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Handedness historically has been of importance to how the game of baseball is played. For example, professional baseball has long alternated players at the same position of varying handedness in order to gain a competitive advantage. That advantage—the platoon effect—is in play when batters hit better when facing pitchers who throw with the opposite hand […]

What’s My Line? was a popular primetime game show which ran on CBS-TV from 1950 through 1967, with a daytime syndicated version lasting from 1968 to 1975. Its format was simple and clever: a quartet of panelists questioned individuals to determine their often unusual or unlikely occupations, which ranged from the offbeat (safety pin maker, […]

Japanese baseball was front and center as the excitement of the new millennium kicked off with an unprecedented Opening Day celebration and ended with a matchup between two star-studded teams battling for world baseball supremacy. Between these two major events, Japan’s greatest closer would win the American League’s Rookie of the Year Award, and the […]

By the end of the 1963 season, the jury will have been out on the 1964 rookie crop for 20 years. Sole remaining exhibits in the majors as of the end of ’83 were pitcher Tommy John and infielder Bert Campaneris. The ’64 rookies may or may not be judged the best ever, but if […]

Merle Harmon interviews Herb Score. The 1955 American League Rookie of the Year winner later joined the baseball broadcasting fraternity after his career ended prematurely. (COURTESY OF MERLE HARMON)   He was a sports broadcaster and former college football player from the Midwest. Tall and gray­ haired, he sported a crooked nose as a football […]

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth on July 4, 1939 on Lou Gehrig’s last day at Yankee Stadium. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.)   Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig weren’t exactly best friends or worst enemies, weren’t exactly master and pupil, weren’t exactly equals on or off the field. Half a generation apart in age1 […]

The 1931 baseball season began as the teeth of the Great Depression sank into economies around the world. Barnstorming baseball clubs hustled to entertain for the scraps of disposable income held by the agrarian public. When the northwestern Minnesota city of Crookston staged a pair of ballgames the weekend of Decoration Day, on May 30 […]

Introduction Baseball had just completed perhaps its most profitable season ever, with every club in both leagues reportedly showing a profit. There was concern about the decline in hitting as well as questions about the length of the season. Even with these issues, the winter meetings of 1905 were expected to be routine affairs. However, […]

The first ballpark on the site (Grand Boulevard and Dodier Street) of what would later be known as Sportsman’s Park was Grand Avenue Grounds. That park was first used for major league baseball as the home of the American Association St. Louis Browns in 1875. The next ballpark on this site, Sportsman’s Park I, was […]

When Bill James first made his Game Score widely public in the Historical Baseball Abstract (1988), he humbly called it a “garbage stat.” He did feature a three–page essay on it and sprinkled it about that book, his last Abstract. Since then, it’s been broadly used, but only shallowly, as though through his description of […]

“I don’t know how else to feel,” Hideo Nomo said – almost sarcastically – to Japanese reporters following Game 2 of the 1996 Sun Super Major Series.1 A blue Dodgers cap adorned Nomo’s head, the intertwined letters “L” and “A” announcing the pitcher’s allegiance to the American powerhouse team. Japanese by birth and citizenship, Nomo […]

Mickey Mantle is carried off on a stretcher after injuring his knee during the 1951 World Series at Yankee Stadium. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   A batter takes a fastball to the ribs. An outfielder crashes into the wall trying to make a circus catch. A baserunner steps on the side of first […]

Introduction and Context The 1987 winter meetings were held at the Loew’s Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, in the middle of the “collusion era.”1 Collusion is a complex tale and, as such, only a brief summary is presented here. Peter Ueberroth became commissioner of baseball in 1984, after concluding his successful management of the 1984 […]

Sometimes a pitcher and a catcher (battery) come together as a fully charged duo outperforming all other battery com­binations for either player. In some cases the result of this pairing has been a full point or more below both the pitcher’s and the catcher’s individual ERA. On the other hand, the battery can fall a […]

“No doubt some graphics do distort the underlying data, making it hard for the viewer to learn the truth. But data graphics are no different from words in this regard, for any means of communication can be used to deceive.” — Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information   Data-visualization expert Edward Tufte suggests […]

Sir Ray Davies of The Kinks wrote and sang in Over the Edge: “Everybody is a victim of society, Comedy, tragedy, vaudeville, variety, Pantomime players in the grand tradition, Forced into roles that leave them totally driven.”1 The melodic lyric unknowingly described the phenomenon of professional wrestling in the United States. On the amateur level, […]

It could be compared, in a way, to a romance novel — first they hate each other, then they start to learn more about each other to where they like each other, and finally they fall in love and get married. Unlike the two protagonists in this popular style of fiction, though, the National and […]

On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  The next day, December 8, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. Three days later, December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy, supporting Japan, declared war on the United States; America in turn declared that a state […]

It was just the top of the first, and Willie Mays hit four home runs before Mickey Mantle could even step to the plate. Decades before it invaded the All-Star Game, Home Run Derby sprouted in the fertile soil of Hollywood. Home Run Derby was filmed at L.A.’s Wrigley Field, former home of the Pacific […]

Ty Cobb is usually thought of as the very embodiment of the Deadball Era hitter; the “Punch and Judy” counterpoint to the post-1920 Ruthian power game.1 This common misconception is underscored in a number of ways. First, it is supported by the types of players who have surpassed Cobb’s career records. Lou Brock bested his […]

QUESTION: Who holds the all-time MLB record for most runs scored by an individual player during a single season? ANSWER: Billy Hamilton of the 1894 Philadelphia Phillies. There is no disagreement on who holds this record, but there is on the number of runs “Sliding Billy” scored in his record-setting campaign. According to MLB.com (the […]

Official scorers in baseball make judgments about the game—whether a play is a hit or an error—that influence individual statistics. This gives the official scorer more prominence in baseball than in other sports. The pay is greater, the attention more penetrating, the controversy often intense. Today’s official scorers sit in the hot seat, but until […]

Although the last decade of the Steroid Era was associated with an increase in the number of players sustaining productive MLB careers beyond age 32 — including Barry Bonds, who set a single-season record with 73 home runs in 2001 at age 36 — it is not clear that PEDs were actually responsible for this […]

When Calvin Griffith sold the Minnesota Twins in 1984, he bowed out of baseball as the last of the family owners whose franchise represented their principal business and source of wealth. Griffith spent practically his entire life in baseball, spending his young adulthood working in one capacity or another for the Washington Nationals organization that […]