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Fans may recall that Boog Powell, while batting in the 1971 World Series, had trouble on at least one occasion fighting off bees or gnats. This was a very minor disruption compared to the many caused by birds or beasts in the offbeat annals of baseball. Down through the years, reports of ball games have […]

Four members of the 1935 Detroit Tigers were later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Three of them were among the finest players of their era, while the fourth was a very good player whose election was the subject of debate. All were instrumental in the Tigers’ winning the 1935 championship, their first.Four members […]

On September 12, 1992, in the fifth inning of a game between the Dodgers and the Giants at Dodger Stadium, Michael Joseph Piazza hit his first major league home run and his road to the catcher career home-run record began.1 This first four-bagger was a hard shot to right center with men on second and […]

In Babe Ruth’s first year with the Yankees in 1920, he hit 54 homers to break his own American League record set the year before with Boston. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   On the morning of January 6, 1920, New Yorkers awoke to a headline in The New York Times that screamed “Ruth […]

Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) in Arlington, Virginia, is the most famous burial ground in the United States, if not the world. It is a standard item on tourists’ must-see lists when visiting the Washington, D.C. area on vacation as it is the final resting place for presidents, generals, and Supreme Court justices. In addition, there […]

Move over, Charlie Finley and Bill Veeck – the old Browns’ owner was baseball’s first great promoter. And move over George Steinbrenner – Von der Ahe was a meddler supreme.   PERHAPS THE GREATEST DAY of Chris Von der Ahe’s life occurred in the spring of 1882, when he dedicated his new Sportsman’s Park on […]

Fun facts and general observations about Little League Home Runs.Editor’s note: This is the Appendix to Chuck Hildebrandt’s article, “‘Little League Home Runs’ in MLB History: The Denouement.” There were originally 355 plays in consideration as Little League Home Runs: 329 have been confirmed by media accounts and are discussed here; one other has confirmation […]

Wilbur Rogan, pictured here second from left in the front row, compiled a 20-3 pitching record for Jamestown in 1932, batting .315 and leading the team in RBIs. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Jamestown, North Dakota, fielded Class D minor-league teams in 1922 and 1923, and again in 1936 and 1937.1 But between those two excursions into […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 19 (1990).   Phoenix, Denver, Tampa, Washington, perhaps a dozen cities are all hoping to be tapped by major-league baseball’s magic wand and be initiated into the fraternities of American and National League clubs. Expansion has been a topic of discussion for at least […]

Baseball is at one and the same time an idyllic game for children and a gravely serious business for adults. A sport that can be played on a pastoral commons requires, in the world of commerce, space to which some can be admitted and from which others can be excluded—in short, what lawyers call real […]

The National Football League and baseball have enjoyed a close relationship from the beginning. To capitalize on the popularity of baseball, pro football teams have, at times, adopted major league names: Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, New York Yankees, and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Jets picked their name to rhyme with the […]

October 11-12, 1899 Great Northern Hotel, Chicago On October 11 and 12, 1899, the Western League held its annual meeting at Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel. After much discussion that was finally settled by a unanimous vote, the circuit chose a new name — the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Though some balked at the […]

Introduction and Context Professional baseball was mired in conflict throughout 1901. The American League abandoned the National Agreement of 1892 and announced its intention to compete on equal terms with the National League. The National League faced not only an external threat from the self-proclaimed new major league, but internal disunity revolving around organization and […]

Was the Federal League of 1914 and 1915 a major league? Baseball authorities interested in the answer have been, and still are, divided in their opinions. Could a six-team independent league in 1913, generally regarded as no better than Class D, become an eight-team organization of major league quality a year later? The odds suggest […]

After two years of unlawful contract signings and other roster-jumping shenanigans that produced end­less lawsuits, baseball’s Great Tampering War settled down as the 1903 NL campaign began on Thursday, April 16, in Cincinnati and St. Louis. Though person­al disgust and distrust may not have subsided between all franchise owners, a signed truce between the long­ […]

Major League Baseball (MLB) is awash in advanced metrics that more reliably describe key aspects of players’ offensive and defensive performance compared to “traditional” statistics. PITCHf/x and Statcast greatly contributed to this. The power of the original Statcast system came from its effective integration of high-definition video cameras and Doppler radar.1 Whereas cameras were useful […]

The date was October 14, 1972. Families across North America gathered around their wood-paneled television sets to watch Game One of the World Series that Saturday afternoon.  Many fans in the televised audience had not seen the Oakland A’s or the Cincinnati Reds in a regular-season contest.  There stood the Reds along the first-base line […]

“The greatest pitcher I have ever seen,” whispered John McGraw as he shoved his way through a jostling home­ bound crowd after watching “Cannonball” Jackman strike out eighteen batters in nine innings. That whisper spread from ear to ear and finally developed into a roar, for certainly the famed former New York Giants pilot should […]

Magnates attending the 1899 winter league meetings in New York had a full docket: Contraction of the National League The gathering threat of other circuits aiming to claim major-league status; Various internal headaches, chief of which was mollification of angry and vindictive New York Giants owner Andrew Freedman.1 In the end, the progress achieved on […]

Not long after D-Day, in June 1944, Esquire magazine summoned 16- and 17-year-old boys from all over the country to New York for the first Esquire All-American Boys Baseball Game. Chicago was one of 29 cities to send players to this game. A local newspaper would select a deserving local player and pay their travel […]

When quintessential baseball buff Douglas Heeren first approached me about a player named Ducky Holmes, I failed to grasp the depth of the subject. Pointing out my misidentification of Ducky in a team photo in my book about baseball in Northwest Iowa, Heeren simply wanted to set the record straight.1 A young man from rural […]

Taken on Labor Day in 1902 during a doubleheader between the Phillies and Chicago Orphans, the photo shows the edge of the grandstand and bleachers along the third base line where the collapse would take place less than a year later. (Author’s Collection)   Introduction “From the lips of a frightened little girl came a […]

Major-league baseball players and umpires are sometimes at odds, but both groups seemed to be thinking along the same lines around 1968. It was then that the Major League Baseball Players Association won the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports, and umpires started on the road to formation of a union that would eventually […]

What makes these Detroit Tigers uniform numbers — 2, 5, 6, 16, and 23 — special? Nearly every Tigers fan knows the answer to this question — each of those uniform numbers has been retired, in honor of Charlie Gehringer (2), Hank Greenberg (5), Al Kaline (6), Hal Newhouser (16), and Willie Horton (23). Each of these […]