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This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   In his wonderfully compact and brilliant Take Time For Paradise, the late Bart Giamatti says, “If baseball is a narrative, an epic of exile and return, a vast, communal poem about separation, loss and the hope for reunion — if […]

Perry Barber was just the second woman to umpire at Yankee Stadium, in 1985. (Courtesy of Perry Barber)   On Sunday, September 9, 1973, Ronnie Bromm became the lone member of the most exclusive club on the planet: Women Who Have Umpired at Yankee Stadium. She held that title all by herself for a long […]

There was once a time when Major League Baseball did not completely control all the players in the minor leagues. It was a time before farm systems and a time before the major leagues could pull players from a minor-league pennant race to supplement a major-league bench at will. It was a time before the […]

One measure of player endurance is consecutive games played. Another measure, which could be considered a superior one, is highest percent of scheduled games played in ten consecutive years. Only five of the highest rated players in the percent calculation compiled long consecutive game streaks. Lou Gehrig is unquestionably the highest ranking player using either […]

Other pennant races have been undecided longer, had more participants, and perhaps other cities have been as involved with their teams as was St. Louis in 1922, but for the lasting effect it had on the future of a franchise, probably no race could match the impact of the one between the New York Yankees […]

Ottawa Rapidz center fielder Jared Lemieux watches the ball after a hit. (Courtesy of Jared Lemieux)   The word “rapids” refers to stretches of river that are fast-flowing, rocky, and turbulent. They’re a test of endurance, but some people enjoy them. “Rapidz” made a good name, then, for the Ottawa baseball team that lasted one […]

In 2018, a country auction in Maine handling the estate of major leaguer Harry Lord put a photograph up for bid they touted as the “First Ever All-Star Game.”1 The 1910 photo pictured an American League team of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Big Ed Walsh, and ten others including Lord, the former Red […]

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 […]

John Tortes Meyers (left) of the New York Giants and Charles Albert Bender of the Philadelphia Athletics (right) pose before the first game of the 1911 World Series, deemed the “Indian versus Indian” series by sports writers. Like other Native American players of the era they were given the nickname “Chief.” (Bain Collection, Library of […]

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth on July 4, 1939 on Lou Gehrig’s last day at Yankee Stadium. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.)   Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig weren’t exactly best friends or worst enemies, weren’t exactly master and pupil, weren’t exactly equals on or off the field. Half a generation apart in age1 […]

The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have one of the fiercest rivalries in American sports. It is a rivalry borne out of regional differences that date back to Colonial America. The rivalry goes beyond sports—New York and Boston were early economic rivals, eventually becoming a cultural rivalry between New York and New England. […]

The morning of October 4, 1905, broke as had many other early autumn days over the prior four decades: with baseball teams locked in the throes of a pennant race. This season it was Charles Comiskey’s White Stockings of Chicago pitted against Connie Mack’s Athletics of Philadelphia in the nascent American League, and unlike some […]

1951 Hazard Bombers. From L-R, top row: J. Ravelo, D. Hayling, E. Bobrik, J. Podres. Second row: K. Johnson, R. Coluni, L. Isert, M. Sanders, R. Torres. Third row: M. Macon, Max Smith (team owner). Fourth row: R. Dacko, J. Tondora, J. Chapman, K. Cox, E. Catlett. Bottom row: C, Crook Jr. (batboy), H. Snyder, […]

Eighty-six years. Decades of near-misses and long-shot losses that kept a World Series win out of reach of the Boston Red Sox. Years turned into decades and – occasionally – a near-miss tantalized the team and fans. What could possibly have been the reason for all the misfortune? Waiting until next year became an old, […]

The Illinois-Indiana-Iowa baseball league started its ninth consecutive season of play in May 1909. While the league was better known then as the Three-I or Three-Eye league, the name was actually a misnomer. The eight teams in the league that year were located only in Illinois and Iowa. (This would not be the last time […]

In 1971, the year SABR was founded, the analysis of baseball statistics was still in its infancy, and computers were in the hands of few. Sabermetrics developed alongside the information age, with personal  computers enabling those who did not work where computers were easily  available to develop their algorithms and analyze data at home. In […]

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2024 newsletter.   Walter East is hardly the sole Deadball Era career minor leaguer to have led an interesting and eventful life. But more than a century later, he may well be the only one to have his own Wikipedia page. Regrettably for East, the […]

Hall of Fame executive Ed Barrow secured his legacy during his years with the Yankees. He joined New York’s front office after the 1920 season as their first de facto general manager. The next year the team won its first pennant; during his 24-year tenure, from 1921 through 1944 (through 1947 he stayed on as […]

In addition to 1976 being the Nation’s Bicentennial, it also is a big year for celebration in each of America’s major baseball organizations. The venerable National League, being born in New York, February 2, 1876, is celebrating its proud centennial. Its once upstart junior, the American League, is accepting congratulations on surviving 75 tempestuous seasons. […]

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig formed the most feared batting twosome in the history of baseball. Batting third and fourth, they served as the heart of the great Yankee teams that won three World Series between 1927 and 1933. Despite their heroics, Ruth and Gehrig played a different type of baseball, led decidedly different lives, […]

Haskell Institute baseball team, ca.1910. (Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University)   The idleness and rhythm of baseball were a spring rite at the federally-operated Indian boarding schools of the late nineteenth century. Played passionately by the students on fields carved out of forests, the schools used baseball as another tool to impose […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   A native Louisvillian, Louis “Pete” Browning was born June 17, 1861, in the first summer of America’s Civil War. One of eight children (four sons and four daughters) born to Samuel and Mary Jane Sheppard Browning, Pete grew […]

1920 Baltimore Orioles, International League champions. (BALTIMORE SUN)   In 1920, the Baltimore Orioles were champions of the International League (IL) for the second straight year. Baltimore would win seven consecutive pennants (1919–25), and six of the championship teams are ranked in the top 20 of the 100 best minor league teams of the twentieth […]