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The 1950 ManDak League Champion Winnipeg Buffaloes, featuring four Negro Leaguers: Hall of Famers Willie Wells (front row, fourth from left) and Leon Day (middle, far left), as well as Lyman Bostock (middle, far right) and Butch Davis (front, second from right). Third from right in the front row is John Kennedy, who never played […]

Lou Gehrig has usually been described as playing in the shadow of his long-time teammate, Babe Ruth. This was true, particularly when it came to hitting home runs. Gehrig overtook the Babe in home runs on a season basis only when the latter was winding down, and he had no chance to overtake Ruth on […]

Color postcard view of Sherman Institute, c. 1903. (Collection of the author)   On February 21, 1903, a warm and sunny Saturday, the baseball team of the nation’s newest Native American boarding school played its first game. The Sherman Institute was set among citrus groves outside Riverside, California, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. The […]

Being a member of Red Sox nation in our modern era is easy: if you can’t attend the games, you can watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read about them in magazines or newspapers, or do all of the above on the Internet, as well as participate in fan sites. But […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

Background Unlike the turmoil of the previous few winters, baseball in December 1970 was relatively calm. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was secure in his job for at least the next five years, and the owners and players had agreed to a new CBA in May. The 1970 baseball Winter Meetings were held in Los Angeles, from […]

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 […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

SABR members have selected all-star fielding teams for each decade since 1900. Wary of the dangers lurking for the baseball researcher, they have not ventured into the poorly charted territory of the 19th century. But the urge to explore is irresistible to those willing to rush in where wise men fear to tread. The selections […]

The National Football League and baseball have enjoyed a close relationship from the beginning. To capitalize on the popularity of baseball, pro football teams have, at times, adopted major league names: Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, New York Yankees, and Pittsburgh Pirates. The Jets picked their name to rhyme with the […]

The 1972-73 A’s were the first team not named the New York Yankees to win back-to-back world championships since, well, the A’s. Some four decades and two franchise relocations earlier, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics had claimed the 1929 and 1930 world championships. His team reached a third straight World Series in 1931, but the A’s […]

1953 Eddie Lopat All-Stars (Rob Fitts Collection)   Eddie Lopat was a fine, soft-tossing southpaw during a 12-year baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and most famously the New York Yankees. Called the Junkman because of his assortment of off-speed pitches, Lopat was also something of a baseball entrepreneur. He not only ran a […]

“It takes courage to be a pioneer”1   The Hero Two Doors Down, written by Sharon Robinson, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, and cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi and Mary Claire Cruz. (Courtesy of Scholastic Publishers)   There is a lovely scene in Ken Burns’ documentary series Jackie Robinson in which Robinson’s daughter, Sharon, remembers […]

Sandy Koufax speaks at the Baseball Writers Association of America dinner in 2014. (Photo: Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, New Jersey.)   Just two years after Sandy Koufax’s shocking retirement from baseball, the headline in The Sporting News on April 20, 1968, read: “New Koufax? It Could Be Cubs’ Holtzman.”1 “Holtzman is regarded by many […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the April 2018 edition of the SABR Deadball Era Committee newsletter. One of the great and enduring achievements of the latter part of the Deadball Era was, in fact, literary: the 1916 publication of “You Know Me Al” by Ring Lardner. The book, which could today be […]

Little Bobby Mathews (all of 5-feet-5½ inches) twirled a gem of a ballgame to initiate play of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. But the Fort Wayne Kekiongas’ fantastic 2-0 victory over Cleveland on May 4, 1871, was not a harbinger of scores to come as it was soon proved to be a […]

Note: All statistics are current through the 2016 season.   Bruce Froemming, who umpired in the major leagues from 1971 through 2007, was on the field for the most no-hitters ever — 11. Froemming was the home-plate umpire four times for a no-no. He called Milt Pappas’s in 1972, Ed Halicki’s in 1975, Nolan Ryan’s […]

With an attack on a future Hall of Famer’s batting average, a lifetime ban handed down to a minor-league executive, and a power struggle between the American League president and the commissioner, the 1922 baseball winter meetings did not lack for story lines. Controversy abounded even before the meetings started, as there was serious concern […]

Once upon a time, A.J. Liebling, consummate Manhattanite and writer for The New Yorker, dubbed Chicago America’s Second City.1 But in relation to New York-centric baseball movies, this AAA-league rating is extremely generous. Across the decades, baseball films with Chicago references have been relatively scarce. For every on-screen image of Wrigley Field, there are scores […]

Detroit the Unconquerable: The 1935 World Champion Tigers Edited by Scott Ferkovich Associate Editors: Bill Nowlin and Len Levin Contributing Editors: Ron Antonucci, Barry Deutsch, Mark Pattison, David Raglin, Jim Wohlenhaus Publication Date: December 15, 2014 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-933599-78-6, $19.95 ISBN (e-book) 978-1-933599-79-3, $9.99 8.5″ x 11″, 226 pages It had taken three and a […]