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It’s tough enough to throw a shutout in your final season – fewer than 300 pitchers did – and almost impossible to zip the opposition in your final game. In 1901, Bill Cristall, a rookie left-handed pitcher and a native of Odessa, Russia, started six games for the Cleveland Blues of the new American League. […]

In the first years of the American League, its eight clubs added to their ranks by drawing away players from the older National League. Baseball had been slumping, a situation stemming from the country’s economic depression and the failed leadership of team owners. Attempting to snap out if it, the NL magnates had pared down […]

Charlie Dressen. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   As soon as the last pitch of a baseball season is thrown, owners of major-league franchises and executives in front offices focus on the year ahead. Offseason decisions, even from clubs that have experienced success, occasionally surprise outside observers when prominent players are traded, sold, or released—or when managers and […]

On-Base Performance is very important — it is the absolute prerequisite for the most critical aspect of playing winning baseball — scoring runs. In order for a team to score a run, at least one of its players must get on base. The conventional metric for On Base Performance is On Base Average (OBA), oftentimes called On Base Percentage […]

Leo Durocher made the cover of Time magazine just once: the April 14, 1947, issue. Published the day before Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Time article did not cast the Dodgers’ manager in a kind light. The words “I don’t want any nice guys on my ball club” […]

The intentional base on balls was a part of professional baseball long before it became a part of baseball’s official statistics. The Sporting News’s Baseball Record Book lists Napoleon Lajoie of the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League as the first player to receive an intentional walk with the bases full, in the ninth inning […]

When Pete Rose hustled down to first base after rapping out base hit No. 4,192 on September 11, 1985, neither he nor the adoring crowd at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium knew that their hero had already passed Ty Cobb’s revised total of 4,189 career hits. Many baseball records are erroneously regarded as sacrosanct: these historic numbers […]

Playing in the postseason is high stress and tension-packed, bringing ballplayers to the edge, making them play harder and sometimes better, sometimes making mistakes along the way. The idea of reaching the postseason in New York City—the Capital of Baseball—brings an extra burden for players, even more with the hard-core rivalries like the New York […]

Back in the Deadball Era, Sherry Magee was called “one of the greatest and most neglected of sluggers,” “a born dynamiter with the bat,” and “a genuine murderer of the pill.” Today we’d call him a five-tool player: he could hit, run, field, throw, and hit with power. We might also call him a psychopath. […]

Pitching, as the old cliché goes, is somewhere between 75 and 90% of baseball. The official averages issued each year provide us with a record for each pitcher. This article will present a summary of data compiled on 14 different measures for a group of 46 pitchers active in the 1957-78 period. The pitchers selected […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   The baseball season of 1890 was a tumultuous season on and off the field. It was the year of open battled in the Brotherhood War, with the players forming their own league and fielding a full schedule of […]

“Skip and Pete” — Caray and Van Wieren — broadcast Atlanta Braves games together for 33 years.I first met Skip Caray on a December day in 1975, when he and I were introduced as the new members of the Atlanta Braves broadcast team. Little did we know that it was the beginning of a 33-year […]

Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]

 Minor-League Winter Meeting The prospect of war cast a long shadow over the National Association meeting for 1941. Europe and Asia had been mired in conflict for more than two years by this time, and just days after the meetings concluded, the United States would be forced to enter the second worldwide war of the […]

Jim Bouton (right) and John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s Official Historian, sharing the stage at SABR’s 47th annual convention in New York City in 2017. (Photo: Jacob Pomrenke)   In the fall of 1976, CBS Television premiered the television series Ball Four, based upon the 1970 book by former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton, a best-seller […]

Early baseball teams in Minneapolis and St. Paul played in a number of hastily built and short-lived ballparks before settling on a pair that each lasted 60 years, longer than any other park or field used for professional baseball in the Twin Cities.  NICOLLET AND LEXINGTON Opened and closed a year apart, Nicollet Park in […]

Across the decades, professional actors and athletes have shared a special camaraderie. Both are paid entertainers, performing for the pleasure of the masses. So not surprisingly, many thespians are vocal supporters of their favorite ball teams. Back in the day, for example, Tallulah Bankhead was a famed New York Giants fan-atic. (“There have been only […]

After a 1985 season in which he hit 29 home runs and drove in 97 runs, Detroit Tigers outfielder Kirk Gibson was the top position player of that winter’s free-agent class. So when he accepted an invitation to go bird hunting with people from the Kansas City Royals, he believed the outing would be a […]

Sitting in the bleachers at Coffee Pot Park during a break at spring training. The seats were pine boards without arm or backrests. Left to right: Erskine Mayer, Pat Moran, Jack Adams, Dode Paskert. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   It seems obvious that Florida is an apt location for major league baseball to […]

Do clutch hitters exist? More precisely, are there any batters whose performance in critical game situations consistently exceeds expectations, as established both by that batter’s performance in less critical situations and also by the relative performance of average batters in critical game situations? Thirty years ago one of us published a first investigation of clutch […]

As inadvisable as it would be to draw conclusions based on 34 plate appearances or 72 innings of defense spread out over more than a decade, it’s safe to state that Roberto Clemente’s All-Star Game performances only enhanced his legacy. The lifetime .317 hitter batted .323 in 15 midsummer exhibitions against his most skilled competitors […]

San Francisco Giants Hall of Famer Willie Mays influenced the lives of two other Giants, Bobby and Barry Bonds, both of whom who had significant careers of their own. He was Bobby’s teammate with the Giants, while taking on the role of godfather for Barry as a youngster. When Barry later became a Giant, Mays continued […]

Amidst the current upsurge of social activism among professional athletes, it is worth recalling the enormous contribution of Jim Bouton, one of the most politically outspoken sports figures in American history. Among professional team sports, baseball may be the most conservative and tradition-bound, but throughout its history, rebels and mavericks have emerged to challenge the […]

Toronto hosted the 1979 winter meetings at the Sheraton Centre, marking the fourth time the winter meetings were held outside the United States (Montreal in 1930 and 1936 and Mexico City in 1967).1 The owners’ discussions, both formal and informal, focused on the game’s economics and the coming labor negotiations with the players — only […]