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This is (roughly) the tenth anniversary of the transfer of a unique and valuable baseball property. On September 6, 2000, Major League Baseball and Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP (a very big and very prominent Philadelphia-based international law firm)1 issued a joint press release announcing “that the law firm has transferred its domain name—mlb.com—to Major […]

As a franchise that began 130 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have made an indelible mark not only on the city where they play but also on the whole sport of baseball. This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of the […]

By 1951 the Browns were decidedly moribund. They had been last in the American League in attendance every year since 1946 and the usual question one asked before the start of the season was whether they might finish in seventh or eighth place. Underfinanced, Charles and William DeWitt wanted out of what they saw as […]

The 1884 New York Gothams, featuring catcher Jack Humphries (front row, far right). Humphries’ improbably journey took him from the hamlet of North Gower, outside Ottawa, to Cornell for Latin and Greek, then to New York to catch Mickey Welch and Tip O’Neill. (COURTESY OF DAVID McDONALD)   On September 6, 1993, Denis Boucher pitched […]

“War is the Province of Chance.” — Count Carl von Clausewitz   THE FOG OF WAR Even a bloodless, but nonetheless bitter “war,” such as the two-year (1914–15) battle between the outlaw Federal League and Organized Baseball proves Clausewitz’s point.1 For years, the convention has been to view the Federal League, the last challenger to […]

The .400 batting average (BA) for an individual in a single season has been the standard of hitting excellence all batting champions have sought, but few have achieved. In fact, the last time it was accomplished was in 1941 when Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox managed the feat with a .406 BA. To […]

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 […]

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 […]

In an article in the 1994 Baseball Research Journal, Charles Blahous explained a system to determine the probability of various players in various seasons putting together a 56-game hitting streak. I will describe some improvements to Mr. Blahous’s method, which I believe result in probabilities that are more accurate and, in almost all cases, lower […]

“Bad trades are a part of baseball; I mean who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas for gosh sakes.” — Annie Savoy, Bull Durham   Outside of the 1919 sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, baseball trades do not often occupy a persistent niche in pop culture. As the Bull Durham quotation indicates, […]

I was inspired to write this article by Jonah Gardner’s Sports-Reference.com post “Remembering Mike Piazza’s 8 Amazing Days with the Florida Marlins,” about Hall-of-Famer Piazza’s short 1998 Florida Marlins stint before getting traded to the New York Mets.1 New York City’s major league teams have a storied history but I was curious: how many Hall-of-Famers […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]