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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 7 (McFarland & Co., 2014). The long relationship between Negro League baseball and Yankee Stadium that provided the Black leagues with both income and prestige began in 1930 when a millionaire lent his prized major league ballpark to a man who […]

INTRODUCTION One of the most appealing reasons for talent research in sport is the hope that future talent can be predicted in “key transferable skills.”[fn]Abbott, A., Button, C., Pepping, J.G., & Collins, D. (2005). Unnatural selection: Talent identification and development in sport. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 9, 62.[/fn] Previous talent research has used […]

Some professional baseball teams did not include dates on regular season tickets before 1974. Therefore, many stubs exist as a tangible part of sports history, but remain unidentified and have lost their historical significance. This study attempts to identify pre-1974 regular season grandstand and bleacher tickets issued by the New York Yankees. Numerous unique details […]

This article was honored as a 2021 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   More than a decade has passed since American City Business Journals (ACBJ), a subsidiary of Advance Media, the company that bought the Sporting News in 2006, moved the publication’s editorial office from St. Louis to Charlotte, North Carolina, and closed The Sporting […]

In 1922, the New York Yankees played the New York Giants in the World Series; the majors produced three .400 hitters; Rogers Hornsby won the Triple Crown; and Organized Baseball reached the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Baseball had long been a popular pastime on the Shore. Almost every town supported a team, and competition among […]

 Minor-League Winter Meeting The prospect of war cast a long shadow over the National Association meeting for 1941. Europe and Asia had been mired in conflict for more than two years by this time, and just days after the meetings concluded, the United States would be forced to enter the second worldwide war of the […]

Baseball is thankfully free of artificial boundaries of time which confine other sports. This freedom helps to shape the unique magical charm that is an evening at the ballpark. Fans never know whether it will be a two-hour squeaker or whether they may be enchanted until past sunrise by the first-ever wild 12-hour 46-inning slugfest. […]

Southpaw Ross Grimsley waited until the last inning of the last game of the 1978 season to become the Montreal Expos’ first and only 20-game winner. With one out and two men on in the final frame of a tie game against the St. Louis Cardinals on October 1, Grimsley strolled to the plate. “He […]

In 1976, Larry Parrish had batted only .232 in 154 games, and his prospects in 1977 appeared cloudy. However, he had a torrid spring and was named the starting third baseman by Expos manager Dick Williams. Unfortunately the hopes of spring soon faded as Parrish slumped both at the plate and in the field, and […]

Gary Carter earned the nickname “Kid” when he first came to spring training with the Montreal Expos at age 19 in 1973.1 He, along with Larry Parrish, Ellis Valentine, André Dawson, and pitcher Steve Rogers, would turn out to be the core players of this franchise in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But Carter, […]

Already the author of both a pair of one-hitters and two-hitters in his fledgling career, Silvio Martinez of the St. Louis Cardinals came within four outs of a no-hitter against the high-flying Montreal Expos on June 27, 1979, at Busch Stadium. Backup catcher Duffy Dyer, with a lifetime .232 batting average entering the 1979 season, […]

History was on the verge of being made when Dwight Gooden took the mound on August 25, 1985. After a stellar rookie season in 1984, Gooden’s sophomore season had been just as spectacular. If he won this afternoon, Gooden, at 20 years, 9 months, and 9 days old, would become the youngest 20-game winner in […]

It didn’t take long for St. Louis Cardinals fans to appreciate Bruce Sutter. In the Cardinals’ second game of the 1981 season, the right-handed relief ace pitched three nearly flawless innings to earn the save in a 7-3 victory over the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies on April 12 at Busch Stadium. Sutter, the […]

Sunday, July 2, 1961, was a muggy day at Yankee Stadium, with game-time temperatures in the low 90s. The expansion Washington Senators were finishing a three-game set against the New York Yankees, who were going for a series sweep and seeking to move closer to the first-place Detroit Tigers. This game illustrated the challenges any […]

There was no shortage of outstanding performances in Gary Carter’s Hall of Fame career. Twice he blasted three home runs in a game, and he drove in seven runs in another regular-season matchup.1 In the 1981 All-Star Game, Carter hit two round-trippers to lead the National League to a 5-4 win. Some of his greatest […]

Earl Randolph Ashby Powbett led a fascinating baseball life. He was a backup catcher for the 1945 Negro champion Cleveland Buckeyes. He was given a chance to replace Josh Gibson as Homestead Grays catcher in 1947. He played in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States and perhaps other lands as well.  But he also […]

Imagine the right guard from your favorite NFL team pitching for your favorite MLB squad. Nearly a century ago that scenario was played out by Garland “Gob” Buckeye, who opened holes for the Chicago Cardinals and threw fastballs for the Cleveland Indians. Garland’s size was often mentioned in the press. Over the years he was […]

An every-other-year major leaguer, Gary Fortune was a switch-hitting pitcher – a right-hander on the mound – who wound up 0-5 in his big-league career. He pitched for the Phillies in 1916 and 1918, and for the Red Sox in 1920. His 0-5 record reflected a 6.61 career earned run average. He wasn’t any better […]

Frank Strong Lary, a talented, hard-throwing right hander for the Detroit Tigers, proved to be one of the American League’s best pitchers from 1955 through 1961. An All-Star hurler in 1960 and 1961, he was best known as the “Yankee Killer.” While fashioning a major league lifetime record of 128-116 with an ERA of 3.49, […]

It simply should not have taken six years for Gary Carter to get into the Hall of Fame. He was one of the best catchers of his era, and many observers put him in the top ten in major-league history. He was an outstanding defender with a strong arm who did all the other things […]