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“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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

    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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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, […]

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 […]

A third of a century has passed since the Dodgers commemorated their centennial – 100 years since joining the National League in 1890, the year they consider their founding. The anniversary was highlighted by a midsummer Old-Timers Weekend held at Dodger Stadium, which included a private luncheon for former players and coaches on Saturday, June […]

As the major-league ownership gathered in Chicago, Illinois from December 8 through 10, 1931, the Great Depression was a silent partner to the discussions. Unemployment rose dramatically in 1931, topping out at 16 percent and showing no signs of relenting. Attendance dropped at almost every ballpark during the 1931 season, and overall attendance for the […]

Thomas Francis Qualters was a bonus baby whom the Philadelphia Phillies signed on June 16, 1953, for an estimated $40,000. He was a star pitcher at McKeesport, Pennsylvania and once struck out 21 batters in a seven-inning high school game and 24 in an eight-inning high school game, allowing only one hit in each contest.1 […]

Billie Barnie had taken the reins of the Baltimore Club of the major league American Association in March of 1883. He was determined that the fans not suffer through another dismal season like the previous one. That aggregation, led by Henry Myers, had been hammered in local newspapers with headlines like “BAD GAME OF BALL—DISBAND […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 14 (1994).   My most desired time-machine dream game happened on August 2, 1930. On a hot, humid summer night in Kansas City, Missouri, two men, one with smoke and the other with fire, engaged in a wild, free-swinging 12-inning contest that would result […]

Introduction It was decided both major leagues would hold their annual winter meetings in New York City in December 1910. Although it would not be a joint meeting, this would be of great convenience to the writers and help centralize interest in the meetings.1 The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minor leagues) had […]

A mural in Montréal attests to Jackie Robinson’s popularity in the city. (Author’s collection)   “To the large group of Louisville fans who came here with their team, it may be a lesson of goodwill among men. That it’s the man and not his color, race or creed. They couldn’t fail to tell others down […]

Baseball has always been a favorite subject for artists wishing to portray popular aspects of American culture. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), America’s “Dickens with a paint brush,” produced dozens of illustrations of the National Pastime for novels and magazine stories, commercial advertisements and magazine covers, notably 11 for the Saturday Evening Post. These paintings, which included […]

Myth, legend and controversy mix together with history and fact in baseball’s churning cauldron of the past. Abner Doubleday’s invention of baseball is a myth. Babe Ruth’s calling his shot in the 1932 World Series is legendary (and probably a myth). The 1969 Mets World Series win is a fact, however improbable and however much […]

  Several players on the 1919 Chicago White Sox agreed to lose that year’s World Series, earning the nickname “Black Sox.” Their manager William (“Kid”) Gleason said publicly after the Series that “something was wrong. I didn’t like the betting odds. I wish no one had ever bet a dollar on the team.”1 Gleason had […]