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Larry Twitchell’s greatest day in baseball came on August 15, 1889 — but for many years, it was unclear whether he should share the record for most total bases in a single nine-inning game. This article clears up the mystery. I was researching information related to an afternoon game held on May 30, 1894. Bobby […]

In the 1912 season Rube Marquard, the left-handed pitcher of the National League (NL) New York Giants, won nineteen consecutive games and it was thought at the time to be one game shy of the record. The record was thought to be twenty, set by John Perkins “Pat” Luby, a right-handed pitcher for the NL […]

In his four appearances at Yankee Stadium with the 1952 St. Louis Browns, Satchel Paige had a 2.55 ERA in 17 2/3 innings. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Yankee Stadium is considered baseball’s biggest stage, a modern marvel of concrete and steel. The fashionable frieze that encircled the top of the exterior walls added regality and panache […]

The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, featured Yankee Stadium transformed into a football field. (20th Century Fox)   “Baseball stadiums are never only about baseball. Their utility is both more dynamic and more poetic.”1 Some landmarks are so burned into our collective mind’s eye that their image tells the story of their […]

The problem of measuring batting skill is as old as baseball itself. The earliest statisticians were content to count the hits and runs scored by each batter, but the unfairness of this simple method to the stars of weak teams soon prompted invention of the batting average. Since then statistics have proliferated to the point […]

In general, the baseball Winter Meetings can be viewed as a watershed event, marking both the end of one season and the beginning of the next. Even before the 2007 Winter Meetings got under way in Nashville, however, the offseason had been launched with a major new initiative. Major-league general managers held their annual meetings […]

Set against the backdrop of a country emerging from war, and entering into a period of prosperity, the Hearst Sandlot Classic for 20 years offered a showcase for young baseball talent. Many of those who participated signed professional contracts and others were able to obtain scholarships to further their education. Everyone who participated gained memories […]

The annual Winter Meetings of the National Association ventured to sunny Miami to hold sessions in the McAllister and Columbus hotels from December 3-5, 1947. Major-league representatives stayed at the McAllister, Columbus, or Martinique hotels.1 The annual joint meetings of the American and National Leagues followed shortly afterward, in frosty New York City, at the […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   Sixty years ago there were no millionaire ballplayers in St. Louis. No night baseball, no artificial turf, no exploding scoreboards, no plane travel, no West Coast baseball teams, no television, no helmets, no batting gloves, no blacks in the […]

A version of this article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s February 2015 newsletter. The contributions of Dorothy Seymour Mills to our understanding of baseball history can hardly be overstated, as her work with her husband Dr. Harold Seymour on the 1971 book Baseball: The Golden Age laid the foundation for […]

The time was shortly after 7 AM. The place was a stretch of seashore on the Normandy coast of France designated Omaha Beach. The date was June 6, 1944. Less than sixty minutes had passed since H-Hour, when the first wave of men from the 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, the only […]

In 1948, the St. Louis Cardinals farm system was a model for other big-league teams. When one of the Cardinals’ 21 farm teams was struck by tragedy in July 1948, organized baseball rallied around the organization. On July 24, 1948, a bus carrying the Duluth Dukes, a Cardinals’ affiliate in the Class C Northern League, […]

In 1876, the United States was a century old and had 38 states. Grant was president, and Custer met his end at Little Big Horn. Alexander Graham Bell was demonstrating his telephone, but Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb was still three years away. In Chicago, horse drawn streetcars rattled along cobblestone streets in front of […]

Perhaps the most revered number and jersey in baseball history belongs to Jackie Robinson, who wore number 42 throughout his 10-year career with the Dodgers. As John Odell has said, “Robinson wore number 42 throughout his major league career; for baseball fans and American historians, the number … is … associated with no other player, […]

Few individuals saw more Astros history that Alan Ashby. An Astro for 20 of their first 50 seasons, he spent eleven on the Astrodome carpet, coordinating one of the more challenging pitching staffs of his time. After one year as their bullpen coach Ashby moved to the broadcast booth for another eight, culminating with Houston’s […]

Michael Kelley played only briefly in one major league season. Despite this lack of major league success he was a highly respected minor league player and manager. However, he found himself in extremely hot water with Organized Baseball for three years, starting in 1905. From being a part of a sham sale of the St. […]

Radio broadcasts of Yankees games in the 1920s were sparse, but Graham McNamee (shown here with Babe Ruth) often called the few that did make the air. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   For New York Yankees fans, Wednesday, April 18, 1923, was a momentous occasion: That was the day the brand-new Yankee Stadium […]

Tom Harris interviewed Bobby Thomson at his home in New Jersey on September 26, 1993. Some text in the original transcript has been omitted here and, for clarity, some portions have been transposed. Click here to listen to the entire interview in the SABR Oral History Collection.   Bobby Thomson: I was born in Glasgow, […]

INTRODUCTION On Sunday July 17, 2011, the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays hooked up for the rubber match of a three-game series, both teams’ first after the All-Star break. Josh Beckett started for Boston while Jeff Niemann toed the rubber for Tampa Bay. Both starting pitchers went eight shutout innings in the game, […]

Other than being eaten alive and shot at, Waycross was great. — Hank Aaron (1953)   On March 18, 1953, the Boston Braves did something no club had managed to do since 1903, when the Orioles fled Baltimore to become the New York Highlanders. They moved. To Milwaukee. Among the goods and chattels they brought […]

Jackie Robinson with the Kansas City Monarchs, October 23, 1945 (COURTESY OF RACHEL ROBINSON AND THE ESTATE OF JACKIE ROBINSON)   A brief and often forgotten chapter in the legendary life of Jackie Robinson was the five months he spent as the Negro Leagues batting star for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. This era […]

Harry M. Stevens, shown at left with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, was the Yankees’ official concessionaire through the 1963 season. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The 12-page official program of the new “Greater New York Base Ball Club of the American League“ at its home opener on April 30, 1903, was published by […]

The London, Ontario, baseball tournament held toward the end of August 1869 featured a special category reserved for “colored” teams from Canada and the United States. Two years after the country’s Confederation in 1867, Canadians were still held in high regard for having opened their borders to freed slaves in the pre-Civil War era while […]

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 […]