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If it weren’t for eBay, I never would have written this article. While browsing around the mega auction site I discovered a 1995 Baseball Research Journal for sale. I entered a last-minute bid (yes, I’m one of those guys) and won the auction with a $5 bid. One article in the 1995 BRJ was titled “Streaks” by Neal Moran. Moran […]
“I’d love to be the man going into Washington. I’ve always felt that city is one of the top two or three franchises in the nation.” – Frank Lane, general manager, Cleveland Indians1 October 26, 1960, started a new era of Washington Senators baseball. It began auspiciously enough. Senators’ president Calvin Griffith was relocating his […]
Cy Young was around but there wasn’t any award presented in his name. There were valuable players, slick fielders, top rookies and managerial masterminds but there were no awards to be presented in tribute. All of which is unfortunate because a year’s listing of award winners provides a ready reference to the top performers for […]
Jim Spencer had 36 major-league home runs at Yankee Stadium during his 15-year career, the first coming on August 6, 1969. However, his first Yankee Stadium homer came on August 12, 1963, in a tune-up game for the annual Hearst Sandlot Classic. Spencer was on the United States All-Stars, who defeated the Eastern Pennsylvania All-Stars, […]
Topps commemorated Ryan Zimmerman’s 11th career walk-off with a collectible card in 2018. (THE TOPPS COMPANY) “The pressure is on him, man. It’s not on me. I’m supposed to get out.” — Ryan Zimmerman1 Baseball games are filled with moments of great theater. What do we expect before the curtain rises? Perhaps a great […]
“Now it’s even. It’s neck and neck. We’ll start from here and see who’s boss.” — Reggie Jackson1 There have been two players in Chicago White Sox history that led the American League in home runs. Only two over the first 123 seasons of baseball on the south side of Chicago. The second of those […]
Here is the appendix for Pete Palmer’s article “Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing by Catchers” in the Spring 2014 Baseball Research Journal.
The major league baseball clubs of Cleveland and Cincinnati have much in common. They call the same state home. Both have established a proud tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century, and have enjoyed success and endured failure. They are mid-market teams who can afford to compete when managing resources wisely, but can’t […]
Wesley Branch Rickey — even the name is wonderfully quirky and unique. And the man himself lived up to the matchlessness of his name. He was another Lincoln; he was Simon Legree; he was a saint and he was a grievous, unrepentant sinner; he was one of baseball’s best executives and innovators, or he was […]
“Do you feel they’ll make the big-league grade?” This question (referring to Black ballplayers) was posed to Bob Feller in October 1946. As reported in The Sporting News on October 30, 1946, Feller said without hesitation, “I have seen none who combine the qualities of a big-league ballplayer – not even Jackie Robinson.”1 Induction Day […]
1935 Paducah Red Birds B.B. Hook, Jr. is the child in the very front. Front row (L–R): Joe Grace, Floyd Perryman, Venable Satterfield, and Louis Perryman. Middle row (L–R): Lowell Green, Mel Ivy, E.R. Jones (more behind the row than in it), Robert Brown, Benny Sanders, and an unnamed child listed as “mascot.” Back […]
The excitement was electric, as crowds filled Yankee Stadium to capacity on October 10, 1923. For the third consecutive year, the Fall Classic was an all-New York affair, pitting the dominant National League Giants against the upstart Yankees, representing the American League. The latter fittingly christened their magnificent new ballyard in the Bronx by going […]
Several years ago when the Texas Rangers explored the idea of moving their spring training headquarters from Port Charlotte, Florida, one option they briefly considered was building a spring training complex in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Of course, for the move to be feasible, at least three other teams would have to be […]
After a 90-loss, ninth-place season in 1966, the Boston Red Sox entered spring training in Winter Haven, Florida, with a new manager and a new outlook.Spring training 1967 was quite different from spring training 1966 for the Boston Red Sox. We can remember 1966 as the year when Earl Wilson was turned away from the […]
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in “The Journal of Illinois History” (Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 2006) and reprinted in SABR’s “The National Pastime” (No. 26, 2006). The version below has been edited for clarity and updated with new information about the Black Sox Scandal that has come to light in the years […]
Many Baseball Hall of Fame inductees are associated with the American League Philadelphia Athletics and Philadelphia Phillies by way of career accomplishments, or by wearing the team ball cap on their Hall of Fame plaque. Many others in the Hall have connections to the city of Philadelphia and the city’s baseball teams since the 1860s. […]
In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof wrote about the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “Many players of less status got almost twice as much on other teams. … (Charles Comiskey’s) ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst.” This passage sums up the entire foundation of Asinof’s thesis: Low salaries and […]
Robert “Bob” Addy’s Canadian baseball success story begs a really big question. Why are we only hearing about him now? In the last 10 years, thanks to researcher Peter Morris, Addy’s Canadian roots have been highlighted, but this knowledge has taken its sweet time spreading to all corners of the baseball world.1 Now additional details […]
This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). “In the vast range of baseball novels boys’ books written by men like John Tunis to adult novels written by men like Bernard Malamud, women for the most part have been either complaisant wives or stupid bimbos — or perhaps sexual […]
Small-market teams often complain about the unfairness of baseball’s financial structure, contending that teams in large markets have disproportionate access to money to spend on players, giving them an unfair competitive advantage. Big-market teams disagree. But when it comes to the movies, there can be no argument. At the cinema, big-city teams such as the […]
Bent for Blood at Ebbets Field Do you remember when a gun for hire almost shot Jackie Robinson at Ebbets Field from behind the dugout on the first-base line? Of course, you do. How could you forget a moment like that? Everybody was there: Dixie Walker, Ralph Branca, Clyde Sukeforth, Eddie Stanky, Pee Wee Reese, […]
On April 24, 1943, Brooklyn Dodger president Branch Rickey sent a confidential memo to his top scout with instructions to begin searching for “colored” ballplayers, thus setting the wheels in motion that would result in the signing of Jackie Robinson. This document, and those that followed shortly thereafter, are historically significant yet have remained a […]
Led by unanimous MVP Hank Greenberg and player-manager Mickey Cochrane, the Detroit Tigers repeated as American League champions in 1935.Despite what a lot of knowledgeable people in the world of professional baseball felt, Mickey Cochrane was nervous. In the spring of 1935, a poll of 194 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America indicated […]