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From youth “select” baseball to the major leagues, the percentage of players who are African American has reached a historic low. As low as the percentage on 2020 MLB teams’ 30-man rosters had ebbed (7.5 percent1), it is even lower among college players and youth players.2 Scholars and pundits have offered reasons for, and solutions […]
The highest grossing baseball movie of all time, A League of Their Own, features a 15-second scene where an African-American woman picks up an errant ball and throws it back with such snap that it raises eyebrows.1 The film tells the story of what is now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBPL), […]
The word nickname is derived from the Old English eke name based on the verb ecan meaning to add or augment. Thus, nicknames augment given names and provide a richer and more explicit denotation. They tell us something more about a person than just the fact that he is officially James Smith. Nicknames often serve […]
Advertisement for August 19, 1963 exhibition game featuring the New York Yankees against the International League All-Stars at Buffalo ’s War Memorial Stadium. (Buffalo Courier-Express, August 19, 1963) Fans in Montreal and Toronto watched major-league baseball teams years before the Expos or Blue Jays came to town. Same thing with Milwaukee and the Braves […]
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988). This past February, the city of Chicago finally yielded to massive pressure from the Commissioner’s office and the Tribune company and decided to put lights in Wrigley Field. The City Council tried to mask the significance of the move by […]
Writers often refer to “MLB” as though it were something that has existed as long as there has been major-league baseball. It has not. I decided to ask the question: Did MLB exist before 2000? Or maybe late 1999? Some background on why I decided to delve into this question. Several odd words or constructions […]
The scene paints a mental picture. It is Philadelphia in the winter of 1908-1909; the exact date is not a matter of record. Charles Albert (Chief) Bender sits in his newly-completed home at 3515 Judson Street, contemplating a survey document received from the Carlisle Indian School. The recently enrolled Jim Thorpe has yet to make […]
The Houston Astrodome was the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned major-league ballpark. It was formally unveiled in an exhibition game that pitted the Houston Astros against the American League champion New York Yankees on April 9, 1965. Unlike previous sports venues, the Astrodome was built to be a massive all-purpose, climate-controlled facility that would serve as […]
Maury Wills attempts to turn a double play against the Yomiuri Giants (Robert Fitts Collection) By 1966, the bloom was coming off the chrysanthemum of Japan tours by major-league teams. Rebuilding US-Japan relations was less worrisome as the Japanese economy surged and Tokyo proved a stout ally for American fears about Russian and Chinese […]
One of the most unusual baseball games in American League history took place at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, on May 18, 1912. Nominally a contest between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Detroit Tigers, the men who suited up for the Tigers that day were locally recruited ballplayers, while the real Tigers players bought tickets to sit […]
Editor’s note: Justice Samuel Alito delivered this speech as the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2008 Annual Lecture. It was published originally in the “Journal of Supreme Court History 34,” no. 2 (July 2009): 183–95, and republished in SABR’s law-themed Fall 2009 issue of the Baseball Research Journal. The Justice expresses his gratitude to James Hunter, […]
In another article, I describe my findings on the accuracy of Major League Baseball’s official runs-scored statistics for each Detroit Tigers player for the period 1945—2007.1 There I report that I discovered—and corrected—26 runs-scored errors affecting 19 players, including four Hall of Famers. Subsequently the Elias Sports Bureau (the official statisticians for MLB), based on […]
(Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.) Robert Clemente was not the first Latino to play major-league baseball, but he was the first Latino superstar. He saw that as both a responsibility and an opportunity. Like Jackie Robinson, he used his athletic celebrity to speak out on behalf of social and racial justice. And like Robinson, […]
Sixteen months ago, we were stuck in our homes wondering if, or under what circumstances, baseball would return. To some degree, as I began this essay in April 2021, things had not changed. There were encouraging signs during the summer of 2020. Once, as I was walking my dog, Buddy, we happened on a batting […]
“No sporting event so decisively enthralls the national consciousness as baseball’s annual October pageant.… There is something heroic about the pitched combat of two teams that are at once survivors and winners, meeting to decide the world championship.” – Donald Honig1 Even though the nature of postseason baseball has changed dramatically over the past 50 […]
This excerpt is from the SABR book, Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark. We are honored to include this reminiscence by longtime Stadium tour director Tony Morante of his time working in baseball. As a New York Yankees employee from 1958 to 2018, I had the good fortune to witness or par take […]
A quick perusal of the performance of the Boston Braves during the war years of 1942-45 might lead one to conclude that the team’s destiny suffered few, if any, ill effects from the loss of ballplayers to military service. The Tribe had been mired in the National League’s second division since 1935 and finished in […]
Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]
More than 65 years have elapsed since Rube Marquard attracted national attention by winning 19 consecutive games at the start of the season for the 1912 National League Champion New York Giants. That was a banner year for streaks by pitchers as Smokey Joe Wood and Walter Johnson both set the American League standard with […]
On August 9, 2006, the first-place New York Mets were hosting the San Diego Padres at Shea Stadium. The Mets were headed toward their first division title since 1988 and first playoff berth since 2000. It was an ordinary late summer series against an out-of-division team as the Mets held a big 13.5 game lead […]
In 1892, Frank Grant played for the Gorhams and then the Cuban Giants on his way to a Hall of Fame career. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY) During a playoff game in October 1905, Leland Giants pitcher Walter Ball rushed onto the diamond at Chicago’s West Side Park and threw a punch “with […]
R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?” TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?” Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In […]
Recent study has revealed the claim of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York to pioneer status, as well as that of Alexander Cartwright to be the game’s inventor, to be suspect if not altogether baseless. I have taken up the latter claim at length in Baseball in the Garden of Eden and will […]
Roberto Clemente won MVP honors during the 1971 World Series with a .414 batting average (12-for-29), with two home runs, a triple, and two doubles. (Courtesy of the Clemente Museum) In baseball, there is only one goal. Each season teams play 162 games, plus up to 15 more in the playoffs, to earn the […]