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This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2).   Back in the days when I could claim my local race track as a dependent, I always played longshots. Understand, a longshot wasn’t a horse that just might finish ahead of the field—a good longshot was a splendid […]

The players on the train carrying the St. Louis Cardinals back to Union Station should have been vibrant and fun-loving as it rolled through the Land of Lincoln on October 2, 1949. The Redbirds had thumped the Chicago Cubs, 13-5, at Wrigley Field in the season finale that afternoon. Thanks to a thrilling pennant race, […]

Perhaps the most revered number and jersey in baseball history belongs to Jackie Robinson, who wore number 42 throughout his 10-year career with the Dodgers. As John Odell has said, “Robinson wore number 42 throughout his major league career; for baseball fans and American historians, the number … is … associated with no other player, […]

This article was originally published in “The SABR Book on Umpires and Umpiring” (SABR, 2017), edited by Larry R. Gerlach and Bill Nowlin.   Umpires “Bullet” Rogan, Robert Boone, and Hurley McNair, Ruppert Stadium, May 2, 1940. (NOIR-TECH RESEARCH)   “What about our Negro baseball umpires? They are cussed, discussed, made the subject of all […]

Babe Ruth strikes a batting pose at Fenway Park in the early 1930s. (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   Even among Jazz Age giants like Al Jolson and Jack Dempsey, it was Babe Ruth who was the King of Swing. “I swing as hard as I can, and I try to […]

Ty Cobb is still remembered as one of the greatest players in the game’s history. He’s perhaps the only player from more than one hundred years ago whose name is still recognized by even casual fans. However, he bears the burden of having played in an era when statistics weren’t compiled or analyzed at anywhere […]

Lou Gehrig Played First and Last Games of Consecutive Streak at Yankee Stadium In the July 12, 1999, edition of Sports Illustrated, the magazine listed some memorable dates in the history of Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The item for May 1, 1939, read,”Lou Gehrig played his 2,130th consecutive game—the last of his major league career.” […]

Since the National League started in 1876, there have been only 28 seasons in which a batter finished with a batting average of .400 or higher. Wanting to see how different players had achieved the rare feat of batting .400, I used many different sources to compile different “splits” about each and every .400 season. […]

    Baseball rules were amended in 1891 to allow for substitute batters for other than emergency conditions. That was 86 years ago; yet, from a recordkeeping standpoint, there are still many gaps regarding the performance of pinch hitters on a seasonal and a career basis. What pinch hitter had the most doubles, triples, or […]

In Philadelphia, Mundell’s Solar Tips moved back and forth among the various levels of baseball during the 1880s and 1890s. Their history is illustrative of the more open and entrepreneurial baseball world that ended long ago. John Mundell Jr. founded the Solar Tips baseball team in 1879. The first players were workers in the factory […]

Your team clings to a lead in the late innings and is trying to get out of a first-and-third, one-out jam. Your pitcher gives up a long fly to right-center, and both runners take off. But your fleet center fielder seemingly saves the day. She sprints, leaps, extends, dives, and snags the drive inches off […]

Any way you look at it, the 1970s was a decade of upheaval and change everywhere in the country, but particularly in New York City. The “police action” of Vietnam ended and an era of urban decay began. The personal computer arrived, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center became the world’s tallest buildings, […]

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the April 2018 edition of the SABR Deadball Era Committee newsletter. One of the great and enduring achievements of the latter part of the Deadball Era was, in fact, literary: the 1916 publication of “You Know Me Al” by Ring Lardner. The book, which could today be […]

Ever wonder who were the best big leaguers to be born in Kentucky?  Approximately 150 players from our 120 counties have worn a big league uniform, but fewer than one-third of them played for as long as five seasons. Performance over time is essential in choosing an all-star lineup, so in picking players for the […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

Red Lucas had three strong points as a National League player in the 1920s and 1930s. He had excellent control as a pitcher, the best for any hurler in his era; he completed most of the games he started, having the best record in the NL since 1920; and he was a very good hitter, […]

Once a very sparsely settled farming community, Holyoke, Massachusetts’s geographic location on the banks of the Connecticut River was ideal for development, utilizing its ample source of hydroelectric power.1 A group of four wealthy executives from Boston, about 90 miles to the east, believed the South Hadley Falls of the river was large and powerful […]

The 1927 Pittsburgh Pirates are generally remembered for losing in the World Series to the New York Yankees’ Murderers’ Row, a juggernaut highlighted by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at their offensive peak. Although the Yankees did sweep the Pirates in four straight games, two of them — Games One and Four — were decided […]

The average time required to play a major-league baseball game continues to hover just under three hours; the average game in 2009 took two hours and 55.4 minutes. However, games taking longer than that average are becoming more common—especially in the postseason, when the average grows to 3:36.6. In 2009, only one of the 30 […]

  Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” […]

It is well known that a manager may formally protest a game only if he claims an umpire has made a decision contrary to the rules. Dissatisfaction with a specific call (safe/out, ball/strike, fair/foul) is not grounds for a protest. However, sometimes things get a little murky. Take, for example, the game of July 20, […]

It is well known that a manager may formally protest a game only if he claims an umpire has made a decision contrary to the rules. Dissatisfaction with a specific call (safe/out, ball/strike, fair/foul) is not grounds for a protest. However, sometimes things get a little murky. Take, for example, the game of July 20, […]

Minor-league baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is virtually synonymous with Texas League professional baseball in the region. The small parts not connected to the Texas League are the rise and fall of black baseball in the area and the brief sojourns of the Fort Worth and Dallas teams in other leagues. (The Metroplex is […]