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Editor’s note: This article, originally published in  “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]

Lenny Randle (SABR-Rucker Archive)   WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO YOU? Reality check: Playing professional baseball is a job. It requires supreme skill, demanding hours, cultural fit, and a balancing act to win approval from demanding, unpredictable bosses who control when you play, even if you’ll be traded. The pressure can become overwhelming. When you feel […]

Early baseball teams in Minneapolis and St. Paul played in a number of hastily built and short-lived ballparks before settling on a pair that each lasted 60 years, longer than any other park or field used for professional baseball in the Twin Cities.  NICOLLET AND LEXINGTON Opened and closed a year apart, Nicollet Park in […]

Today Wrigley Field is the second oldest major league ballpark. When it began, it was known as Weeghman Park and was the new home park of the Chicago franchise of the upstart Federal League. The park was built in less than two months before the 1914 season, and was named for the owner of the […]

In 1877, an auburn-haired 20-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, took the field for George McManus’s St. Louis Brown Stockings. The career of baseballist Thomas Joseph “Tom” Loftus parallels the story of the first 35 years of pro ball. Born on November 15, 1856, Loftus was a minor- and major-league baseball player, team captain, scout, manager, […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. “When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.” — Lord Kelvin “One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter […]

“Shea Stadium continues to be a fun place, even in triumph.” From Dick Young’s script for Look Who’s No. 1, the 1969 Mets highlight film that reassured fans unhinged by a world championship that Banner Day and Helmet Day weren’t going anywhere. You know you’re in Queens when you look up and see that virtually […]

The end of the Brotherhood war restored the status quo ante: two major leagues, the National League and the American Association, atop the sport’s pyramid. Yet, the principals of both leagues spent more of 1891 continuing war rather than securing an enduring peace. The restoration of the two-league system proved untenable for the longer term. […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

Rock and roll is the métier of choice at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (a.k.a. O.co Coliseum since 2011). For example, the Allman Brothers Band’s hit “Ramblin’ Man” can often be heard at the baseball Athletics’ 35,067-capacity home. It is fitting, given the franchise’s peregrination from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland […]

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey talk happily after a contract signing meeting in the offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field on January 25, 1950. (SABR/The Rucker Archive)   In 1947, concerned about the firestorm that could erupt once he went public with his plan to break baseball’s color barrier by hiring Jackie Robinson, […]

Baseball history is littered with heroic performances by great teams that ran rampshod over their competition, as well as teams that overachieved. Less remembered are the underachievers— teams that, at least on paper, appeared great, but failed to achieve their full potential.

Ask the average American to name a Jewish athlete. For many, the first to come to mind will be Dodgers great Sandy Koufax, even though it’s been nearly six decades since his retirement from major-league baseball. Like many of his sport’s all-timers, Koufax maintains an almost mythic status–especially among Jewish baseball fans, as well as […]

The American Association (AA) began operation in 1882 as a major league, challenging the National League’s (NL) hegemony in professional baseball that had existed since the NL’s founding six years earlier. The AA had a mostly successful ten-year run until it merged with the NL in 1892. An interesting question is whether, at any time […]

The 1949 Drummondville Cubs, Quebec Provincial League champions. Left to right: Gerry Cotnoir, Roy Zimmerman, Roger Bréard, Quincy Trouppe, Len Hooker, Sal Maglie, Conrado Perez, Roberto Vargas, Joe Promowicz (Prom), Joe luminelli, Danny Gardella, Stan Bréard, Vic Power, Ernie Sawyer. (Collection of Daniel Papillon)   On the afternoon of May 8, 1949, 4,000 fans crammed […]

The evolution of umpires’ equipment and uniforms began in the mid-nineteenth century when modern baseball under the New York Rules was introduced. Beginning in 1846 when the New York Rules came into effect and the popularity of baseball began to spread across the country, umpires had to enforce the rules of play. Since leagues were […]

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 […]