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Former Nebraska State League president Albert Felt umpired the September 13, 1915, contest between his fellow inmates at Leavenworth Prison and the Kansas City Packers when Federal League umpires missed their train.   In one way, everyone on the diamond was a prisoner. The nine Leavenworth federal prison convicts were obvious; those wearing the blue […]

The date was October 14, 1972. Families across North America gathered around their wood-paneled television sets to watch Game One of the World Series that Saturday afternoon.  Many fans in the televised audience had not seen the Oakland A’s or the Cincinnati Reds in a regular-season contest.  There stood the Reds along the first-base line […]

In the first years of the American League, its eight clubs added to their ranks by drawing away players from the older National League. Baseball had been slumping, a situation stemming from the country’s economic depression and the failed leadership of team owners. Attempting to snap out if it, the NL magnates had pared down […]

This interview by Ron Anderson was originally published in SABR’s “Can He Play? A Look at Baseball Scouts and Their Profession” (2011), edited by Jim Sandoval and Bill Nowlin. Interviews were conducted on October 12, 2006 and March 3, 2007. RA: When we talked before you had mentioned that when you first discovered Hank Aaron […]

“Year after year, lots of home runs at Atlanta.” “Must be about the easiest home-run park.” We’ve all heard these comments. The stadium is a small reason; the big factor is the way they play the game. At Atlanta, they really go after the home run — emphasis, we call it. And they go all […]

Jim “Mudcat” Grant. (SABR-Rucker-Archive)   The spring of 1955 found minor-league manager Pinky May walking around Indianville with a list of players in his pocket.1 May, a journeyman third baseman who put in five years in the majors as a player with the Philadelphia Phillies, had been a manager in the Cleveland Indians farm system […]

Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, the shortstop of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, first met the morning of August 28, 1945, in Rickey’s fourth-floor office at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, New York. Clyde Sukeforth, a Brooklyn scout, told Robinson that Rickey was interested in signing the ballplayer […]

0-10, 10.32: That is the major-league career line for one William T. Stecher of Riverside, New Jersey. If you look it up, the record book tells you that Stecher also holds the records for the “most career games by a pitcher who lost all his games (0–10)” and “most career innings by a pitcher with […]

A natural on the radio, Jackie Robinson spent a fair amount of time behind the microphone. (NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)   One of the more impressive aspects of his trailblazing life is that Jackie Robinson had a wide and varied interest in the world, and his career reflected that. As early as college, […]

While baseball’s origin story began on the East Coast, the Midwest has been a vital part of the growth of America’s pastime. Although a disastrous fire in 1871 temporarily stunted the city’s growth, Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century was a growing hub for commerce and culture. As the United States expanded westward, […]

When the Yankton Treaty was signed in 1858, the United States government acquired a large parcel of land: the northernmost part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, much of which had been Sioux Indian land. In 1861, the area was incorporated as the Dakota Territory. Its borders changed over the next decade, at one time […]

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 […]

This article first appeared in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2016 newsletter. Even with the large number of new books on the Deadball Era published annually, it is worthwhile on occasion to recall prior works which illuminate figures who may have fallen a bit outside of the Deadball Era Committee’s view. One such person […]

Telephone card souvenir from the 1986 Super Major Series (Robert Fitts Collection)   Opposing thoughts can complement one another and fill our lives with elegant contradictions. In ancient Chinese philosophy, this theory was known as yinyang. In Japan, the word is inyo. Although frequently associated with Eastern thought, inyo is a universal part of the […]

This article investigates the 1963 Pepsi Cola Colt .45s Baseball Card Set, documents rarities, and identifies why certain of these cards are rare, drawing attention to this set that is obscure to all except the most sophisticated collectors. In 1963 the Houston Colt .45s were relatively new to the baseball world and Pepsi Cola hoped […]

Overture Adrian C. Anson’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt end on February 1, 1898, when Chicago Club president James Hart unceremoniously sacked him without notice. Anson had made his living playing baseball since 1871, had been a member of the Chicago Club since 1876 and, as their captain since 1879, had risen to […]

As late as the 1980s, the softball/baseball Minneapolis Millerettes were one of Minnesota’s forgotten professional sports teams.1 Eventually, the Millerettes and other female ballplayers in the 1940s and 1950s got the spotlight they deserved. Reunions and the development of a players association led to an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). Editor’s Note: Why are Cub books different? Because Cub fans are different. No team in baseball has such a long-term tradition of efficient losing as the Cubs. So Cub fans don’t write books full of poetry about Babe Ruth (or about […]

In my years as a traveling baseball writer, namely 1946 through 1958, I believe I bridged the gap between the yesteryear of hero worship and the modern adversary era. When I came along, writers were just beginning to find warts on athletes’ faces. Now? Heck, they’re apt to see nothing but. Somewhere, of course, there […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   If you spent most of your formative years in Nebraska, as I did, the major leagues were like a fairy tale. In the late 40’s and early 50’s the closest major league park was in St. Louis. Harry Caray’s voice […]

Editor’s note: This article has been reformatted for the SABR website. Click here to download a PDF file of this article to read it in its original format.   The following description of the Chicago Daily News collection appears on the Archives Library Information Center page of the National Archive website1: “This American Memory Collection […]

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. Introduction In his December 29, 2005 internet blog, John Thorn, the noted baseball author and SABR member, mentioned that the shotgun that killed Ty Cobb’s father in 1905 had been part […]

Every batter has unique psychological approaches, swing mechanics, habits and characteristics. Even so, one thing about hitting is true for every hitter: Every time he walks up to the plate, he has only one tool to work with. In 1920 and 1927, Babe Ruth hit more home runs than every other team in the American […]