If you are not happy with the results below please do another search
Venezuela might have become a soccer-focused country, like the rest of South America, if not for three pivotal historical events: 1) Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez and his son, Gonzalo, developed a profound love for baseball. They sponsored teams and paid the players’ salaries, even when baseball was supposed to be an amateur sport. Their […]
In 2022, the Lords of Baseball decreed that the full infield shift, which had become commonplace in baseball, would be banned. Since the 2023 season, all four infielders must be within the outer boundary of the dirt, with two on each side of second base and no switching sides. After a violation, the wronged team […]
In February 2021, SABR member Rich Campbell observed that the San Francisco Giants might utilize a lineup during the 2021 baseball season where all of the players on the field were over 30 years old. This observation prompted Ben Lindbergh, the cohost of Effectively Wild (the FanGraphs podcast), to explore the over-30 lineup question in […]
As the major-league ownership gathered in Chicago, Illinois from December 8 through 10, 1931, the Great Depression was a silent partner to the discussions. Unemployment rose dramatically in 1931, topping out at 16 percent and showing no signs of relenting. Attendance dropped at almost every ballpark during the 1931 season, and overall attendance for the […]
Some sportswriters in the 1960s worried that Willie Mays was actually hurting the Giants. One magazine headline asked, “Is Willie really worth $105,000?” (SABR-Rucker Archive) If we didn’t have proof, we probably wouldn’t believe it. If there hadn’t been hundreds of magazines published in the 1960s about baseball, a large percentage of them containing articles […]
This article was originally published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 30 (2001). As famed radio news commentator Paul Harvey might expound, “And now for the rest of the story.” What story? The one detailing the how and the who of the long-overlooked run batted in that, 69 years after Hack Wilson accomplished the […]
The San Francisco Giants – a party of more than 60, including players, management, and staff, plus embedded sportswriters – boarded their chartered Japan Airlines jet at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on the damp gray morning of Tuesday, March 31, 1970. Among the players, the prevailing mood was one of relief that their two-week ordeal in […]
Gary Ward with the Big 8 conference championship trophy in 1995, the 15th of 16 consecutive league championships. (Oklahoma State Athletics) Founded in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1890, Oklahoma A&M College (OAMC) became Oklahoma State University (OSU) in 1957. The school fielded its first baseball team in 1909 and from then through the 1977 season, […]
Jackie Robinson, right, shakes hands with manager Leo Durocher of the Brooklyn Dodgers at spring training in Havana, Cuba in March 1947. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE) In reviewing the career of Jackie Robinson in hindsight, one advantage is that everything seems as if it was a certainty. Robinson was one of the great players in the […]
Jackie Robinson lifts a pennant to commemorate his being traded from the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Giants on December 14, 1956, at his home in Brooklyn. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE) In October 1956, the Brooklyn Dodgers faced the New York Yankees in the World Series for the sixth time in Jackie Robinson’s 10 years […]
October 16, 1958 Robert Hyland, General Manager, KMOX Radio In my opinion, there is no more effective way of strengthening mutual understanding among nations than through the people to people approach, and I am convinced that international sports engagements are playing a very important role in building international friendship and good will. For that reason, […]
A few days after Shohei Ohtani made his major league debut on March 29, 2018, Jay Jaffe wrote, “Ohtani is doing things that haven’t been done at the major league level in nearly a century. … and not since 1919 has a player served as both a starting pitcher and a position player with any […]
Rube Waddell. Walter Johnson. Lefty Grove. Bob Feller. Sandy Koufax. Sam McDowell. Nolan Ryan. Doc Gooden. Roger Clemens. Pedro Martinez. Randy Johnson. (There are others, of course.) Their names are synonymous with “overpowering strikeout pitcher.” Even as time marches on, their names are not forgotten because each has been a standard against which subsequent generations […]
Baker Bowl it was a wonderful place! More action probably took place on those Philadelphia grounds than at any other athletic facility in our country. For half a century the place was packed with action. There was major league baseball, championship boxing and wrestling, and professional football — say nothing of such extra-curricular activities as […]
Roger Kahn and Bob Ryan have highlighted both the excitement and the ulcers of minor league executives who live at best a hand to mouth existence. In Season in the Sun and Wait Till I Make the Show these writers found minor league baseball both fascinating and exasperating, a form of insanity chasing bankruptcy. Yet […]
Pittsburgh Pirate Honus Wagner is the greatest shortstop of all time. Baseball guru Bill James ranks Wagner as the second greatest baseball player in history, behind only Babe Ruth. He was a longtime hero in Pittsburgh. So how did the beloved Pirate get routed in the 1925 race for sheriff of Allegheny County? He ran […]
A crowd heads toward Braves Field. The ticket and administration building (shown at left) still stands and today serves as the headquarters for the Boston University police. Note the trolley tracks in the foreground, indicating the path of transit vehicles exiting from within the ballpark itself. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) The best stories […]
Shigeo Nagashima of the Yomiuri Giants and Boog Powell. (Robert Fitts Collection) Matsutaro Shoriki spent four decades dreaming of an international World Series matching the champion team of American baseball and that of the Japanese. He created Japan’s greatest team, sponsored by his newspaper and known over the years as either the Tokyo or […]
“How about the Browns?” “Have they really a chance?” “Do you think they’ll cop that old pennant?” “Are they going to steam us up like this and then blow?” Everywhere you go you hear such questions. The barber asks the customer, the elevator man asks the newsboy, bank tellers can’t cash a check without some […]
R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?” TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?” Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In […]
“I don’t like to compare myself to hitters of the past because people always start talking about eras — ‘Gwynn’s got to face four different pitchers in a game’ — all that stuff. Forget all that. It’s still the game of baseball. When I’m dead and gone, all that will be left is the numbers. […]
In the opener of this two-part series, published in Baseball Research Journal 53, Number 1, I described how fielding (infield and outfield shifting) and batting (emphasis on pulling and fly-ball hitting) contributed to the 25-point decrease in batting averages between 2007 and 2022, from .268 to .243. As batting average on balls in play dropped […]
This article was honored as a 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner. The names of Jenny Fulle, Amy Dickinson, Elizabeth Osder, and Janine Cinseruli are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the existing literature regarding the integration of female ballplayers into Little League Baseball. These four girls were pioneers on the ground in the first […]