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Lou Gehrig was deemed ineligible for all sports for the 1921–22 school year at Columbia University after playing in 12 games for the Hartford Senators, a pro team. (ROBERT MULDOON)   Columbia University record books state that Lou Gehrig hit seven home runs during his single 19-game college season in 1923.1 But the record books […]

As the Civil War continued to impact America, the population pressed forward with daily and seasonal routines including recreations like baseball. The top clubs in the Northeast continued to slowly increase the number of games they played each season, which had dwindled since the onset of the conflict. The game was steadily overtaking cricket as […]

To see anybody in Shelby, NC, on a Saturday afternoon in the 1940s was easy enough: head toward one of the cotton mills that sponsored a baseball club. Folks packed the stands to talk about wars and depressions, family matters, and local politics. But it was baseball that commanded center stage. Sometimes the game even […]

Lee Lowenfish. Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. 683 pp. Notes, bibliography, index, photographs. Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey’s Little Blue Book. Edited by John J. Monteleone. Preface by Stan Musial. New York: Macmillan, 1995. 142 pp. Index. Murray Polner. Branch Rickey: A Biography. Revised Edition. Foreword by Branch B. Rickey. […]

“Spring training is almost as old as baseball itself. The best evidence points to spring training first taking place in 1870, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Chicago White Stockings held organized baseball camps in New Orleans. Other baseball historians argue that the Washington Capitals of the National League pioneered spring training in 1888, […]

This excerpt is from the SABR book, Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark. We are honored to include this reminiscence by longtime Stadium tour director Tony Morante of his time working in baseball.   As a New York Yankees employee from 1958 to 2018, I had the good fortune to witness or par take […]

“Don’t tell me about Ruth; I’ve seen what he did to people…. I’ve seen them: kids, men, women, worshipers all, hoping to get his famous name on a torn, dirty piece of paper, or hoping to get a grunt of recognition when they said, ‘H’ya, Babe.’ He never let them down; not once! He was […]

Although the last decade of the Steroid Era was associated with an increase in the number of players sustaining productive MLB careers beyond age 32 — including Barry Bonds, who set a single-season record with 73 home runs in 2001 at age 36 — it is not clear that PEDs were actually responsible for this […]

Players wearing the uniform of the San Francisco Giants have performed many amazing feats in the four decades since the franchise moved west from New York. but no player has produced a more intriguing record than Billy Pierce did during the 1962 season. As the Giants engaged a season-long pennant race that culminated in a […]

San Francisco Giants Hall of Famer Willie Mays influenced the lives of two other Giants, Bobby and Barry Bonds, both of whom who had significant careers of their own. He was Bobby’s teammate with the Giants, while taking on the role of godfather for Barry as a youngster. When Barry later became a Giant, Mays continued […]

The Annus Mirabilis that was 1884 left a massive fallout for the campaign of 1885. For the first time, there had been three major leagues operating simultaneously, and the messy multi-circuit milieu — especially the tenuous stability of the freshman Union Association, and the renewed tensions between the National League and the American Association — […]

The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, featured Yankee Stadium transformed into a football field. (20th Century Fox)   “Baseball stadiums are never only about baseball. Their utility is both more dynamic and more poetic.”1 Some landmarks are so burned into our collective mind’s eye that their image tells the story of their […]

Milwaukee County Stadium was in its third season as home of the National League’s Braves when it hosted the inaugural Global World Series in 1955. (Courtesy of the Milwaukee Brewers)   Half a century before there was a World Baseball Classic, there was the Global World Series. The scars of World War II had not […]

Happy Felton, an all-around entertainer of a long-gone era, aggressively and successfully marketed his skills as a dance-band leader, musician, master of ceremonies, actor, comedian, and radio-stage-vaudeville performer for two decades beginning in the late 1920s. Then he won fame in television’s infancy as the creator and host of Happy Felton’s Knothole (or, Knot-Hole) Gang—a […]

Early days with the Montreal Royals. March 6, 1946. (Courtesy of Rachel Robinson and the Estate of Jackie Robinson)   On Tuesday, October 23, 1945, 15 of Montreal’s sportswriters and broadcasters were invited to a press conference at the home of the Montreal Royals, Delorimier Stadium, and were promised “a major announcement.” The Triple-A International […]

“The unionization of professional athletes has been the most important labor relations development in professional sports since their inception.”1 Journalist Studs Terkel called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” long-time president of the United Mine Workers and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.2 Actually, he may have sold Miller […]

A fictional tale about a personal rivalry between a Minneapolis player and a St. Paul player in the late 19th century.

The image of American higher education reflected by college athletics is any­thing but flattering. As of March 1982, 17 schools were on the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s pro­bation list—the highest number for a single period—and the Association’s enforcement department declared that the list would lengthen before it shortened. An additional 35 schools were under investigation […]

The baseball season of 1868 ended with the National Association crown changing hands twice in the final month. The 1867 champs, the Unions of Morrisania, maintained their status for most of the season, thanks to playing weaker Eastern clubs during the early months and then taking an extensive Western tour in July and August. When […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, 1921–22. Back row, left to right: Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James McReynolds, and John H. Clarke. Front row, left to right: William R. Day and Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Willis Van Devanter. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)   […]

  In mid-March 1921—amid delay in the criminal proceedings pending against those accused of corrupting the 1919 World Series—baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis placed the eight indicted Chicago White Sox players on the game’s ineligible list. “Baseball is not powerless to defend itself,” an impatient Landis declared. “All these players must vindicate themselves before they […]