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Driving along the oft-congested Chicago expressways in 2005, one might occasionally pass a wayside billboard that featured a White Sox player in full uniform with a random-seeming catchphrase. If you drove the same route, you saw it every day and during those rush-hour traffic jams, the image lasted longer, leaving a lingering impression. The seeds […]
As a young southpaw, I naturally felt an affinity for major league left-handers. Lefties, by nature, are outsiders. The consensus of sources spanning more than three decades states that only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, making we portsiders indeed a rare breed.1 I, personally, never experienced the forced switching of penmanship meant […]
In the course of his career, Roberto Clemente played in 2,433 games and earned 266 assists. He made any number of spectacular defensive plays. One often cited is the time that Clemente, playing right field, earned an assist on a bunt. The game was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on Friday night, August 27, 1965. […]
A real “put-down” for a club is to get shut out in both games of a doubleheader. This happened to the Red Sox on Labor Day of 1974 when the Orioles almost put the Beantowners out of business for the season. Actually, they were close games, with Ross Grimsley beating Luis Tiant 1-0 in the […]
Don Zimmer in Cuba, 1952. (SABR-Rucker Archive) Cal Ripken Jr. has said, “I had the most fun in baseball in my first year in the minor leagues than at any other time in baseball. Once you get to the major leagues, it’s more of a business.” In my more than 50 years interviewing ballplayers, […]
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 […]
Toronto’s worst incident of civil unrest happened in one of its most storied ballparks. More than six hours of brawls, bloodbaths, and beatings were unleashed at the corner of Bloor and Christie streets because of tensions built during 15 years of postwar animus. It was a race riot, it was a lawless free-for-all, it […]
Have you ever wondered why Willie McCovey and ten other Padres were identified on their 1974 Topps cards as “Washington National League”? The history of the American League in Washington was not among the more glamorous chapters in baseball. In 71 seasons, two franchises called the Senators combined for only three American League pennants and […]
Golf Magazine deemed that Babe Ruth was “once America’s most famous golfer.” Ruth was hitting the links while the Olympic trials were being held in Baltimore. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY) It has been noted that history is cyclical, and there is nothing new under the sun. Baseball’s relationship with the International Olympic […]
IN 1954, the Washington Senators were an abominable team They finished the season ensconced in sixth place in the American League, with a 66—88 record. The previous year, they were a fifth-place ballclub, completing the campaign at 76—76. In 1952, they also ended up in fifth place, with a 78—76 mark. In mid-decade, Ernest Barcella, […]
As I write this, I am aware that I might be the only person alive who saw Lou Gehrig play and was present at Camden Yards the night Cal Ripken Jr. broke Gehrig’s 2,130 consecutive game record. I was an eight-year-old fan when I saw Gehrig at the original Yankee Stadium in 1938. I was […]
Like raging dinosaurs in some prehistoric swamp, the Milwaukee Braves’ Warren Spahn and the San Francisco Giants’ Juan Marichal slugged it out for four hours, 10 minutes, and 16 innings, all through the night of July 2 and into the early minutes of July 3, 1963. Spahn, 42, personified an aging Tyrannosaurus rex defending his […]
For the past two years I have pored over approximately 2,000 media guides, from the 1960s through 2007, to find material for this article. In addition to learning about players’ off-season jobs, marital status, children, fathers, brothers, hobbies, and other oddities, I found out a great deal about media guides themselves. Let others devour reams […]
In August 2022, the Williamsport Crosscutters plan to commemorate Dave Bresnahan’s trick by renaming the team for a night and selling Great Potato Caper collectibles, including the shirt shown here. (Courtesy of the Williamsport Crosscutters) Roger Bresnahan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945 for his achievements as a […]
Darrell Porter got hot in 1982’s postseason, but his work with the pitching staff may have also been crucial to the championship. (SABR-Rucker Archive) Darrell Porter’s second season as a St. Louis Cardinal was difficult. He was playing on an incredibly talented team with great fielding at every position, solid starting pitching, and a […]
SABR had its first convention, if it can be described as that, in 1971 when 16 people heeded the call to meet in Cooperstown, New York. Arlington, Chicago, and Philadelphia, with an attendance of 40, followed. Attendance reached 100 in 1979 in St. Louis, 300 in 1984 in Oakland, and topped 700 in Boston in […]
Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]
This is the appendix to “The Complete Collegiate Baseball Record of President George H.W. Bush” by Herm Krabbenhoft.Editor’s note: This is the appendix to “The Complete Collegiate Baseball Record of President George H.W. Bush” by Herm Krabbenhoft. APPENDIX Click on a link below to scroll to that section. A. 1946 Game-By-Game Batting and Fielding […]
By the fall of 1978 modern free agency was entering its third year, and teams were beginning to come to terms with both its existence and its potential, though ownership still hoped to roll it back dramatically. Front offices were figuring out the mechanics of pursuing free agents, how to fit them into their payroll […]
Andre Braugher (Robinson) and Ruby Dee (as Mallie Robinson) in The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson. (Courtesy of Alamy) Seventy-five years ago, Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s modern-day color barrier, ushering himself into the history books and helping open the doors for so many more. A few years earlier, while in the U.S. military, […]
Harry M. Stevens, shown at left with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, was the Yankees’ official concessionaire through the 1963 season. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) The 12-page official program of the new “Greater New York Base Ball Club of the American League“ at its home opener on April 30, 1903, was published by […]
Think about your favorite baseball team. Think about the many times a sports team you root for made a baffling decision. Think about the roster rebuild that never seems to end. Now imagine something new. Imagine buying a membership in your favorite team. Imagine voting on who runs the team or on how to finance […]
Mislabeling all winter baseball played in California as “California Winter League” ignores the uneven color lines that existed in that time and place.