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Cliff Kachline has been deeply involved in sports: writing, sports memorabilia, and almost everything else connected with sports — especially baseball — for more than a half century, and through it all he’s maintained his boundless energy, youthful high spirits, and keen sense of humor. In The Politics of Glory: How the Baseball Hall of […]

The Twenties were still “Roaring,” Lindbergh was in Paris, Coolidge in Washington and Prohibition was the law of the land as Americans celebrated Decoration Day in 1927. It was the “Golden Age of Sport” and newspapers heralded the exploits of Grange, Dempsey, Tilden and Jones. In baseball the New York Yankees were hammering their way […]

   In the modern era of baseball there have been many great minor league clubs. Those that come immediately to mind are the 1937 Newark Bears, the 1934 Los Angeles Angels, the 1925 San Francisco Seals, the 1939-40 Kansas City Blues, the 1933 Columbus Red Birds, the  1928-31 Rochester Red Wings, and those special minor […]

This article was originally published in “The Empire State of Baseball,” the 1989 SABR convention journal (Albany).   In baseball’s modem era there have been many outstanding minor league teams. Coming to mind immediately are the 1937 Newark Bears, the 1934 Los Angeles Angels, the 1925 San Francisco Seals, the 1939-1940 Kansas City Blues, the […]

Many different methods exist for projecting the performance of major leaguers in a variety of statistical categories for an upcoming season. These projection systems include Brad Null,1 Bill James Handbook,2 CAIRO,3 CBS,4 CHONE,5 ESPN,6 Hardball Times,7 Hit Tracker,8 KFFL,9 Marcel,10 Oliver,11 PECOTA,12 RotoWorld,13 and ZiPS.14 Despite the availability and prevalence of these systems, there has […]

You can’t hit it if you can’t see it. Success in baseball requires good visual skills, including being able to see clearly. Many people need glasses or contact lenses. The most common reason for using them before age 40 is myopia (nearsightedness), which affects 20 to 30 percent of young adults in the United States.1,2 […]

Jack Allen (Tartleton State University Athletics)   Jack Allen, former head coach at Ranger College and Tarleton State University, is a member of the National Junior College Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame (inducted 1986) and the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame (inducted 2000). Allen served as head coach for 23 years at Ranger […]

Lou Gehrig Played First and Last Games of Consecutive Streak at Yankee Stadium In the July 12, 1999, edition of Sports Illustrated, the magazine listed some memorable dates in the history of Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The item for May 1, 1939, read,”Lou Gehrig played his 2,130th consecutive game—the last of his major league career.” […]

1931 All-Americans in front of the Oriental Hotel in Kobe (National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, NY)   It was a tour initially framed by the dreams of retired fringe major-league outfielder Herb Hunter, the continuing quest of a Japanese newspaper publisher to bring Babe Ruth to Japan before he retired as a player, and the metastasizing […]

Many casual baseball fans and serious sabermetricians alike hold the belief that the home run was not a terribly important part of the game until the arrival of Babe Ruth in the outfield of the New York Yankees in 1920. Just the year before, Ruth had hit 29 homers to slip past Ned Williamson’s single […]

A baseball team would be considered “streaky” if its record exhibits an unusually high number of consecutive wins or losses, compared to what might be expected if the team’s performance does not really depend on whether or not they won their previous game. If an average team in Major League Baseball (i.e., with a record […]

IN THE six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]

In the six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]

Social distancing restrictions were still in place for COVID-19 for this game at Dodger Stadium on May 29, 2021. (Photograph by Scott Carter.)   The Los Angeles Dodgers began the 2020 regular season – finally – on July 23. A worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with prolonged negotiations on how the games could safely be played, […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for nearly half a cen­tury, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. Two recent books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Flatbush. Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They touch briefly on some […]

A great deal has been written about the faceoff between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds in the best-of-nine 1919 World Series. Probably no other baseball World Series has drawn more attention from commentators and historians. However, the vast majority of words written about the Series relate to what has become commonly known […]

INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT As the twenty-first century began, the commissioner’s office and many team owners were concerned about competitive imbalance. After free agency began in the 1970s, some teams were able to use their financial heft to gain a competitive edge, especially those with lucrative local radio and television contracts; the New York Yankees, for […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Cleveland,” the 1990 SABR convention journal.   What most Cleveland fans regard as the beginning of the end of the Golden Era of Indians baseball can be traced to Easter Sunday, April 17, 1960. The Indians, who had finished second to the Chicago White Sox in 1959, […]

The cover illustration to the Amigos program shows the distinctively cantilevered roof of Miami Stadium, later known as Bobby Maduro Stadium.   Ever since the 1963 minor leagues realignment, the leagues that have held the Triple-A classification have been fairly consistent. The International League and Pacific Coast League have been fielding teams annually since then, […]

Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) in Arlington, Virginia, is the most famous burial ground in the United States, if not the world. It is a standard item on tourists’ must-see lists when visiting the Washington, D.C. area on vacation as it is the final resting place for presidents, generals, and Supreme Court justices. In addition, there […]

Bobby Thomson’s home run in the bottom of the ninth in the third game of the 1951 National League playoff is generally considered baseball’s greatest walk-off home run. Broadcaster Russ Hodges captured Thomson’s shot and froze it in time, echoing it through baseball’s ages. After the ball soared over Dodgers outfielder Andy Pafko’s forlorn face, […]

The baseball media have made a lot of noise the past two seasons about how baseball’s home run explosion possibly reached its zenith in the 2000 season, since the number of home runs per game in the 2001 and 2002 seasons was lower than in 2000. Even the number of runs scored per game was […]

An Ebbets Field of the mind was the only Ebbets Field I ever knew. And Babe Herman played there. If there is such a thing as “a fully matured baseball fan”, I was one when the Dodgers left New York. Unfortunately, I was only nine years old. Trapped in a child’s body, I couldn’t convince […]