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  I was born in a small farming town in the southwest Minnesota prairie. In 1963, when I was 5 years old, our family moved to Milwaukee. Like all our friends and most of our neighbors, my brother and I loved all things baseball. We played catch in the backyard and organized endless pickup games […]

1960 San Francisco Giants Goodwill tour program featuring Willie Mays (Robert Fitts Collection)   The San Francisco Giants enjoyed a banner year in 1960. After almost five years of planning by the city’s mayor and Board of Supervisors and two years of problem-plagued construction, the Giants’ new ballpark, Candlestick Park, opened in time for the […]

We know it didn’t come to pass, but when Fenway Park was less than 10 years old, there there was discussion of disposing of it. The park was opened in 1912 and at the time had hosted the world champion Boston Red Sox in four of its eight years—1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918. But in […]

Jackie Robinson, center, shows his son Jack Jr. and the son of Roy Campanella the statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands outside the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey in February 1951. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)   On July 18, 1949, Jackie Robinson appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify against Paul Robeson, […]

Advertising billed The Great American Pastime as a comedy that would “keep us all in stitches.”   Following the Second World War, the baseball genre film enjoyed considerable popularity with Hollywood filmmakers hoping to recapture the commercial success of The Pride of the Yankees (1942). As that film re-told Lou Gehrig’s life story, many of […]

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 […]

In a scene from the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers”, Chico and Harpo attempt to switch a priceless painting with a copy. After the usual mayhem, the duo turns to exit, stage left. When they open the French doors, there’s a caterwauling of thunder, with lightning and sheets of rain. The pair close the doors, head […]

The feat of collecting five or more hits in a single game was rare enough, even for baseball in the nineteenth century, but when one player managed to do it in four separate games during a single season, that was one of the rarest accomplishments in the history of baseball. In fact, it was so […]

Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]

Current defensive statistics are far less meaningful than batting or fielding  statistics,  mostly because  the  correct  information  is  not  collected. Statistics that do exist tend either to be not revealing or incredibly complex. I propose the collection of a single new piece of information that I think might change popular understandings of defense and allow […]

A MAGIC SUMMER: FORTY YEARS LATER Now, 40 years after the fact, the “Miracle” has finally become the property of history. Two generations have quickly slipped by. You need to be in your 50s to have a clear recollection of the Legend of the 1969 Mets and what they meant, banked against the futility of […]

  This story is about the first nationally telecast spring training game in major-league baseball history. It describes events that enabled this groundbreaking expansion in televising baseball games to occur. It then examines why the broadcast is best remembered for being suddenly and inexplicably stopped while the game was in progress, leaving TV screens dark […]

Branch Rickey assumed the duties of executive vice president and general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates on November 3, 1950. Given Rickey’s accomplishments, there was significant hope that the Pirates would become a force in the National League. Rickey brought to Pittsburgh his philosophy of winning, which was that it couldn’t be done unless you […]

Heinie Groh of the Cincinnati Reds had one of the most distinctive bats in baseball history, a “bottle bat” which had about a 17-inch barrel that tapered sharply to a thin handle. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   Introduction Over the centuries, baseball bat shapes have undergone all kinds of contortions: Bat diameters have […]

During the four seasons that Bobby Wine and Ruben Amaro were teammates, from 1962 through 1965, they split the shortstop duties for the Philadelphia Phillies — and each won a Gold Glove. In May 1962, Rubén Amaro (who had previously been in the Mexican Army) was recalled to service in the US Army. The Phillies […]

Dummy Hoy taught his teammates sign language, which they began to use in game situations and even off the field. Initially, Hoy when at bat had to turn around to look at the umpire’s hand signal in order to see the call, ball or strike. Opposing pitchers would rush him. In 1887, after adopting the […]

The pregame ceremonies before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series included a giant American flag in center field and President George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch. (Courtesy of Scott Pitoniak)   At Yankee Stadium over the weekend of September 7-9, 2001, the Yankees had swept the visiting Boston Red Sox. Boston was […]

The annual meetings of the National League and the American Association after the 1888 season took place in the unusual context of “the great event in the modern history of athletic sports,” as the famous baseball journalist Henry Chadwick dubbed it. He was referring to the six-month world tour by the Chicago White Stockings and […]

The 1915 season had been a tough one for Organized Baseball, and murky moods were probably spread widely across the sport as the annual meetings approached in November and December. As noted in a Sporting Life preview of the four-day meeting of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL), membership had plunged from 47 […]

The 1976 renovation of Yankee Stadium removed the columns that obstructed views on the lower decks and the seats in center field that obstructed batters, but it also relegated the recognizable frieze to above the outfield wall. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In the spring of 1976, the Yankees celebrated a grand reopening of Yankee Stadium.1 It […]

The 1988 Major League-Japan All-Star Series was the 24th time that major leaguers had gone on a goodwill tour of Japan. Although many independent tours had happened over decades, the semiannual Japan All-Star Series had only begun in 1986. On that tour, the major-league All-Stars won the series six games to one. Gearing up for […]

Introduction and Context The National Association didn’t just survive during the summer of 1935 — it flourished. “The past season,” recalled promotional department head Joe Carr, “was one of the very best that minor league baseball has experienced in years.”1 For the Association’s 34th annual meeting, about 2,000 baseball people convened in Dayton, Ohio, to […]

Still there: the Braves Field administration building/main entrance is now Boston University’s police station at Nickerson Field. (Courtesy of Bob Brady)   When Braves Field opened on August 18, 1915, it had the largest capacity of any stadium in professional baseball at 45,000. A century later, with only the right-field pavilion remaining and with just […]

  In the modern game, a team’s fortune or failure is often the burden of the general manager. The GM hires the field manager, signs or passes on available free agents, makes transactions with teams, and, with the farm director and his legion of scouts, oversees the amateur free agent draft. Out of all that […]