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“I cannot see why they should object to playing with me in the game as they have played nine of us in Rockville, and I have pitched against them.”1 — Billy Holland after not being allowed to pitch for Manchester against Rockville on September 1, 1906   Barnstorming independent teams and semipro leagues were common in […]

Rochester, New York, played host to the 1962 baseball winter meetings, which saw discussion of issues including the pace of play, player travel, and a healthy amount of player movement. The largest issue on the agenda, however, concerned the reorganization of the minor-league system. Minor League Overhaul The most extensive action taken during the winter […]

Chattanooga Lookouts first baseman Jess Levan was the last man to be banned from professional baseball for trying to fix games. The uproar surrounding Levan’s banishment in 1959 revealed evidence linking other players to wide­ spread gambling in Southern ballparks. The Southern Association scandal was either, as The Sporting News dismissed it, “relatively insignificant;’1 or […]

With interim Commissioner Bud Selig calling an end to the 1994 season on September 14 because of the players strike, the baseball offseason commenced earlier than usual. The major feature of the annual winter meetings was, of course, the resolution of the strike, but the issues of offseason transactions and replacement players hung over the […]

In the opener of this two-part series, published in Baseball Research Journal 53, Number 1, I described how fielding (infield and outfield shifting) and batting (emphasis on pulling and fly-ball hitting) contributed to the 25-point decrease in batting averages between 2007 and 2022, from .268 to .243. As batting average on balls in play dropped […]

Sandy Koufax posted a career 57-15 won-loss record at Dodger Stadium and a 1.37 ERA. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Sandy Koufax’s baseball career is a tale of two cities, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. It is a tale about a career that contained two disparate time periods, the worst of times and the best of times. For […]

Baseball is at one and the same time an idyllic game for children and a gravely serious business for adults. A sport that can be played on a pastoral commons requires, in the world of commerce, space to which some can be admitted and from which others can be excluded—in short, what lawyers call real […]

Freddie Fitzsimmons of the New York Giants gives a pitching clinic for the All-Japan team. (Courtesy of the San Francisco Giants)   On the morning of June 29, 1953, readers of the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa, were greeted by a headline on page 13: “New York Giants Invited to Tour Japan This Fall.”1 […]

This article was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   A National League players’ strike, instigated by some of the St. Louis Cardinals, against the presence in the league of Jackie Robinson, Negro first baseman, has been averted temporarily and perhaps permanently quashed. That’s the lede of Stanley Woodward’s story in the […]

“The greatest pitcher I have ever seen,” whispered John McGraw as he shoved his way through a jostling home­ bound crowd after watching “Cannonball” Jackman strike out eighteen batters in nine innings. That whisper spread from ear to ear and finally developed into a roar, for certainly the famed former New York Giants pilot should […]

The number 11 has a prominent place in human history, both real and imagined. The First World War ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Apollo 11 was the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon. And in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things, the fate […]

Roger Kahn coined the phrase “The Era” to represent New York City baseball from 1947 through 1957.1 During this era the Yankees won nine AL pennants and seven World Series, the Dodgers won six NL pennants and one world championship, and the Giants won two NL pennants and one World Series. While this success certainly […]

Jackie Robinson, right, shakes hands with manager Leo Durocher of the Brooklyn Dodgers at spring training in Havana, Cuba in March 1947. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)   In reviewing the career of Jackie Robinson in hindsight, one advantage is that everything seems as if it was a certainty. Robinson was one of the great players in the […]

In 1905, Tokyo’s Waseda University became the first Japanese ballclub to play on American soil. Under the visionary leadership of Isoo Abe, the man now celebrated as “the Father of Japanese Baseball,” Waseda played 26 games against American colleges and semi-pro teams, finishing with a 7–19 record (.269 winning average).1 In 1911, Waseda returned to […]

The baseball community met at the Galt House hotel in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, December 3-9, 1992. Reportedly, 1,800 to 1,900 people registered for the annual meeting, with vendors increasing the size of the meeting to about 2,500. By most accounts, the 1992 Winter Meeting was especially eventful, highlighted by a number of prominent free-agent signings […]

Two seasons ago, I witnessed the Florida Marlins attempt to execute a classic Earl Weaver maneuver. It was the fifth inning of a game in Milwaukee. The Marlins, down 1–0, had runners on first and third with two outs. As the pitcher was winding up for the next batter, I nudged my buddy in the […]

Serious baseball research has refuted the earlier contention that Abner Doubleday laid out the first baseball diamond at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839 while a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy. But this should not diminish the relationship that developed between baseball and the military over the last century. Both the effort to credit General Doubleday […]

This article was published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 34 (2005).   As a baseball artifact, it’s pretty special as it is. It’s a scorecard from August 5, 1891 — a day when Buck Ewing drove in four runs off Cy Young and the New York Giants managed to hold off the Cleveland Spiders, […]

Rachel Balkovec shattered a glass ceiling when she became the first woman to manage in affiliated baseball for the Tampa Tarpons. (Photo by Mark LoMoglio/ Tampa Tarpons)   Rachel Balkovec’s résumé includes several firsts: the first woman to serve as a strength and conditioning coordinator in affiliated baseball; the first woman to do so for […]

Frank Shaughnessy (middle, second row) guided the 1913 Ottawa Senators to their second straight Canadian League title, nosing out the London Tecumsehs by a single game. First baseman “Cozy” Dolan (top row, third from left) led the Senators with a .358 batting average. (Alfred Pittaway of Pittaway & Jarvis Photographers, Ottawa)   For Frank Shaughnessy, […]

The 1911 winter meetings played out in the press as well as in the meeting rooms. Two days before the start of the 1911 World Series, which matched the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Athletics, the newspapers in both cities noticed that large blocks of World Series tickets had fallen into the hands of […]

He spent 20 years as a professional umpire, baseball’s loneliest profession, passing judgment on the performances of the game’s great athletes and egos. Many people have pursued this particular job, but Emmett Ashford had the added burden of breaking racial barriers throughout his career, as a black man whose job required maintaining authority over white […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1). During the summer of 1895, John Peter Wagner — not yet known as “Honus” or “Hans,” nor yet as a shortstop — played at least 79 games for teams at Steubenville, Akron, and Mansfield, Ohio; Adrian, Michigan; and Warren, […]

On the eve of the 1943 season, Boston Red Sox manager Joe Cronin faced a daunting task: replacing Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio in his outfield. The two All-Stars were serving their country as World War II raged across Europe and the Pacific. Sensing Cronin’s predicament, Associated Press features sports editor Dillon Graham shared a […]