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At SABR’s 2006 convention one speaker analyzed the commissioners of baseball and rated Judge Landis the best of all. In the question-and-answer session that followed, a member of the audience challenged the speaker: “How can you stand here in the year 2006 and praise Landis, who was so instrumental in keeping blacks out of Major […]

Five former Yankees players and staff shared their thoughts on working in the renovated Yankee Stadium. I chose them because of the wide-ranging and different perspectives they had working and playing in the Stadium during their careers in baseball. Some of these players and staff were on teams that won the World Series and others […]

In a blog post of March 23, 2008 (“Do Players Turn ‘Clutch’ When Chasing a Personal Goal?” sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com), I speculated about the anomaly, discovered by Bill James, that there are more 20-game winners than 19-game winners in the major leagues. That is the only case, between 0 and 30, where a higher-win season happens more […]

In the typical telling of the Jackie Robinson life story there are two acts. The leading figures in both acts are White men. Act I is the run-up to White baseball: Pasadena, UCLA, the United States Army, the Kansas City Monarchs, the scouting of Clyde Sukeforth. This Act concludes in Branch Rickey’s Ebbets Field office […]

The New York Times heralded the approaching start of the base-ball season in March 1871 by announcing that “the ball-fields of the metropolis will again become the scene of interesting contests—unless the weather should prove unusually inauspicious.”1 In Cleveland and Chicago, base-ball clubs and their fans also kept an impatient eye on the weather and […]

“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 […]

As we came out of the ferryboat landing and walked to the Port Authority Building, the sky was overcast and a light rain was falling. It was noon, and we had two hours to get to Yankee Stadium. Maybe the doubleheader would be rained out, we thought. The date was June 26, 1955. I was […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]