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Four members of the 1935 Detroit Tigers were later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Three of them were among the finest players of their era, while the fourth was a very good player whose election was the subject of debate. All were instrumental in the Tigers’ winning the 1935 championship, their first.Four members […]

While professional baseball and politics have always been linked, only once has a major league baseball team become a voluntary part of a Presidential campaign. The visible evidence of this happenstance is the 1920 Chicago Cubs’ exhibition game in a small Ohio town against a squad of local semi-professionals called the Kerrigan Tailors. United States […]

I wish that someone had told me when I was 15 years old that Willie Stargell was starting a five-year tear that would transform him from a good home run hitter to one of baseball’s superstars. If they had, I would have taken more mental snapshots of the man who was not yet  “Pops.” While […]

Any avid baseball fan can tell you about the Miracle Braves of 1914-how they rose from eighth place on July 18 to win the pennant by 10.5 games and the World Series in four straight. But who can tell you much about the Miracle-less Boston Braves of 1935? They had the worst record in the […]

Upon arriving in the United States in the spring of 1956, without knowing a single person, ignorant of the native language, customs, and food, and unaware of racism, Felipe Alou was armed with nothing but his mind, courage, determination, and talent. No Dominican had ever played in the major leagues, and there were as yet […]

Editor’s note: In the 1982 launch of The National Pastime, reissued by SABR in 2014, a previously unpublished writer named Frank J. Williams wrote a groundbreaking article. “A breakthrough,” I called it then: “the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for deciphering won-lost decisions of the dead-ball era.” In the years since, every record-keeping book, website, and organization has […]

Mickey Mantle is carried off on a stretcher after injuring his knee during the 1951 World Series at Yankee Stadium. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   A batter takes a fastball to the ribs. An outfielder crashes into the wall trying to make a circus catch. A baserunner steps on the side of first […]

Asked what it was like to face Sandy Koufax, Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks said, “It was frightenin’.” (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Sandy Koufax faced 512 different batters during his Hall of Fame career, from Dick Groat (145 plate appearances, or PA), to Vinegar Bend Mizell (one PA, along with 63 other batters). Along the […]

What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” – Jackie Robinson As people and events recede into the mists of the past, people and events that have resonated in our own times become as remote to the next generation as ancient history is to ours, and our task is […]

The magnificent September sunset offered the perfect backdrop for the final game of a four-game series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals. A cool northerly wind blew. Autumn had arrived, and the postseason was rapidly approaching. Although that breeze provided a momentary chill, the battle on the diamond—along with the sold-out ballpark and deafening […]

Dummy Hoy taught his teammates sign language, which they began to use in game situations and even off the field. Initially, Hoy when at bat had to turn around to look at the umpire’s hand signal in order to see the call, ball or strike. Opposing pitchers would rush him. In 1887, after adopting the […]

When I approached Robin Roberts in 1992 about writing a book on the famous Whiz Kids team that won the 1950 pennant on the last day of the season, he was immediately all in.  Since I’d never written a baseball book (although heaven knows I’d read enough of them), I felt a little like the […]

The odds on the Boston Red Sox winning the 1967 American League pennant were 100-1 at the beginning of the season. But when they completed the Impossible Dream, it was “Pandemonium on the field!”The Boston Red Sox embarked on their 1967 season with a five-man rotation that had collectively won only 25 major league games […]

    In August 2022, the Williamsport Crosscutters plan to commemorate Dave Bresnahan’s trick by renaming the team for a night and selling Great Potato Caper collectibles, including the shirt shown here. (Courtesy of the Williamsport Crosscutters)   Roger Bresnahan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945 for his achievements as a […]

Andre Braugher (Robinson) and Ruby Dee (as Mallie Robinson) in The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson. (Courtesy of Alamy)   Seventy-five years ago, Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s modern-day color barrier, ushering himself into the history books and helping open the doors for so many more. A few years earlier, while in the U.S. military, […]

The 1985 Winter Meetings had showcased a then-record 62 free agents, but the 1986 free-agent class shattered that mark as 82 players filed for free agency by the deadline.1 Despite the uptick in the number of free agents, however, for the second year in a row none of them signed with a new club at […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

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. Introduction In his December 29, 2005 internet blog, John Thorn, the noted baseball author and SABR member, mentioned that the shotgun that killed Ty Cobb’s father in 1905 had been part […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume IV (1989). Editor’s Note: Why are Cub books different? Because Cub fans are different. No team in baseball has such a long-term tradition of efficient losing as the Cubs. So Cub fans don’t write books full of poetry about Babe Ruth (or about […]

In the old days of professional baseball, players fist-fighting on and off the field was not uncommon. Players would scream at each other. Some would tease. Many others were just downright mean. One player in particular earned a nickname that perfectly described his slick dugout demeanor. The handle followed him throughout his days in the […]

On John Klima’s 2009 book about Willie Mays and the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons and James S. Hirsch’s 2010 book, “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.”

Spike Lee, in his Jackie Robinson jersey, on the set of Do the Right Thing. (Courtesy of Alamy)   In an Instagram post on March 29, 2020, Spike Lee announced that he would be sharing the 155-page fifth draft of a script for a Jackie Robinson biopic, which he wrote in 1996. The project, he […]

I was inspired to write this article by Jonah Gardner’s Sports-Reference.com post “Remembering Mike Piazza’s 8 Amazing Days with the Florida Marlins,” about Hall-of-Famer Piazza’s short 1998 Florida Marlins stint before getting traded to the New York Mets.1 New York City’s major league teams have a storied history but I was curious: how many Hall-of-Famers […]