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The 2010 draft was broadcast nationally in prime time, the third year in a row that Major League Baseball had put its draft on TV. Its top talent, Las Vegas sensation Bryce Harper, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was just sixteen. As that draft approached, the star of the 2009 draft, […]

Advertisement for August 19, 1963 exhibition game featuring the New York Yankees against the International League All-Stars at Buffalo ’s War Memorial Stadium. (Buffalo Courier-Express, August 19, 1963)   Fans in Montreal and Toronto watched major-league baseball teams years before the Expos or Blue Jays came to town. Same thing with Milwaukee and the Braves […]

  New Yorkers love baseball. Their passion for the national game (and its bat-and-ball precursors) can be traced back into the earliest decades of the nineteenth century. Prior to the Civil War, scores of juvenile and adult teams in New York vied for bragging rights or trophy balls on emerald fields and dusty lots.1 Boys […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2025 newsletter.   The date was July 16, 1909, and there was baseball in the air.1 The catcher showed up in a Panama hat. The left fielder was clad in white flannel trousers with a black silk watch fob dangling from his belt. The […]

Introduction and Context Now fully invested in the Great War taking place in Europe, the United States was burdened by a shift in its political and economic conditions that demanded a sharp focus on a mobilization of the nation’s armed forces.  On the home front, Americans were implored to sacrifice for the good of the […]

The 1876 London Tecumsehs. Early curve bailer Fred Goldsmith is seated front row, second from left. (Canadian Illustrated News, July 15, 1876)   1876: A seminal year in baseball. Club owners and organizers recognized the necessity of providing increased stability and an opportunity to elevate the game of baseball on a national level by establishing […]

Moses and Welday Walker played with the Toledo club of the American Association in 1884 and thereby became the only recognized Negroes to make the major leagues until Jackie Robinson did it in 1947. But what about the rest of Organized Baseball, the fledgling minor leagues of the 19th Century? Was it just as difficult […]

New Amsterdam Domed City, Mars Colony, Baseball League Game System Diagram (JAMES BREAUX)   Emma Hasford cycles through the civic dome at a leisurely pace. She keeps an eye on the crowded lanes, an ear on her comm, and her hands on the bars. The bike’s autopilot and gyros keep her upright and dodging the […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   Exactly a hundred years ago, on June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Baseball and the written word have been on good terms ever since. It was not until 1981, however, […]

On October 14, 1965, the Minnesota Twins lost a heartbreaking World Series Game Seven to Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2–0. While the disappointment was palpable, there was every reason to believe the Twins would soon be back in the Series. The team had won the pennant convincingly with a record of 102-60, […]

In the early days of SABR, many of its most skilled researchers concerned themselves not only with the relative merits of men who played in different eras, but with determining who the players were. Hundreds of men were absolute ciphers, about whom nothing but a last name was known. This sort of digging seldom yields […]

Rising from the prairie grass, a few miles south of downtown Houston, from the grazing land that only recently, in half-century terms, had been the longtime home to large herds of beef cattle, the brand-new Astrodome now stood boldly on those same plains as a spot-on caricature of every large incoming spaceship depicted in all […]

On November 11, 1918, minor-league owners from 40 teams, representing seven leagues, were preparing for a somber discussion about whether baseball would even be played in the 1919 season1 when word came down that the World War had ended. The “war to end all wars” had caused an existential crisis throughout the baseball world. The […]

Triumph, mystery and sorrow marked his life. A weak hitter as a semi-pro, the pint-sized shortstop not only starred afield, but also batted .304 during his seven years with the Chicago Cubs. Early in the morning of August 14, 1940, Constable Arthur C. Mosley and Deputy Charles Gordon of Clayton, Mo. (a suburb of St. […]

Editor’s note: This article was published in the April 2018 edition of the SABR Deadball Era Committee newsletter. Pervasive cheating plagued baseball during the Deadball Era. Cutting bases, blocking baserunners, doctored baseballs, lob pitches, indifferent play, bribery, and fixed games found a way into every crevice of baseball. Much of the indiscretion occurred openly, regarded […]

  Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito trying out VR during spring training in 2016. (ARTURO PARDAVILA III / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)   A NEW KIND OF BATTING PRACTICE Mariano Rivera wasn’t always destined to be the greatest closer of all time. He entered the majors as an old rookie at age 25 and took a […]

The cover of The Plot to Kill Jackie Robinson, illustration by Steve Carter & jacket design by Todd Radom. (Courtesy of Penguin Random House)   Consider this quote from eminent baseball historian Donald Honig’s 1985 book Baseball America: “For those who cared to pay attention, Robinson’s style of play should have been both threat and […]

Tris Speaker is remembered more for his performance on the playing field than for his results as a manager. But in 1920–21 his personnel moves, tactics, and leadership generated outstanding results for the Cleveland Indians. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Tris Speaker, considered one of the greatest hitters and center fielders of all […]

On June 28, 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs and Forbes      Field’s role in Pirate baseball was over. The park was condemned and doomed to the wrecker’s ball. It was 61 years earlier, almost to the day, that Forbes Field opened, with the Pirates hosting the same Chicago Cubs. Over […]

This article was originally published in “From McGillicuddy to McGwire: Baseball in Florida and the Caribbean,” the 2000 SABR convention journal.   The 1923-24 Santa Clara Baseball Club is ranked by many historians and baseball aficionados as the greatest team in the long and storied history of the pre-revolutionary Cuban League. Their 112 game margin […]

Bordering Hoboken — which dubs itself the “birthplace of baseball” because of the legendary 1846 game between the Knickerbockers and the New Yorks at Elysian Fields — Jersey City stands on the edges of the Hudson River and Newark Bay, somewhat obscured by the baseball notoriety of its neighbor to the northeast and the epic […]

As the 1959 Winter Meetings approached, both the nation and baseball were on a roll. For America, the postwar economy was firing on all cylinders. The Space Race against the Soviet Union was on, and a burly, proud nation was confident of ultimate victory. Television ratings toppers like Father Knows Best reflected a culture that […]

SABR Salute: Bob Davids Editor’s note: The SABR Salute, first bestowed upon writer Fred Lieb in 1976, was designed as a manner of recognizing the contributions of some of the older members of the Society. Subsequent SABR Salutes appeared in the SABR Membership Directory and honored members who had made great contributions to baseball historical […]

SABR Salute: Tweed Webb Editor’s note: The SABR Salute, first bestowed upon writer Fred Lieb in 1976, was designed as a manner of recognizing the contributions of some of the older members of the Society. Subsequent SABR Salutes appeared in the SABR Membership Directory and honored members who had made great contributions to baseball historical […]