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Today a specter hangs over the Giants’ miraculous 1951 season. Their incredible end-of-season heroics are now clouded. Though rumored at the time, it was not revealed as fact until a half-century later: The Giants had been stealing the opposing team’s catcher’s signs. Signs are arguably as old as baseball itself. In any ballgame there is […]

Chicago’s first professional baseball club was founded following the 1869 season. Prior to that season, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) had changed its rules from mandating exclusively amateur play to allowing clubs to declare themselves professional. A dozen or so organizations took advantage of this. The Cincinnati Base Ball Club (widely called […]

Introduction In September 2005 the confirmation hearings of John Roberts as the nominee for chief justice of the United States included an unexpected but telling nod to the national pastime when Roberts observed, “Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; […]

One of baseball’s most exciting plays comes when a batter unexpectedly drops a bunt down the third base line. The third baseman charges in frantically and, with no margin for error, usually tries to barehand the ball. The batter is tearing down the first base line as fast as his legs will carry him, and […]

While the San Diego Padres experienced only two World Series in the half-century after their 1969 founding, they did have a long and storied history of relief pitching: three Hall of Fame careers; a Rookie of the Year and a Cy Young Award winner; and the 2004 denouement of a tragic figure. The first Padre […]

Lou Gehrig, born 101 seasons ago, would never have made the claim, but let’s credit him with the best 10-season batting record in major league history if you don’t mind. It happened from 1927 through 1936 when baseball offense had a heyday. In a compilation of the finest 10-season performers from 1901 through 2003, Gehrig places in seven of […]

On February 20, 1859, William Cauldwell, National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) convention delegate and secretary of the Union Base Ball Club of Morrisania, NABBP Rules Committee member, and editor/publisher of the New York Sunday Mercury, printed a notice of the Association’s impending second annual convention, scheduled to open on March 9. The notice […]

In 1922, the New York Yankees played the New York Giants in the World Series; the majors produced three .400 hitters; Rogers Hornsby won the Triple Crown; and Organized Baseball reached the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Baseball had long been a popular pastime on the Shore. Almost every town supported a team, and competition among […]

When San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem during a 2016 preseason game to protest police violence against black people in America, all hell broke loose. Voices of praise and condemnation rained down. Passion often trumped reason. The “conversation” remains heated, while complicated criminal justice problems remain unsolved. Is […]

Lobby card for “Kill the Umpire” (1950) starring William Bendix. (Author’s collection)   Most baseball fans would agree that the best umpire is the invisible umpire. Sure, the umps on the field ensure that the rules of the game are followed. They call balls and strikes. They determine if the fielder who dives for the […]

The history of baseball in America has always been closely tied to the history of race in America. The progression of baseball from an exclusionary sport to a beacon for integration and eventually to a global game has paralleled our country’s movement from slavery to the civil rights movement to modern day multiculturalism. While the […]

Ford Frick, president of the National League in 1947, is not the first person who comes to mind concerning Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball, though he deserves more consideration than he has been given. While no other individual rivals the role played by Branch Rickey in breaking the game’s color barrier, other than […]

Ask any resident of Eau Claire if any Hall of Fame baseball players got their start in their Western Wisconsin city, and you will likely hear a story about Henry Aaron and his storybook 1952 season. Or you can view the bronze statue featuring the likeness of the young slugger, wearing his not so famous […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   When Miller Huggins found he couldn’t own the Cardinals—or at least a good hunk of them—he opted for a job for which he had been recommended by Ban Johnson, the founder of the American League, and endorsed by J. […]

Introduction and Context The 2001 Winter Meetings were held in Boston at the Marriott Copley Place Hotel from Sunday, December 9, to Friday. December 14. This was the second time the city had played host to the meetings, the first time being just five years earlier, in 1996. Commissioner Bud Selig’s announcement, made soon after […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Twelve managers have won more games than Bill McKechnie. None has won more respect. Deacon Bill McKechnie was the first to lead three different teams to the World Series and the […]

Pat Gillick once observed that it should take 10 years for an expansion team to emerge into a contender.1 The Hall of Fame executive would know; he oversaw the burgeoning of two of the 14 expansion teams. On one hand, his Astros were still a few years away from contending when he left Houston for […]

This appendix is related to the article, “Women’s Baseball in Nineteenth-Century New York and the Man Who Set Back Women’s Professional Baseball for Decades,” by Debra Shattuck. This appendix is related to the article, “Women’s Baseball in Nineteenth-Century New York and the Man Who Set Back Women’s Professional Baseball for Decades,” by Debra Shattuck.   […]

The St. Louis Cardinals were the most successful major-league team during America’s involvement in World War II. Manager Billy Southworth led the Redbirds to three consecutive pennants and two World Series championships from 1942 through 1944, and to a second-place finish in 1945. Although they benefited from a remarkable level of continuity, especially among their […]

The 1911 winter meetings played out in the press as well as in the meeting rooms. Two days before the start of the 1911 World Series, which matched the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Athletics, the newspapers in both cities noticed that large blocks of World Series tickets had fallen into the hands of […]

In 1959, ace Pittsburgh Pirates fireman Roy Face set a major-league record by winning 18 games in relief against one loss. His .947 winning average also established the record for pitchers with at least 15 decisions. Face’s incredible numbers far exceeded those of the Pirates, who went 78–76 and finished fourth, nine games behind the […]

A subject that animates baseball fans is ranking its greatest players, particularly regarding membership in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (HOF). In the past decade or two, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has moved to the forefront of this discussion among analytically minded fans. Unlike many “traditional” stats (wins, losses, saves, runs, RBI), […]

All managers think about strategy, but one can argue that no manager this side of John McGraw changed our prevailing understanding of baseball strategy as much as Earl Weaver. In his seminal work, Weaver on Strategy, and in various quotations uttered while holding court, Weaver presented insights that may have long been implicitly understood by […]

“No sporting event so decisively enthralls the national consciousness as baseball’s annual October pageant.… There is something heroic about the pitched combat of two teams that are at once survivors and winners, meeting to decide the world championship.” – Donald Honig1 Even though the nature of postseason baseball has changed dramatically over the past 50 […]