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Forbes Field on Opening Day in 1909. (COURTESY OF THE PITTSBURGH PIRATES)   Many people regard Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, home of the Pirates from 1909 to 1970, as a quaint, simple ballpark. Some might even consider Forbes Field’s design reflective of an old-fashioned and bygone era. Nevertheless, its construction was very much rooted in embracing […]

Dick Hall’s trade to the Baltimore Orioles — with Dick Williams — on April 12, 1961, for Jerry Walker and Chuck Essegian, was influenced by Charles Finley’s resolve not to trade with the Yankees, a team he despised. Finley once pointed a school bus in the direction of New York and burned it to symbolize […]

The White major leagues held their first All-Star Game on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Taking place in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, the game was the brainchild of Chicago’s Mayor Edward Kelly with help from the Chicago Tribune to hype the Fair and spur interest in baseball, whose fortunes had […]

Baseball is one of the few sports not dictated by a time clock, but its beautiful symmetry is what makes it unique: the ultimate game of equal opportunity. Countless contests in history have extended into extra innings. In some cases, overtime matchups have turned into drawn-out affairs leaving only the most ardent fans waiting for […]

The SABR 19th Century Committee recently polled its members to determine the top ten players of the pre-1900 era not in the Hall of Fame. Heading the list in a three-way tie were Jimmy Ryan, Harry Stovey, and George Van Haltren. My favorite is Ryan, the great Chicago outfielder. A brief review of his life […]

After their on-field exploits of 1961, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were sought by film producer Tom Naud for a Hollywood feature. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Occasionally, baseball films spotlight sequences or storylines that are Florida-centric. Not surprisingly, they primarily are linked to spring training—and some even have real-world connections. Slide, Kelly, […]

Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison wound up as the game’s hero, hitting a dramatic walk-off three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to give the NL a 7-4 victory.Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison […]

This article originally appeared in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s February 2017 newsletter. In early 1961, nearly 44 years after the event, Al Laney recalled Ernie Shore’s unique pitching achievement against the Washington Senators with a memorable opening line in the New York Herald Tribune: “On a Saturday in the summer of 1917 at Fenway […]

What’s My Line? was a popular primetime game show which ran on CBS-TV from 1950 through 1967, with a daytime syndicated version lasting from 1968 to 1975. Its format was simple and clever: a quartet of panelists questioned individuals to determine their often unusual or unlikely occupations, which ranged from the offbeat (safety pin maker, […]

Pete Rose’s reputation is built on two pillars: he has more hits than any player in history and he helped his teams immeasurably with his hustle. The first is a fact; the second is a complete misimpression. Rose was not much of a hitter and only an average offensive player. He didn’t create runs, he […]

On the afternoon of Saturday, December 14, 1996, a 700-foot, 70,000-ton bulk cargo ship, fully loaded with grain, lost engine power and glided ominously toward a shopping mall along New Orleans’ Mississippi River. Acting quickly, the cool-headed pilot dropped his anchors in an attempt to slow the massive vessel and blasted the emergency horn. As […]

Major-league baseball was coming off a momentous season in 1991. Both the National and American League pennant winners (the Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins, respectively) had finished in last place in their division in 1990 before roaring back to life in 1991. The season culminated with a thrilling World Series, during which five of the […]

In 1971, Satchel Paige became the first Negro Leagues player to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was the same year the Pirates fielded the first all-black lineup in major-league history on their way to a World Series title. Since 1971, over 30 Negro Leagues players and executives have been elected to […]

When tasked with discussing the first game in the history of the Montréal Royals, one must decide which one of the club’s first games he or she believes to be the real one. The conventionally accepted description of the Royals as having been around from 1897 to 1917 and from 1928 to 1960, although not […]

Pitcher Dick “Turk” Farrell was selected in 1962 to represent the expansion Houston Colt .45s franchise at both All-Star Games. In the expansion draft to fill the rosters of the new clubs in New York and Houston, the Mets elected to go with veterans, while Houston built on youth. Under manager Harry Craft and general […]

Data visualization is an art. Alli Torban, a Washington, DC-based data visualization consultant, defines the art as a tool to “widen the circle of people who know what you know”—a truly apt description of the value of data visualization in an environment of information overload.1 Data visualization is also a science, using charts and graphs […]

Supreme Court Involvement On November 9, 1953, a month after the close of the season, the US Supreme Court chimed in on major-league baseball for the second time in history. George Earl Toolson, a longtime pitcher in the New York Yankees farm system, sued the team, claiming the reserve clause violated federal antitrust laws. Toolson […]

  Actor Chadwick Boseman portrayed Jackie Robinson in “42: The True Story of An American Legend,” released in 2013.   Jackie Robinson was one of the most complicated men to ever play the game, and so it is no surprise that fictional representations of him largely fail to fully capture this nuanced hero. His is […]

The annals of baseball prose include several memoirs and biographies from and about major-, minor-, and amateur-league umpires, well stocked with entertaining war stories from the diamond front, as well as numerous how-to-manuals for those pondering careers in this noble and unappreciated profession; and books inviting fans to offer their own interpretation of baseball’s knottier […]

U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax at the Jewish American Heritage Month reception at the White House. Next to Koufax are his wife Jane Clarke Koufax and entertainer Theodore Bikel. May 27, 2010. (Photograph by White House photographer Alex Wong.)   On May 27, 2010, President Barack […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 2 (1983). Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century. — Mark Twain . . . social inequality … means that in all the relations that […]

One Thousand, Nine Hundred, Ninety. Nineteen-Ninety-One. One-Nine-Nine-Five. Nineteen Hundred, Ninety-Six. One can find all these different numbers for Lou Gehrig’s lifetime Runs Batted In (RBIs), depending where one looks. Which, if any, of those numbers—1,990, 1,991, 1,995, or 1,996—is correct? THE PROBLEM The Howe News Bureau served as the official statistician for the American League […]