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Hilda Chester and her famous cowbell (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The New York Yankees have their Bleacher Creatures. The crosstown Mets had Karl “Sign Man of Shea” Ehrhardt, while “Megaphone Lolly” Hopkins was the super-fan of the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, and Baltimore Orioles rooters […]

Introduction and Context With the inauguration of free agency in 1976 and the introduction of a second interleague trading period in 1977, the baseball winter meetings had become agonizing to attend. The traditional exchange of players between teams became more limited now that players could bargain for long-term contracts and no-trade clauses. However, the 1980 […]

The word nickname is derived from the Old English eke name based on the verb ecan meaning to add or augment. Thus, nicknames augment given names and provide a richer and more explicit denotation. They tell us something more about a person than just the fact that he is officially James Smith. Nicknames often serve […]

Sox Bid Curse Farewell began as a project of SABR’s Boston Chapter, but as the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Red Sox season approached, it was adopted by the national organization and we are pleased to have it presented as a SABR publication. At the beginning of 2024, SABR published its 100th book in the […]

This article was selected as a finalist for a 2017 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award. In the immediate aftermath of the exciting Game Seven between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants in 2014, the baseball world fixated on one question: should Alex Gordon have been sent home with two outs in the bottom […]

A publicity still of Lou Gehrig in Tarzan garb.   As the 1937 baseball season came to a close, Lou Gehrig was still at the top of his game. Lou had a .351 batting average that year, with 37 home runs and 158 RBIs. He was fourth in voting for the American League’s Most Valuable […]

After the 1970 season, two brothers, Eldon and Harlan Mills, unveiled a new approach to baseball statistics: Player Win Averages. Eldon was a retired Air Force colonel and an expert in computer programming and data processing, while Harlan was a professor and mathematics consultant to IBM. What they did was develop a model for calculating […]

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 […]

Curt Flood, Gene Conley, and Danny Ainge had nothing on Baltimore native Peck Lerian, who challenged the reserve clause and earned fame on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Showing great promise as the leading member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ young receiving corps at the close of the 1920s, he also stood out […]

1950 Cotton Bowl ticket. (Courtesy of C. Paul Rogers III)   The Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas dates to 1930, when it was known as Fair Park Stadium, since it was built on the State Fairgrounds. Its fame was originally from its hosting of the annual Cotton Bowl football game, which was played there from […]

Rochester, New York, played host to the 1962 baseball winter meetings, which saw discussion of issues including the pace of play, player travel, and a healthy amount of player movement. The largest issue on the agenda, however, concerned the reorganization of the minor-league system. Minor League Overhaul The most extensive action taken during the winter […]

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, […]

Introduction In the months following the first year of play in the Federal League, the two established major leagues showed different approaches to this new rival. While a desire for peace persisted throughout the winter months, it was tempered by fervent desires for one entity to be a clear loser in any compromise. Though the […]

Babe Ruth is handed a 10-gallon Stetson hat by Dallas Mayor Jimmie Stetson (right) upon his arrival at Love Field on July 8, 1947. A joyous Claire Ruth (left) looks on. (Dallas History & Archives Division, Dallas Public Library)   Babe Ruth’s plane landed at Love Field in Dallas on the afternoon of Tuesday, July […]

Chicago is a city of icons. A hotbed of popular culture, the Windy City owns a curriculum vitae rarely paralleled concerning characters, real and fictional, responsible for defining the American experience. Al Capone rose to kingpin status in Chicago’s underworld during Prohibition in the 1920s. His was a household name, a celebrity status recognizable nearly […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s August 2024 newsletter.   Standing less than five-feet tall, Deadball Era arbiter Barney Bricelin was the game’s smallest umpire. That diminutive stature, however, garnered him little sympathy or respect from players, baseball fans, or the sporting press. Bricelin’s umpiring tenure was punctuated by assaults upon […]

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. Over the decades, major-league baseball has produced a host of memorable teams, but only one infamous one — the 1919 Chicago White Sox. Almost a century after the fact, the exact […]

The Boston Beaneaters dominated the beginning of the 1890s, winning three straight pennants from 1891 to 1893. The Baltimore Orioles, continual also-rans in the second division, came out of nowhere to win the 1894 pennant, and then followed that up with another title in 1895. Both clubs could boast of being the dynasty of the […]

The Big Red Machine reached its destiny when Cesar Geronimo closed his glove around Carl Yastrzemski’s fly ball on October 22, 1975 at Fenway Park to end the World Series. In that moment of ecstasy and exhaustion the Cincinnati Reds became world champions, finally grasping the ring that had eluded their reach in the first […]

Yolande Teillet’s publicity photo upon joining the Fort Wayne Daisies in 1945. (Courtesy Manitoba Aboriginal Sports & Recreation Council)   In 2022 the Manitoba Indigenous Sports Hall of Fame was launched as a project of the Manitoba Aboriginal Sports & Recreation Council to publicly document the countless ways in which Indigenous peoples have served as […]