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Bill Renna was playing winter ball for the 1953–54 San Juan Senators, managed by Harry Craft, after his 1953 rookie season with the world champion New York Yankees, when a local sportswriter got the news Renna had been traded to the Philadelphia A’s in an 11-player deal. Renna, the San Juan right fielder, “was surprised […]

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. A leading contributor was a well-traveled veteran named Dave Philley, who […]

May 1, 1951: Minnie Minoso debuts for Sox and homers in first at-bat On April 30, 1951, the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Athletics, and Chicago White Sox orchestrated a trade. Philadelphia sent Lou Brissie to Cleveland, which in turn shipped Sam Zoldak and Ray Murray to Philadelphia and Orestes “Minnie” Minoso to Chicago. The Athletics also […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (McFarland & Co., Fall 2009).   In August of 1932, Gus Greenlee added permanent lights to the Pittsburgh Crawfords home field. (NOIRTECH RESEARCH INC.)   The Story of Greenlee Field Any story requires plot, characters, and setting. In […]

Once upon a time, A.J. Liebling, consummate Manhattanite and writer for The New Yorker, dubbed Chicago America’s Second City.1 But in relation to New York-centric baseball movies, this AAA-league rating is extremely generous. Across the decades, baseball films with Chicago references have been relatively scarce. For every on-screen image of Wrigley Field, there are scores […]

    Baseball rules were amended in 1891 to allow for substitute batters for other than emergency conditions. That was 86 years ago; yet, from a recordkeeping standpoint, there are still many gaps regarding the performance of pinch hitters on a seasonal and a career basis. What pinch hitter had the most doubles, triples, or […]

“One thing I can’t go for is any “hero” stuff. I know I am no hero. All right, I flew 39 missions—I know too many others who flew 100 and more. . . .Just because I happen to be in baseball, it seems to be big news. Well, I’m not kidding myself and I am […]

Jackie Robinson, United States Army. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The course of history can flip on a dime, the course of one’s life often defined by a series of watershed flash-points. Some we control; others are thrust upon us. On December 7, 1941, Jackie Robinson was two days into his journey from […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume V (1990).   On October 15, 1988, with a runner on first, Kirk Gibson of the Los Angeles Dodgers jerked a slider from the Oakland A’s Dennis Eckersley into the stands for a 5-4 victory. Newspaper reports noted that it was the first […]

All batters think it’s great to hit a home run. They think it’s even better to hit one as a pinch hitter. And when the bases are loaded and you’re called off the bench to deliver — and you do! There’s hardly anything to match the emotional impact of a pinch grand slam! Here’s a […]

In the years between 1892 and 1925, Charlotte, North Carolina, “Queen City of the South,” emerged from the obscurity of a backwater frontier boomtown to its present position as one of the South’s most prosperous, thriving cities. One of the early exponents of the “New South” commercial and industrial development was Daniel Augustus Tompkins. In […]

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 Japanese Base Ball Association in 1911. (COURTESY OF ROB FITTS)   Since the mid-nineteenth century, baseball has helped immigrants assimilate into American society. By following their local team or taking the diamond, foreigners improve their English, become part of the cultural fabric, and learn American values. Between the mid-1890s and 1910, over 100,000 Japanese […]

Amidst the current upsurge of social activism among professional athletes, it is worth recalling the enormous contribution of Jim Bouton, one of the most politically outspoken sports figures in American history. Among professional team sports, baseball may be the most conservative and tradition-bound, but throughout its history, rebels and mavericks have emerged to challenge the […]

In his essay “Does Baseball Deserve This Black Eye?” Norman Macht raises a number of questions. First is the question embedded in the title, a question he doesn’t address until his concluding comments. Second, he asks how it is known that Judge Landis was instrumental in barring blacks from baseball. This second question occupies much […]

This article was originally published in “Northern California Baseball History,” the 1998 SABR convention journal.   Described as a “most genial boniface” when he opened a San Francisco saloon in 1885, Calvin Alexander McVey (“Mac” to his friends) got a kick out of patrons who marveled at his hands: big ham fists with discolored lumps […]

“Free-agent frenzy.”1 “Meat Market.”2 Negotiations dominated by “fast-talking, greedy little men.”3 Memories of the 1992 Winter Meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, were unvaryingly ugly. Over a tumultuous four days, baseball’s annual gathering had dissolved into nightmarish chaos and sent major-league executives running. Among the worst incidents, the Rev. Jesse Jackson denounced baseball’s “institutional racism,” threatening to […]

In one of the 1951 Bowman trading card sets, Jets, Rockets, Spacemen, visitors from Earth watch a baseball game beamed from Cleveland years earlier via alien technology. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)   In October 2019, three American astronauts aboard the International Space Station played baseball to mark the final game of the World Series, in which the […]

In a stunning development on September 29, 1953, the city of Baltimore went from being the home of the minor league Orioles of the International League to having the major league Orioles of the American League.1 On that historic day, Bill Veeck, president of the St. Louis Browns, announced “a Baltimore group headed by attorney […]

You will not find Joe E. Brown’s name in a major league box score. But in his way, he is as much a part of baseball lore as the Gas House Gang, the Whiz Kids, and the House That Ruth Built. Joe E. Brown was a movie star: a wide-mouthed co­ median whose face was […]

Observing the similarity between two celebrated dynasties — the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s and the Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s — is hardly original, and hardly new. But the comparisons between the two teams are worth exploring in some detail. They were a ballclub well-known then and well-remembered today not just for their victories […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

“The general public, or baseball fan, when he thinks of baseball thinks of the major leagues. He thinks of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. He thinks of huge salaries, of terrific baseball parks and beautiful lights and marvelous conditions, hotels, trains. That is baseball. Only 5 percent of baseball players in the United States play […]

Although on the surface Miller Huggins and Jacob Ruppert seemed worlds apart, the two men had striking similarities. They were the architects of the New York Yankees’ dominance in the 1920s. (BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)   Jacob Ruppert believed that hiring Miller Huggins as his manager after the 1917 season was the first and most important […]