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Umpires, the unsung heroes of baseball, predictably received less than an appropriate share of the publicity generated by the 75th anniversary of the World Series in 1978. Although the men in blue are both essential and conspicuous participants in the National Pastime, they continue to be regarded generally as necessary evils by fans and as […]

On Opening Day of the 2015 season, Miami Marlins players and fans had to scurry for cover as Marlins Park was soaked with rain — despite the retractable roof installed on the facility.  Dee Gordon slipped as he accelerated out of the batter’s box. The speedy Miami Marlins second baseman had just laid down a […]

Any way you look at it, the 1970s was a decade of upheaval and change everywhere in the country, but particularly in New York City. The “police action” of Vietnam ended and an era of urban decay began. The personal computer arrived, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center became the world’s tallest buildings, […]

Friday, August 10, 1883, promised excitement for baseball fans in Toledo. The Toledo Blue Stockings of the Northwest League played host to the three-time world champion Chicago White Stockings, and thou­ sands jammed League Park at Monroe and 13th Streets to see the greatest team in baseball and its star player-manager, Cap Anson. What the […]

Introduction The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (minor leagues) and the National and American Leagues held their annual winter meetings one week apart in December 1929. Though there were different points of contention for both the minors and majors, some issues were relevant to all the organizations and leagues. The draft, the signing of […]

In their book The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong tell a small but striking story of the racial insensitivity of Justice Harry A. Blackmun.1 It happened during the drafting and circulation of opinions in Flood v. Kuhn, the 1972 baseball antitrust case.2 As the story goes, when Blackmun circulated the […]

Major-league baseball’s 1964 Winter Meetings were conducted in Houston, Texas, from November 30 to December 4, 1964. This was a time when there were 20 teams in the majors, 10 in each league. Several issues or topics dominated these meetings. The commissioner’s powers had been reduced after A.B. “Happy” Chandler succeeded Kenesaw Mountain Landis in […]

How important is the subject of pitchers’ fielding? Just ask Jim Leyland, manager of the 2006 Detroit Tigers, who lost the World Series. Five errors—four of them throwing errors—committed by four different pitchers, one in every one of the five games of the series, led to seven unearned runs for the opposing St. Louis Cardinals. […]

As the 1875 baseball season approached, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago White Stockings, was livid. Chicago’s entry in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) had attempted, prior to the end of the 1874 season, to sign their star shortstop, Davy Force, for the next year. Such a move violated the […]

There was a time, not long ago, when many people hoped, or feared, that artificial playing surfaces would overtake natural grass in most outdoor sports facilities. The phenomenon started indoors, for good reasons, but by the 1970s every new park had to have fake turf, and even some of the old fields were ripping up […]

In his excellent biography of Bill Veeck, author Paul Dickson tackles the controversy over whether National League president Ford Frick and/or Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis blocked Veeck’s attempt to buy the Phillies in 1942 and field a team of players from the Negro Leagues, as Veeck alleges in his 1962 book, Veeck — as in […]

The first real job I had after university was working in politics on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill. The job title was “legislative assistant to a Member of Parliament,” but really, I was a grunt. I answered the mail, prepared the propaganda, and greeted visitors to the office. The best part of the gig was the location. […]

1962 Detroit Tigers Goodwill Tour program (Robert Fitts Collection)   For the Detroit Tigers 1962 was a year to forget. They finished the season in fourth place, 10½ games behind the pennant-winning Yankees, with 16 fewer wins than the second-place 1961 Detroit club. The best the Tigers could muster in 1962 was second spot in […]

Instead of using shovels, Judge Roy Hofheinz and other officials fire six-shooters at the ceremonial ground-breaking. (PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE HOUSTON ASTROS)   “Houston Astrodome or Bust” —Tagline for Bad News Bears in Breaking Training   The Astrodome was born in spectacle, a very Texan sort of spectacle, tied to the state’s historical heritage and […]

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. “Under current generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me.”1 —Paul […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (McFarland & Co., Fall 2008). Premise By the late 1930s, and particularly during the years of US involvement in World War II, segregation in sport and society was a topic of increasing public interest. Nationalism had at least […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth turned his cricket bat into a broken, splintered mess. Baseball’s great home-run hitter had just smashed an hour’s worth of bowling (cricket’s term for “pitching”). He whacked balls all over a “subterranean” field near the Thames River in London. Alan Fairfax, formerly a top Australian player, coached Ruth and marveled at his pupil’s […]

This article illustrates the problems that existed in the 1884 Minneapolis Grounds, covering the social tensions that arose to legal difficulties that were created by the ballpark.

Major League Baseball has always been a for-profit business.  It emerged from the Roaring Twenties and survived the Great Depression to emerge firmly entrenched as “The National Pastime,” but despite the reverence held for the game the primary objective of the owners was to fill the stadiums and keep costs to a minimum, maximizing their […]

Happy Felton, an all-around entertainer of a long-gone era, aggressively and successfully marketed his skills as a dance-band leader, musician, master of ceremonies, actor, comedian, and radio-stage-vaudeville performer for two decades beginning in the late 1920s. Then he won fame in television’s infancy as the creator and host of Happy Felton’s Knothole (or, Knot-Hole) Gang—a […]

The 1949 Drummondville Cubs, Quebec Provincial League champions. Left to right: Gerry Cotnoir, Roy Zimmerman, Roger Bréard, Quincy Trouppe, Len Hooker, Sal Maglie, Conrado Perez, Roberto Vargas, Joe Promowicz (Prom), Joe luminelli, Danny Gardella, Stan Bréard, Vic Power, Ernie Sawyer. (Collection of Daniel Papillon)   George Gmelch, then playing for the Drummondville Royals, recalled a […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

“Bad trades are a part of baseball; I mean who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas for gosh sakes.” — Annie Savoy, Bull Durham   Outside of the 1919 sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, baseball trades do not often occupy a persistent niche in pop culture. As the Bull Durham quotation indicates, […]