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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? […]

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 […]

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 […]

Leona Kearns was a young woman, a teenage pitcher during the Roaring Twenties. Eddie Ainsmith was once a major-league catcher. When their lives intersected, tragedy was the result. Back when automobiles were rare and baseball players heroes, Claude and Evalina Gard Kearns raised seven children in the small town of West Union, Illinois: Russell, Forest, […]

The 1984 Winter Meetings in Houston, Texas, took place in the midst of important leadership transitions for both major-league baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Baseball had a new commissioner — Peter Ueberroth, an outsider best known for founding First Travel Corporation and for his role in the highly praised and financially successful […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   The literature on the New York Yankees is presumably indicative of baseball literature generally, except’ of course, that Yankee literature, like Yankee tradition, Yankee Stadium, Yankee uniforms and Yankee hot dogs, has a pinch or two of special interest, the […]

Sandy Koufax pitched one season for the University of Cincinnati baseball team in 1954. He posted a 3-1 record with a 2.81 ERA. (Courtesy of University of Cincinnati Athletic Department)   When you think of the nickname Wild Thing, which baseball player comes to mind? Perhaps it is Mitch Williams, who earned that moniker while […]

The Phillies’ Richie Ashburn hit only 29 homers—approximately one per 300 times at bat—in a 15-year career, and none of them are legendary because of their length. Eight were inside-the-parkers that never left the playing field. Exhibiting a slashing style of hitting that contrasted sharply with the “swing-from-the-heels” approach of most of his contemporaries, he […]

The feat of collecting five or more hits in a single game was rare enough, even for baseball in the nineteenth century, but when one player managed to do it in four separate games during a single season, that was one of the rarest accomplishments in the history of baseball. In fact, it was so […]

Harry M. Stevens, shown at left with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, was the Yankees’ official concessionaire through the 1963 season. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The 12-page official program of the new “Greater New York Base Ball Club of the American League“ at its home opener on April 30, 1903, was published by […]

John Ford Smith, the son of a pioneer Arizona family, was a pioneer himself whose baseball career spanned the pre- and post-integration eras, both in Phoenix and nationally. He is the only1 Negro League player presently known to have been born in Arizona. Smith was born in Phoenix on January 9, 1919. His father, Charles […]

The number 11 has a prominent place in human history, both real and imagined. The First World War ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Apollo 11 was the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon. And in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things, the fate […]

The life of Jimmie Reese as described by Tom Willman, journalist and friend.

Even though the value of stealing bases can be argued, there is no dispute about the impact on a game’s outcome when a runner steals home. And one player, more than any other, can be considered the “Master Thief”: Tyrus Raymond Cobb. His record-setting career 54 steals of home (SOH) is a mark that may […]

All managers think about strategy, but one can argue that no manager this side of John McGraw changed our prevailing understanding of baseball strategy as much as Earl Weaver. In his seminal work, Weaver on Strategy, and in various quotations uttered while holding court, Weaver presented insights that may have long been implicitly understood by […]

The idea for Who’s On First: Replacement Players in World War II was conceived in January 2011.  The original thought was to compile biographies of some of the players who made their debut during World War II and went on to successful careers after the war ended. (The premise was that perhaps they got their […]

Oscar Charleston is shown here in the uniform of the Santa Clara Leopardos, circa 1923. The 1923-24 Leopardos, for whom Charleston played, were considered the best Cuban team in history—a team so dominant that halfway through the season the league simply declared them champions and then reorganized. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   April […]

Heinie Groh of the Cincinnati Reds had one of the most distinctive bats in baseball history, a “bottle bat” which had about a 17-inch barrel that tapered sharply to a thin handle. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   Introduction Over the centuries, baseball bat shapes have undergone all kinds of contortions: Bat diameters have […]

The World Series is the capstone of each baseball season. It ties up the annual package that was the pennant races, crowning an ultimate champion and providing fans with memories and associations that continue to live: the Called Shot, Al Gionfriddo, Bill Mazeroski. The special events of the World Series have a parallel in the […]

In April 1985, Ozzie Smith signed a contract which called for a base salary of $2,200,000 a year in 1988 and 1989. This probably caused more derisive comment from both press and fans than any other baseball contract. The focus of all this derision was Smith’s batting statistics – the fact that his lifetime batting […]

A Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews baseball card from Topps. (Courtesy of Topps)   Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews shared a baseball card in the 1959 Topps set. The horizontal card, with a green-and-yellow background, showed the sluggers admiring their bats under the words FENCE BUSTERS. That they were. Aaron and Mathews combined for a […]

One-Win Wonders Edited by Bill Nowlin Associate editors: Len Levin, Carl Riechers, Bruce Slutsky Publication Date: January 31, 2024 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-960819-13-0, $39.95 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960819-12-3, $9.99 8.5″ x 11″, 391 pages In One-Win Wonders, published by the SABR Digital Library in 2024, we meet 78 players whose time in the major leagues included only a […]