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The 1936 Black Panthers. Charlie Culver is the first on the left, sitting. (Jerry Cohen, Ebbets Field Flannels)   The reception that Jackie Robinson received in Montréal is well known. A few years later, the Provincial League became a prime destination for Negro League veterans. Many factors can explain how that came to be, but […]

On Saturday, the tenth of September in 1881 at Albany, New York, the Troy and Worcester teams of the National League played a championship game. In the early days of League baseball, especially late in the season, it was considered good promotion to play a game on neutral ground for the publicity value and in hopes […]

The Twenties were still “Roaring,” Lindbergh was in Paris, Coolidge in Washington and Prohibition was the law of the land as Americans celebrated Decoration Day in 1927. It was the “Golden Age of Sport” and newspapers heralded the exploits of Grange, Dempsey, Tilden and Jones. In baseball the New York Yankees were hammering their way […]

Baltimoreans strolling on Eutaw Street outside Oriole Park before a home game may stop for a bite to eat and kibbitz with owners of the establishments. It’s not an unusual sight. But one owner happens to be a civic icon—John Wesley Powell. Boog. The slugger who bashed 339 home runs in the majors does more […]

Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Til Huston realized early in their partnership that New York wouldn’t tolerate anything less than a championship team. Ruppert had a championship in mind when he hired Miller Huggins to manage the club in 1918. According to Ruppert: “Huggins had vision. Getting him was the first and most important step […]

For two days in the summer of 1971, Tom Seaver dueled with another dominant hurler, splitting the games by scores of 1–0 and 2–1. Red Foley, writing for the Daily News, rhapsodized about this matchup, comparing it favorably to legendary contests between Dizzy Dean and Carl Hubbell, Mort Cooper and Whit Wyatt, and Christy Mathewson […]

That folks in the Rochester, N.Y. area would play eager hosts to aspiring athletes was established once and for all time as early as Nov. 13, 1829. Sam Patch, the vaunted falls-jumper, fresh from a triumphant plunge off Goat Island into the Niagara River, appeared before 8,000 adoring fans on the banks of the Genesee […]

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 […]

  Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.   Stories about Roberto Clemente are numerous. He is much more than a man who died at age 38 in a plane crash carrying humanitarian aid to Nicaragua. In the half-century since his untimely death, Clemente has transcended to cultural icon and been honored with numerous public remembrances. Public […]

Vida Blue lost two consecutive 1-0 games in 1971 and fans wondered why those Oakland batters couldn’t get this great pitcher some runs. Walter Johnson had this same problem a half century ago, but it wasn’t for just two games, or two seasons, but for 20 years. Johnson, in the course of his career, participated […]

The 1876 London Tecumsehs. Early curve bailer Fred Goldsmith is seated front row, second from left. (Canadian Illustrated News, July 15, 1876)   1876: A seminal year in baseball. Club owners and organizers recognized the necessity of providing increased stability and an opportunity to elevate the game of baseball on a national level by establishing […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2018 newsletter. The accessibility of the Deadball Era derives, in part, from the many existing images of players from the period. It is worthwhile to recall that some of the most vivid and enduring player portrayals are on contemporary baseball cards. […]

He was forever young on his baseball card—6-foot-2, with a square jaw, and a passing resemblance to Mickey Mantle. He was 24, and I was in the third grade. It was the summer of 1963. I never minded that he set a record for strikeouts in a single season that year, which is how many […]

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 […]

  The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments of 1972 gives us an opportunity to reflect on its impact on women’s sports as a whole and on specific sports such as baseball. Women’s participation has been overlooked and marginalized in most publications and general discussions about the sport. […]

The San Diego Padres have retired the uniform numbers of five of their players. Three are Hall of Famers: Tony Gwynn (number 19), Dave Winfield (31), and Trevor Hoffman (51). The fourth was the franchise’s first star player and a fan favorite, Cy Young Award winner Randy Jones (35). The fifth? He played only four […]

On August 9, 2006, the first-place New York Mets were hosting the San Diego Padres at Shea Stadium. The Mets were headed toward their first division title since 1988 and first playoff berth since 2000. It was an ordinary late summer series against an out-of-division team as the Mets held a big 13.5 game lead […]

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 […]

A list of hit sequences for players who completed a cycle during the 1920-2017 period.This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s “‘When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It’: Who Took the Cycle or Quasi-Cycle?”   Click here to scroll down for Table A-2: Sequences for Players Who Completed a Quasi-Cycle […]

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 […]