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As the 1875 baseball season approached, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago White Stockings, was livid. Chicago’s entry in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) had attempted, prior to the end of the 1874 season, to sign their star shortstop, Davy Force, for the next year. Such a move violated the […]

One hundred years ago on Thursday, September 2, 1880, teams representing two of Boston’s prominent department stores, Jordan Marsh and Company and R. H. White and Company, played a game of baseball at Nantasket Bay on the oceanside of Hull, Massachusetts. This game would have held no historic value and would long since have been […]

It was a hot summer day in 1897 when hundreds of fans of the Federalsburg Club in Maryland gathered for a game. This small town of barely a thousand people was proud of their team. Little did they know that three of the young teenagers taking the field for them that day would soon be […]

When the movers and shakers of the baseball world descended on the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas for the 2008 Winter Meetings, the sport and the country faced economic uncertainty not witnessed since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic downturn that became known as the Financial Crisis or the Great Recession began rumbling […]

The 1936 Black Panthers. Charlie Culver is the first on the left, sitting. (Jerry Cohen, Ebbets Field Flannels)   The reception that Jackie Robinson received in Montréal is well known. A few years later, the Provincial League became a prime destination for Negro League veterans. Many factors can explain how that came to be, but […]

If Bob Sheppard, longtime public address announcer for the New York Yankees, was class personified, Tex Rickards, who held a similar slot with Dem Bums, reflected the spirit of the “woiking” class Brooklynite.1 And while Robert Merrill, the classy Metropolitan Opera baritone, often sang “The Star Spangled Banner” at Yankee Stadium, at Ebbets Field the […]

  Like 9/11, the sinking of the Titanic clings to American memory, slicing across sex, race, age, geographical, and class divides. Generations later, mental snapshots of the disaster develop at the briefest mention. An iceberg on a moonless night. The Law of the Sea: women and children first. The fortunate watching from insufficient lifeboats while […]

Had Michael Brantley stayed healthy, the 2022 World Series could have avoided becoming the first Fall Classic since 1950 to have no African American players. As it was, the Astros outfielder and lone African American on either team’s roster suffered a season-ending shoulder injury that kept him out of postseason play.1 The only other African […]

The 1963 baseball winter meetings were alive with discussion of important issues, including the permissible size of catcher’s mitts and the color of baseball bats. The clubs also made time to once again reconfigure the minor-league structure and adopt an amendment designed to assist the player-development efforts of expansion teams. The minor leagues kicked off […]

During the first years of the twentieth century many of the most celebrated—and marketable— major leaguers supplemented their incomes by headlining in vaudeville or touring in legitimate plays during the off-season. A few even appeared in motion pictures: a new medium that was revolutionizing the way in which Americans passed their leisure hours. And so, […]

Recognized as one of the top umpires in Cuba for the past five seasons, Elber Ibarra Santiesteban has the satisfaction (or the luck, as he puts it) of never having called a play that would not let him sleep that night.1 Born in Tacajó, a settlement in the current municipality of Báguano, within the province […]

In anticipation of hosting SABR 40, the Magnolia Chapter has selected an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team. Any major-league player born in the state of Georgia was theoretically eligible; no residency requirement was stipulated. In order to make the process more efficient, the author screened the master list of players to eliminate most “cup of coffee” […]

Baseball is at one and the same time an idyllic game for children and a gravely serious business for adults. A sport that can be played on a pastoral commons requires, in the world of commerce, space to which some can be admitted and from which others can be excluded—in short, what lawyers call real […]

Although on the surface Miller Huggins and Jacob Ruppert seemed worlds apart, the two men had striking similarities. They were the architects of the New York Yankees’ dominance in the 1920s. (BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)   Jacob Ruppert believed that hiring Miller Huggins as his manager after the 1917 season was the first and most important […]

The 1860 Excelsior Club. Star pitcher James Creighton is third from left. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The Excelsior club of Brooklyn toured Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland in 1860, only two years after the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players. The Nationals of Washington carried the baseball gospel […]

Early days with the Montreal Royals. March 6, 1946. (Courtesy of Rachel Robinson and the Estate of Jackie Robinson)   On Tuesday, October 23, 1945, 15 of Montreal’s sportswriters and broadcasters were invited to a press conference at the home of the Montreal Royals, Delorimier Stadium, and were promised “a major announcement.” The Triple-A International […]

ABSTRACT Minor league baseball has undergone a resurgence, exemplified by record-setting attendance and a growing number of new ballparks. Much research has focused on factors that drive attendance. Chief among those factors is promotions, with numerous studies showing that giveaways and sponsored off-the-field activities at games can increase gate receipts. The quality of the team […]

Gus Greenlee, in hat and tie, shown here with some members of his Pittsburgh Crawfords team. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The United States Negro Baseball League is mostly known for its minor role in the Jackie Robinson story. It was famously backed by Branch Rickey in 1945, possibly for use as a cover for the Brooklyn […]

This article illustrates the problems that existed in the 1884 Minneapolis Grounds, covering the social tensions that arose to legal difficulties that were created by the ballpark.

It was the last game of the 1949 baseball season and George Kell was locked in a close race for the AL batting title. The Detroit Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians in a game that meant little to either team since neither was destined for the World Series. Ted Williams, who had sat atop […]

George Davis, one of the turn of the century’s finest ballplayers, remains an enigma with regards to his personal life and character. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Of the more than 300 individuals enshrined in Cooperstown, perhaps the most enigmatic is George Davis. Despite an outstanding 20-season playing career—and twice being manager of […]

1960 San Francisco Giants Goodwill tour program featuring Willie Mays (Robert Fitts Collection)   The San Francisco Giants enjoyed a banner year in 1960. After almost five years of planning by the city’s mayor and Board of Supervisors and two years of problem-plagued construction, the Giants’ new ballpark, Candlestick Park, opened in time for the […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

Other than being eaten alive and shot at, Waycross was great. — Hank Aaron (1953)   On March 18, 1953, the Boston Braves did something no club had managed to do since 1903, when the Orioles fled Baltimore to become the New York Highlanders. They moved. To Milwaukee. Among the goods and chattels they brought […]