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“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 […]

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 […]

In February 1933 – when Jackie Robinson was 14 years old – Heywood Broun, a syndicated columnist at the New York World-Telegram, addressed the annual dinner of the all-White New York Baseball Writers Association. If Black athletes were good enough to represent the United States at the 1932 Olympic Games, Broun said, “it seems a […]

The 1937 season had been frustrating for the Chicago Cubs. After a slow start, they had climbed their way through the National League standings, taking over first place on June 15. They maintained a lead over the second-place New York Giants for all but one day of the next 10 weeks. By August 3 the […]

Babe Ruth with Japanese students wearing Koshien jerseys. (Courtesy of Yoko Suzuki.)   The American ambassador to Japan stretched out his long legs and put the final touches on the speech to welcome the All American baseball team to the Land of the Rising Sun. Although the ambassador, Joseph Grew, was probably pleased with it, […]

Fans come from miles around—families in wheezing Model Ts, farmers by horse-drawn wagons, folks of all ages on bicycles and on foot. Down flat, dusty roads past fertile fields of potatoes, melons, and corn ripening fast in the late summer sun. Their destination—the sleepy little town of Parksley, Virginia, hard by the Maryland state line […]

Tris Speaker is remembered more for his performance on the playing field than for his results as a manager. But in 1920–21 his personnel moves, tactics, and leadership generated outstanding results for the Cleveland Indians. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Tris Speaker, considered one of the greatest hitters and center fielders of all […]

In one of the 1951 Bowman trading card sets, Jets, Rockets, Spacemen, visitors from Earth watch a baseball game beamed from Cleveland years earlier via alien technology. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)   In October 2019, three American astronauts aboard the International Space Station played baseball to mark the final game of the World Series, in which the […]

Progressive Field at sunset in Cleveland, 2024 (Courtesy of the Cleveland Guardians)   After the Cleveland Indians initiated a name change in time for the 2022 season, there were fans who applauded the decision and others who were upset that they were abandoning the identity they had held since 1915. However, this was a club […]

“No nation that has had as intimate contact with baseball as the Japanese,” The Sporting News wrote in an editorial shortly after Pearl Harbor, “could have committed the vicious, infamous deed of … December 7, 1941, if the spirit of the game had ever penetrated their yellow hides.”1 Today, 60 years removed, the writing is […]

This article was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   A National League players’ strike, instigated by some of the St. Louis Cardinals, against the presence in the league of Jackie Robinson, Negro first baseman, has been averted temporarily and perhaps permanently quashed. That’s the lede of Stanley Woodward’s story in the […]

After clinching the 1884 Eastern League pennant in mid-August, the team replaced Philadelphia in the Union Association and compiled the majors’ worst record – a dismal . 111 won-lost percentage.   The year 1884 marked the Eastern League’s inaugural season, and the circuit had a less than auspicious start. A number of teams folded or […]

In a scene from the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers”, Chico and Harpo attempt to switch a priceless painting with a copy. After the usual mayhem, the duo turns to exit, stage left. When they open the French doors, there’s a caterwauling of thunder, with lightning and sheets of rain. The pair close the doors, head […]

The 1934 All-Americans outside Nagoya Castle (Yoko Suzuki Collection)   Katsusuke Nagasaki’s breath billowed as he loitered outside the Yomiuri newspaper’s Tokyo offices. The morning of February 22, 1935 was chilly. But that was good; nobody would look twice at his bulky overcoat. Matsutaro Shoriki, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun, was late. Nagasaki strolled […]

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 […]

The highest grossing baseball movie of all time, A League of Their Own, features a 15-second scene where an African-American woman picks up an errant ball and throws it back with such snap that it raises eyebrows.1 The film tells the story of what is now known as the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBPL), […]

1962 Detroit Tigers Goodwill Tour program (Robert Fitts Collection)   For the Detroit Tigers 1962 was a year to forget. They finished the season in fourth place, 10½ games behind the pennant-winning Yankees, with 16 fewer wins than the second-place 1961 Detroit club. The best the Tigers could muster in 1962 was second spot in […]

On September 23, 1908, as I wrote in The Un­forgettable Season, “the Giants and Cubs played the most celebrated, most widely discussed, most controversial contest in the history of American sports. The game was declared a 1 to 1 tie.” This was, of course, the game of the “Merkle blunder.” As Kurosawa’s film masterpiece Rashomon beautifully illustrated, the same event may be […]

Gardner Park, Dallas Texas (Dallas Morning News)   The Armistice of November 11, 1918, ended the fighting in World War I, but for Black soldiers like O’Neal Pullen—a professional baseball player from Texas who served in the segregated 509th Engineer unit in France—the fight for freedom continued at home.1 Returning to a nation gripped by […]

Adrian C. Anson was the venerable captain of the famous Chicago White Stockings when they were the kingpins of the baseball world in the 1880s. Anson is more popularly, although slightly incorrectly, known to today’s fans as “Cap.” In his own time, Anson was identified in the press, variously, as “Ans,” “The Big Swede,” and […]

Editor’s note: This article was selected as a recipient of the 2025 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award.   On July 25, 1966, Casey Stengel and Ted Williams were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Although most observers likely assumed that Casey would steal the show, as he usually did, it was Williams […]

In the fall of 1893, a new Western League was formed with Milwaukee as a charter member. The first (and only) president of the Milwaukee Brewers was Matthew R. Killilea, born in the town of Poygan, Wisconsin. An 1891 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Killilea was thereafter appointed assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County, […]

How important is the subject of pitchers’ fielding? Just ask Jim Leyland, manager of the 2006 Detroit Tigers, who lost the World Series. Five errors—four of them throwing errors—committed by four different pitchers, one in every one of the five games of the series, led to seven unearned runs for the opposing St. Louis Cardinals. […]