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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. Editor’s Note By John Thorn Let me tell you how this wonderful reminiscence by a seemingly nondescript Red Sox pitcher came to light. When I created The National Pastime (TNP) as […]

It’s a basic rule that’s familiar to all baseball fans: A batter, when struck by a pitched ball, shall be awarded first base. While some people may dismiss the hit-by-pitch as a relatively minor aspect of the game, a hit batsman can have significant consequences. As an extreme example, the Tommy Byrne pitch that struck […]

Walter O’Malley, center, shown with Jersey City officials, announced that, in 1956 through 1958, the Dodgers would play seven games each season in Jersey City and would have the option to continue the agreement for three years beyond that.   INTRODUCTION  The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the […]

Willie Mays and Willie McCovey played together for 14 seasons, including in McCovey’s 1969 MVP campaign. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Willie Mays and Willie McCovey formed one of the greatest one-two power combinations in baseball history. The pair were teammates on the San Francisco Giants from 1959 to 1972. During that stretch, they won the 1962 National […]

October 16, 1958 Robert Hyland, General Manager, KMOX Radio In my opinion, there is no more effective way of strengthening mutual understanding among nations than through the people to people approach, and I am convinced that international sports engagements are playing a very important role in building international friendship and good will. For that reason, […]

Introduction and Context The 1939 baseball winter meetings were held in Cincinnati, with the major and minor leagues meeting together for the first time since 1923. But meeting together provided little impetus for agreement. The minor leagues approved several measures to govern major-minor affiliations, but when the American and National Leagues split on whether to […]

One could pen a book or perhaps even an encyclopedia on the manner in which baseball and television have merged across the decades. Such a volume not only would explore the manner in which ballgames have been broadcast on TV both locally and nationally and the celebrated sportscasters who announce them. It would feature everything […]

St Louis on the evening of July 19, 1950. The New York Giants came to town to challenge the winging Cardinals, engaged in a taut four-team race with Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Boston. A mere one and one-half games separated the contenders. Unlike their hosts, the visiting Giants harbored no pennant aspirations. Having just lost 12 […]

Most baseball fans are familiar with historian Jacques Barzun’s famous 1954 quotation, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball,” but they may not know the rest of the sentence: “…the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”1 If […]

Indian Head Rockets sweater crest, 1951. (Indian Head Museum)   “Wonder how long it will be before we have baseball in these parts again?” mused the man on Coffee Row as he sipped his java. He was scanning the sports pages jammed with holiday ball tournaments. There must have been 100 teams within hailing distance […]

On October 10, 1961, the National League held the expansion draft to provide players for the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets. While the American League had held a seemingly similar expansion draft on December 14, 1960, the National League draft had the following distinctions: It was held earlier in the year. There […]

Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]

The Illinois-Indiana-Iowa baseball league started its ninth consecutive season of play in May 1909. While the league was better known then as the Three-I or Three-Eye league, the name was actually a misnomer. The eight teams in the league that year were located only in Illinois and Iowa. (This would not be the last time […]

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. When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, it was their fifth triumph in the fifteen years of the modern classic. The club had the best player in […]

Editor’s note: In the Spring 2012 issue of “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game,” noted Black Sox expert Bob Hoie used player salary data to put to rout the long-held notion that the 1919 Chicago White Sox were underpaid. As it turns out, the Sox had the second-highest player payroll in the major […]

If a modern fan could be transported back to a baseball game in 1908, to the strains of the new tune “Take Me out to the Ball Game,” he or she would feel right at home. The rules, the two major leagues, and many of the teams were similar then to what they are today. […]

In May of 1957, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley took a helicopter ride over Chavez Ravine, the eventual home of his iconic new ballpark. In Brooklyn he had loaded the team with Italian and African American players to reflect the demographics of that borough. He wanted his team to reflect the large Mexican American population in […]

The National League winter meetings of 1897-1898 were conducted during a period of good feeling among club owners, with Cincinnati Reds boss John T. Brush at the height of his influence. The gatherings were highly productive in terms of the adoption of new legislation and policy, although some initiatives, particularly the player-conduct commandments known as […]

Mislabeling all winter baseball played in California as “California Winter League” ignores the uneven color lines that existed in that time and place.

The National League and the American Association entered their respective winter meetings — hereafter called the annual meetings1 — buoyed by the growing popularity and profits of the past 1886 season.2 The owners recognized that to further expand the popularity of baseball and, with the consequent rise in attendance, increase their profits, they had to […]

When I first became interested in baseball as a little leaguer in 1960-61, my reading and TV ex­periences eventually led me to San Diego’s Westgate Park (opened two years earlier), home of the Pacific Coast League Padres. There I could see Gary Peters, Suitcase Simpson, and the locals in person. When a player got hurt, […]