated, and easily understood. OOP captures in a single number all aspects of offensive performance included in multiple, existing offensive stats, plus additional aspects […]