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While the New York Yankees had a wife swap between pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich in Florida in March of 1973, the Oakland A’s went about the business of getting ready to defend a world championship in Arizona. The only snag was that the A’s had no experience as world champions. The organization had […]

When Roy Hofheinz took charge of the Astrodome project, he envisioned a venue that would host a broad range of activities. Before moving forward with the project, Hofheinz, a former state representative, judge, mayor, and entrepreneur, had worked with Buckminster Fuller to plan and design an indoor shopping mall that would feature a unique dome […]

South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin […]

As World War II progressed and the war effort lay greater and greater claim to American resources, every industry tightened up as best it could. One adaptation that baseball made was to schedule spring training nearer the cities that the teams would ultimately have as a home base. The Boston Red Sox, then, instead of […]

Roy Mack affixes his signature to an agreement selling the Athletics to the Philadelphia syndicate on October 17, 1954—a commitment Roy would betray just a day later in a backroom deal with Arnold Johnson. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Bill Renna was playing winter ball for the 1953–54 San Juan Senators, managed by […]

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. There are ways of recognizing the best pitched games of starting hurlers — the record books list the no-hit games and in a special category even the perfect games where no […]

  The death of Roberto Clemente on December 31, 1972, caused shock waves across the globe. He was just a few months removed from being the 11th player, and the first Latin American, to record 3,000 hits in the major leagues. The 38-year-old right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates was on a humanitarian mission taking […]

At first I thought it was a misprint. Right in the middle of the Deadball Era — the years of the Hitless Wonders, small ball and Bill Bergen — the 1911 Boston Nationals’ pitchers allowed 1,021 runs scored.1 Even for 1911, the high-water mark for offense in that era, it was a phenomenal number of […]

Not long after D-Day, in June 1944, Esquire magazine summoned 16- and 17-year-old boys from all over the country to New York for the first Esquire All-American Boys Baseball Game. Chicago was one of 29 cities to send players to this game. A local newspaper would select a deserving local player and pay their travel […]

A moment that marked a dramatic shift in the power structure between major league baseball players and owners occurred on December 23, 1975, when an arbitrator’s decision brought an end to the primary effects of the reserve clause. Prior to the decision,the pendulum of power had been firmly with the owners. The players had made […]

Havana served for many years as something of a playground for the idle wealthy of the United States, as often as not those of New York, particularly during the Prohibition years (1920-1933), when alcohol was banned in by an amendment to the US Constitution. It was a major tourist mecca and attracted a large number […]

Appendix 2 in Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Hank Greenberg.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the April 2018 edition of the SABR Deadball Era Committee newsletter.  On April 24, 1901, the American League’s inaugural day as a major league, Cleveland Blues second baseman Erve Beck collected the loop’s first extra-base hit when he led off the top of the ninth inning with […]

The Society launched a research project in 1976 to gather information about — what is now a rather rare baseball occurrence — the inside-the-park home run (IPH). Some of the questions raised at the outset of this project v re rather basic in nature. How many inside-the-park homers are being hit at the present time […]

“In all due respect to Henry Aaron, Stan Musial and Willie Mays, the best hitter I ever played against was Roberto Clemente.”— Pete Rose, recipient of the 1976 Roberto Clemente Award1 The baseballs are signed by Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Ton Seaver, Ferguson Jenkins, Don Drysdale, and Sandy Koufax – each one a Hall of […]

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey talk happily after a contract signing meeting in the offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field on January 25, 1950. (SABR/The Rucker Archive)   In 1947, concerned about the firestorm that could erupt once he went public with his plan to break baseball’s color barrier by hiring Jackie Robinson, […]

Sandy Koufax pitched 14 complete games in which he gave up two hits or fewer. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   In the run-up to the 1970 season, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn shared plans to continue minor-league trials with what became the designated hitter, begin another trial with livelier baseballs, and explore “bending” foul lines […]

On August 8, 1979, the visiting Milwaukee Brewers defeated the hometown Baltimore Orioles 8-4. The visitors scored a run in the top of the first inning, but the home team came back with three runs in the bottom half. Slowly, with a run in the fourth and another in the seventh, the visitors fought back to […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   The city of Louisville has a rich baseball history. Louisville was a charter member of the National League as well as the major league American Association. Pete Browning, perhaps the greatest hitter not in baseball’s Hall of Fame, […]

Introduction The 1983 Baseball Winter Meetings were held at the Opryland Hotel, in Nashville, Tennessee, from December 5 to 10. Trades and free-agent signings usually headline the agenda of the annual gathering of executives, managers, scouts, agents, lawyers, accountants, and media personnel. Going into the 1983 meetings, though, there were several unresolved issues, including the […]

The media market in North Texas was changing in 1972, just as the rest of the country was. With the advent of television, newspapers had felt the pinch as advertising dollars shifted to the new medium. Now, a couple of decades after the arrival of television, newspapers were beginning to fold or merge with others. […]

On Larry Tye’s 2009 biography of Paige and Timothy M. Gay’s 2010 book on the barnstorming tours of Paige, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.

Among the more noteworthy events in major-league baseball in 2010 were a) the San Francisco Giants winning their first World Series since 1954 (when the franchise was based in New York) when they defeated the Texas Rangers in five games; b) the in-season retirement of several stars, including future Hall of Famers Randy Johnson, Frank […]

Roland Hemond joined the Los Angeles Angels’ on the ground floor in 1961, remaining with the Halos until 1970. Here is Hemond in 1961 with prospects Dan Ardell (l) and Tom Satriano (Courtesy of Angels Baseball)   Responding to six decades of demographic change, the National and American leagues moved to expand as the 1960s […]