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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. In the 2011 postseason, David Freese made a name for himself with his spectacular and timely hitting and won both the National League Championship Series and World Series MVP awards. It […]

In addition to an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team, the Magnolia Chapter selected an All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star team. While acknowledging the talent of any number of players who served the Braves franchise during its time in Milwaukee and Boston, we wanted to restrict this team to players who actually played in Atlanta. We suggested that […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

Lou Gehrig has usually been described as playing in the shadow of his long-time teammate, Babe Ruth. This was true, particularly when it came to hitting home runs. Gehrig overtook the Babe in home runs on a season basis only when the latter was winding down, and he had no chance to overtake Ruth on […]

In keeping with one of SABR’s objectives—“To encourage further research and literary efforts to establish and maintain the accurate historical record of baseball”—the Society has promoted numerous research initiatives. One such effort, the BioProject (archived online at sabr.org/bioproject), has generated large amounts of information in its mission to publish biographical articles about everyone who ever […]

“The idea of community, the idea of coming together…in baseball, you do that all the time; you can’t win alone. You can be the best pitcher…but somebody has to get you a run to win the game. It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another. I love bunt plays. I […]

On September 26, 1962, Dave McNally took the mound for the first time as a Baltimore Orioles starter in game one of a doubleheader at Memorial Stadium. The lefty, who spent most of the year pitching for the Elmira Pioneers, hurled the first of his 33 career shutouts. McNally’s two-hit, three-walk effort produced the first […]

After a 90-loss, ninth-place season in 1966, the Boston Red Sox entered spring training in Winter Haven, Florida, with a new manager and a new outlook.Spring training 1967 was quite different from spring training 1966 for the Boston Red Sox. We can remember 1966 as the year when Earl Wilson was turned away from the […]

During their 11-1 run through the postseason that followed a wire-to-wire regular season for their first World Series title in 88 years, the 2005 White Sox used the same 25-man roster in all three series, and nearly half of the players on that roster became a part of the organization only over the previous year. […]

When I did The Hidden Game of Baseball with John Thorn, I came up with a total player rating involving batting, pitching, base running, and fielding. Some notes on total player rating1: Each player was rated on runs above or below average, with runs turned into wins, using a variable factor based on league data, […]

As the Cincinnati Reds prepared for the 1975 season, they had reason for cautious optimism. The club had plenty of talented players, including some of the biggest stars in the game, and they had been a strong team for several years. But they had not won the World Series in 35 years; and the Los […]

To date, there has only been one woman who played baseball with a team of major leaguers in a big-league ballpark. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Murphy and she played for a team of “all-stars” against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Lizzie Murphy’s team beat the Red Sox, 3-2.1 The year was 1922, […]

The Kansas City Royals had so much fun on Turn Ahead the Clock Night, they decided to bring the promotion back for its 20th anniversary in 2018. Pictured here are (L) Whit Merrifield in 2018 and (R) Johnny Damon in 1998. (KANSAS CITY ROYALS)   Imagine you are sitting in a ballpark in the year […]

The Canadian Military Headquarters team defeated their American opponents before a huge crowd at Wembley Stadium on June 3, 1944. The hero of the day, Ed Smith, is back row, third from the right. (Library and Archives Canada)   Ed Smith was twice a hero during Canada’s Second World War. Smith, working at the Canadian […]

Entrance to Replay Operations Center, New York City.   In 1955, a producer on Canadian television used a kinescope to show a replay during a Hockey Night in Canada telecast, the first time anyone had shown a play a second time on television. In the early 1960s, a director for CBS Sports invented a replay […]

In 1959, ace Pittsburgh Pirates fireman Roy Face set a major-league record by winning 18 games in relief against one loss. His .947 winning average also established the record for pitchers with at least 15 decisions. Face’s incredible numbers far exceeded those of the Pirates, who went 78–76 and finished fourth, nine games behind the […]

Babe Ruth was one of the most iconic players in baseball, and Runs Batted In are one of the most revered statistics in baseball. Not surprisingly, Ruth was one of the most prominent RBI men in the history of Major League Baseball. He topped the Junior Circuit in ribbies in several seasons. But how many? […]

One could pen a book or perhaps even an encyclopedia on the manner in which baseball and television have merged across the decades. Such a volume not only would explore the manner in which ballgames have been broadcast on TV both locally and nationally and the celebrated sportscasters who announce them. It would feature everything […]

In 1944, three years before he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson was court-martialed at Fort Hood, Texas. Robinson had volunteered for combat with the segregated 761st Tank Battalion. Although he had signed a waiver for a previous football injury, he was required to undergo extensive medical tests before being transferred […]

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of an article that appeared in the January 1985 issue of Baseball Gold.   San Diego, with a population of 2,000, wasn’t much more than a speck on the map in 1876, the year the National League was organized. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and Father Junipero Serra had set foot […]