Search Results

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume II (1987).   “Poets, it should be noted, keep shaping their metaphors out of the ruins of their existence, in contradistinction to the powerful on this earth, whose stock in trade is the fable of their victories.” The poet Stanley Kunitz was referring […]

For baseball, 1857 had been a momentous year in its development into an organized sport for adults. The meetings of 14 Greater New York clubs in January and February introduced standardized rules that still form the game’s backbone: nine innings, nine players, 90 feet between bases. Furthermore, the list of rules was extensively modified: What […]

This article was originally published in “From McGillicuddy to McGwire,” the 2000 SABR convention journal.   It was 1947, and Branch Rickey had two spring training problems, both of his own making. Bud Holman had one, but it loomed large for him. It took Rickey and Holman a while to find each other, but they […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Cleveland,” the 1990 SABR convention journal.   What most Cleveland fans regard as the beginning of the end of the Golden Era of Indians baseball can be traced to Easter Sunday, April 17, 1960. The Indians, who had finished second to the Chicago White Sox in 1959, […]

The 1936 Winter Meetings were not the most exciting session. At the time, it seemed as though little history was made during those three days, but some of the changes made did have an important impact on the game, and some of the smaller changes are still in use. The 1936 meetings gave us innovations […]

1. My Model In issue number 33 of The Baseball Research Journal, I published an article entitled “Underestimating the Fog.” The thesis of this article is that we in sabermetrics have been relying on a method which doesn’t actually work, under closer scrutiny, and we should stop relying on this method. “This method” is the […]

All-Star Football Game program, 1941. (COURTESY OF BRYAN STEVERSON)   “There but for the grace of God” is an expression used when someone avoids a very serious situation, possibly life-threatening, and gives credit to the Almighty.1 In the life of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, this thankfulness applied on December 7, 1941. After a disappointing 1940 football […]

One baseball executive said Willie Mays’ glove was “where triples go to die.” (SABR-Rucker Archive)   One of the game’s greatest players of all time was also one of the greatest defensive players of all time. Willie Mays set a standard of excellence for outfielders that is virtually unmatched. As Dodgers executive Fresco Thompson said, […]

In the years between 1892 and 1925, Charlotte, North Carolina, “Queen City of the South,” emerged from the obscurity of a backwater frontier boomtown to its present position as one of the South’s most prosperous, thriving cities. One of the early exponents of the “New South” commercial and industrial development was Daniel Augustus Tompkins. In […]

In October 1999, as part of the merging of the National League and American League into Major League Baseball, the decision was made to create a unified approach to look after the health and wellness of major-league umpires. Under the auspices of the Office of the Commissioner, Sandy Alderson and Ralph Nelson reached out to […]

A Kekionga Base Ball Club collectible card from 1871. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The National Association of Professional Baseball players was formed in 1871 in New York City leading to the first all-professional baseball organization. While many of the founding clubs were no surprise, one addition might raise eyebrows: the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne. Compared to […]

  When he stepped on the mound at Municipal Stadium to face the hometown Waterbury Giants on September 3, 1967, Dick Such of the York White Roses carried the burden of an 0–16 record. It was his last chance that season to snap his winless streak. The 6-foot-4 right-hander got off to a rocky start […]

Jackie Urbaez congratulates an Ottawa Titans teammate during a Frontier League game. (Courtesy of Timothy Austen)   The first weather alert went out about two hours before the Ottawa Titans of the Frontier League were to play their 2024 home opener. The warning to residents of Canada’s capital from Environment Canada was grim: prepare for […]

INTRODUCTION It is not unusual to hear a sports fan or announcer say something like, “The window for this team is closing.” But what exactly does this expression mean? The general notion is that a team has a limited number of years when it can contend for a championship. Saying the window is closing implies […]

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. Babe Ruth was presented with flowers before a game during the 1934 baseball tour of Japan.   November 20, 1934; Shizuoka, Japan With a flick of his wrist, the boy received […]

  Chocolatier William Klein Sr. of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, had a problem. The year was 1918. Soldiers were returning from the war in Europe. Klein was looking to expand to a national market for his “Lunch Bar,” a three-cent candy bar that was in direct competition with the chocolate bars produced by Milton Hershey at his […]

This story begins and ends with fried chicken. It also includes four armed men, an All-Star ring, an abduction, and a brush with the grim reaper. Oh yeah, and in the middle of it is the greatest Puerto Rican baseball player of all time, Roberto Clemente. So why isn’t this story common knowledge among baseball […]

In 100 years of major league’ baseball, there have been nearly 117,000 home runs hit in regulation games. Less than 2 percent of these, or 2150, have been hit in extra innings. Yet, these overtime homers have been very important. About 90-95% of the time they provide the winning margin. In 1975, for example, there […]

It could be compared, in a way, to a romance novel — first they hate each other, then they start to learn more about each other to where they like each other, and finally they fall in love and get married. Unlike the two protagonists in this popular style of fiction, though, the National and […]

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone could do it. The hard is what makes it great.” — Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own (1992)   One might not think summer evenings at the ballpark and the staid atmosphere of America’s concert halls have much in common, […]

Baseball is great theatre. Indeed, baseball stories have been fodder for Hollywood since the era of silent films, both dramatic and comedic. But baseball biographies in movies and TV-movies often sacrifice facts to move the story forward at a watchable pace, increase drama, or provide comic relief. For a sport whose patrons guard its history […]

Editor’s note: This article was published in the April 2018 edition of the SABR Deadball Era Committee newsletter. Pervasive cheating plagued baseball during the Deadball Era. Cutting bases, blocking baserunners, doctored baseballs, lob pitches, indifferent play, bribery, and fixed games found a way into every crevice of baseball. Much of the indiscretion occurred openly, regarded […]

The result of the prior year’s conflict between the two major circuits ended with the demise of the American Association.1 It was also the death of a favorable two-league balance for all concerned. Specifically, that meant the interleague rivalry both on the diamond and through the turnstiles that previously produced the ballplayers’ edge in the […]

People of a certain age know where they were when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt died, and Bobby Thomson swung. “The most famous sports moment of all time,” Jon Miller termed Thomson’s October 3, 1951, pennant-winning blast. We still recall the Shot Heard ’Round the World: Russ Hodges five times crying, “The Giants […]