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  Duke Farrell as depicted with the Chicago White Stockings on an Old Judge baseball card, circa 1888–90. (Trading Card Database)   Welcome to nineteenth-century baseball research, where it is not uncommon for the newspapers to have conflicting box score data, and for the box score data to be in conflict with the written article […]

The 1954 major league baseball season ended leaving a lot of questions about the 1955 campaign unanswered — especially for the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees. In 1954 the Yankees, led by 64-year-old Casey Stengel, won 103 games (the only time in Casey’s career that he would win 100 games) yet finished eight […]

This present study is an outgrowth of my presentation in 2004 at SABR 34 in which I addressed the pattern of scoring in a game, such as the possible importance of one-run wins, come-from-behind wins, etc. The first point to establish is the rate of scoring by home and road teams in each inning. The […]

In early February 1985, Alan Wiggins became the newest big-money player for the 1984 National League champion San Diego Padres. With the help of his San Diego-based agent, Tony Attanasio, and Padres general manager Jack McKeon, Wiggins, just 26 years old, signed a guaranteed four-year, $2.5 million contract, making him one of the highest paid […]

Writers often refer to “MLB” as though it were something that has existed as long as there has been major-league baseball. It has not. I decided to ask the question: Did MLB exist before 2000? Or maybe late 1999? Some background on why I decided to delve into this question. Several odd words or constructions […]

Foreword Please do not tell my umpire assignor this: I conceived of the format of this memoir while I was doing the bases at a somewhat boring freshman high-school game last fall in California. Actually, it was something called a “showcase.” Parents of aspiring high schoolers who feel they can make college teams will know […]

  There is not a person alive in the industrialized world who has not been touched directly or indirectly by the wonders of medical science. Death-sentence diseases of the past, like cancer, now carry longer and longer commutation periods, thanks to advanced early detection and modern surgical techniques. The twentieth century discovery of insulin has […]

Seldom are the occasions when a team emerges as back-to-back champions in the National League. Rarer still when that team’s manager could call upon a well-heeled mound corps that includes three future Hall of Famers. These were the well-earned privileges of Walter Alston as his Los Angeles Dodgers entered as 8–5 favorites against the Baltimore […]

Once upon a time in a faraway place—a place so far away no one under the age of sixty today has ever been there—there was a land called Organized Baseball, consisting of two major leagues of eight teams each and fifty-one minor leagues with names like Kitty, Pony, Cotton States, and Three-I. There were six […]

Knowing and living in the same household with my grandfather Bob Groom was an accident of fate but a gift of immeasurable value. His was and remains the strongest presence in my life. What I remember of him are the deeply felt, simple memories of a child, so discovering who he was to others took […]

There is a lengthy tradition of Red Sox booster clubs, ranging from the Royal Rooters to the Winter League and the Red Sox Half Century Club. The most venerable of all, though, is the BoSox Club, founded in early 1967.There is a lengthy tradition of Red Sox booster clubs, ranging from the Royal Rooters to […]

The Big Red Machine reached its destiny when Cesar Geronimo closed his glove around Carl Yastrzemski’s fly ball on October 22, 1975 at Fenway Park to end the World Series. In that moment of ecstasy and exhaustion the Cincinnati Reds became world champions, finally grasping the ring that had eluded their reach in the first […]

Introduction and Context The 2006 baseball Winter Meetings were held in Orlando, Florida, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. The size of the resort — an 87-acre facility featuring two hotels with over 80 meeting rooms and 300,000 square feet of meeting space — matched the big names on the market heading […]

1. Introduction Rule 9.02 of the official MLB rulebook states, “Any umpire’s decision which involves judgment, such as, but not limited to, whether a batted ball is fair or foul, whether a pitch is a strike or a ball, or whether a runner is safe or out, is final. No player, manager, coach, or substitute […]

The National League Expansion Committee visited Denver Mile High Stadium after a tour of the metropolitan area in several helicopters. Here, they huddle on the infield grass to exchange information. (Courtesy of Roger Kinney)   The year 1959 was a good one– a very important year for baseball in Colorado. It was the first time […]

[I]n my book the most exciting play in baseball is a three-bagger. […] You used to see a fair number of them in the old days, but now they’re the rarest plays in baseball. For sheer excitement, I don’t think anything can beat when you see that guy go tearing around the bases and come […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Buckeye State,” the 2004 SABR convention journal.   On Saturday, October 15, 1892, Charles Leander Jones of Cedarville, Ohio, pitched a no-hitter for the Cincinnati Redlegs against the Pittsburghs. It was Jones’ first major league game and the first National League no-hitter for the Reds. Additionally […]

Bob Meusel and Babe Ruth at Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, October 16, 1922. (Courtesy of Stew Thornley)   Babe Ruth was drawn to Minnesota by baseball, but – as was the case with Ted Williams, who later challenged Ruth for the title of greatest hitter ever – the outdoors and nonbaseball opportunities in the state also […]

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” – Jackie Robinson As people and events recede into the mists of the past, people and events that have resonated in our own times become as remote to the next generation as ancient history is to ours, and our task is […]

Carl Daniel Erskine, born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, but famed for his twelve seasons as a stellar right hander for the Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball’s postwar era, proved not only to be talented pitcher but also an exceptional teammate and person. One of the Dodgers of 1952-53 portrayed in Roger Kahn’s 1971 baseball classic, […]

Your team clings to a lead in the late innings and is trying to get out of a first-and-third, one-out jam. Your pitcher gives up a long fly to right-center, and both runners take off. But your fleet center fielder seemingly saves the day. She sprints, leaps, extends, dives, and snags the drive inches off […]