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Researching People and Biographical Data In the early days of baseball biographical research, a researcher had to spend much of his time at the library or a genealogical research center poring over hard-to-read microfilm. It was a very painstaking, time-consuming effort as much of the microfilm had to be ordered through inter-library loan and then […]

On October 26, 1960, Calvin Griffith received permission to move his Washington Senators ballclub and bring major league baseball to Minnesota. As a result, in 1961 the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were joined in support of one team. Until the coming of the Twins, however, the two cities had been supporters of their […]

Major-league rules have stipulated since 1950 that the home team always bats last. However, as Gary Belleville relates in a recent Baseball Research Journal article, an exception has been added to the rulebook: Starting in 2007, any team that had to relocate a home game to another city would still bat last. … MLB’s revised […]

Introduction The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (minor leagues) and the National and American Leagues held their annual winter meetings one week apart in December 1929. Though there were different points of contention for both the minors and majors, some issues were relevant to all the organizations and leagues. The draft, the signing of […]

Baseball is called America’s national pastime, but in Cuba baseball is a way of life. In the late 1890s during the war of independence, baseball unified the Cuban people in opposition to Spaniards, who looked down on the sport and preferred traditional European bullfighting. Sixty years later when Fidel Castro came to power, he knew […]

Few individuals saw more Astros history that Alan Ashby. An Astro for 20 of their first 50 seasons, he spent eleven on the Astrodome carpet, coordinating one of the more challenging pitching staffs of his time. After one year as their bullpen coach Ashby moved to the broadcast booth for another eight, culminating with Houston’s […]

The 1927 New York Yankees, featuring Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, et al., are generally considered the greatest team ever to play the game. This superb club won the American League pennant by 19 games, then went on to crush the Pittsburgh Pirates in four straight games. Across the Harlem River that year, John McGraw’s Giants […]

Sponsor Herbert L. Kokernot Jr. and manager Tom Chandler view the Alpine Cowboys practice at Kokernot Field in 1956. (Courtesy of Rick Herrscher)   Thanks to a successful, quiet, unassuming, and very generous rancher named Herbert Kokernot, the most remote part of the great state of Texas, sometimes referred to as Far West Texas, has […]

A summary of the 1951 World Series, won by the New York Yankees in six games over the New York Giants. Game One New York Giants 5, New York Yankees 1 October 4, 1951, at Yankee Stadium With the recurring sounds of “the Giants win the pennant!” still echoing, a World Series – even a […]

The famous city of Philadelphia totes the title the City of Brotherly Love for many reasons. One intention might refer to a friendship between a pitcher and a catcher that would last for 19 years. The catcher was Jimmie “Ace” Wilson, a backstop born and bred in the great state of Pennsylvania. In the fateful […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   Sixty years ago there were no millionaire ballplayers in St. Louis. No night baseball, no artificial turf, no exploding scoreboards, no plane travel, no West Coast baseball teams, no television, no helmets, no batting gloves, no blacks in the […]

Introduction By contemporary accounts, the 1883 championship season was a grand success, noteworthy for the nationwide baseball boom, establishment of new professional joint-stock clubs, and organization of professional baseball associations. The offseason business meetings prepared professional baseball for an orderly championship season. No doubt this was due to a desire for the established National League […]

Aquino Abreu in the uniform of the 1968–69 National Series champion Azucareros ball club, three seasons after his miraculous three-game pitching string. (Author’s Collection)   Aquino Abreu—a diminutive right-handed fastball specialist who labored for a decade and a half during the formative years of the modern-era post-revolution Cuban League—remains entirely unknown to North American and […]

When the 2003 Boston Red Sox reported to Fort Myers, Florida, for spring training, state-of-the-art facilities, a battery of instructors, and a full staff of physical-training specialists awaited them. The minor league facility at City of Palms Park, where the team trains before the exhibition season begins, includes eight batting tunnels and sixteen pitcher’s mounds. Every […]

During the 1940s National League baseball was largely dominated by the Cardinals and the Dodgers. St. Louis won four pennants in the decade while finishing second five times. Brooklyn took three flags and were runner-ups three as well. Besides a horrendous 1944 season, “dem Bums” were third the rest of the time. It was the […]

As the American League’s pecking order of the 1950s was established, the Washington Senators (or Nationals) suffered greatly from the lack of a strong beak. Even with the 1960 season—the final campaign of the original franchise—tossed in for good measure, teams from the nation’s capital consistently played in a manner that inspired ridicule in an enduring […]

The creation of the National League in 1876 provided a stable base for the rapid development of professional baseball nearly a century ago. Yet within five years of its creation, major population centers including New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Cincinnati were excluded from membership. The spirit of enterprise that has been an […]

The 1956 Winter Meetings of the two major leagues were scheduled to be held December 10-12, 1956 at the Palmer House in Chicago. As was customary, the minor leagues met before the major leagues, and in 1956 the National Association Winter Meetings were held in Jacksonville, Florida, from December 3 to 6 at the George […]

Long before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Angels sprang into being three years later, professional baseball and its rivalries had been a central part of the Southern California sports scene. Los Angeles had its first team of professionals in 1890, then joined the fledgling California League in 1892.  When this league folded […]

It has become almost as rare as the major-league Triple Crown, and even more so than its statistical opposite of a pitcher winning 20 games in a single season. Since 1980, there has been only one pitcher who lost 20 games in a single season—21 to be exact—and there is no reason to think baseball […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   Let others praise the literary giants who have brought their skills to baseball fiction. Wolfe, Farrell, Malamud, Harris, Coover, Kennedy deserve kudos. But I toss my cap in the air and shout, “huzzah!” for Lester Chadwick, the author who invented […]

In a reception hall at the Marriott Rancho Las Palmas resort, the mood of the five-member Ottawa delegation might be best described as cautious optimism. Local entrepreneur Howard Darwin stood alongside his son, Jack. Joining them were Ottawa’s deputy mayor, Joan O’Neill, councillor George Kelly, and Don Gamble, the city’s culture and recreation commissioner. Their […]