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The Fall Meeting — November 16-17, 1894 The first conclave after the 1894 season convened in Parlor F of the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City.1There were no hot-button issues facing the magnates, but there were still critical details that required the group’s collective attention.The largest single administrative action came in reappointing the Board […]

On September 20, 2002, the Los Angeles Dodgers played a doubleheader against the Arizona Diamondbacks and scored five runs in the eighth inning to come back and take game one 6-5. This gave the Dodgers a season record of 103-44, a .700 winning percentage (briefly, as they lost game two), a feat rarely accomplished in […]

This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s “Howie Fox: Baltimore’s Unique Oriole.” Click on a link below to scroll down to that section: [A-1] Where the 1953 Baltimore Orioles Played in 1954 — The Men Who Participated in the 1953 Playoffs [A-2] Where the 1953 Baltimore Orioles Played in 1954 — The Men Who […]

Baseball fans love statistics. For more than a century, folks have talked about baseball numbers of all sorts around the water cooler and the hot stove, in the box seats and the bleachers, and, more recently, on call-in radio shows and the Internet. Batter numbers, pitcher numbers, and manager numbers have provoked discussions and arguments. […]

The winter2 meetings of 1896-1897 were conducted at the height of National League factionalism, with club owners in the 12-team circuit divided into two camps. The Big Five franchises of Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg represented the League’s prominent, Eastern venues. At annual meetings, the concerns of the Big Five were most often […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume II (1987).   I asked Cappy Gagnon, former SABR president and aficionado extraordinaire, what he thought the best baseball novels were. Without hesitation, Cappy replied, “That’s easy. There aren’t any. Baseball fiction is not as interesting as baseball history. Why make up stories, […]

The Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York (PONY) League was a Class-D (entry-level) minor league that operated from 1939 through 1956 before becoming the New York-Pennsylvania League. (Ontario no longer hosted any franchises.) The successor league operated from 1957 through 2020, when Major League Baseball restructured the minor-league system. As an entry-level league, its role as a pipeline to […]

P.K. Wrigley and the Chicago Cubs’ “College of Coaches” in 1961. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)   In any business venture, management often seeks to make changes in everyday operations in order to bring about improvements in overall performance. These changes may range from minor tweaks in normal operating procedures to overhauls of the conventional methods in place. […]

Between the years 1888 and 1891, the National League Philadelphia Phillies lost two prominent ballplayers on what promised to be contending teams. In an age when the life expectancy for American men was 46 to 53, it was surprising to see athletically-fit young men in their mid-twenties die before their expectant lifespan.1 This fate, however, […]

  1935 Paducah Red Birds B.B. Hook, Jr. is the child in the very front. Front row (L–R): Joe Grace, Floyd Perryman, Venable Satterfield, and Louis Perryman. Middle row (L–R): Lowell Green, Mel Ivy, E.R. Jones (more behind the row than in it), Robert Brown, Benny Sanders, and an unnamed child listed as “mascot.” Back […]

Babe Ruth turned his cricket bat into a broken, splintered mess. Baseball’s great home-run hitter had just smashed an hour’s worth of bowling (cricket’s term for “pitching”). He whacked balls all over a “subterranean” field near the Thames River in London. Alan Fairfax, formerly a top Australian player, coached Ruth and marveled at his pupil’s […]

In anticipation of hosting SABR 40, the Magnolia Chapter has selected an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team. Any major-league player born in the state of Georgia was theoretically eligible; no residency requirement was stipulated. In order to make the process more efficient, the author screened the master list of players to eliminate most “cup of coffee” […]

In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof wrote about the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “Many players of less status got almost twice as much on other teams. … (Charles Comiskey’s) ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst.” This passage sums up the entire foundation of Asinof’s thesis: Low salaries and […]

Two seasons ago, I witnessed the Florida Marlins attempt to execute a classic Earl Weaver maneuver. It was the fifth inning of a game in Milwaukee. The Marlins, down 1–0, had runners on first and third with two outs. As the pitcher was winding up for the next batter, I nudged my buddy in the […]

The Curse of the Bambino hovered over the Boston Red Sox for more than 80 years, from the time they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season until early in the 21st century. The team that won four world championships in the 1910s didn’t win another until 2004. A close […]

Babe Ruth pitches in to help the grounds crew in The House That Ruth Built. (Getty Images)   November 27, 1922, was an overcast and chilly day, but the grounds crew finished laying the last pieces of outfield sod, pleasing the head groundskeeper. Phil Schenck stood with New York Yankees co-owner Colonel Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston […]

Walter O’Malley, center, shown with Jersey City officials, announced that, in 1956 through 1958, the Dodgers would play seven games each season in Jersey City and would have the option to continue the agreement for three years beyond that.   INTRODUCTION  The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the […]

In the summer of 1948, two of the nation’s premier major-league pitching prospects were Georgia boys—Willard Nixon of Lindale and Hugh Radcliffe of Thomaston. Both were multisport stars with a special talent for baseball. Both were big, strong, righthanded pitchers who had dominated opposing batters wherever they had pitched. Both attracted the attention of almost […]

In reading accounts of the 1903 World Series, I so often came across the team name “Boston Pilgrims” that I accepted this on faith as one of the names by which the team was known. I even used it myself, presenting it as fact (see page 1 of Tales from the Red Sox Dugout). I […]

Cross-checkers, called regional scouting supervisors by some clubs, work a level between that of the area scout and scouting director. Most organizations now have three to four cross-checkers, each covering a territory – like the East Coast. They work in both directions, being directed by the scouting director to scout certain players and following up […]