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With the recent success of Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui, and other Japanese nationals in the major leagues, American fans are becoming curious about the history of baseball in Japan. There are several good histories of Japanese baseball published in English, but little compares to listening to a player talk about his own experiences. Oral histories […]

  Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito trying out VR during spring training in 2016. (ARTURO PARDAVILA III / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)   A NEW KIND OF BATTING PRACTICE Mariano Rivera wasn’t always destined to be the greatest closer of all time. He entered the majors as an old rookie at age 25 and took a […]

Moving into 1909, change was in the wind. All ballparks had been, up to that point, made of wood, but Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, and St. Louis’ rebuilt Sportsman’s Park opened that year as baseball’s first steel-and-concrete facilities.1 More umpires were hired so that the majority of big-league games would now feature two […]

When the National Association of Base Ball Players voted unanimously in March of 1860 to shift future conventions to mid-December, they most likely didn’t foresee that the decision would thrust the next gathering into the midst of one of the most troubled periods in American history.1 At the time of the March vote, even the […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. In early 2007 major league baseball marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers, bringing an end to a sixty-year ban on black players in the major […]

Do clutch hitters exist? Not according to the most popular yardstick used to define them, says the author. Clutch hitting, he concludes, is “a mirage at best.” IS THERE SUCH A thing as a clutch hitter? This question has been the subject of endless discussion through the years. Until recently, the evidence on the subject […]

An Ottawa Lynx pitcher delivers a pitch during a Triple-A game. (SeregaI / Dreamstime.com)   The freshly minted Ottawa Lynx were to make their debut March 20, 1993 in a preseason game against the Albuquerque Dukes in Dodgertown. The mixture of prospects and borderline major leaguers who made up the new Triple-A International League affiliate […]

In the baseball season just concluded, Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins, Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals, Roy Oswalt of the Houston Astros and Bartolo Colon of the Los Angeles Angels were baseball’s only 20 game winners. In 2004, Curt Schilling won 21 games for the Boston Red Sox, Johan Santana won 20 […]

Cover of the May 1927 issue of Yakyukai depicting O’Neal Pullen and Shinji Hamazaki (Rob Fitts Collection)   Kazuo Sayama, baseball historian, author, and member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 2021), states with great passion and conviction that had it not been for the tours of the Negro Leagues’ all-star Philadelphia […]

Baseball milestones are as well known to fans as their own birthdays and addresses. True baseball fans know that 714-511-4256 is not a phone number, but Babe Ruth’s home run total, the career wins of Cy Young, and Pete Rose’s hit tally. Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of 56 games is a sacred number, 2632 will […]

Shorty Fuller (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   What is a catch? A player grasps the ball. At some instant the catch is completed. If the player drops the ball before this instant, a catch has not occurred. If he drops the ball after this instant, this does not change the fact of the […]

The actress and noted Giants baseball fan Tallulah Bankhead once said, “There have only been two geniuses in the world – Willie Mays and Will Shakespeare.”1 This book, Willie Mays: Five Tools, focuses on the first of those two great men. Willie Howard Mays Jr. could do it all. To many, he is the greatest […]

Two pitchers emerged in the New York Yankees’ remarkable 1947 season who would lead the team to unprecedented success: Allie Reynolds and Vic Raschi. The 1947 season for the New York Yankees was expected to be another step down in the decline of the franchise. Joe DiMaggio and Joe Gordon had returned from the military […]

“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 […]

As a young boy growing up in York, Pennsylvania, Harold Wynegar Jr. emulated Mickey Mantle. “I patterned myself after Mantle,” Wynegar said as a minor leaguer in 1975. “He was a switch-hitter, so I started switch-hitting when I was 9. I’m not saying I’m going to be another Mickey Mantle. He’s one of the biggest […]

Over the past 10 years, interleague play has become one of the rites of summer for baseball fans. Interleague play arrives with a lot of fanfare, as so-called “natural rivals” square off while new teams from the other league come to town for the first or second time, theoretically creating a set of unusual and […]

As a franchise that began 130 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have made an indelible mark not only on the city where they play but also on the whole sport of baseball. This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]