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In Cooperstown on July 9, 1939, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues conducted its celebration of baseball’s centennial. A brief announcement in The Sporting News of March 2 outlined what was to be the minor league’s part in the 100th anniversary year. The program was to consist of the dedication of a research library, […]

It was a hot summer day in 1897 when hundreds of fans of the Federalsburg Club in Maryland gathered for a game. This small town of barely a thousand people was proud of their team. Little did they know that three of the young teenagers taking the field for them that day would soon be […]

Editor’s note: All statistics are current through the 2016 season.   Playing in postseason is a special time for players. It is also special for umpires who are assigned to officiate. The first modern World Series in 1903 was umpired by two men: Hank O’Day and Tommy Connolly. O’Day, a retired player, had been a […]

Much more than a booster of baseball locally, V. Jamison Jr., prominent Hagerstown industrialist and civic leader, was a moving spirit of professional baseball for most of the first half of the twentieth century. His influence reached not only his hometown and the state of Maryland, but the country. Jamison was born in Luray, Page […]

Stripped to the waist, Johnny was working as groundskeeper one day at the ballpark in Silverton, Oregon, when a well-dressed gentleman approached him. Louis Butler represented one of the St. Louis clubs and he was sporting a shirt and tie. Johnny had just finished watering and dragging the field. “I was marking the field, getting […]

A note from the editor of the Fall 2015 BRJ.

The three-inning exhibition between the Chicago Colleens and Springfield Sallies on August 11, 1950, marked the only time the AAGPBL played at Yankee Stadium. (New York Daily News)   Between 1923 and 2008, Yankee Stadium hosted 6,746 American League and related professional baseball games, including 161 postseason games and four All-Star Games. More than 200 […]

This excerpt is from the recent SABR book, Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark, and also appears at www.grassrootsbaseball.org.   Between 1923 and 2008, Yankee Stadium hosted 6,746 American League and related professional baseball games, including 161 postseason games and four All-Star Games. More than 200 Negro League games have also taken place there. […]

Many amusement parks had seen their fortunes intertwined with minor-league baseball, and both faced hard times in the post-World War II era. The amusement parks that had survived to the 1950s— many of which started life at the turn of the century as “trolley parks,” built at the end of a streetcar line— were starting […]

Following the 1895 season, and almost six weeks after the death of Harry Wright, the owners met in New York on November 13 and 14, at what was identified as the “Fifth annual meeting of the National League and American Association of Professional Baseball Clubs.”1 One paper predicted, “At tomorrow’s meeting … there may be […]

At the close of play on July 17, 1915, the American League’s Chicago White Sox led the league by 1½ games, the Federal League’s Chicago Whales had a half-game lead, and the National League’s Chicago Cubs were tied for first. The feat of one city having three first-place teams has not since been repeated, since […]

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, […]

     Hillsboro Hops manager Shelley Duncan being ejected from the game against the Tri-City Dust Devils by short-season Single-A Northwest League umpire Joe Schwartz, August 26, 2015. (Courtesy of Michael Jacobs)   The theater of baseball contains many acts and scenes, from the overarching storyline of a masterful pitching performance or offensive feat to the […]

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 […]

ESPN Radio Chicago Sports Anchor and Talk Show Host Tom Shaer and Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk after Shaer MC’d the August 7, 2005 unveiling of the White Sox’ statue of Fisk at then-U.S. Cellular Field. (Courtesy of Tom Shaer)   In 2005 I was a sports anchor and talk show host at ESPN Radio […]

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 […]

Olean, New York, sits in a plateau in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. It is surrounded by rolling hills whose forests burst into a rainbow of color in autumn, mimic crystal and silver spires in winter, explode with new life in the spring, and cover the land with cooling shade in summer. Residents and […]

Joe Neptune, a nephew of Lou Sockalexis, played minor-league and semipro baseball for over three decades in the northeastern borderlands. (Baltimore Sun, June 5, 1923)   In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball was a common pursuit among Indigenous peoples in the Northeastern borderlands. In Maine, competitive native clubs organized at Sipayik (Pleasant […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]