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According to a well-known baseball saying in the Dominican Republic, “You don’t walk off the island.”1 It means that, for a ballplayer looking to advance to Major League Baseball, it is better to try to hit the ball than draw a walk, even at the possible expense of making an out. This may explain a […]

Elmer Dean, center, the older brother of St. Louis Cardinals stars Dizzy and Paul Dean shows his new House of David teammates how he grips a curveball on May 5, 1935. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The brothers Jay Hanna (“Dizzy,” also known as Jerome Herman) Dean and Paul Dee (“Daffy”) Dean are […]

Charlie Dressen. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   As soon as the last pitch of a baseball season is thrown, owners of major-league franchises and executives in front offices focus on the year ahead. Offseason decisions, even from clubs that have experienced success, occasionally surprise outside observers when prominent players are traded, sold, or released—or when managers and […]

I think that no players in the majors today could conceive of going through what Negro Leaguers did for a chance at a baseball career. At the same time, however, most of the veterans of baseball’s black leagues will say that, if given the chance, they would do it all over again. A statement like […]

Nelson Rockefeller stands with Jackie Robinson, who served as a special assistant on community affairs for the New York Governor in the 1960s.   Between 1960 and 1968, Jackie Robinson was widely regarded as the most famous Black Republican in the country. Following his announced retirement from baseball in January 1957, and in remarkably short […]

Baseball parks contain an aura and grandiosity that seem ripe for events beyond the game. Yet their odd angles, inconsistent dimensions, and strange sightlines have made them a historic challenge as a site in which to pull off a concert.1 Still, some of the most famous shows on American soil took place somewhere between a […]

Hilda Chester and her famous cowbell (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The New York Yankees have their Bleacher Creatures. The crosstown Mets had Karl “Sign Man of Shea” Ehrhardt, while “Megaphone Lolly” Hopkins was the super-fan of the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles rooters […]

“Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” – Roberto Clemente Walker   (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   For a sports figure to be idolized for his or her greatness is not uncommon. Roberto Clemente received the […]

Jackie Robinson speaks to a reporter during the August 28, 1963, Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.   “I know that you realize that in the tasks that lie ahead all freedom-loving Americans will want to share in achieving a society in which no man is penalized or favored solely because of his race, color, […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (McFarland & Co., Fall 2008). Premise By the late 1930s, and particularly during the years of US involvement in World War II, segregation in sport and society was a topic of increasing public interest. Nationalism had at least […]

This article was honored with a SABR Analytics Conference Research Award in 2016.   In 1976, for the first time in thirty-three seasons, total stolen bases exceeded total home runs in Major League Baseball.1 A consistent turn towards more frequent basestealing had already become evident on the field, as teams collectively stole over 1,000 more […]

In the first years of the American League, its eight clubs added to their ranks by drawing away players from the older National League. Baseball had been slumping, a situation stemming from the country’s economic depression and the failed leadership of team owners. Attempting to snap out if it, the NL magnates had pared down […]

Although Al Kaline obviously deserved the many accolades he received as an exceptional athlete with admirable personal characteristics, misconceptions have long existed regarding the severity of challenges he faced in his youth and during his 22-year professional baseball career. This article will address a litany of circumstances that he encountered and explain how he overcame […]

In the Spring 2014 edition of the Baseball Research Journal, I authored a study that examined within-season attendance patterns attributable to the homegrown status of the home team’s starting pitcher (Ormiston, 2014a). While the analysis failed to find a relationship between homegrown pitchers and game attendance, a control variable in the model—the rookie status of […]

Albert Spalding lived an extraordinary life as one of baseball’s most important figures. This article focuses on his San Diego years, during which he helped develop San Diego into the city it is today, as well as key connections in his early life that set up his grand finale. The Rockford Files Rockford, Illinois, is […]

Introduction and History I have taught or co-taught sabermetrics in the mathematics department at the United States Military Academy several times. We covered all the metrics but what always interested me most was the direction student projects took to solve or analyze various issues in baseball. In one of these courses, for example, the group […]

Roy Mack affixes his signature to an agreement selling the Athletics to the Philadelphia syndicate on October 17, 1954—a commitment Roy would betray just a day later in a backroom deal with Arnold Johnson. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Bill Renna was playing winter ball for the 1953–54 San Juan Senators, managed by […]

It is hard to imagine a more polarizing figure in Philadelphia sports history than Dick Allen. Countless gallons of ink have been spilled in furtherance of trying to capture and explain Allen’s stormy relationship with the Phillies and the city of Philadelphia during his 1963-69 tenure with the club. Much less focus has been given, […]

INTRODUCTION  The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series. The Yankees are at bat in the bottom of the sixth with men on first and second and none out. Johnny Podres has pitched masterfully during the first five innings. Yogi Berra is up and lashes a […]

Juan Soto’s family represented as cardboard cutouts at Nationals Park in 2020. (Photo by Ed Shea/All Pro Reels)   The 2020 Major League Baseball season was unprecedented, as games were played without fans for the entire COVID-19-abbreviated schedule, creating a unique environment for study of the effect of fans on MLB team performance. The season […]

From the beginning of professional baseball in the nineteenth century and continuing through the first decades of the twentieth, Georgia was a popular site for major-league spring training. Between 1871 and 1953, more than 20 major-league baseball franchises from 14 cities held their spring training in the state (see table 1).[fn]In order to prepare these […]

A playoff souvenir from the Ottawa Nationals. (City of Ottawa Archives, MG-946-1-1)   The Second World War ended, sparking a boom in affiliated minor-league baseball across Canada and the United States. In 1945, there were 12 leagues with 86 teams. The 1946 season began with 43 leagues and 316 teams. On December 9, 1945, a […]

National League president Warren Giles was in San Diego for Opening Day, April 8, 1969, and here joins Buzzie Bavasi holding an aerial photograph of the Padres’ new ballpark, San Diego Stadium. (Courtesy of Tom Larwin)   San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time Los Angeles […]

Major-league baseball players and umpires are sometimes at odds, but both groups seemed to be thinking along the same lines around 1968. It was then that the Major League Baseball Players Association won the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports, and umpires started on the road to formation of a union that would eventually […]