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Norman “Bobby” Robinson was the starting center fielder on the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons team that played in the last Negro League World Series. At least he was until an injury sidelined him. By the time he returned to action, he was moved to left field because a rookie and future baseball legend had replaced […]

Before Mike Lum came along in 1967, only three men born and raised in Hawaii had played in the majors, and none since 1945.1 Both before and after World War II, quite a few Hawaiian ballplayers had gone to Japan – but for mainland fans, Lum became a longstanding reminder of baseball in the Aloha […]

Rudolph Ash played in eight league games for the 1920 NNL champion Chicago American Giants, though he also may have participated in a few exhibition games. Subsequently, it took another three years before Ash’s name again was mentioned in association with baseball in the press. At that time, he was enrolled in the University of […]

The heir to Moe Drabowsky, Tug McGraw, and Roger McDowell, Turk Wendell kept the tradition of lovable zany relievers alive. Wendell had a unique litany of on-field antics, plus a trademark necklace of animal teeth and claws – from beasts he’d hunted himself. “Turkey spurs too,” said the avid outdoorsman, “but no shark teeth.” Yet […]

Ted Strong Jr. thrilled baseball fans with a hard-hitting swing that he displayed over his 10 seasons in the Negro Leagues and in Mexico. The tall, muscular Strong played in seven All-Star games as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs and other teams. This two-sport superstar also toured the country as a member of […]

George Weiss presided over the greatest sustained run of excellence in baseball history. Under Weiss’s leadership, from 1948 through 1960, the New York Yankees won ten pennants and seven World Series. After a slip to third place in 1959 Weiss retooled his squad and returned to the top the following season. For this accomplishment The […]

When Jim Holt played for the Minnesota Twins, sportswriter Bob Fowler wrote that he was the type of ballplayer every winning team needed, one who knew how to play the game and was ready whenever called upon. “Every team has an underrated player, a man who isn’t a most valuable player but a most valued […]

Negro League historian James A. Riley portrays Leroy Grant as a “hulking first sacker [who] was susceptible to bonehead plays in the field and on the bases, and evidently made some critical errors during the 1917 season.”1 In truth, although Grant did have some rough times in 1917, he was considered by many of his […]

“Saul was a great man and one of my best friends. He was a pretty good player, quite a lady’s man, and one of the greatest people I ever met in my life. He was a good hitter and a good glove man. If things were like they are today, he would have played in […]

4,256. 755. 5,714. 511. .366. As baseball has often been described as a game of numbers, fans, reporters, and students of the game would most certainly recognize the preceding list of significant digits. These were the career accomplishments forever linked to the respective immortals Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Ty Cobb. To that list, another […]

Harry Simpson first saw life as a child in the segregated South. He went on to be one of the first black players to break the color line. Born in Atlanta, Georgia on December 3, 1925, (many accounts list his birth year as 1923 or 1924), Harry was the fourth child of Frank and Maggie […]

The early life of pitcher Tom Johnson, one of the star hurlers for the 1920 Chicago American Giants team that won the inaugural Negro National League pennant, is largely shrouded in mystery. What is known is that he had two outstanding seasons for Rube Foster’s squad, including the 1920 campaign, in which he pitched to […]

Shortstop Humberto “Chico” Fernández played the game with flair. It was a flair that endeared him to fans and fellow players, but often saw him at odds with his many managers. He was a daring, some would say reckless, baserunner. Playing for the Detroit Tigers, he showed that special flair in the second game of […]

Bill Killefer began his 48-year career in Organized Baseball in 1907 as an unlikely professional, weighing only 125 pounds when he played with Jackson of the Southern Michigan League. According to his brother Wade, “the bats he used were almost as big as he was.” It would be years before he grew to be 5’10 […]

Professional baseball leagues began in 1871 with the founding of the National Association, which many consider the first major league. Its demise in 1875 opened the door to the National League, and minor leagues then followed. Leagues rose and crumbled in those early days, franchises came and went (or switched home cities), but one thing […]

The New York Giants surged into the National League pennant race in 1921 after star right fielder Ross Youngs’ return from a preseason knee injury but still ran second behind the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates in late July. With the Giants trailing in Pittsburgh on July 26 and in danger of falling five games back of […]

As game time approached on October 7, 1874, a crowd estimated at 1,000 gathered at Brooklyn’s Union Grounds for a match between the first-place Boston Red Stockings and the sixth-place Brooklyn Atlantics.1  If the immediate past was prologue, it was hard to understand the fans’ motivation for plunking down their hard-earned quarters to gain admission. […]

On this crisp afternoon, the sky was a vivid blue, the grass and ivy were a radiant green, and the infield dirt was a golden brown. One color, though, was making its debut at Wrigley Field. For the first time, a Black baseball team would play in the famous ballpark, a hallmark of racially segregated […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates were still enjoying the aura of their shocking 1960 World Series victory over the vaunted New York Yankees as they played their 33rd game of the 1961 season. They were in Chicago, en route from Milwaukee to St. Louis, for a two-game series with the Cubs opening on Wednesday afternoon, May 24.1 […]

While volumes have been written on Arnold Rothstein — who was NOT indicted — and on the Eastern-based gamblers involved in the 1919 World Series fix, historians have largely ignored the Midwestern-based gamblers who WERE indicted. Early reports on the Black Sox grand jury findings included the names of brothers Benjamin and Louis Levi, who […]

1912 Hilldale Club. Back row: Bill Anderson, Alice Robinson, Lloyd Thompson, Marian Caulk, Devere Thompson, Mark Studevan, Clara Ivory, Ed Bolden, Helen Barrett, Charles Gaskins, Mary Ricketts, Hubert Jackson, Grace Ricketts, Sam Anderson and Leon Brice. Front row: Hulett Strothers, Raymond Garner, Billy Hill, Frank “Chink” Wilson, George Kemp, Hugh “Scrappy” Mason and Clarence Porter. […]

This article was originally published in the December 2024 edition of the SABR Black Sox Scandal Committee Newsletter.   Judge Hugo M. Friend presided over the Black Sox trial during the summer of 1921, less than a year after he was tabbed to fill a temporary vacancy on the Cook County circuit court bench. (Photo: […]

This article was published in From Setbacks to Success: The 1945 Cleveland Buckeyes (SABR, 2025), edited by Vince Guerrieri, Thomas Kern, and Bill Nowlin.   As 1945 dawned, World War II was winding down toward its conclusion – even if that wasn’t apparent as the year began. After repelling the Nazis in the Battle of the […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords” (2020), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.   Baseball spring training had a long run in Hot Springs, Arkansas, from 1886, when the Chicago White Stockings came to town, to 1955, when the Detroit Stars prepared there for their season. Within […]