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The Kansas City Royals had so much fun on Turn Ahead the Clock Night, they decided to bring the promotion back for its 20th anniversary in 2018. Pictured here are (L) Whit Merrifield in 2018 and (R) Johnny Damon in 1998. (KANSAS CITY ROYALS) Imagine you are sitting in a ballpark in the year […]
When Calvin Griffith sold the Minnesota Twins in 1984, he bowed out of baseball as the last of the family owners whose franchise represented their principal business and source of wealth. Griffith spent practically his entire life in baseball, spending his young adulthood working in one capacity or another for the Washington Nationals organization that […]
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 […]
Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley brought his team out west in 1958. (SABR-Rucker Archive) To Walter O’Malley, Dodger Stadium was never just a building, or a place to sell tickets. It was “a monument to the O’Malleys.”1 As such, he took an almost obsessive interest in its design and construction, from innovations in precast concrete to […]
The cover of the second issue of the Fawcett Publication of Jackie Robinson. A new publication appeared on magazine racks as the first game of the 1949 World Series neared. It had a bright yellow cover with garish red letters at a jaunty angle spelling out Jackie Robinson’s name with a subdued subheading declaring him […]
Mislabeling all winter baseball played in California as “California Winter League” ignores the uneven color lines that existed in that time and place.
Since the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961, the team has boasted many stars, including several of the greatest players in the game. Minnesotans have embraced these players differently, highlighting the changing nature of our complicated relationship with our sports heroes. The team that Calvin Griffith moved to Minnesota featured a player who was […]
Publicity photo from the Chicago Children’s Theatre production of Jackie and Me, featuring l. to r.: Kamal Angelo Bolden (Jackie), Patrick DeNicola (Ant), Sean Cooper (Flip), Phil Biedron, Vanessa Greenway (Mom), Rania Manganaro, Tracey N. Bonner (Rachel) and Tyler Ross (Joey). (Courtesy of Chicago Children’s Theatre, Michael Brosilow photographer) Not only has Jackie Robinson […]
This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. In the 2011 postseason, David Freese made a name for himself with his spectacular and timely hitting and won both the National League Championship Series and World Series MVP awards. It […]
IN THE six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]
In the six seasons following the transfer of the St. Louis Browns’ franchise to Baltimore, the pattern of losing that had been established in the Midwest was not broken. From 1954 through 1959, the Orioles attained a winning percentage as high as .500 only once (in 1957) and never finished in the first division of […]
The 1922 All-American team (Rob Fitts Collection) THE PLOT The Polo Grounds. New York’s National League champs were on the verge of beating the mighty Yankees for the second year in a row. The 1922 World Series was once again a series in one park, as each game for the past two years had […]
In 1969, his first season as manager of the Washington Senators, Ted Williams worked wonders. He gave instant celebrity status to a team formerly mocked and ignored, even in its own city. With essentially the same roster as the 1968 team that finished 65-96, the worst record in Major League Baseball, Williams’ Senators won 86 […]
Editor’s note: This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. The war against the forces of fascism in Nazi Germany and Japan mirrored another war fought in the trenches of American life – that between the entrenched forces of […]
Wow! Look at all those bright colors. The baseball field at the Astrodome suddenly resembled a Tequila Sunrise. Yellow, red, and orange floated over jade green Astroturf as the players took their positions. Perplexed fanatics couldn’t take their eyes off the gaudy new 1975 uniforms on the backs of their Houston Astros. Thankfully, the back […]
Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]
“Jarvis fires away…That’s a fly ball, deep to left, back, back…HEY HEY! He did it! Ernie Banks got number 500! The ball tossed to the bullpen…everybody on your feet…this…is IT! WHEEEEEEEE!” — Jack Brickhouse, WGN-TV, May 12, 1970 1 When the curtain rang down on the 1969 season, Ernie Banks was just three home […]
Jackie Robinson and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley in 1956. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY) Jack Roosevelt Robinson was not a man to be owned. Yet, professional baseball’s rules ensured that he would have contractual relations with the owners of the team he played for. And his position as team leader and cultural […]
The only player to appear in every inning of all nineteen World Series games played by the Washington Senators was born in Salem, New Jersey, on October 16, 1900. Rigorous farm work had matured Leon Allen Goslin into a muscular 185-pound young man, standing just a half-inch shy of six feet. His early pitching exploits […]
By consensus, it has been deemed that the Negro Leagues died in 1948. The last Negro League World Series was played that year. SABR’s book on the 1948 Homestead Grays and Birmingham Black Barons was titled A Bittersweet Goodbye. Seamheads, an authority on Negro Leagues history, does not go beyond 1948. When Retrosheet began doing […]
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 […]
In the Spring of 1908 a young songwriter and vaudeville performer named Jack Norworth was riding on a New York City subway (or, in some tellings, an elevated train) when he saw an advertisement for a Giants game at the Polo Grounds.1 Inspired by the image, he pulled paper and pencil from his pocket and […]