Search Results

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 […]

On October 14, 1968, just four days after the final out of the World Series, the National League held an expansion draft, allowing the two new teams who were to join the Senior Circuit the next season to bulk up their rosters with 30 “unprotected” players from the other 10 NL teams. At the Windsor […]

On October 14, 1969, Gary Gentry pitched 6 2/3 shutout innings against the Orioles, and then got relief help from Nolan Ryan as New York beat Baltimore 5–0 to take a two-games-to-one lead in the World Series. Of course the Mets went on to shock Baltimore and win the Fall Classic in five games. While […]

It was recently reported that Eddie Lopat, who pitched for the Chicago White Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Baltimore Orioles, compiled a phenomenal 40-13 W-L record versus the Cleveland Indians during his major league career (1944-1955).1 For the years that he was a full-time, full-season player (from 1944 through 1954), his W-L record against the Tribe was 40-12 (which yields a […]

Jean Faut, a child of the mid-1920s, was destined to become one of two All-American Girls Base Ball League players to earn MVP honors twice.  She noted that during the Depression and the beginning of World War II, there wasn’t much for kids to do in East Greenville, Pennsylvania, except play ball or go swimming […]

Mickey Mantle was turned into a switch hitter when he was “barely old enough to walk.” He remains the only switch-hitter in the history of the game to earn Triple Crown honors. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Mickey Mantle posted a .353 batting average, slammed 52 homers, and drove in 130 runs in […]

After Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record, there was a renewed interest in Ruth and several new books on the Babe were published. At least two of them deal at some length with his early life and entry into Organized Ball. That was more than 60 years ago, and researching the pertinent […]

Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley brought his team out west in 1958. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   To Walter O’Malley, Dodger Stadium was never just a building, or a place to sell tickets. It was “a monument to the O’Malleys.”1 As such, he took an almost obsessive interest in its design and construction, from innovations in precast concrete to […]

L to R: Mookie Betts, Janet Marie Smith, and David Price tour the outfield construction work at Dodger Stadium. (Photograph by Jon SooHoo / Los Angeles Dodgers)   Besides her work on the renovations of Dodger Stadium, Janet Marie Smith is well known for her work in building Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992 […]

Among baseball’s most iconic career numbers are 714 and 4,191, the first Babe Ruth’s official career home runs total and the second Ty Cobb’s official career hits total. But if you look at many baseball statistics sources today, including websites and encyclopedias, you will find Cobb’s number has been altered. This paper seeks to use all available […]

Baseball milestones are as well known to fans as their own birthdays and addresses. True baseball fans know that 714-511-4256 is not a phone number, but Babe Ruth’s home run total, the career wins of Cy Young, and Pete Rose’s hit tally. Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of 56 games is a sacred number, 2632 will […]

GARY BELL Pitcher, 1958-67 Best season: 1959, 44 games, 16-11 won-lost record, 5 saves, 4.04 ERA Indians career: 419 games, 96-92 won-lost record, 45 saves, 3.71 ERA Gary Bell was good, but never seemed to be as good as everyone thought he would be—or should be throughout his nine seasons with the Tribe, and the […]

Editor’s note: Reprinted courtesy of the Oakland Tribune. Research by Paul J. Zingg, author of Harry Hooper: An American Baseball Life, contributed to this article. An earlier version ran as a column in The Oakland Tribune on April 9, 1995.   Fans of professional football hear incessantly of the collegiate connection to their game. Jerry […]

On the surface, baseball does not appear overly complex. Not only is the sport easy enough for millions of children to understand and play in their Little League games, its charming simplicity is one of the many reasons it was adopted as “America’s Pastime.” However, as both the interest and capital involved in professional baseball […]

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 […]

It could be argued that the most famous sentence ever written by a Canadian author is W.P. Kinsella’s, “If you build it, he will come.” That ghostly utterance may only be matched by Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson’s equally phantomic line about Pierre Trudeau: “he haunts us still.” Being interested in both political and baseball […]

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 […]

The Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League was a Class-D (entry-level) minor league that operated from 1939 through 1956 before becoming the New York-Pennsylvania League. (Ontario no longer hosted any franchises.) The successor league operated from 1957 through 2020, when Major League Baseball restructured the minor-league system. As an entry-level league, its role as a pipeline to […]

Introduction and Context In 1973, when 24 teams existed in major-league baseball, the sport conducted its annual Winter Meetings in Houston, Texas, from December 3 to December 7. Several issues or topics dominated these meetings. A relatively complex managerial situation, featuring Ralph Houk, who had been the manager of the New York Yankees, and Dick […]

Joe Robbie Stadium on Opening Day, April 5, 1993. (Courtesy of the Miami Marlins)   The National League expansion of 1993 was a long time coming. The 1991 decision to add the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins to the major leagues was the end of “the road that began six years, three commissioners, and three […]

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 […]

Henry Aaron Edited by Bill Nowlin and Glen Sparks Associate editors: Carl Riechers and Len Levin Publication Date: February 5, 2026 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960819-60-4, $9.99 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-960819-61-1, $29.95 8.5″ x 11″, 184 pages “Trying to throw a fastball past Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster.” — Curt Simmons, […]