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In 2009, on SABR-L (SABR’s online listserv), Trent McCotter cited two instances of a player taking a swing while being walked intentionally and wondered if anyone knew about other instances of a batter hitting a deliberate ball. I responded with two such incidents I had happened on during my research. Several other SABR members, including […]

Baseball leagues flourished in American shipyards during World War I as legions of workers built warships and troop transports to safeguard the Atlantic sea lanes and carry men and materiel to Europe. Among the best of these circuits was the Delaware River Shipbuilding League of 1918. Centered in Philadelphia, it represented eight shipyards operating along […]

As Major League Baseball moved toward a possible players’ strike in 1981, the Chicago baseball scene had plenty of drama: the White Sox signed future Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, the Wrigley family sold the Cubs, and beloved broadcaster Harry Caray moved from the South Side to the Friendly Confines. A possible 1980 players’ […]

Who’s the batter? Nowadays, fans attending a Detroit Tigers game at Comerica Park can just look at the player—his name and assigned number are on the back of his uniform, and his name is displayed prominently on a huge scoreboard. However, a hundred years or so ago, Tigers fans attending a baseball game at Navin […]

In September 2020, I had the good fortune of speaking with Sharon Robinson, Jackie’s daughter, over the course of two interviews in which we discussed representations of her father. The conversation is frank, detailed, and gives a keen insight into just how involved the Robinson family has been in telling their patriarch’s tale. Sharon also […]

The sacrifice fly was a part of major league baseball, off and on, for 36 of the 65 seasons before 1954, when it became, for the first time, a separate item in the official statistics. It has had a very checkered history and the reader may have trouble understanding or even following the various changes. […]

Many of us who read Richard D. Cramer’s article “Average Batting Skill Through Major League History” in BRJ 1980 (pp. 167-72) regard it as one of the most important, impressive, and fascinating articles which SABR has ever published. Its implications — which are not spelled out by Mr. Cramer — are so amazing that they […]

Baseball fans love numbers — 755, 511, 2,632, for instance, or .300 batting averages, winning 20 games, stealing 100 bases, hitting 100 mph on the radar gun — all are part of the lore of the game. Sometimes those numbers include specific years, generally the year we started watching or the year our favorite team […]

Appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Babe Ruth’s RBI record.

Much more than a booster of baseball locally, V. Jamison Jr., prominent Hagerstown industrialist and civic leader, was a moving spirit of professional baseball for most of the first half of the twentieth century. His influence reached not only his hometown and the state of Maryland, but the country. Jamison was born in Luray, Page […]

What with Bill Veeck Jr.’s gregarious nature, numerous achievements, and well-known career as “a champion of the little guy” (to quote from his Hall of Fame plaque), it is not surprising that writers have penned quite a few profiles of the flamboyant baseball executive. On the other hand, regrettably little ink has been spilled in […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

The U.S. Supreme Court, 1921–22. Back row, left to right: Louis D. Brandeis, Mahlon Pitney, James McReynolds, and John H. Clarke. Front row, left to right: William R. Day and Joseph McKenna, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Willis Van Devanter. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)   […]

As tensions between owners, general managers, and players mounted, the winter meetings of 1993 featured battles over the commissioner’s chair, the free-agent process, revenue sharing, and the salary cap. These points of contention collided over four months of meetings that began in early November, when the general managers met in Naples, Florida. The National Association […]

Introduction and Context The 2006 baseball Winter Meetings were held in Orlando, Florida, at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort. The size of the resort — an 87-acre facility featuring two hotels with over 80 meeting rooms and 300,000 square feet of meeting space — matched the big names on the market heading […]

Editor’s note: A version of this article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s February 2015 newsletter. This article expands upon a well-received presentation at SABR 44 in 2014 in Houston. Supporting documentation and other aspects of the research upon which this article is founded has been posted on the SABR website […]

In the 1970s, the very time when players and umpires gained wealth and power, baseball’s field managers’ status declined as they became wretched scapegoats to be sacrificed to the bloodlust of victory-starved fans. True, sacking the manager was a time-honored ploy; whenever rumblings of fan discontent erupted, a manager was bumped off as virgins in […]

President Warren G. Harding shaking hands with  New York Yankee Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium. April 25, 1923.  (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   In the wake of the 1919-20 Black Sox scandal, baseball got lucky. Luck’s name was George Herman Ruth, who entered our vernacular in a long-ball way and […]

As baseball’s powers-that-be prepared for the 1920 season, the national pastime was in complete turmoil behind the scenes. The American League was in the midst of a civil war over a series of controversial decisions made by its founder and president, Ban Johnson. There were steady rumors that the recent World Series between the Chicago […]

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once remarked that there are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damned lies, and statistics. While this may be debated on political and philosophical levels, there are circumstances where statistics (and graphs and charts) can shed some truth and light. Perhaps this is one of those times. In this paper we […]

In order for a baseball team to achieve its ultimate objective (winning the World Series), it must first, during the regular season, win the most games in its division (or, since 1994, have the best winning percentage among the second-place teams) and thereby proceed to postseason play. Moreover, the absolutely essential component for winning the […]

By the fall of 1978 modern free agency was entering its third year, and teams were beginning to come to terms with both its existence and its potential, though ownership still hoped to roll it back dramatically. Front offices were figuring out the mechanics of pursuing free agents, how to fit them into their payroll […]