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The foul poles at Dodger Stadium were in foul territory, there were only two drinking fountains (one in each dugout), and no one had installed electrical outlets in the clubhouses.1 Besides fixing those design issues after the 1962 opening season, no real renovations to the ballpark were made until 1975 when new, space-age plastic-colored seats […]

In reading accounts of the 1903 World Series, I so often came across the team name “Boston Pilgrims” that I accepted this on faith as one of the names by which the team was known. I even used it myself, presenting it as fact (see page 1 of Tales from the Red Sox Dugout). I […]

“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: used in logic to describe the fallacy of thinking that a happening which follows another must be its result.” — Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)1 By long-standing consensus, a 21-year-old show girl […]

During the first two decades of the 20th century, “inside baseball” dominated the way the national pastime was played. Superstars like Detroit’s Ty Cobb and Pittsburgh’s Honus Wagner, along with manager John McGraw of the New York Giants, were proponents of this style of baseball. After Wagner and Cobb retired, many baseball experts believed that […]

Early 1857 saw the first baseball convention, beginning a series that continues, in one form or another, to the winter meetings of today. What provoked it? Why did anyone bother to initiate such a gathering? The convention was called to fill a need. It was successful enough to merit a repeat the following year, while […]

When Houston Astros right-handed flamethrower James Rodney Richard, the number two pick in the June 1969 draft, debuted against the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park on September 5, 1971, he did so in relative anonymity. He received no television coverage, and no radio broadcast beyond the clubs’ local markets. Fans were unaware of his […]

Two weeks before the start of the 1974 season, Oakland Athletics owner Charles O. Finley signed Herb Washington as a “designated runner”—in the long, storied history of Major League Baseball, the first and only player whose sole responsibility was to run the bases. Baseball historians and fans have not treated “Hurricane Herb” Washington kindly over […]

Jackie Robinson, United States Army. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The course of history can flip on a dime, the course of one’s life often defined by a series of watershed flash-points. Some we control; others are thrust upon us. On December 7, 1941, Jackie Robinson was two days into his journey from […]

The mentor-mentee relationship is a bedrock of Hollywood storytelling: Dr. David Zorba and Dr. Ben Casey. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso. Mickey Goldmill and Rocky Balboa. Three movies and one TV-movie set in baseball’s minor leagues exemplify the dynamic.   Stud Cantrell (William Petersen) and Dixie Lee Boxx (Virginia Madsen) […]

Any way you look at it, the 1970s was a decade of upheaval and change everywhere in the country, but particularly in New York City. The “police action” of Vietnam ended and an era of urban decay began. The personal computer arrived, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center became the world’s tallest buildings, […]

Kenichi Zenimura (right) with his cousin Tasumi Zenimura (left) in 1928. (Rob Fitts Collection)   Few baseball fans know the story of early twentieth-century Nikkei (Japanese American) baseball. Despite this lack of awareness, the Nikkei impact is still visible in today’s game. It’s subtle, though, visible only to the well-informed. The legacy is not a […]

Hard as it may be to believe, the Brooklyn Dodgers have been the Los Angeles Dodgers for half a century—and have now played more seasons in Chavez Ravine than in Ebbets Field. By August 5, 1957, the storied history of the Brooklyn Dodgers was fast approaching its final days. But as the Dodgers, who were […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).   At their 1983 winter meetings the major leagues instructed their long-range planning committee to consider the feasibility of expanding the National and American leagues to sixteen teams each. I believe the committee should recommend such an expansion, and […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

On May 9, 1950, Bill Sisler finally ended his baseball odyssey with a record that makes any other player look like a homebody.1 Sisler played for at least 44 different teams during his 23 active years in the minors between 1923 and 1950.2 Forty-four. It can’t be said with absolute certainty that it’s a record, […]

Toronto hosted the 1979 winter meetings at the Sheraton Centre, marking the fourth time the winter meetings were held outside the United States (Montreal in 1930 and 1936 and Mexico City in 1967).1 The owners’ discussions, both formal and informal, focused on the game’s economics and the coming labor negotiations with the players — only […]

In Babe Ruth’s first year with the Yankees in 1920, he hit 54 homers to break his own American League record set the year before with Boston. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   On the morning of January 6, 1920, New Yorkers awoke to a headline in The New York Times that screamed “Ruth […]

The 1972-73 A’s were the first team not named the New York Yankees to win back-to-back world championships since, well, the A’s. Some four decades and two franchise relocations earlier, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics had claimed the 1929 and 1930 world championships. His team reached a third straight World Series in 1931, but the A’s […]

The 2014 baseball season’s adoption of expanded instant replay review not only introduced another wrinkle into our national pastime, it opened the door into a brand new arena of statistical analysis over 50 years in the making. Thanks to the adoption of a manager’s challenge system—which MLB has confirmed will remain in place for the […]

A memorial program was conducted in Spokane in July to commemorate the eight Spokane players and the bus driver, who died on June 24, 1946, when their team bus careened off a narrow road in the Cascade Mountains. (Courtesy of David Eskenazi)   Blessedly, professional baseball has had very few terrible moments, incidents that end […]

In their book The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong tell a small but striking story of the racial insensitivity of Justice Harry A. Blackmun.1 It happened during the drafting and circulation of opinions in Flood v. Kuhn, the 1972 baseball antitrust case.2 As the story goes, when Blackmun circulated the […]

Los Chorizeros baseball played an essential role in the life of the Mexican American community of East Los Angeles.

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). “In the vast range of baseball novels boys’ books written by men like John Tunis to adult novels written by men like Bernard Malamud, women for the most part have been either complaisant wives or stupid bimbos — or perhaps sexual […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s August 2021 newsletter.   If Fred Odwell isn’t the most obscure home run champion in the history of major league baseball, it’s only because the competition is surprisingly stiff. After all, who remembers Oyster Burns, who shared the National League lead in 1890, or Braggo […]