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SABR members, we hope you enjoy your paperback copy of the 2015 Emerald Guide to Baseball. Click here to purchase 2015 Emerald Guide to Baseball in PAPERBACK for the discount price of $12.48 from CreateSpace.com Use the coupon code 6NQ8GUYL at checkout to get the discount. The link above allows you access to purchase this […]

In August 1953, as St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Ray Jablonski was putting the final touches on a brilliant rookie campaign, Gus Mancuso, the club’s broadcaster and a former longtime National League catcher, said, “The thing about Jabbo is that he’s got terrific potential as a hitter. Give him a year or so and he […]

Statistics and anecdotes of early black player Charlie Grant are minimal and sketchy at best. The difficulty in seeking reliable evidence is compounded by the fact that many during his time and still today have consistently confused him with the great Frank Grant, who played in several white leagues during the nineteenth century and was […]

Some baseball players evoke a position. Recall catcher Mickey Cochrane. Others define managing: Connie Mack comes to mind. Many broadcast as a color analyst or play-by-play man, like Bob Uecker and Bob Costas. Few have performed all of the above at one time or another as well as the Blue Jays’ John Albert “Buck” Martinez, […]

The Chicago White Sox’ historic 2005 season can be told in many ways, but few shared it as personally as one of the teams radio voices, Ed Farmer. Born in Evergreen Park, Illinois, and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Farmer – affectionately known as “Farmio” – grew up watching and rooting for the […]

Even before he was born into this world, Mickey Mantle was being prepared for life as a future big-league baseball player. His father, Elvin “Mutt” Mantle, a former semipro player and a lifelong baseball fanatic, proclaimed that if his first child turned out to be a boy, he would name him Mickey, in honor of […]

Through the 2021 season, Brady Anderson is the only player in the history of Major League Baseball to amass at least 20 home runs and 50 stolen bases in one season, and at least 50 homers and 20 steals in another. Anderson usually batted leadoff over a 15-year career (1988-2002) spent almost entirely with the […]

“Pinch hit hero mobbed by rabid Red Sox enthusiasts” was a sub-headline of the October 17, 1912, edition of the Boston Globe reporting on young Olaf Henriksen’s game-tying base hit in the eighth and deciding game of the 1912 World Series, against a dominant Christy Mathewson. It was a crucial blow off the great Mathewson, […]

There are many Moonlight Grahams. One is a quasi-relative of mine who signed a contract with the Cleveland Indians and made their roster but never got into a major-league game. Carter Hamilton was from a small town in Iowa. He was a pitching star at the University of Iowa and was signed to an Indians […]

“There are those who can, and there are those who will,” an old saying goes. James Paul David “Jim” Bunning was clearly one of the latter. He willed himself to become a great pitcher and then a successful politician through hard work and determination. Though he struggled for almost six seasons in the minor leagues, […]

In 1973, Jason Miller’s angst-enabled play That Championship Season won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. The drama, set in Scranton, Pennsylvania, focused on the 25th-anniversary reunion of the players and the coach of a high-school basketball team that won the state championship. Full of booze, brooding, bigotry, bitterness, betrayal, and bruised feelings, […]

Milt “Pinky” Shoffner was destined to be a ballplayer. He was born on November 13, 1905, in Sherman Texas, the only child of minor league pitcher Herman Daniel Shoffner and Jessie Lee ( Combs) Shoffner. Herman played throughout Texas and Oklahoma for nearly a decade during which Milt was born. Herm taught Milt the game […]

The New York City hosting the 1977 All-Star Game had drastically changed in the 13 years since the Mets hosted the 1964 Midsummer Classic. In the summer of ’77, Big Apple residents lived in fear of the “Son of Sam” serial killer stalking the outer boroughs, and on July 13, the entire city was plunged […]

Tim Raines had put away his razor. He was riding an 11-game hit streak heading into the May 7 matchup with the Phillies, and he vowed to let the whiskers grow for as long as the streak continued.1 The 26-year-old Raines, already considered one of the best leadoff hitters of all time, was focused on […]

Early in the 1987 season, a large chart was hung on the wall of the Expos’ clubhouse with a small box for each game on their schedule. Players could select a square, and whoever correctly guessed the game in which a much-anticipated milestone took place would win the money in the pool.1 The event that […]

“After two near misses on the final weekends of ’79 and ’80, the Expos finally surmounted a psychological barrier by wresting the East title from the Phillies in the playoffs last October. Now, nothing stands between Montreal and greatness.” – Thomas Boswell, Washington Post1   The Montreal Expos were overwhelming favorites to win the National […]

The first week of a new season is supposed to be a time for optimism. But even the most diehard fans of the 1994 Florida Marlins and San Diego Padres knew to temper their expectations. The Marlins were in their second year of existence and were not expected to seriously compete in any race except […]

On September 20, 1981, rookie Minnesota Twins third baseman Gary Gaetti unwrapped a pregame piece of Bazooka bubble gum and found an auspicious fortune on the wrapper: “Something magical will happen today.”1 And it did. In his first major-league at-bat against the Texas Rangers, Gaetti hit a two-run home run, making him the third player […]

The 1988 National League Championship Series was a matchup of a pair of teams that had comfortably won their division. The NL East Division champion New York Mets finished with a record of 100-60, 15 games ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates. The NL West Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers finished with a record of […]