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“Free-agent frenzy.”1 “Meat Market.”2 Negotiations dominated by “fast-talking, greedy little men.”3 Memories of the 1992 Winter Meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, were unvaryingly ugly. Over a tumultuous four days, baseball’s annual gathering had dissolved into nightmarish chaos and sent major-league executives running. Among the worst incidents, the Rev. Jesse Jackson denounced baseball’s “institutional racism,” threatening to […]

Recent study has revealed the claim of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York to pioneer status, as well as that of Alexander Cartwright to be the game’s inventor, to be suspect if not altogether baseless. I have taken up the latter claim at length in Baseball in the Garden of Eden and will […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s “The Inside Game” newsletter for November 2014. With Hank O’Day and Jacob Ruppert being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013, it is reasonable to ask which Deadball Era figures — if any — still merit inclusion. Considering that no […]

The Almada family of Sinaloa, Mexico sought refuge from the civil unrest of the Mexican Revolution, emigrating to the United States in 1914. The Southern California city of Los Angeles offered Baldomero Almada a safe place for his family and a ranking position in the Mexican consulate. “My father always wanted us children to have […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, 1921–22. Back row, left to right: Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James McReynolds, and John H. Clarke. Front row, left to right: William R. Day and Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Willis Van Devanter. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)   […]

With a little luck and considerable pluck, the 1898 Boston Beaneaters were able to overcome injuries to three of their regulars to capture the National League pennant. While injuries would figure in 1899 as well, none matched the far-reaching consequences of the deteriorating mental health of one of the team’s most popular players. During the […]

Ebbets Field has been gone for nearly half a cen­tury, but the place still has a remarkable grip on our consciousness. Two recent books have been devoted to the lovable old ballpark in Flatbush. Yet even these in-depth works don’t shine much light on what happened after the Dodgers left Brooklyn. They touch briefly on some […]

While considerable attention has been paid to the home run feats of outstanding players such as Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron, comparatively little consideration has been given to outstanding team home run achievements, particularly those occurring in a single game. On 28 occasions, a major league team has nit at least 7 home […]

The headline in the March 13, 1903, edition of the New York Times read “Baseball Grounds Fixed.” The nonbylined article described an agreement, announced by American League President Ban Johnson, that a plot of rocky land was leased for the construction of a ballpark to be occupied by the newly minted New York American League […]

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 […]

“Hugh Fullerton has a theory regarding left-handed pitchers that their left arms affect their hearts and that affects their brain which is why they’re all eccentric. Waddell is, of course, the synonym for eccentricity in baseball.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 21, 1906   One controversial aspect of Rube Waddell’s career, while he was still […]

Washington, D.C., is primarily known today as the home of our nation’s central government and for its wealth of great museums. Very few people are aware that the city helped give the game of baseball its rich national identity over 150 years ago. A thorough review of the recent “find” of baseball materials, known simply […]

The Houston Astrodome was the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned major-league ballpark. It was formally unveiled in an exhibition game that pitted the Houston Astros against the American League champion New York Yankees on April 9, 1965. Unlike previous sports venues, the Astrodome was built to be a massive all-purpose, climate-controlled facility that would serve as […]

Introduction and Context Once again the American and National Leagues met in New York City, December 7 to 9, 1925. The stormy drama that engulfed the winter meeting proceedings in 1924 gave way to clear skies this winter, and it was expected to be business as usual based on last year’s understood agreements. Hence the […]

There can be little doubt that compared to pitching and hitting, fielding is the most vastly under-analyzed part of the game. There is very good reason to hope that the greatest advances in our understanding of the game through statistics will come in the area of fielding measures.

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2). Zane Grey possesses “no merit whatsoever either in style or in substance,” wrote Burton Rascoe, the brilliant but acerbic New York literary critic. And this was the view of another critic, Heywood Broun: “The substance of any two Zane […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

One could pen a book or perhaps even an encyclopedia on the manner in which baseball and television have merged across the decades. Such a volume not only would explore the manner in which ballgames have been broadcast on TV both locally and nationally and the celebrated sportscasters who announce them. It would feature everything […]

Jimmy Piersall’s death on June 3, 2017, provided an occasion to recall his rookie season of 1952 that he began playing a new position—shortstop—for the Boston Red Sox, continued with AA Birmingham, and ended in a mental hospital. His is the inspiring story of a young man overcoming a serious health problem to craft a […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: We were informed by Mike Lackey’s family that Mike passed away before he could see his article in print. It is our honor to publish it here in his memory.   Frank Shellenback was the last legal spitball pitcher when he retired in 1938, but it took several more years for the “wet […]

  Bud Fowler’s election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in December 2021 has brought new attention to this Black baseball pioneer of the nineteenth century. Fowler was one of the first Black players to make a living in so-called “Organized Baseball,” playing for a series of otherwise all-white teams between 1878 and 1895 […]

On June 29, 1947, the New York Yankees began a 19-game winning streak to set a franchise record and tied a 41-year-old American League mark for consecutive wins.Fans of the New York Yankees awoke on June 29, 1947, with their team in first place in the American League with a 39-25 record. Striving to return […]

There have been many pitchers who also excelled with the bat, hurlers who could help their team with the stick as well as with their arm. This article will look at some of the most proficient home run-hitting pitchers in the major leagues and some of their accomplishments. In 1999 there was a shoe company […]