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The 1878 baseball season was not financially successful for the National League. Financial reports for all teams are not available, but it is doubtful that any club made money. According to Harry Wright’s account books, the pennant-winning Boston Red Stockings lost $1,433.31.1 Indianapolis was more than $5,000 in debt and unwilling to continue.2 In late […]

“There was always the wind.” — Dennis Tojo Bambauer, orphaned internee living in the Manzanar Children’s Village   EFT Storytellers on Manzanar Baseball Field. Left to right: Kerry Yo Nakagawa, Nisei Baseball Research Project; Pete Mitsui, founder of San Fernando Aces; Jeff Arnett, former director of education at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (Courtesy […]

This article was originally published in “The Empire State of Baseball,” the 1989 SABR convention journal (Albany).   In baseball’s modem era there have been many outstanding minor league teams. Coming to mind immediately are the 1937 Newark Bears, the 1934 Los Angeles Angels, the 1925 San Francisco Seals, the 1939-1940 Kansas City Blues, the […]

In the relatively progressive state of Minnesota, African Americans were still able to participate on integrated amateur and semi-professional ball teams. Two men in paticular, slugger Billy Williams and crack infielder Dick Brookins, figured prominently on the Midwestern diamonds of the early twentieth century, although their experiences with the color line took radically different turns.

From 1920 to 1958, baseball fans across the Deep South and Southwest looked forward to the annual Dixie Series, a best-of-seven postseason matchup between the playoff champions of the Southern Association and the Texas League. In 1967, after an 8-year hiatus, owners in the Double-A Texas League and the newly created Southern League resurrected the […]

Many Baseball Hall of Fame inductees are associated with the American League Philadelphia Athletics and Philadelphia Phillies by way of career accomplishments, or by wearing the team ball cap on their Hall of Fame plaque. Many others in the Hall have connections to the city of Philadelphia and the city’s baseball teams since the 1860s. […]

From left to right: George Foster, Sadaharu Oh, Pete Rose, Isao Harimoto, and Johnny Bench. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York)   Pete Rose basked in the attention he was receiving from the Japanese press on Opening Day, April 6, 1978. His Cincinnati Reds were facing the visiting Houston Astros in a […]

Prince Edward Island native and H&D League alumnus Vern Handrahan with the Kansas City Athletics in 1966. (Prince Edward Island Sports Hall of Fame)   The Halifax and District (H&D) Baseball League was a postwar offspring of the Second World War when Nova Scotia, and Halifax in particular, served as a major debarkation point for […]

The 1912 Ottawa Senators Baseball Team. (City of Ottawa Archives, MG946-3)   In the early decades of the twentieth century, baseball was by far the most popular sport in North America. By 1911 about 400 cities in Canada and the United States had professional baseball. But not Ottawa. Ottawa, pop. 87,000, was reportedly the only city […]

Introduction Deep in the heart of Texas, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (better known as the minor leagues) huffed and puffed at their major-league brethren and tried to … well … not blow the house down but remodel it into something they could live with more comfortably. But from New York, the majors […]

Led by Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio’s brother Vince, who belted 21 homers and knocked in 100 runs, the 1941 Pittsburgh Pirates under future Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch finished in fourth place with an 81-73 record, 19 games behind the National League champion Brooklyn Dodgers.  Two months later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the country […]

Just how bad were the early Texas Rangers teams? Put it this way: When reporter Mike Shropshire wrote a book about covering the Rangers from 1973 to ’75, he called it Seasons In Hell, and when that book was published, two decades later, the Rangers still hadn’t made the playoffs. Counting the ’60s, the decade […]

This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal.   There was a time in baseball history when exhibition games meant something. There was a time when rival teams met each other on the field of play, and even though the exhibition contests did not figure in the regular […]

In 1999 the Society for American Baseball Research completed a poll that ranked Harry Wright as the third largest contributor to 19th-century baseball. Though hindsight is often said to be 20/20, that is questionable in this case. In fact, the 19th-century perception of that question was quite different. In a November 1893 edition of The […]

The Most Important Baseball Figure of the 19th Century? In 1999 the Society for American Baseball Research completed a poll that ranked Harry Wright as the third largest contributor to 19th-century baseball. Though hindsight is often said to be 20/20, that is questionable in this case. In fact, the 19th-century perception of that question was […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986). A person’s first impression of baseball literature usually comes from library books, usually from the juvenile fiction section. Judging from what I see as a librarian, there are no more series of baseball books being published today for 8- to 12-year-olds. […]

The Houston Astrodome was the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned major-league ballpark. It was formally unveiled in an exhibition game that pitted the Houston Astros against the American League champion New York Yankees on April 9, 1965. Unlike previous sports venues, the Astrodome was built to be a massive all-purpose, climate-controlled facility that would serve as […]

Historical Backdrop Although the first all-professional baseball organization, the National Association, was established in 1871, only six years after the Civil War, Major League Baseball began with the establishment of the National League in 1876. MLB’s first seven decades took place against of backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, and lynchings, and MLB was a […]