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Warren Ballpark in Bisbee, Arizona, has hosted baseball games since it first opened in 1909. (Courtesy of Jacob Pomrenke)   Today, the term “Cactus League” refers to an annual rite of spring: affiliated professional baseball’s preseason in Arizona. But MLB’s Cactus League was not the first! In 1910, a league far removed from the slick […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).   Frank Bancroft, the new manager of the Providence Grays, was having second thoughts. Had he done well to leave Cleveland, where he had been treated kindly and where, the previous season, he had led his club to a […]

Unlikely as it may seem, a careful reading of Louisville’s two major daily newspapers in January 1978 does not reveal a single article of local origination announcing that one of the city’s former sports cornerstones had passed away in upstate  New York. Perhaps it was a mark of shame to Louisville’s sense of  history that […]

During a five-week span in 1932, minor-league legend Buzz Arlett accomplished the Herculean feat of twice blasting four home runs in a game. That season, he wore the uniform of the International League Baltimore Orioles and led the loop with 54 round-trippers. It happened in the year immediately following his one and only bittersweet trip […]

What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]

When the Yankton Treaty was signed in 1858, the United States government acquired a large parcel of land: the northernmost part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, much of which had been Sioux Indian land. In 1861, the area was incorporated as the Dakota Territory. Its borders changed over the next decade, at one time […]

In 1944, even the Browns were able to win an American League pennant, having previously come close only when the George Sisler-led 1922 assemblage barely lost out to Babe Ruth and the pre-Lou Gehrig Yankees. But it could have turned out quite differently. Missing from the action The 1944 Red Sox were missing three of […]

The creation of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in February, 1876, brought stability and strong leadership to organized baseball. The eight-team National League promised a respectable game for its patrons, with no play on Sundays, no liquor sales on the grounds, and no gambling.1 To insure roster stability and salary control, the […]

In 1999 the Society for American Baseball Research completed a poll that ranked Harry Wright as the third largest contributor to 19th-century baseball. Though hindsight is often said to be 20/20, that is questionable in this case. In fact, the 19th-century perception of that question was quite different. In a November 1893 edition of The […]

The Most Important Baseball Figure of the 19th Century? In 1999 the Society for American Baseball Research completed a poll that ranked Harry Wright as the third largest contributor to 19th-century baseball. Though hindsight is often said to be 20/20, that is questionable in this case. In fact, the 19th-century perception of that question was […]

At 3:38 on the afternoon of April 19, 1890, Albert Johnson was on top of the world. When Boston’s Matt Kilroy threw the first pitch to Brooklyn left fielder Emmet Seery, a revolution in American sports began.1 The 30-year-old Johnson, who had spent his working life making a fortune in street railway lines in Louisville, […]

Baseball-Reference.com includes “A note about statistics from 1887 and 1876,” signed in 2001 by Sean Forman. In it, the inimitable site founder explained: 1887—During this year, Major League Baseball and the guides reporting on that season decided that a walk was equivalent to a hit. This was the only season in which this was true. […]

On the afternoon of Saturday, December 14, 1996, a 700-foot, 70,000-ton bulk cargo ship, fully loaded with grain, lost engine power and glided ominously toward a shopping mall along New Orleans’ Mississippi River. Acting quickly, the cool-headed pilot dropped his anchors in an attempt to slow the massive vessel and blasted the emergency horn. As […]

From 1920 to 1958, baseball fans across the Deep South and Southwest looked forward to the annual Dixie Series, a best-of-seven postseason matchup between the playoff champions of the Southern Association and the Texas League. In 1967, after an 8-year hiatus, owners in the Double-A Texas League and the newly created Southern League resurrected the […]

The 1988 Major League-Japan All-Star Series was the 24th time that major leaguers had gone on a goodwill tour of Japan. Although many independent tours had happened over decades, the semiannual Japan All-Star Series had only begun in 1986. On that tour, the major-league All-Stars won the series six games to one. Gearing up for […]

All baseball fans can attest to the truism that baseball is a game that hinges on timing and inches. To the fans of a team eclipsing 100 victories, a season feels joyous and swift. Other seasons are made interminable by loss after loss. Line drives either just clip the foul line or miss wide by […]

One of the rarest and most highly regarded achievements for a hitter is winning the Triple Crown (TC)—leading the league in Batting Average (BA), Home Runs (HR), and Runs Batted In (RBI). In this article I present the minor league batters who won the Triple Crown from 1946 through 1962—the periods designated as “The Golden […]

The home run was not a major part of a batter’s arsenal in the 19th century. In fact, at the end of the century Roger Connor was the career leader in home runs with 138, and only seven players had smashed 100 or more four-baggers. During the first two decades of the new century, an […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Author’s note: Jules Tygiel and I collaborated on this story for SPORT magazine in June 1988. Subsequently it appeared in SABR’s The National Pastime, in several editions of Total Baseball, and […]

“In all due respect to Henry Aaron, Stan Musial and Willie Mays, the best hitter I ever played against was Roberto Clemente.”— Pete Rose, recipient of the 1976 Roberto Clemente Award1 The baseballs are signed by Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Ton Seaver, Ferguson Jenkins, Don Drysdale, and Sandy Koufax – each one a Hall of […]

(Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   Long after most of the city has descended into slumber, Roberto Clemente rises again. For Latin American baseball players, a road trip into Pittsburgh often means a midnight pilgrimage to the Roberto Clemente Museum, located, incongruously enough, in a restored nineteenth-century firehouse, a little off the beaten path but […]

Introduction In September 2005 the confirmation hearings of John Roberts as the nominee for chief justice of the United States included an unexpected but telling nod to the national pastime when Roberts observed, “Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; […]

“War is the Province of Chance.” — Count Carl von Clausewitz   THE FOG OF WAR Even a bloodless, but nonetheless bitter “war,” such as the two-year (1914–15) battle between the outlaw Federal League and Organized Baseball proves Clausewitz’s point.1 For years, the convention has been to view the Federal League, the last challenger to […]

As baseball’s powers-that-be prepared for the 1920 season, the national pastime was in complete turmoil behind the scenes. The American League was in the midst of a civil war over a series of controversial decisions made by its founder and president, Ban Johnson. There were steady rumors that the recent World Series between the Chicago […]