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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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

“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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

    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 […]

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 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 […]

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 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 […]

The Brooklyn Eagle, beginning in 1946, staged its “Brooklyn Against the World” competition at Ebbets Field. The main forces behind the game were Branch Rickey of the Dodgers and Lou Niss, the sports editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. Players from around the United States, Canada, and Hawaii were brought to Brooklyn as part of the […]

The Brooklyn Eagle, beginning in 1946, staged its “Brooklyn Against the World” competition at Ebbets Field. The main forces behind the game were Branch Rickey of the Dodgers and Lou Niss, the sports editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. Players from around the United States, Canada, and Hawaii were brought to Brooklyn as part of the […]

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 […]