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Jim Bouton (right) and John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s Official Historian, sharing the stage at SABR’s 47th annual convention in New York City in 2017. (Photo: Jacob Pomrenke)   In the fall of 1976, CBS Television premiered the television series Ball Four, based upon the 1970 book by former major-league pitcher Jim Bouton, a best-seller […]

Pete Mitsui and his brother Saturo (Sat) Mitsui played for the Valley Tire 1939 City Champion softball team. (Courtesy of Willie Tamura)   “Mrs. Tamura, can George come out and play?” We can be certain those were not the exact words Pete Mitsui uttered, but the request took place nonetheless. The year was 1942. The […]

South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin […]

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 […]

All the poetry and folklore of “Tinker to Evers to Chance” notwithstanding, the great Chicago Cubs teams of 1906–10 won their four pennants and two World Series by way of outstanding pitching. The glories of Mordecai “Three Fingered” Brown, Ed Reulbach, Jack Pfiester, and Orval Overall have been widely recognized, and rightfully so. Sadly ignored, […]

Spring in Ottawa Taunts. It teases and tantalizes, offering its charms in unexpected bursts, only to pull back its promise with cruel wintry blasts that test endurance and resilience. In January, spring is merely a concept, but as the days come off the calendar, there is cause for hope, perhaps distant, but hope, nonetheless. There […]

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 […]

Cover of the May 1927 issue of Yakyukai depicting O’Neal Pullen and Shinji Hamazaki (Rob Fitts Collection)   Kazuo Sayama, baseball historian, author, and member of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame (enshrined in 2021), states with great passion and conviction that had it not been for the tours of the Negro Leagues’ all-star Philadelphia […]

What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. One of the longest droughts in baseball history came to an end in 2004 when the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. With that victory, a new age was dawning. One in which even the Chicago Cubs could start […]

On the morning of May 11, 1953, the fair citizens of Waco, Texas woke up to a muggy day. Many prepared themselves for the beginning of the work week by downing their daily cup of coffee and reading the latest edition of the Waco Tribune–Herald. Sprawled across the front page were reports of intense tornadoes […]

In 1892, Frank Grant played for the Gorhams and then the Cuban Giants on his way to a Hall of Fame career. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   During a playoff game in October 1905, Leland Giants pitcher Walter Ball rushed onto the diamond at Chicago’s West Side Park and threw a punch “with […]

When James Bentley “Cy” Seymour of the Reds stepped into the batter’s box on August 2, 1905, in Cincinnati, he was battling Pittsburgh Pirates great Honus Wagner for the National League batting crown. At start of play that Wednesday afternoon Wagner, 31, was batting .356, and Seymour, 32, was at .357.1 Wagner had won the […]

P.K. Wrigley and the Chicago Cubs’ “College of Coaches” in 1961. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)   In any business venture, management often seeks to make changes in everyday operations in order to bring about improvements in overall performance. These changes may range from minor tweaks in normal operating procedures to overhauls of the conventional methods in place. […]

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in  “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]

This appendix accompanies the article “Player Win Averages” written by Pete Palmer and published in the Spring 2016 Baseball Research Journal. To scroll down to pitchers, click here.   Player Win Averages-Batters Player Games PW RW Barry Bonds 2986 120.3 123.2 Henry Aaron 3298 97.2 94.6 Willie Mays 2992 95.7 87.5 Mickey Mantle 2401 92.4 […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates were nursing a four-game losing streak heading into a Saturday-afternoon contest against the Brooklyn Dodgers on June 24, 1933. Pittsburgh had finished in second place in 1932, just four games behind the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs, and had high hopes for a pennant in 1933. The team had shot out of the gate […]

Ted Williams bounded down the first-base line at Briggs Stadium like the kid he was. He clapped his hands twice as he neared the bag then bounded over it with a joyful skip as he made his way around the bases. Williams’s three-run homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth had just […]

The Philadelphia Phillies arrived in Pittsburgh after the 1936 All-Star Game on a five-game winning streak, their longest of the season to date. The streak ended when they lost the first game of their two-game series, 16-5. When the two teams took the field under cloudy skies the next afternoon, right-hander Jim Weaver started for […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates hit two grand slams and beat the Philadelphia Phillies 10-0 on May 1, 1933. The Pirates had five future Hall of Famers in their lineup (Freddie Lindstrom, Pie Traynor, Arky Vaughan, Lloyd Waner, and Paul Waner), and all five had at least one hit in the shutout win. It was “a fine […]

Hall of Famer Arky Vaughan spent most of his career playing shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but was a valuable member of the Brooklyn Dodgers for his last four years in the major leagues. He played a key role as a reserve on the pennant-winning 1947 squad. Vaughan’s presence on the team in any role […]