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Sandy Alomar Jr.’s career has been marred by frequent injuries, and one could argue that he has not lived up to the expectations most people had for him back when he was one of the most promising young catchers in the game. But no one was disappointed in him on the night of July 8, […]

Once upon a time, A.J. Liebling, consummate Manhattanite and writer for The New Yorker, dubbed Chicago America’s Second City.1 But in relation to New York-centric baseball movies, this AAA-league rating is extremely generous. Across the decades, baseball films with Chicago references have been relatively scarce. For every on-screen image of Wrigley Field, there are scores […]

Although Al Kaline obviously deserved the many accolades he received as an exceptional athlete with admirable personal characteristics, misconceptions have long existed regarding the severity of challenges he faced in his youth and during his 22-year professional baseball career. This article will address a litany of circumstances that he encountered and explain how he overcame […]

Carl Daniel Erskine, born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, but famed for his twelve seasons as a stellar right hander for the Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball’s postwar era, proved not only to be talented pitcher but also an exceptional teammate and person. One of the Dodgers of 1952-53 portrayed in Roger Kahn’s 1971 baseball classic, […]

Two weeks before the start of the 1974 season, Oakland Athletics owner Charles O. Finley signed Herb Washington as a “designated runner”—in the long, storied history of Major League Baseball, the first and only player whose sole responsibility was to run the bases. Baseball historians and fans have not treated “Hurricane Herb” Washington kindly over […]

Many baseball fans of a certain age remember with some nostalgia the 1955 Bowman “TV set” of baseball cards, which featured a number of umpires. Television was new for many Americans at that time; it was maybe three years earlier that my family got the first set in the neighborhood I grew up in and […]

On September 28, 1947, the Bambino made an appearance before a game benefitting his Babe Ruth Foundation – later recognized as the first Old-Timers Day. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The story of Yankee Stadium cannot be told without telling the story of Babe Ruth. His home-field exploits during his playing days are well covered, but a […]

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from the chapter on the 1926–32 Yankees and 1928–32 Athletics found on the author’s website, www.thebestbaseballteams.com. In the annals of baseball history, the New York Yankees are often remembered as being most formidable when they had Babe Ruth batting third and Lou Gehrig right behind him in the cleanup […]

It happens every spring. Those four words name both a popular motion picture and a formula for television programmers. Around the first of April every year viewers can see Lou Gehrig’s luck and Ike’s alibis and Stratton’s courage and that secret formula which causes objects to veer away from wood. Unfortunately, with all the cinematic […]

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 […]

Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison wound up as the game’s hero, hitting a dramatic walk-off three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to give the NL a 7-4 victory.Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison […]

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 […]

“BASEBALL is America’s game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere – belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws …” — Walt Whitman   Just what is the Baseball Reliquary, anyway? There are as many answers to that question as there are multitudes contained by […]

The telegram was brash and a bit disrespectful. Simply stated, it read “DEAR MOOSE: TOLD YOU SO. JOE PEP”. 1 The New York Yankees needed pitching help—specifically a boost to their rotation—following the 1962 season. They set their sights on Stan Williams, a right-handed twirler for the Los Angeles Dodgers who had won 14, 15, […]

He was forever young on his baseball card—6-foot-2, with a square jaw, and a passing resemblance to Mickey Mantle. He was 24, and I was in the third grade. It was the summer of 1963. I never minded that he set a record for strikeouts in a single season that year, which is how many […]

The first night game in the history of Organized Baseball took place in Independence, Kansas, on April 28, 1930. The Independence Producers, a Class C team in the Western Association, had installed permanent lights on their field, Producers Park. They played a total of fifty-five night baseball games at home in 1930.1 One part of […]

Doug Harvey. (Courtesy La Patrie du Dimanche, December 3, 1959.)   Professional baseball in Ottawa was sporadic in the early to mid-twentieth century. From 1912 to 1915, the Ottawa Senators played in the Class-C (later Class-B) Canadian League and finished first in three of the four seasons. The Senators resurfaced in the Class-B Eastern Canada […]

Back in the mid-1990s, I published Great Baseball Films (Citadel Press), which charts the manner in which the sport has been depicted onscreen from the late 1890s to early 1990s. Twenty years ago as today, even the most obscure films with obvious baseball themes were readily accessible to researchers. However, seeking out films in which […]

Rising from the prairie grass, a few miles south of downtown Houston, from the grazing land that only recently, in half-century terms, had been the longtime home to large herds of beef cattle, the brand-new Astrodome now stood boldly on those same plains as a spot-on caricature of every large incoming spaceship depicted in all […]

While considerable attention has been paid to the home run feats of outstanding players such as Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron, comparatively little consideration has been given to outstanding team home run achievements, particularly those occurring in a single game. On 28 occasions, a major league team has nit at least 7 home […]

Don Zimmer in Cuba, 1952. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Cal Ripken Jr. has said, “I had the most fun in baseball in my first year in the minor leagues than at any other time in baseball. Once you get to the major leagues, it’s more of a business.” In my more than 50 years interviewing ballplayers, […]

The Detective (1968), starring Frank Sinatra and Lee Remick, featured Yankee Stadium transformed into a football field. (20th Century Fox)   “Baseball stadiums are never only about baseball. Their utility is both more dynamic and more poetic.”1 Some landmarks are so burned into our collective mind’s eye that their image tells the story of their […]

On a warm summer evening July 8, 1953, Sacramento Solon Neill Sheridan did something no professional ballplayer before or since has ever done. Between games of a twi-night doubleheader against the San Francisco Seals, he raced an Arabian horse—and won. Then in the nightcap, the right-handed slugger homered over the right-field fence, something no one had […]

This spring, baseball attention will be focused on Henry Aaron as he strives to reach and pass that magic number in the home run summit of fame — 714.   There is another historic home run number that is being approached and soon some one will be achieving that milestone.   That will be the 100th home […]