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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the SABR 25 Convention Journal in 1995.   Although Philadelphia was the most prominent center of early African American baseball, the 1887 Pittsburgh Keystones produced the leadership for the era’s most successful (or least unsuccessful) Black baseball league, the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs. Commonly referred […]

Connie Marrero (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The Florida International League (FIL) existed but a brief eight and one-half years, folding in the middle of its ninth season. During those years countless exciting games were played by some of baseball’s most recognizable cast of characters. The league served as the catalyst for Havana’s […]

Twenty years ago, an ordinary 93-year-old childless widow named Edna Crotty died in Waterford, a small upstate New York village. Somewhat later, the usual estate sale was held to dispose of all her belongings from the house and barn-mostly the normal furni­ture, decorative figurines, appliances, tools, books, maybe a few antique items. A small, very […]

AT 4:09 A.M. on Easter morning, April 19, 1981, just 51 minutes before sunrise, a hardy group of 17 freezing souls huddled in the 28-degree pre-dawn chill of McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I. They had just seen their beloved PawSox close out the thirty-second inning of a 2-2 tie against the Rochester Red Wings. When […]

You can’t hit it if you can’t see it. Success in baseball requires good visual skills, including being able to see clearly. Many people need glasses or contact lenses. The most common reason for using them before age 40 is myopia (nearsightedness), which affects 20 to 30 percent of young adults in the United States.1,2 […]

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it […]

Gus Greenlee, in hat and tie, shown here with some members of his Pittsburgh Crawfords team. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The United States Negro Baseball League is mostly known for its minor role in the Jackie Robinson story. It was famously backed by Branch Rickey in 1945, possibly for use as a cover for the Brooklyn […]

Chicago is a city of icons. A hotbed of popular culture, the Windy City owns a curriculum vitae rarely paralleled concerning characters, real and fictional, responsible for defining the American experience. Al Capone rose to kingpin status in Chicago’s underworld during Prohibition in the 1920s. His was a household name, a celebrity status recognizable nearly […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

Record books have been compiled on every game of skill and athletic endeavor that exists. Baseball, America’s national game, is, of course, the most prominent because of its long history, the long season in which it is played, the endless flow of statistics, and the broad interest it affords. Although statistical based newspaper and magazine […]

Roomie – that’s Monte Irvin. He and I room together when the ball club’s on the road. Many’s the time I’ve hollered for him to get me out of what I’m in. Like the time we were posing for the team picture and a guy came up to me and said “Willie, I’m Jumble from […]

Bill James recently asserted that Dick Cramer’s famous 1977 clutch-hitting study, which purportedly demonstrated that clutch talent is a myth, was fatally flawed. James argued that the study’s finding that year-to-year clutch hitting looks random was not enough to show nonexistence. Here, the author uses statistical methods to try to determine whether James’s argument is […]

In 1928, the Stanford University baseball team came to Australia with its coach, Harry Wolter, to play a series of games against local teams. Australian newspapers proclaimed that it would “mark an epoch in Australian baseball history.” The Stanford tour, with its inclusion of an ex-major league ballplayer in the role of touring coach, not […]

The famous city of Philadelphia totes the title the City of Brotherly Love for many reasons. One intention might refer to a friendship between a pitcher and a catcher that would last for 19 years. The catcher was Jimmie “Ace” Wilson, a backstop born and bred in the great state of Pennsylvania. In the fateful […]

From left, Coach Buck Bailey of Washington State, Umpire Jim Tobin of National Association of Professional Baseball, Umpire Lon Warneke of National League, Coach Bibb Falk of Texas, and Umpire Hank Soar of American League. (Author’s collection)   The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I conference, 1914-96, which included colleges from Texas, Oklahoma, […]

Recent study has revealed the claim of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York to pioneer status, as well as that of Alexander Cartwright to be the game’s inventor, to be suspect if not altogether baseless. I have taken up the latter claim at length in Baseball in the Garden of Eden and will […]

Click here to read Part I of this article on Roberto Clemente’s Puerto Rico winter league career. Roberto Clemente with San Juan in 1959. (Courtesy of Thomas Van Hyning.)   In August 1959, Roberto Clemente was traded from Caguas of the Puerto Rico Winter League to San Juan, with Canenita Allen and José “Palillo” Santiago […]

In addition to an All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team, the Magnolia Chapter selected an All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star team. While acknowledging the talent of any number of players who served the Braves franchise during its time in Milwaukee and Boston, we wanted to restrict this team to players who actually played in Atlanta. We suggested that […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1).   Several members of the Texas pitching staff were sitting in the clubhouse one afternoon discussing the importance of fielding. They were quick to agree with Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda’s assertion that a good­fielding pitcher can help himself […]

Jackie Robinson slides to home plate in an attempt to avoid the tag during a game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field on May 13, 1956. Catcher is Ray Katt. Batter is Clem Labine. It was one of the times he didn’t make it. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME […]

This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s article, “Bobby Layne, 28-0: Hall of Fame Caliber Pitcher for the Texas Longhorns,” in SABR’s The National Pastime: Baseball in Texas and Beyond (2025).   Click on a link below to scroll down: APPENDIX A: Brief Summaries of Each Game Pitched by Bobby Layne for the Texas […]

Introduction The 2013 Baseball Winter Meetings were held December 9-12 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort, in Orlando, Florida. The meetings came only 40 days after the Boston Red Sox’ Koji Uehara pitched a perfect ninth inning in Game Six of the World Series, striking out Matt Carpenter of the St. Louis […]

U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax at the Jewish American Heritage Month reception at the White House. Next to Koufax are his wife Jane Clarke Koufax and entertainer Theodore Bikel. May 27, 2010. (Photograph by White House photographer Alex Wong.)   On May 27, 2010, President Barack […]

This paper examines competitive balance in the free agent era by comparing the old reserve clause system versus the modern collectively bargained system. Baseball’s reserve system began modestly on September 29, 1879, when the National League owners introduced a new rule that would eventually be incorporated into every player contract and would allow each franchise […]