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What’s My Line? was a popular primetime game show which ran on CBS-TV from 1950 through 1967, with a daytime syndicated version lasting from 1968 to 1975. Its format was simple and clever: a quartet of panelists questioned individuals to determine their often unusual or unlikely occupations, which ranged from the offbeat (safety pin maker, […]

As a franchise that began 130 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have made an indelible mark not only on the city where they play but also on the whole sport of baseball. This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of the […]

When the 2003 Boston Red Sox reported to Fort Myers, Florida, for spring training, state-of-the-art facilities, a battery of instructors, and a full staff of physical-training specialists awaited them. The minor league facility at City of Palms Park, where the team trains before the exhibition season begins, includes eight batting tunnels and sixteen pitcher’s mounds. Every […]

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. When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, it was their fifth triumph in the fifteen years of the modern classic. The club had the best player in […]

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 […]

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, […]

Although on the surface Miller Huggins and Jacob Ruppert seemed worlds apart, the two men had striking similarities. They were the architects of the New York Yankees’ dominance in the 1920s. (BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)   Jacob Ruppert believed that hiring Miller Huggins as his manager after the 1917 season was the first and most important […]

Jerry Sullivan as a teenager.   The city of Baltimore has hosted a number of historic baseball events. Although this story barely qualifies as such, it is nevertheless an interesting aside involving Jerry Sullivan, a 32-year-old, 3-foot-11 stage actor who appeared in an Eastern League game in Baltimore in 1905. Forty-six years later, the St. […]

Minor-league baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is virtually synonymous with Texas League professional baseball in the region. The small parts not connected to the Texas League are the rise and fall of black baseball in the area and the brief sojourns of the Fort Worth and Dallas teams in other leagues. (The Metroplex is […]

Celebrating the Dodger Dog. (Courtesy Todd Anton)   “A hot dog at the park is better than a steak at the Ritz.” — Humphrey Bogart 1 “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” may mention peanuts and Cracker Jack, but the hot dog is the cleanup hitter of the baseball stadium lineup. The quintessential ballpark meal […]

Frank Shaughnessy (middle, second row) guided the 1913 Ottawa Senators to their second straight Canadian League title, nosing out the London Tecumsehs by a single game. First baseman “Cozy” Dolan (top row, third from left) led the Senators with a .358 batting average. (Alfred Pittaway of Pittaway & Jarvis Photographers, Ottawa)   For Frank Shaughnessy, […]

All the poetry and folklore of “Tinker to Evers to Chance” notwithstanding, the great Chicago Cubs teams of 1906–10 won their four pennants and two World Series by way of outstanding pitching. The glories of Mordecai “Three Fingered” Brown, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, and Orval Overall have been widely recognized, and rightfully so. Sadly ignored, […]

To date, there has only been one woman who played baseball with a team of major leaguers in a big-league ballpark. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Murphy and she played for a team of “all-stars” against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Lizzie Murphy’s team beat the Red Sox, 3-2.1 The year was 1922, […]

Late in the summer of 1914, Doc Reisling, the ballplaying dentist from Ohio, found himself at the center of one of the most bizarre pennant races in baseball history. It was September 6, the penultimate day of the Canadian League1 season, and Reisling’s London Tecumsehs2 trailed their archrivals, Shag Shaughnessy’s Ottawa Senators,3 by two games. […]

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 […]

“It was my first spring training ever, at Jackson, Tennessee, in 1927, when I went up with Toledo. Casey Stengel, our manager, was trying to teach me how to turn and throw to first base in one motion. Well, we were playing Chattanooga later in the day and there was a man on first. I […]

The players on the train carrying the St. Louis Cardinals back to Union Station should have been vibrant and fun-loving as it rolled through the Land of Lincoln on October 2, 1949. The Redbirds had thumped the Chicago Cubs, 13-5, at Wrigley Field in the season finale that afternoon. Thanks to a thrilling pennant race, […]

The World Series is the capstone of each baseball season. It ties up the annual package that was the pennant races, crowning an ultimate champion and providing fans with memories and associations that continue to live: the Called Shot, Al Gionfriddo, Bill Mazeroski. The special events of the World Series have a parallel in the […]

    Minnie Minoso’s appearance in three games for the White Sox in September 1976 at age 53 serves as a reminder that major league baseball has had some pretty old performers over the years. The only distinction Minoso gained in his brief stint was to be the oldest player to collect a hit in […]

Only one tripleheader has been played in the majors in this century and that was 60 years ago. Considering that, in this Age of Television, nine innings may take three or more hours to play, it is unlikely that we shall soon see another one. The last tripleheader was played on October 2, in the […]

This is the appendix for “Quasi-Cycles — Better Than Cycles?” by Herm Krabbenhoft.Editor’s note: This is the appendix for “Quasi-Cycles — Better Than Cycles?” by Herm Krabbenhoft.   DISCREPANCIES Comparison of Joseph Donner’s “Full List of Players with Five and Four Long Hits in a Game” [The Baseball Research Journal (1993)] with Joseph L. Reichler’s […]

Three players named John Tobin played pro baseball, each at some time during the early 1930s. John Thomas Tobin’s playing record is well documented. He had a 13-year major-league career, mostly with the St. Louis Browns. He led the Federal League in hits in 1915 and the American League in triples in 1921. He finished […]

Baseball fans love numbers — 755, 511, 2,632, for instance, or .300 batting averages, winning 20 games, stealing 100 bases, hitting 100 mph on the radar gun — all are part of the lore of the game. Sometimes those numbers include specific years, generally the year we started watching or the year our favorite team […]

Introduction and Context As the American and National Leagues prepared for the 1924 winter meetings in New York City, drama laced the usual business agenda of trades, rulings, and discussion of regulations. The NL had faced trouble internally since the end of September, when its president, John Heydler, disclosed, first to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis […]