Search Results

Baseball traveled through rough waters beginning in the late 1960s, as it navigated increasing player unrest and the growing power of their union. Court cases, strikes, hearings, lawsuits — it was challenging to follow baseball in this period without a law degree. The off-field headliners — Curt Flood, Bowie Kuhn, Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Charlie […]

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army built dozens of military forts on the Great Plains. As the railroads pushed westward, settlers soon followed, and the first cities on the western frontier were established. From the earliest days, the playing of base ball was a favorite pastime, first by the soldiers and later by the […]

Fans of the 1958 Philadelphia Phillies had little to cheer about at the end of a rather dismal season. When the final standings were posted, the club was firmly planted dead last in the National League. One bright note was the team’s pinch-hitting performance: It led both major leagues with an impressive batting average of […]

A third of a century has passed since the Dodgers commemorated their centennial – 100 years since joining the National League in 1890, the year they consider their founding. The anniversary was highlighted by a midsummer Old-Timers Weekend held at Dodger Stadium, which included a private luncheon for former players and coaches on Saturday, June […]

COLLABORATOR’S NOTE: My friendship with James Fargo (Jimmy) Lanier went back approximately eighteen years, to a time when I helped organize a local baseball conference and learned that the man who had been Ty Cobb’s batboy and then lived in the Atlanta area. I contacted him, and he agreed to participate in the conference. We […]

The Hagerstown Hubs, the 1920 Class D Blue Ridge Champions, featured two pitchers from the 1916 Class D Potomac League, Charles Dye (second from left), star pitcher for the Cumberland Colts, and Tommy Verecker (behind seated boy), who starred for the Piedmont Drybugs. Verecker also pitched one game in the Federal League in 1914. (AUTHOR’S […]

Foreword Please do not tell my umpire assignor this: I conceived of the format of this memoir while I was doing the bases at a somewhat boring freshman high-school game last fall in California. Actually, it was something called a “showcase.” Parents of aspiring high schoolers who feel they can make college teams will know […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 1985.   “It is always wrong to consider that something which begins in a small way cannot rapidly become important.” — Plutarch On June 5, 1942, Doreston Luke Carmen Jr. became the thin end of a very large wedge. That […]

As 1945 dawned, World War II was winding down toward its conclusion – even if that wasn’t apparent as the year began. After repelling the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge, Allied troops were moving through Europe, making their way toward Berlin – and presenting the question of how to defeat the Japanese in […]

“You could not possibly train a baseball squad in Havana. The distractions are too great. … The after-dark program down there would kill a team before it ever had a chance to appear in National League competition. …” So opined baseball legend John McGraw when asked why he never took his New York Giants to […]

For a youngster passionately devoted to baseball and living on the north side of Chicago during the 1950s, every summer revolved around the fortunes of the Chicago Cubs and getting to Wrigley Field as often as possible. There, in a ballpark that dominated the immediate neighborhood, we were always swept up by the most colorful […]

For the first time since 1941, major-league baseball was able to conduct its winter meetings without having to adjust to World War II, which had decimated rosters and affected the quality of play over the previous four years. After the war ended in August 1945, the commissioner, league presidents, and team owners met in Chicago […]

On Larry Tye’s 2009 biography of Paige and Timothy M. Gay’s 2010 book on the barnstorming tours of Paige, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.

  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 […]

Registration for incoming incarcerees to Manzanar. (Courtesy of County of Inyo, Eastern California Museum)   Smoke clouded the Sunday morning sky. Beneath the black plumes, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, with at least another 1,000 wounded. Twenty-one American ships were either damaged or sinking. Some 188 American aircraft lay destroyed.1 The USS Oklahoma, struck […]

“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 […]

Detroit Tigers fans in every part of Michigan were focused on the team as they led the pennant race in the fall of 1934. For the first time in 25 years, the team was poised to advance to the World Series. And for the first time in the team’s history, Tigers fans throughout the state […]

Portrait of Harry Tashima. (Courtesy of the Tashima family) As sweat dripped from brows and dust bounced into eyes, Harry Tashima gave people reasons to keep looking up. The 6-foot-1-inch pitcher stood a head taller than teammates and competitors alike. His speed and control demanded attention, though it usually did his strikeout victims no good. […]

The San Francisco Giants – a party of more than 60, including players, management, and staff, plus embedded sportswriters – boarded their chartered Japan Airlines jet at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on the damp gray morning of Tuesday, March 31, 1970. Among the players, the prevailing mood was one of relief that their two-week ordeal in […]

Kevin Costner’s place in the Hollywood-baseball paradigm is as evident as a thunderclap during an Iowa rainstorm. In four movies, Costner uses the national pastime as a cornerstone for stories about love and regret. He’s a retired ballplayer hosting a sports radio show and pursuing love with Joan Allen’s character in The Upside of Anger. […]

Roy Mack affixes his signature to an agreement selling the Athletics to the Philadelphia syndicate on October 17, 1954—a commitment Roy would betray just a day later in a backroom deal with Arnold Johnson. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Bill Renna was playing winter ball for the 1953–54 San Juan Senators, managed by […]

Moses and Welday Walker played with the Toledo club of the American Association in 1884 and thereby became the only recognized Negroes to make the major leagues until Jackie Robinson did it in 1947. But what about the rest of Organized Baseball, the fledgling minor leagues of the 19th Century? Was it just as difficult […]