Search Results

  With Connie Mack’s election as president of the Athletics in January 1937, the Mack family now controlled all of the senior leadership positions in the club’s front office. From left: Earle, Connie, and Roy Mack in 1937. (Courtesy of Robert D. Warrington)   The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1954. In […]

Missed, bad or wrong calls are part of nearly every game and can have an influence on the run of the play as well as the final score. Emotions can run particularly high when a player perceives a pitched ball is out of the strike zone but the umpire calls “strike.” Is it possible that […]

Introduction If you pick the baseball milestone carefully enough, you can always reduce the number of players that qualify to one. For example, the only player to hit more than 72 home runs in a season is Barry Bonds. He hit 73 dingers in 2001. Second on the list is Mark McGwire with 70 in […]

  When he stepped on the mound at Municipal Stadium to face the hometown Waterbury Giants on September 3, 1967, Dick Such of the York White Roses carried the burden of an 0–16 record. It was his last chance that season to snap his winless streak. The 6-foot-4 right-hander got off to a rocky start […]

The American national pastime of bat-and-ball games, played under various names since the colonial era, was formalized to a previously unprecedented degree by the end of the Civil War (1861–65) under the name of “base ball,” as the version played in the Greater New York City (GNYC) area. the Register of Interclub Matches (RIM1) lists […]

On August 9, 2006, the first-place New York Mets were hosting the San Diego Padres at Shea Stadium. The Mets were headed toward their first division title since 1988 and first playoff berth since 2000. It was an ordinary late summer series against an out-of-division team as the Mets held a big 13.5 game lead […]

“No nation that has had as intimate contact with baseball as the Japanese,” The Sporting News wrote in an editorial shortly after Pearl Harbor, “could have committed the vicious, infamous deed of … December 7, 1941, if the spirit of the game had ever penetrated their yellow hides.”1 Today, 60 years removed, the writing is […]

A subject that animates baseball fans is ranking its greatest players, particularly regarding membership in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (HOF). In the past decade or two, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has moved to the forefront of this discussion among analytically minded fans. Unlike many “traditional” stats (wins, losses, saves, runs, RBI), […]

Richard Nixon may have been the greatest baseball student to occupy the presidency. In 1936 Nixon, 23, saw his first big-league game. “I don’t remember much about it,” he said, “except that the date was July 4, the Washington Senators lost a doubleheader at Griffith Stadium, and a rookie named DiMaggio put one in the […]

Ford Frick, president of the National League in 1947, is not the first person who comes to mind concerning Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball, though he deserves more consideration than he has been given. While no other individual rivals the role played by Branch Rickey in breaking the game’s color barrier, other than […]

  Like 9/11, the sinking of the Titanic clings to American memory, slicing across sex, race, age, geographical, and class divides. Generations later, mental snapshots of the disaster develop at the briefest mention. An iceberg on a moonless night. The Law of the Sea: women and children first. The fortunate watching from insufficient lifeboats while […]

Ray Brown: Hall of Famer When Negro Leagues great Ray Brown was inducted posthumously into baseball’s National Hall of Fame in 2006 as one of 17 individuals chosen for their essential contributions to “the history of blacks in the game,” he also became the first player with links to the Quebec Provincial League ever to […]

The word nickname is derived from the Old English eke name based on the verb ecan meaning to add or augment. Thus, nicknames augment given names and provide a richer and more explicit denotation. They tell us something more about a person than just the fact that he is officially James Smith. Nicknames often serve […]

As a young boy growing up in York, Pennsylvania, Harold Wynegar Jr. emulated Mickey Mantle. “I patterned myself after Mantle,” Wynegar said as a minor leaguer in 1975. “He was a switch-hitter, so I started switch-hitting when I was 9. I’m not saying I’m going to be another Mickey Mantle. He’s one of the biggest […]

One philosophy of pitching holds that pushing off the rubber as hard as possible and landing as far from it as possible generates the most velocity, while another holds that shortening stride length and “pulling off” the rubber will generate the most. In both theories, stride length is a critical component, both for establishing the […]

The 1908 National League race is best remembered for the “Merkle game” between the New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs, who were in a dead heat for first place at the end of the season. The clubs met to replay that tie game. The Cubs won and went on to beat the Detroit Tigers […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Chicago,” the 1986 SABR convention journal.   You and I embark on a wondrous journey as we are magically whisked away to a long-ago time and place. We stand on the corner of State and Madison. The familiar iron-facade entrance of Carson, Pirie, Scott’s is behind us […]

Although Al Kaline obviously deserved the many accolades he received as an exceptional athlete with admirable personal characteristics, misconceptions have long existed regarding the severity of challenges he faced in his youth and during his 22-year professional baseball career. This article will address a litany of circumstances that he encountered and explain how he overcame […]

Recent study has revealed the claim of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York to pioneer status, as well as that of Alexander Cartwright to be the game’s inventor, to be suspect if not altogether baseless. I have taken up the latter claim at length in Baseball in the Garden of Eden and will […]

Oscar Charleston is shown here in the uniform of the Santa Clara Leopardos, circa 1923. The 1923-24 Leopardos, for whom Charleston played, were considered the best Cuban team in history—a team so dominant that halfway through the season the league simply declared them champions and then reorganized. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   April […]