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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 […]

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

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 […]

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.

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, […]

1931 All-Americans in front of the Oriental Hotel in Kobe (National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, NY)   It was a tour initially framed by the dreams of retired fringe major-league outfielder Herb Hunter, the continuing quest of a Japanese newspaper publisher to bring Babe Ruth to Japan before he retired as a player, and the metastasizing […]

Henry Chadwick, baseball’s first historian, tried to capture a game in a chart for his newspaper readers. It was called a box score, and as it evolved over the years, it offered the raw material for the statistically minded to analyze, understand, and appreciate the game. There were dozens who followed, from Ernie Lanigan, longtime […]

When Frank Thomas reached base in 15 consecutive plate appearances in May 1997, all the record books were examined to see who was the all-time record holder of this obscure feat. The only book with this entry listed was The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book. To no one’s surprise, Ted Williams was listed with […]

The idea for Who’s On First: Replacement Players in World War II was conceived in January 2011.  The original thought was to compile biographies of some of the players who made their debut during World War II and went on to successful careers after the war ended. (The premise was that perhaps they got their […]

All batters think it’s great to hit a home run. They think it’s even better to hit one as a pinch hitter. And when the bases are loaded and you’re called off the bench to deliver — and you do! There’s hardly anything to match the emotional impact of a pinch grand slam! Here’s a […]

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 […]

He was forever young on his baseball card—6-foot-2, with a square jaw, and a passing resemblance to Mickey Mantle. He was 24, and I was in the third grade. It was the summer of 1963. I never minded that he set a record for strikeouts in a single season that year, which is how many […]

Click here to download your free e-book edition or save 50% on the paperback of From Rube to Robinson: SABR’s Best Articles on Black Baseball, edited by John Graf (SABR, 2021)   It almost goes without saying, that were it not for the Negro Leagues, modern professional baseball would be in a much different place. […]

On September 20, 2002, the Los Angeles Dodgers played a doubleheader against the Arizona Diamondbacks and scored five runs in the eighth inning to come back and take game one 6-5. This gave the Dodgers a season record of 103-44, a .700 winning percentage (briefly, as they lost game two), a feat rarely accomplished in […]

Once upon a time, A.J. Liebling, consummate Manhattanite and writer for The New Yorker, dubbed Chicago America’s Second City.1 But in relation to New York-centric baseball movies, this AAA-league rating is extremely generous. Across the decades, baseball films with Chicago references have been relatively scarce. For every on-screen image of Wrigley Field, there are scores […]

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 […]

Bill James recently asserted that Dick Cramer’s famous 1977 clutch-hitting study, which purportedly demonstrated that clutch talent is a myth, was fatally flawed. James argued that the study’s finding that year-to-year clutch hitting looks random was not enough to show nonexistence. Here, the author uses statistical methods to try to determine whether James’s argument is […]

Eddie Waitkus, the Fightin’ Phillies first-sacker, is best remembered not for his 182 hits and .284 average on the 1950 National League pennant-winners and not for any other on-field accomplishment. Instead, his name is inexorably linked to the plight and fate of the central character in an all-time classic baseball novel. One might imagine that […]

Because it seemed both helpful and important to attempt to round out Richard “Dick” Higham’s story (see TNP 2000 and TNP 2001) with photographs, I researched libraries, archives, newspapers, and magazines, etc. Identifying 19th-century baseball players in 19th-century photographs can be trying. Finding such pictures and attempting to determine whether you have actually succeeded in […]

The First starred David Alan Grier, as Jackie Robinson, along with costar David Huddleston as Branch Rickey. (Courtesy of David Chapman)   “You know what would be a great musical? The story of Jackie Robinson.” So said film critic Joel Siegel to writer Martin Charnin at a chance meeting at their business manager’s midtown office […]

Records of home runs hit by batters have been a part of baseball information and statistics essentially from the beginning of the National League in 1876. It is true that this information was not of overwhelming interest to the public until the advent of Babe Ruth and the launching of the lively ball era in […]

In 1876, the United States was a century old and had 38 states. Grant was president, and Custer met his end at Little Big Horn. Alexander Graham Bell was demonstrating his telephone, but Thomas Edison’s electric light bulb was still three years away. In Chicago, horse drawn streetcars rattled along cobblestone streets in front of […]

In 1877 the National League began the season on April 30 with six clubs. However, in mid-June, the Cincinnatis disbanded for reasons only partly related to their poor on-field performance. A second Cincinnati club was quickly organized under different ownership and stronger financial backing. It began play less than three weeks after the first disbanded […]

People of a certain age know where they were when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt died, and Bobby Thomson swung. “The most famous sports moment of all time,” Jon Miller termed Thomson’s October 3, 1951, pennant-winning blast. We still recall the Shot Heard ’Round the World: Russ Hodges five times crying, “The Giants […]