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As I sprinted across Oracle Park with my son during the San Francisco Giants home opener on April 7, 2023, an usher and I struck up a conversation.1 Understanding that I was from the Twin Cities and a fan of the Minnesota Twins, he asked me point blank, “Will Joe Mauer end up in the […]

Second base. It might not have the pizzazz of shortstop. It also might not have the glamour of third base, which is known as the “hot corner.” Fans don’t normally expect the same power numbers from a second baseman that they see in others who play the infield, like the stereotypical slugger who plays first […]

Babe Ruth is seated in a bistro. A waiter takes his order. William  Bendix, wearing a putty-flattened Ruth nose, orders milk. Babe Ruth??? Milk??? That scene was enough to curdle “The Babe Ruth Story,” a  cheaply made production of the great slugger’s life. And Ty Cobb doesn’t fare any better. In 1916, Cobb was coaxed […]

Until my freshman year of college, the only books I’d read cover-to-cover were baseball almanacs and biographies of early and mid-twentieth century baseball players like Ed Delahanty and Satchel Paige. Throughout grade school, I spent my evenings flipping through onionskin pages full of baseball stats or studying the backs of baseball cards. An Indians fan, […]

Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]

You will not find Joe E. Brown’s name in a major league box score. But in his way, he is as much a part of baseball lore as the Gas House Gang, the Whiz Kids, and the House That Ruth Built. Joe E. Brown was a movie star: a wide-mouthed co­ median whose face was […]

Adam Ford and his wife, the former Jane Cruttenden, ca 1872. Seated center is Jane’s father Lauriston Cruttenden, one of the early settlers of St. Marys. Ford’s marriage into the respected and influential family provided an immediate boost to both his social standing and his political aspirations. (St. Marys Museum and R. Lorne Eedy Archives, […]

As a franchise that began 130 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have made an indelible mark not only on the city where they play but also on the whole sport of baseball. This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of the […]

For a batter or pitcher, the best—or worst—of the “Three True Outcomes” is a home run or a strikeout.1 The rates of the both home runs and strikeouts have increased substantially over the years. To illustrate, let’s compare 1949 and 2019. In the National League in 1949, 42,711 at bats resulted in 935 homers and […]

Clutch hitting is back in fashion in the baseball research com­munity. For years many of us looked in vain for the existence of some persistent clutch-hitting ability and, failing to find it, came to the conclusion that such an ability must not exist. The pioneer of this approach was Dick Cramer, who wrote an article on […]

Four books on the Bronx Bombers.

(Photograph by Duane Rieder.)   It was fitting that Nelson Cruz received the Roberto Clemente Award in 2022 as the 50th anniversary of Clemente’s untimely passing approached. Both Clemente and Cruz hailed from Caribbean islands, and each used his wealth and status derived from playing major-league baseball to help improve the lives of the less […]

Lobby card for “Kill the Umpire” (1950) starring William Bendix. (Author’s collection)   Most baseball fans would agree that the best umpire is the invisible umpire. Sure, the umps on the field ensure that the rules of the game are followed. They call balls and strikes. They determine if the fielder who dives for the […]

As we are told by the good-hair talking heads on 24-hour sports networks—as well as by any newspaper, electronic fish wrap, podcast, or blog—the 2021 season featured nine no-hitters. But in 11 games a team was held hitless. Why the discrepancy? Two of those games were seven-inning games, and a 1991 committee had declared that […]

The odds on the Boston Red Sox winning the 1967 American League pennant were 100-1 at the beginning of the season. But when they completed the Impossible Dream, it was “Pandemonium on the field!”The Boston Red Sox embarked on their 1967 season with a five-man rotation that had collectively won only 25 major league games […]

Tris Speaker, considered one of the greatest hitters and center fielders of all time, is rarely considered a great manager, though his rallying the Cleveland Indians to the 1920 world championship after the death of Ray Chapman is readily acknowledged. His remarkable achievement of managing the Indians in 1921—keeping them in the pennant race against […]

INTRODUCTION Social network analysis (SNA) is the mathematical examination of the interactions between individuals when those individuals intermittently come together for a common purpose. It is often used to determine the influential or important people in a large group of interacting individuals. The term “social network analysis” is somewhat of a misnomer as the interactions […]

ORIGINAL BULLPEN PLACE FOR FRUGAL FANS THE TERM “BULLPEN” IS generally believed to have come into baseball with the advent of relief pitchers who usually warmed up in the area where Bull Durham signs were located. The term, however, goes all the way back to the beginning of major league baseball itself, and its original […]

With an original cover illustration of Jim Bouton designed by SABR member Gary Cieradkowski, we hope you enjoy the new issue of the Baseball Research Journal! By the time you read this, the 2021 World Series champion will have been crowned. But right up to the morning of game 161 the possibility of a four-way […]

Who is the greatest catcher to have ever played in the major leagues? Some might say it is Yogi Berra or Johnny Bench or Roy Campanella. The answer depends on what one uses as a measure of greatness. There have been numerous measures used or proposed 1 and numerous lists 2 ranking the great backstops. […]

A natural on the radio, Jackie Robinson spent a fair amount of time behind the microphone. (NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)   One of the more impressive aspects of his trailblazing life is that Jackie Robinson had a wide and varied interest in the world, and his career reflected that. As early as college, […]

When a group of major-league baseball all-stars traveled to Japan in November 1979 for a series of games, it represented a shift, of sorts. Since the end of World War II, most baseball tours of Japan had been by single teams. A US all-star team had not played in Japan since the Eddie Lopat All-Stars […]

“In the ’80s we had a terrible cocaine problem. Did we have a policy? Did anything happen? No. We have a (steroid) policy.” — Commissioner Bud Selig, July 13, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle Lonnie Smith had batted leadoff in hundreds of major league games, but on September 5, 1985, he was at the top of […]

According to the official averages reported in the November 28, 1912, issue of The Sporting News, Heinie Zimmerman won the 1912 National League batting championship with a .372 average and the home run title with 14.1 Five weeks later, The Sporting News reported that—according to the research of baseball writer Ernie Lanigan—Zimmerman also had the […]