Search Results

A recap of the 1935 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs.On the eve of the 1935 World Series, pitting the National League champion Chicago Cubs against the two-time American League champion Detroit Tigers, Mickey Cochrane was asked his thoughts on the outcome. “From what I have seen and heard,” the Detroit […]

For the past six-plus years, since before the 2011 season, Rick Rieker has been director of umpire development for Major League Baseball. Rieker umpired his first major-league game in 1992, and worked as both a National League and then major-league umpire through the 2001 season. In 2002 he began work as an umpire supervisor. For […]

In 1877 the National League began the season on April 30 with six clubs. However, in mid-June, the Cincinnatis disbanded for reasons only partly related to their poor on-field performance. A second Cincinnati club was quickly organized under different ownership and stronger financial backing. It began play less than three weeks after the first disbanded […]

“Joe Mendez is better than any pitcher but Christy Mathewson and Mordecai Brown — and sometimes I think he’s better than Matty.” — John McGraw   Little Jose Mendez, the wiry 20-year old Cuban fast-baller, startled the baseball establishment in November 1908 when the Cincinnati Reds arrived in the Islands and faced him for the […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s “The Inside Game” newsletter for November 2014. With Hank O’Day and Jacob Ruppert being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013, it is reasonable to ask which Deadball Era figures — if any — still merit inclusion. Considering that no […]

Editor’s Note: On this page, Parts One and Two, which were published separately in the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 issues of the Baseball Research Journal, are combined into one article as the author intended. Sandy Koufax (SABR-Rucker Archive)   American Jews have long had a love affair with baseball. They have played baseball since […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1).   Several members of the Texas pitching staff were sitting in the clubhouse one afternoon discussing the importance of fielding. They were quick to agree with Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda’s assertion that a good­fielding pitcher can help himself […]

Mary Dobkin at age 77, while speaking to the press about the TV movie “Aunt Mary.” (Historic Images)   Nineteen-seventy-nine was quite a year for Baltimore. The Orioles returned to the World Series for the first time in eight years and one of the city’s most impactful residents got well-deserved national recognition. Her name was […]

Jackie Robinson, center, shows his son Jack Jr. and the son of Roy Campanella the statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands outside the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey in February 1951. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)   On July 18, 1949, Jackie Robinson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify against Paul Robeson, […]

(Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   Robert Clemente was not the first Latino to play major-league baseball, but he was the first Latino superstar. He saw that as both a responsibility and an opportunity. Like Jackie Robinson, he used his athletic celebrity to speak out on behalf of social and racial justice. And like Robinson, […]

One of many things that makes baseball the most enjoyable sport is statistics. Players are considered great because of their statistical achievements. We are all familiar with the records for home runs in a season or career. Career strikeouts. Pitchers winning 20 games in a season. Batters hitting .300. All of these are interesting and […]

Stanford and Keio players discuss the controversial ninth-inning call on May 29, 1913. (Rob Fitts Collection)   The Stanford University Baseball Team is closely connected to the development of baseball in Japan. This stems from 1904-05, when Waseda University was planning an expedition to the United States and negotiated with different universities there, and Stanford […]

An industrial lot on the eastern edge of downtown Greenville, Texas, covered with heavy equipment, gives no sign of its grand history, except for one feature: a brick and concrete arch still stands with the welded metal inscription “Majors Stadium,” coated with a layer of primer paint, across the top. It takes an excellent imagination […]

Evaluating a player’s talent, ability, and contributions to his team is an important task of analyzing the game of baseball. In recent years, the prevalent metric for player evaluation has been Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which distills the evaluation into a single number that can be compared directly with that of other players. WAR measures […]

Nearly 300 no-hitters have been thrown in the major leagues since 1876, but none of them have been thrown by a San Diego Padre. The closest any Padres pitcher has come to pitching immortality since San Diego joined the National League was on July 18, 1972, when Steve Arlin pitched 8⅔ hitless innings against the […]

The Canadian Military Headquarters team defeated their American opponents before a huge crowd at Wembley Stadium on June 3, 1944. The hero of the day, Ed Smith, is back row, third from the right. (Library and Archives Canada)   Ed Smith was twice a hero during Canada’s Second World War. Smith, working at the Canadian […]

The Caguas Criollos won back-to-back Caribbean Series crowns in 2017 and ’18, beating Mexicali 1–0 in 10 innings on February 7, 2017, and defeating Aguilas Cibaeñas from the Dominican Republic on February 8, 2018. The Criollos’ fifth Caribbean Series title puts them in elite company: Only the Dominican Republic’s Tigres del Licey have won more […]

Gladys Goodding was more than just an artiste whose musical stylings entertained the Ebbets Field faithful from the early 1940s on. This cheerful, occasionally mischievous woman was a baseball pioneer. Hers was the first organ permanently situated in a big-league ballpark and she predated Eddie Layton, Jane Jarvis, Wilbur Snapp, and other ballyard organists. Her […]

The feat of collecting five or more hits in a single game was rare enough, even for baseball in the nineteenth century, but when one player managed to do it in four separate games during a single season, that was one of the rarest accomplishments in the history of baseball. In fact, it was so […]

This article was honored as a 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   The names of Jenny Fulle, Amy Dickinson, Elizabeth Osder, and Janine Cinseruli are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the existing literature regarding the integration of female ballplayers into Little League Baseball. These four girls were pioneers on the ground in the first […]

Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Hanley Ramirez, and Dustin Pedroia – names you likely would not expect to read about in a book about the 2004 Boston Red Sox. After all, these men were key players in the 2007 World Series championship. Lester, Papelbon, and Pedroia were on the team, while Ramirez was traded to the […]

The East All-Stars for the 1953 Longhorn League All-Star game played July 25 In Midland, Texas. Front row from left, John Malgarini of San Angelo, Roger Dalla Betta of Midland, Scooter Hughes of Midland, John Tayoan of San Angelo, and Barney Batson of Odessa. Second row from left, Joe Riney of Big Spring, Art Bowland […]

“Heroes get remembered. But legends never die.” So says an apparition of Babe Ruth in The Sandlot. Statues affirm their permanence. Capturing a ballplayer’s essence creates a bond with passersby who stop to absorb the player’s importance to the game and admire the sculptor’s handiwork framing a moment. Ruth’s likeness adorns Oriole Park as a […]

In 1995, St. Catharines rebranded their team as the Stompers, a nod to the area’s wine-making. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)   This paper will discuss how a conjunction of events led to the presence in or near the Niagara area of Canada of four minor-league teams for a brief period in the 1980s—90s. It will illustrate how […]