If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
Several players on the 1919 Chicago White Sox agreed to lose that year’s World Series, earning the nickname “Black Sox.” Their manager William (“Kid”) Gleason said publicly after the Series that “something was wrong. I didn’t like the betting odds. I wish no one had ever bet a dollar on the team.”1 Gleason had […]
As World War II ended, baseball was moving in a new direction. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ signing of Jackie Robinson launched a new era of integration for the National Pastime, the first step in a long journey that is still in progress. Since the doors to the majors would not open right away, there continued to […]
This undated publicity photo (circa 1944–49) of the Clowns includes Edward “King Tut” King and in the lower right inset, “baseball clown” Ed Hamman in full clownface. Hamman would eventually become sole owner of the Clowns. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) Found almost exclusively in black newspapers, box scores for Miami Ethiopian Clowns […]
In the relatively progressive state of Minnesota, African Americans were still able to participate on integrated amateur and semi-professional ball teams. Two men in paticular, slugger Billy Williams and crack infielder Dick Brookins, figured prominently on the Midwestern diamonds of the early twentieth century, although their experiences with the color line took radically different turns.
Editor’s note: An abridged version of this interview was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s October 2020 newsletter. David Crawford Jones is a former chairman of the Deadball Era Committee and the editor of Deadball Stars of the American League, published by Potomac Books in 2006. With a master’s degree in U.S. History […]
The 2014 major-league season ended with the San Francisco Giants winning their third World Series in five seasons, beating the Kansas City Royals in a dramatic seven-game series on the shoulders of a staggeringly dominant performance by their 25-year-old southpaw, Madison Bumgarner. The Giants had established themselves as the decade’s model franchise, the Royals emerged […]
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988). Exactly a hundred years ago, on June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Baseball and the written word have been on good terms ever since. It was not until 1981, however, […]
Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” […]
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. A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Although this quote is often attributed to Mark Twain, at least one Twain researcher claims […]
In 2015, I acquired booklets containing scoresheets for all games played by the Québec City team in the 1938 and 1939 Provincial League. Handwritten neatly by somebody who was clearly involved with the team, these booklets contained tons of information, and led me to try to discover as much as I could about the league. […]
Andre Braugher (Robinson) and Ruby Dee (as Mallie Robinson) in The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson. (Courtesy of Alamy) Seventy-five years ago, Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s modern-day color barrier, ushering himself into the history books and helping open the doors for so many more. A few years earlier, while in the U.S. military, […]
Canadian soldiers play baseball against their American allies at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London during the First World War. (Library and Archives Canada) Bill Humber, Canada’s foremost baseball historian, has long made the case for baseball’s distinction as Canada’s earliest “national game.” Before indoor rinks and reliable refrigeration, hockey had yet to freeze itself […]
Racial discrimination did not miraculously disappear in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it cease with Civil War’s end in 1865. However, even as race relations remain a topic in 2011, the process for dealing with race faced an evolution. Speaking to this evolution, Jerry Malloy, in his Introduction to Sol White’s History of […]
Charlie Dressen. (SABR-Rucker Archive) As soon as the last pitch of a baseball season is thrown, owners of major-league franchises and executives in front offices focus on the year ahead. Offseason decisions, even from clubs that have experienced success, occasionally surprise outside observers when prominent players are traded, sold, or released—or when managers and […]
In the typical telling of the Jackie Robinson life story there are two acts. The leading figures in both acts are White men. Act I is the run-up to White baseball: Pasadena, UCLA, the United States Army, the Kansas City Monarchs, the scouting of Clyde Sukeforth. This Act concludes in Branch Rickey’s Ebbets Field office […]
In December 1936, the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League purchased a catcher from the Albany Senators. Bill Starr would leave his mark on San Diego baseball history: As a player, he had the honor of pinch-hitting for Ted Williams. As an owner, he signed the player who broke the Pacific Coast League […]
After clinching the 1884 Eastern League pennant in mid-August, the team replaced Philadelphia in the Union Association and compiled the majors’ worst record – a dismal . 111 won-lost percentage. The year 1884 marked the Eastern League’s inaugural season, and the circuit had a less than auspicious start. A number of teams folded or […]
The American national pastime of bat-and-ball games, played under various names since the colonial era, was formalized to a previously unprecedented degree by the end of the Civil War (1861–65) under the name of “base ball,” as the version played in the Greater New York City (GNYC) area. the Register of Interclub Matches (RIM1) lists […]
Jackie Robinson, left, and heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson wave to supporters in 1963 at LaGuardia Airport in New York City as they leave for Alabama to work with the Civil Rights Movement. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE) “Justice too long delayed is justice denied” was the phrase used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his […]
After a 1985 season in which he hit 29 home runs and drove in 97 runs, Detroit Tigers outfielder Kirk Gibson was the top position player of that winter’s free-agent class. So when he accepted an invitation to go bird hunting with people from the Kansas City Royals, he believed the outing would be a […]
Sometimes research leads us to answers we never intended to find. My quest began in 2010 when I set out to review the history of an unlucky baseball pitcher named Sylvester “Syl” Johnson. This man had the honor to work with one of the most notorious baseball men in history, Tyrus Raymond Cobb. He was […]
Early days with the Montreal Royals. March 6, 1946. (Courtesy of Rachel Robinson and the Estate of Jackie Robinson) On Tuesday, October 23, 1945, 15 of Montreal’s sportswriters and broadcasters were invited to a press conference at the home of the Montreal Royals, Delorimier Stadium, and were promised “a major announcement.” The Triple-A International […]
Oscar Charleston was known as “the Black Ty Cobb.” Both men sprayed line drives to all fields and played a savage running game on the bases. But Charleston hit with power, which Cobb did not, and on the field he ran circles around the more famous Georgian. He was considered in a class with Tris […]
When legendary sportswriter Furman Bisher died in 2012, his obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution repeated a claim that had been casually tossed around for many years — including by Bisher himself: One of the biggest “scoops” of his career occurred in 1949, when “Shoeless” Joe Jackson gave Bisher and Sport Magazine his only interview since […]