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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 […]

For an eager baseball fan, there’s nothing quite like the crack as bat meets ball. But it’s that sharper crack—and maybe a few splinters flying through your field of view—that signals that a wooden bat has broken in the line of duty. It’s not an unusual sight to anyone who watches professional baseball, but in […]

“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 […]

In early 1970, when I was a freshman at St.John’s University, I went to Shea Stadium to purchase tickets for Opening Day. As I walked toward the ticket office, I noticed a lot of refuse strewn around the parking lot, including one large piece of green plywood sheeting lying face down on the ground. It […]

The New York Yankees have finished with a .700 winning percentage three times, most recently in 1998 when they went 114-48 and swept the World Series against the San Diego Padres. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The inspiration for this article was the play of the St. Louis Cardinals at the start of […]

John “Rube” Benton, a National League pitcher from 1910 to1925, was the center of two unusual controversies. The first involved his pitching with the wrong team, a dispute which contributed to the downfall of the National Commission that ruled baseball prior to 1921. The second involved his being declared ineligible and yet being allowed to […]

The 2011 Winter Meetings took place in Dallas from December 5 to 8 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. This was the sixth time the hotel had hosted baseball’s Winter Meetings, with previous meetings taking place in 1980, 1987, 1994, 2000, and 2005. Located in the design district of downtown Dallas, the hotel is in the […]

“Although he never hit more than 47 home runs in a season…” was a common refrain in the eulogies that marked Henry Aaron’s passing on January 22, 2021. Intended as a nod to Aaron’s workmanlike virtue, the suggestion that his peak fell short of the more spectacular feats of other sluggers set up the inevitable […]

As major league ballyards across America were celebrating the 2013 baseball season’s Opening Day, a high-profile new film about a deceased player from a bygone team came to movie theaters. That film was 42 — a biopic charting the life and legend of Jackie Robinson of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. While addressing the crowd at […]

Welcome to the Spring 2021 issue of the Baseball Research Journal. It’s been a banner year for baseball research and writing. Why? Because during the lockdown(s) of 2020, when folks couldn’t go anywhere or do anything else, a lot of SABR members spent their time researching and writing. The result was a bumper crop of […]

Introduction The 2017 MLB season set records for both home runs (6,105) and strikeouts (40,104). Conventional wisdom would suggest that this is not a coincidence. The argument is that players don’t mind striking out more often if they also hit more home runs. The raw data for these two parameters are easily plotted over time […]

Back in the mid-1990s, I published Great Baseball Films (Citadel Press), which charts the manner in which the sport has been depicted onscreen from the late 1890s to early 1990s. Twenty years ago as today, even the most obscure films with obvious baseball themes were readily accessible to researchers. However, seeking out films in which […]

Tip O’Neill was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1994. The opening sentence in the Hall’s online tribute reads: “James Edward ‘Tip’ O’Neill was a sensational hitter who slugged his way to the top of the American baseball ranks during the 1880s.”1 O’Neill was the most valuable batsman on the St. Louis Browns,2 […]

The final performance of Stealin’ Home, featuring Bobby Bradford (cornet), Chuck Manning (tenor saxophone) and Vinny Golia (bass saxophone). (Courtesy of Jon Leonoudakis)   Jazz and baseball are two distinctly American forms of entertainment which have close ancestors that originally began in Europe, but were probably not recognizable as either jazz music or the game […]

On the afternoon of Sunday, October 15, 1972, Jackie Robinson stood on the field of Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. Game Two of the World Series between the Oakland A’s and the Cincinnati Reds was to be played that day, and in a pregame ceremony, Robinson was being recognized on the 25th […]

Overture Adrian C. Anson’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt end on February 1, 1898, when Chicago Club president James Hart unceremoniously sacked him without notice. Anson had made his living playing baseball since 1871, had been a member of the Chicago Club since 1876 and, as their captain since 1879, had risen to […]

In the history of New York baseball broadcasting, Sid Loberfeld is as far removed from Red Barber and Mel Allen as Crash Davis is from Babe Ruth. He was a downtown Brooklyn lawyer, and his place in baseball circles came through his decades-long contacts with local sports stars. But Sid holds a distinction that he […]

In spite of Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak in 1978 and his achievement of more than 3,000 hits in his career, Mickey Mantle has been selected as the greatest switch hitter in baseball history. In a survey conducted by the Society for American Baseball Research earlier this year, Mantle was ranked first by 215 of […]

How did the 2012 World Series end? It was Game Four in Detroit. The San Francisco Giants, up three games to none, scored a run in the top of the tenth on a single by Marco Scutaro to take a 4–3 lead. In the bottom of the tenth, closer Sergio Romo entered the game to […]

On one level, the answer to this question seems obvious: since batters strike out, fly out, and ground out at different rates, and since each of these three ways of making an out have very different associated error rates, batters who ground out in a high percentage of their at-bats should reach base on errors […]

Babe Ruth turned his cricket bat into a broken, splintered mess. Baseball’s great home-run hitter had just smashed an hour’s worth of bowling (cricket’s term for “pitching”). He whacked balls all over a “subterranean” field near the Thames River in London. Alan Fairfax, formerly a top Australian player, coached Ruth and marveled at his pupil’s […]