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In addition to setting the major league single season record with his seventy home runs in 1998, Mark McGwire set a National League record with 162 bases on balls. This tied him with Ted Williams, who did it twice (1947, 1949), for second on the major league single season list behind Babe Ruth’s 170 in […]

Introduction For many in the baseball world, the 2004 season marked the end of an era. Perhaps it was the Boston Red Sox finally breaking the “Curse of the Bambino” to end their streak of futility, or the Expos playing their final games in Montreal, or Barry Bonds’ career finally beginning to wind down as […]

The 2014 major-league season ended with the San Francisco Giants winning their third World Series in five seasons, beating the Kansas City Royals in a dramatic seven-game series on the shoulders of a staggeringly dominant performance by their 25-year-old southpaw, Madison Bumgarner. The Giants had established themselves as the decade’s model franchise, the Royals emerged […]

It’s a basic rule that’s familiar to all baseball fans: A batter, when struck by a pitched ball, shall be awarded first base. While some people may dismiss the hit-by-pitch as a relatively minor aspect of the game, a hit batsman can have significant consequences. As an extreme example, the Tommy Byrne pitch that struck […]

The 2003 Winter Meetings were held from December 12 to 15 at the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans. This was the fifth time the Winter Meetings were held in The Big Easy, with the most recent having been in 1997. Economic conditions in the United States were improving as lower interest rates, the child-tax credit, […]

Harry Passon, the Jewish owner of a sporting goods store, played a strategic role in promoting both black and white semi-pro baseball in Philadelphia. (Courtesy of the Passon Family)   Semi-professional baseball, black and white, flourished in Philadelphia in the first half of the twentieth century. Harry Passon (1897–1954), a Jewish owner of Philadelphia’s leading […]

The Chicago Cubs’ latest pennant near-miss continues to deny Sammy Sosa, a certain Hall of Famer, an appearance in the World Series. Sammy may yet share the dubious distinction of fellow Cub Ernie Banks, the best-known example of a Hall of Fame player who never played in the World Series. Actually, there have been 31 […]

George Shuba greets Jackie Robinson at home plate on April 18, 1946. (Courtesy of Greg Gulas, Carrie Anderson, Mike Shuba)   INTRODUCTION In 1946 as a member of the Montreal Royals, Jackie Robinson played his first game in Organized Baseball at Jersey City’s Roosevelt Stadium. It was a memorable occasion as Jersey City gave him […]

In a companion article, “The Authorized Correction of Errors in Runs Scored in the Official Records (1920–44) for Detroit Tigers Players“, I described my findings on the accuracy of Major League Baseball’s official runs-scored statistics for each Detroit Tigers player from 1920 through 1944. I discovered and corrected 57 runs-scored errors affecting 37 players, including […]

The 1955 crop of baseball “bonus babies” included Massachusetts native Tom Gastall, born on June 13, 1932, in Fall River, to Thomas and Concetta Gastall. (A “bonus baby” rule was first implemented by the major leagues in 1947, intended to restrict the inflated offers made by wealthy club owners seeking to monopolize the best young […]

Babe Ruth meets Yale baseball player George H.W. Bush in 1948. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   George Herbert Walker Bush began the first year of his term as the 41st President of the United States of America on January 20, 1989. Then, just seventy-three days later (on April 3, 1989), he carried out […]

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, […]

What makes these Detroit Tigers uniform numbers — 2, 5, 6, 16, and 23 — special? Nearly every Tigers fan knows the answer to this question — each of those uniform numbers has been retired, in honor of Charlie Gehringer (2), Hank Greenberg (5), Al Kaline (6), Hal Newhouser (16), and Willie Horton (23). Each of these […]

Red Lucas had three strong points as a National League player in the 1920s and 1930s. He had excellent control as a pitcher, the best for any hurler in his era; he completed most of the games he started, having the best record in the NL since 1920; and he was a very good hitter, […]

The American national pastime of bat-and-ball games, played under various names since the colonial era, was formalized to a previously unprecedented degree by the end of the Civil War (1861–65) under the name of “base ball,” as the version played in the Greater New York City (GNYC) area. the Register of Interclub Matches (RIM1) lists […]

Using machine learning, AlphaGo taught itself the game of Go, and in 2016 beat 18-time world champion Lee Sedol. Pictured here is Go professional Michael Redmond providing a play-by-play commentary on the AlphaGo/Sedol match. (DEEPMIND)   Baseball is a sport steeped in tradition, but there are relatively new and rapidly developing technologies that are already […]

This interview by Ron Anderson was originally published in SABR’s “Can He Play? A Look at Baseball Scouts and Their Profession” (2011), edited by Jim Sandoval and Bill Nowlin. Interviews were conducted on January 18, 20, and 29, 2007. RA: You’re a former scout of the Boston Red Sox. GD: Yes. I started with them […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). “In the vast range of baseball novels boys’ books written by men like John Tunis to adult novels written by men like Bernard Malamud, women for the most part have been either complaisant wives or stupid bimbos — or perhaps sexual […]

Roberto Clemente with the Montreal Royals in 1954. (Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   This article focuses on Roberto Clemente’s season in the Brooklyn Dodgers organization – his first in a major-league organization. The subject of the Dodgers “hiding” Clemente from other major-league clubs has been researched and debated by baseball scholars and writers.1 This […]

As part of the National League expansion in 1962, a franchise was awarded to New York City. From 1962 to the current day the Metropolitans’ ownership has been fairly stable. Joan Payson and her family maintained control of the club until they sold the team in 1980 to the publishing firm Doubleday and Co. Nelson […]

Mets Music When the New York Mets debuted in 1962, so did a song. More than a sonic icon, “Meet the Mets” is a member of the pantheon of Mets hallmarks occupied by Shea Stadium, Mr. Met, and the mantra “Ya Gotta Believe!” As any devotee of the blue and orange will tell you, “Meet […]

While the New York Yankees had a wife swap between pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich in Florida in March of 1973, the Oakland A’s went about the business of getting ready to defend a world championship in Arizona. The only snag was that the A’s had no experience as world champions. The organization had […]

The team that finally won the World Series for Boston, for the first time in 86 years, was not a homegrown team, a product of a robust Red Sox farm system. Of the 25 players on the postseason roster, only two had come up in the system – Trot Nixon and Kevin Youkilis. Five were […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   The literature on the New York Yankees is presumably indicative of baseball literature generally, except’ of course, that Yankee literature, like Yankee tradition, Yankee Stadium, Yankee uniforms and Yankee hot dogs, has a pinch or two of special interest, the […]