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In 1947, the Pittsburgh Pirates installed an inner fence in a portion of Forbes Field, reducing the distance down the left field line of the ballpark by 30 feet. The purpose of the fence was to assist the team’s newest acquisition, Hank Greenberg, in his ability to hit home runs. The area between the new […]

When Calvin Griffith sold the Minnesota Twins in 1984, he bowed out of baseball as the last of the family owners whose franchise represented their principal business and source of wealth. Griffith spent practically his entire life in baseball, spending his young adulthood working in one capacity or another for the Washington Nationals organization that […]

Japanese baseball was front and center as the excitement of the new millennium kicked off with an unprecedented Opening Day celebration and ended with a matchup between two star-studded teams battling for world baseball supremacy. Between these two major events, Japan’s greatest closer would win the American League’s Rookie of the Year Award, and the […]

The 1934 All-Americans outside Nagoya Castle (Yoko Suzuki Collection)   Katsusuke Nagasaki’s breath billowed as he loitered outside the Yomiuri newspaper’s Tokyo offices. The morning of February 22, 1935 was chilly. But that was good; nobody would look twice at his bulky overcoat. Matsutaro Shoriki, the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun, was late. Nagasaki strolled […]

Clyde Sukeforth as Dodgers manager, 1947. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   I met Clyde Sukeforth three times altogether. On the first occasion, Howard V. Doyle, an old Mainer, friend, and former boss who knew I’d be interested, invited me to join him on a trip to Waldoboro, Maine, specifically to meet Clyde, with […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   Who reads baseball juveniles? It’s pretty sure the kids still do; those series books in the shelves at Braswell Memorial Library here in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, look pretty well-thumbed to me. I’m hoping that adults do, too, or that […]

“Heroes get remembered. But legends never die.” So says an apparition of Babe Ruth in The Sandlot. Statues affirm their permanence. Capturing a ballplayer’s essence creates a bond with passersby who stop to absorb the player’s importance to the game and admire the sculptor’s handiwork framing a moment. Ruth’s likeness adorns Oriole Park as a […]

Baseball leagues flourished in American shipyards during World War I as legions of workers built warships and troop transports to safeguard the Atlantic sea lanes and carry men and materiel to Europe. Among the best of these circuits was the Delaware River Shipbuilding League of 1918. Centered in Philadelphia, it represented eight shipyards operating along […]

  There is not a person alive in the industrialized world who has not been touched directly or indirectly by the wonders of medical science. Death-sentence diseases of the past, like cancer, now carry longer and longer commutation periods, thanks to advanced early detection and modern surgical techniques. The twentieth century discovery of insulin has […]

American League President Leland S. MacPhail (l.) awards the Seattle Mariners’ charter to co-owners Danny Kaye (c.) and Lester Smith. In addition to being a Hollywood star, Kaye co-owned a California-based radio network with Smith. (Courtesy of David S. Eskenazi)   When considering the formation of the Seattle Mariners, one should look to two key […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1987 (Vol. 6, No. 1).   Several members of the Texas pitching staff were sitting in the clubhouse one afternoon discussing the importance of fielding. They were quick to agree with Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda’s assertion that a good­fielding pitcher can help himself […]

Chicago is a city of icons. A hotbed of popular culture, the Windy City owns a curriculum vitae rarely paralleled concerning characters, real and fictional, responsible for defining the American experience. Al Capone rose to kingpin status in Chicago’s underworld during Prohibition in the 1920s. His was a household name, a celebrity status recognizable nearly […]

Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley brought his team out west in 1958. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   To Walter O’Malley, Dodger Stadium was never just a building, or a place to sell tickets. It was “a monument to the O’Malleys.”1 As such, he took an almost obsessive interest in its design and construction, from innovations in precast concrete to […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

November 26, 1958 cover of Shukan Baseball depicting Stan Musial and Shigeo Nagashima (Robert Fitts Collection)   Game Seven of the 1958 Japan Series featured a winner-take-all finish to a classic contest between two storied franchises. In the bottom of the ninth, with a six-run lead, 21-year-old Kazuhisa Inao stared down at Shigeo Nagashima, ready […]

The 2014 major-league season ended with the San Francisco Giants winning their third World Series in five seasons, beating the Kansas City Royals in a dramatic seven-game series on the shoulders of a staggeringly dominant performance by their 25-year-old southpaw, Madison Bumgarner. The Giants had established themselves as the decade’s model franchise, the Royals emerged […]

Jaime Jarrin, the Dodgers Hall of Fame Spanish-language broadcaster, tells the story that Walter O’Malley wanted to tap the growing Latino market in Southern California by finding a Mexican Sandy Koufax. O’Malley was not alive to see his dream realized when Fernando Valenzuela broke in with the Dodgers in late 1980.1 Valenzuela’s two wins, one […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   Exactly a hundred years ago, on June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Baseball and the written word have been on good terms ever since. It was not until 1981, however, […]

Records of home runs hit by batters have been a part of baseball information and statistics essentially from the beginning of the National League in 1876. It is true that this information was not of overwhelming interest to the public until the advent of Babe Ruth and the launching of the lively ball era in […]

Publicity photo from the Chicago Children’s Theatre production of Jackie and Me, featuring l. to r.: Kamal Angelo Bolden (Jackie), Patrick DeNicola (Ant), Sean Cooper (Flip), Phil Biedron, Vanessa Greenway (Mom), Rania Manganaro, Tracey N. Bonner (Rachel) and Tyler Ross (Joey). (Courtesy of Chicago Children’s Theatre, Michael Brosilow photographer)   Not only has Jackie Robinson […]

The Hollywood Stars baseball club, which was a member of the Pacific Coast League from 1926 to 1935 and again from 1938 to 1957, was “a fun deal” that gave me “the best years of my life,” according to Robert H. Cobb, its last president. The club was truly a civic venture which was both […]

The excitement was electric, as crowds filled Yankee Stadium to capacity on October 10, 1923. For the third consecutive year, the Fall Classic was an all-New York affair, pitting the dominant National League Giants against the upstart Yankees, representing the American League. The latter fittingly christened their magnificent new ballyard in the Bronx by going […]

Edgar Renteria started the Marlins’ walkoff “tradition” with the game-winner off Roberto Hernandez in the first game of the 1997 NLDS. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The Marlins won the World Series both times they qualified for the postseason in 1997 and 2003. This was not accomplished without a little drama: Five of […]

In February 1933 – when Jackie Robinson was 14 years old – Heywood Broun, a syndicated columnist at the New York World-Telegram, addressed the annual dinner of the all-White New York Baseball Writers Association. If Black athletes were good enough to represent the United States at the 1932 Olympic Games, Broun said, “it seems a […]