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The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants Edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III  Associate editors: Clem Comly and Len Levin  Contributing editors: James Forr and Carl Riechers Publication Date: December 8, 2015 Foreword by Monte Irvin ISBN (e-book): 978-1-9335-9998-4, $9.99 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-9335-9999-1, $39.95 Because of Bobby Thomson’s […]

Records of home runs hit by batters have been a part of baseball information and statistics essentially from the beginning of the National League in 1876. It is true that this information was not of overwhelming interest to the public until the advent of Babe Ruth and the launching of the lively ball era in […]

People of a certain age know where they were when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt died, and Bobby Thomson swung. “The most famous sports moment of all time,” Jon Miller termed Thomson’s October 3, 1951, pennant-winning blast. We still recall the Shot Heard ’Round the World: Russ Hodges five times crying, “The Giants […]

Bill James recently asserted that Dick Cramer’s famous 1977 clutch-hitting study, which purportedly demonstrated that clutch talent is a myth, was fatally flawed. James argued that the study’s finding that year-to-year clutch hitting looks random was not enough to show nonexistence. Here, the author uses statistical methods to try to determine whether James’s argument is […]

Because it seemed both helpful and important to attempt to round out Richard “Dick” Higham’s story (see TNP 2000 and TNP 2001) with photographs, I researched libraries, archives, newspapers, and magazines, etc. Identifying 19th-century baseball players in 19th-century photographs can be trying. Finding such pictures and attempting to determine whether you have actually succeeded in […]

The First starred David Alan Grier, as Jackie Robinson, along with costar David Huddleston as Branch Rickey. (Courtesy of David Chapman)   “You know what would be a great musical? The story of Jackie Robinson.” So said film critic Joel Siegel to writer Martin Charnin at a chance meeting at their business manager’s midtown office […]

In 1876, the United States was a century old and had 38 states. Grant was president, and Custer met his end at Little Big Horn. Alexander Graham Bell was demonstrating his telephone, but Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb was still three years away. In Chicago, horse drawn streetcars rattled along cobblestone streets in front of […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth did not take many pitches in the batter’s box during his unusual 1929 season. His walk rate plummeted to 12.27% after he had led the American League in bases on balls in the previous three seasons. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Babe Ruth was an extraordinary batter with respect to the “three true outcomes” in […]

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 […]

The Union Club of Morrisania, located in the modern day Bronx, claimed their first championship in 1867. (NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY)   This article will present a chronology of the 1868 championship season, with particular focus on the pitchers and catchers for the contending teams. It will also discuss the importance of the battery, the […]

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 […]

When Bill James first made his Game Score widely public in the Historical Baseball Abstract (1988), he humbly called it a “garbage stat.” He did feature a three–page essay on it and sprinkled it about that book, his last Abstract. Since then, it’s been broadly used, but only shallowly, as though through his description of […]