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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The mythical baseball championship of the Northwest was the focal point of sporting interests in the Yukon summer of 1904. Over 400 Alaskan supporters joined the Skagway nine in traveling to Whitehorse on the Queen’s Birthday. The Americans were favored by the gamblers. No doubt one factor was Skagway’s reputation as a lawless point of […]
In my 40 years working at the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore, my primary focus has been preserving and celebrating the life and legacy of George Herman “Babe” Ruth. But during my tenure, the museum also expanded its mission to chronicle the rich heritage of area sports, including serving as the official archives of […]
On the southwest side of Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, lies a plain granite marker with a slightly misspelled inscription, the gravesite pathetically guarded by a twisted sweet-bay magnolia tree. Buried there in lot #549 is Louis Rogers “Pete” Browning, whose occupation at the time of his death on September 10, 1905, at age […]
Not all fans attend the ballpark on a regular basis, but that doesn’t diminish their fandom. Take Kathryn Gemme, interviewed by this author at age 109. The paragraphs that follow were written in midsummer 2003 and are, in places, obviously dated — given the fact of the 2004 and 2007 World Championships. Red Sox fans […]
What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]
Just what is the Baseball Reliquary, anyway? There are as many answers to that question as there are multitudes contained by Walt Whitman, the Brooklyn-based author of Leaves of Grass and the first American artist to embrace the game and assimilate it into his poetic vocabulary.
Curt Flood, Gene Conley, and Danny Ainge had nothing on Baltimore native Peck Lerian, who challenged the reserve clause and earned fame on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond. Showing great promise as the leading member of the Philadelphia Phillies’ young receiving corps at the close of the 1920s, he also stood out […]
In a sport now dominated by teams from sunnier climates, the University of Minnesota baseball program has generated its share of warm memories in the Upper Midwest. The Golden Gophers have captured three College World Series (CWS) championships, finished third once and placed sixth once in 30 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament appearances, the […]
South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin […]
Just across Florida Avenue, in the shadow of Griffith Stadium, home to both the Senators and the Grays in 1947, sat the Sportsman Inn. Joe Hurd, the new proprietor, had recently purchased the establishment from longtime DC radio DJ and baseball announcer Hal Jackson, who was in the process of moving to New York. On […]
Editor’s note: Justice Samuel Alito delivered this speech as the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2008 Annual Lecture. It was published originally in the “Journal of Supreme Court History 34,” no. 2 (July 2009): 183–95, and republished in SABR’s law-themed Fall 2009 issue of the Baseball Research Journal. The Justice expresses his gratitude to James Hunter, […]
All baseball fans are familiar, if not from the movie, then from the grainy newsreel footage, with Lou Gehrig’s legendary speech at Yankee Stadium home plate on July 4, 1939. Yet that was not the first nor the last time a speech would have a dramatic impact at The House that Ruth Built. Baseball, football, […]
Happy Birthday, Mr. K! Royals pitcher Moe Drabowsky presents a birthday cake to Ewing Kauffman as his wife Muriel and ‘Royal Lancer’ Lester Milgram look onwards, September 1969. (Courtesy of the Kansas City Royals) Charles O. Finley never seemed to connect with the people of Kansas City after acquiring ownership of the Athletics in […]
Roland Hemond has worked in Organized Baseball since 1951, when he was hired by the Hartford Chiefs, the Boston Braves’ farm club (Class A-Eastern League) for a $28.00-a-week entry-level job. Along the way, Hemond has worked as an executive in the front offices of the Boston/Milwaukee Braves, Los Angeles/California Angels, Chicago White Sox (twice), in […]
If a modern fan could be transported back to a baseball game in 1908, to the strains of the new tune “Take Me out to the Ball Game,” he or she would feel right at home. The rules, the two major leagues, and many of the teams were similar then to what they are today. […]
Friday, August 10, 1883, promised excitement for baseball fans in Toledo. The Toledo Blue Stockings of the Northwest League played host to the three-time world champion Chicago White Stockings, and thou sands jammed League Park at Monroe and 13th Streets to see the greatest team in baseball and its star player-manager, Cap Anson. What the […]
Four books on the Bronx Bombers.
Introduction The 1884 professional baseball season demonstrated the nationwide baseball boom then underway.1 It was an exciting time to be a lover of baseball. The 1883 season concluded with most professional clubs in acceptable financial condition, with plans for higher salaries and improved baseball grounds for 1884. Like 1882, the 1884 season offered new associations, […]