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Mike Piazza, Sadaharu Oh and Tommy Lasorda (Courtesy of Mark Langill)   What felt like a nostalgia trip unexpectedly served as a dress rehearsal for the next frontier of professional baseball when the 1993 Los Angeles Dodgers staged a modest five-game “Friendship Series” in Taiwan and Japan. Nobody could’ve predicted a “Tornado” on the horizon, […]

Baseball tradition before the Civil War favored the selection of respected, senior members of the community as umpires, to interpret rules and resolve disputes between opponents typically grateful for their help. Interjecting themselves only now and then into the conduct of games, umpires were pampered; “given easy chairs, placed near home plate [and] provided with […]

Jim Spencer had 36 major-league home runs at Yankee Stadium during his 15-year career, the first coming on August 6, 1969. However, his first Yankee Stadium homer came on August 12, 1963, in a tune-up game for the annual Hearst Sandlot Classic. Spencer was on the United States All-Stars, who defeated the Eastern Pennsylvania All-Stars, […]

Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]

Nineteen twenty-one was a remarkable baseball season, one that signaled that a seismic shift in how the game was played was underway. Baseball was moving from low-scoring contests dominated by pitching to a power game with more hits, runs, and home runs. It was the year that New York City rose to the top of […]

The Saint John Royals, Maritime Black Champions 1920. (New Brunswick Museum)   Although the origins of Black baseball in the Maritimes remain obscure, it is likely that the game was being played informally as early as the 1870s. Operating independently, but often in association with the African Baptist and Episcopal churches, black teams like the […]

Hall of Fame executive Ed Barrow secured his legacy during his years with the Yankees. He joined New York’s front office after the 1920 season as their first de facto general manager. The next year the team won its first pennant; during his 24-year tenure, from 1921 through 1944 (through 1947 he stayed on as […]

On October 10, 1961, the National League held the expansion draft to provide players for the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets. While the American League had held a seemingly similar expansion draft on December 14, 1960, the National League draft had the following distinctions: It was held earlier in the year. There […]

Overture Adrian C. Anson’s professional baseball career came to an abrupt end on February 1, 1898, when Chicago Club president James Hart unceremoniously sacked him without notice. Anson had made his living playing baseball since 1871, had been a member of the Chicago Club since 1876 and, as their captain since 1879, had risen to […]

Introduction The 1884 professional baseball season demonstrated the nationwide baseball boom then underway.1 It was an exciting time to be a lover of baseball. The 1883 season concluded with most professional clubs in acceptable financial condition, with plans for higher salaries and improved baseball grounds for 1884. Like 1882, the 1884 season offered new associations, […]

San Francisco Giants Hall of Famer Willie Mays influenced the lives of two other Giants, Bobby and Barry Bonds, both of whom who had significant careers of their own. He was Bobby’s teammate with the Giants, while taking on the role of godfather for Barry as a youngster. When Barry later became a Giant, Mays continued […]

Fans come from miles around—families in wheezing Model Ts, farmers by horse-drawn wagons, folks of all ages on bicycles and on foot. Down flat, dusty roads past fertile fields of potatoes, melons, and corn ripening fast in the late summer sun. Their destination—the sleepy little town of Parksley, Virginia, hard by the Maryland state line […]

George Wright at the peak of his baseball career, with the Boston Red Stockings in the 1870s. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Baseball Hall of Famer George Wright’s record for changing clubs as a young player (1865–68) was exceptional even for this pre-reserve-clause period: six baseball teams (one of them twice, and omitting his […]

  In 1904 when Tyrus Raymond Cobb arrived on the professional baseball scene, his first name was not at all well known. In fact, most fans had never even heard of anyone with that particular name—Ty himself apparently among them. That was to change in short order, however, as Tyrus Cobb’s fame spread nationally within […]

By the fall of 1978 modern free agency was entering its third year, and teams were beginning to come to terms with both its existence and its potential, though ownership still hoped to roll it back dramatically. Front offices were figuring out the mechanics of pursuing free agents, how to fit them into their payroll […]

  1935 Paducah Red Birds B.B. Hook, Jr. is the child in the very front. Front row (L–R): Joe Grace, Floyd Perryman, Venable Satterfield, and Louis Perryman. Middle row (L–R): Lowell Green, Mel Ivy, E.R. Jones (more behind the row than in it), Robert Brown, Benny Sanders, and an unnamed child listed as “mascot.” Back […]

What was the best-hitting team in modern (i.e,. post-1900) baseball history? There are many ways to answer that question. If you were to rank offense by runs, the 1931 Yankees crossed the plate a record 1,067 times. But there was a “team” that scored almost a run per game more than the 1931 Yankees, that […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   From what he says in his autobiography, A Measure of Independence, John R. Tunis had no particular interest in baseball. He does remember fondly attending baseball games in Boston at the age of ten or eleven, but the impulse to […]

Baseball fans planning to attend the game at Island Park in Wichita, Kansas, on June 21, 1925, were advised by the Wichita Beacon, the afternoon newspaper, that “strangle holds, razors, horsewhips, and other violent implements of argument” would be barred at the gate.1 The fear was not of unrest that might somehow be provoked by […]

Fred Kipp, Gil Hodges, Wally Yonamine, Vin Scully, Roy Campanella and Don Demeter at the October 18 reception at Chinzanso, Tokyo. (Rob Fitts Collection)   The Brooklyn Dodgers straggled into Idlewild Airport in Jamaica, Queens, on the morning of October 11, 1956. It had been a long, grueling season, ending the day before with a […]

Introduction and Context Some of the best players in baseball traded places at the 1933 winter meetings. The meetings opened amid optimism, with a feeling that baseball was recovering from the Depression and could “be expected to gain steadily” as it moved forward.1 During 1933, all 14 minor leagues that began the season completed it; […]

“Jarvis fires away…That’s a fly ball, deep to left, back, back…HEY HEY! He did it! Ernie Banks got number 500! The ball tossed to the bullpen…everybody on your feet…this…is IT! WHEEEEEEEE!” — Jack Brickhouse, WGN-TV, May 12, 1970 1   When the curtain rang down on the 1969 season, Ernie Banks was just three home […]

Abstract 2014 was a record year for pitchers, but it was followed by an abrupt reversal in trends, with offensive numbers increasing steadily in 2015 and 2016, culminating in a record-setting year for hitters in 2017. This article explores similar offensive explosions throughout the history of major-league baseball in order to draw parallels to the […]

From 1920 to 1958, baseball fans across the Deep South and Southwest looked forward to the annual Dixie Series, a best-of-seven postseason matchup between the playoff champions of the Southern Association and the Texas League. In 1967, after an 8-year hiatus, owners in the Double-A Texas League and the newly created Southern League resurrected the […]