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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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
“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, […]
The American national pastime of bat-and-ball games, played under various names since the colonial era, was formalized to a previously unprecedented degree by the end of the Civil War (1861–65) under the name of “base ball,” as the version played in the Greater New York City (GNYC) area. the Register of Interclub Matches (RIM1) lists […]
Histories of the Philadelphia Phillies portray the club’s admission to the National League (NL) as a straightforward and swift process. Early in 1883, League president Abraham G. Mills informed former star player and old friend Alfred J. Reach that the Worcester franchise was moving to Philadelphia. Mills asked Reach — now a successful business entrepreneur […]
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 […]
Freddie Fitzsimmons of the New York Giants gives a pitching clinic for the All-Japan team. (Courtesy of the San Francisco Giants) On the morning of June 29, 1953, readers of the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa, were greeted by a headline on page 13: “New York Giants Invited to Tour Japan This Fall.”1 […]
To all but a handful of the several hundred spectators attending the Cincinnati Reds’ workout at The University of Michigan’s Ray Fisher Stadium prior to the 1981 “second season” it was an exercise in nostalgia in which baseball loves to indulge. To that knowledgeable handful who were of melodramatic turn it was the staging of […]
The city of Beloit, Wisconsin, has been home to minor league baseball every summer since 1982 when a group of residents successfully purchased a franchise to serve as the Class A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers in the Midwest League. In their history, the team has had three names (Beloit Brewers, 1982-94; Beloit Snappers, 1995-2021; […]
The baseball community met at the Galt House hotel in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, December 3-9, 1992. Reportedly, 1,800 to 1,900 people registered for the annual meeting, with vendors increasing the size of the meeting to about 2,500. By most accounts, the 1992 Winter Meeting was especially eventful, highlighted by a number of prominent free-agent signings […]
Can there be a star quality team without any All Stars? Can a team compiled entirely of All-Stars be mediocre? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes, at least theoretically. Kirk Gibson won an MVP Award but was never named to a single All-Star roster during bis entire career. John Denny won the […]
Gus Greenlee, in hat and tie, shown here with some members of his Pittsburgh Crawfords team. (SABR-Rucker Archive) The United States Negro Baseball League is mostly known for its minor role in the Jackie Robinson story. It was famously backed by Branch Rickey in 1945, possibly for use as a cover for the Brooklyn […]
The 1950 ManDak League Champion Winnipeg Buffaloes, featuring four Negro Leaguers: Hall of Famers Willie Wells (front row, fourth from left) and Leon Day (middle, far left), as well as Lyman Bostock (middle, far right) and Butch Davis (front, second from right). Third from right in the front row is John Kennedy, who never played […]
What with Bill Veeck Jr.’s gregarious nature, numerous achievements, and well-known career as “a champion of the little guy” (to quote from his Hall of Fame plaque), it is not surprising that writers have penned quite a few profiles of the flamboyant baseball executive. On the other hand, regrettably little ink has been spilled in […]
With interim Commissioner Bud Selig calling an end to the 1994 season on September 14 because of the players strike, the baseball offseason commenced earlier than usual. The major feature of the annual winter meetings was, of course, the resolution of the strike, but the issues of offseason transactions and replacement players hung over the […]
The Players’ National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, or Players’ League, completed only one season of competition, 1890, but was the culmination of labor disputes that arose between 1879 and 1889. Professional baseball players were willing to risk future employment — their livelihood — to pry agency from the fists of club owners. The […]
In 2018, a country auction in Maine handling the estate of major leaguer Harry Lord put a photograph up for bid they touted as the “First Ever All-Star Game.”1 The 1910 photo pictured an American League team of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Big Ed Walsh, and ten others including Lord, the former Red […]
The 1985 Winter Meetings had showcased a then-record 62 free agents, but the 1986 free-agent class shattered that mark as 82 players filed for free agency by the deadline.1 Despite the uptick in the number of free agents, however, for the second year in a row none of them signed with a new club at […]
Introduction The most important labor arbitration decision of all time involved baseball, two pitchers and one of the finest labor arbitrators of all time, a true arbitration “superstar.” His 1975 decision in baseball’s Messersmith case still reverberates throughout the multibillion-dollar sports industry. Arbitrator Seitz set the players free. Peter Seitz was a role model for […]
A mural in Montréal attests to Jackie Robinson’s popularity in the city. (Author’s collection) “To the large group of Louisville fans who came here with their team, it may be a lesson of goodwill among men. That it’s the man and not his color, race or creed. They couldn’t fail to tell others down […]