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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

(Photograph by Duane Rieder.)   In the immediate aftermath of Roberto Clemente’s New Year’s Eve plane crash while on a mercy mission to Nicaragua, there were calls for him to be inducted by acclamation into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His qualifications were never questioned; he was only the 11th player to reach 3,000 […]

Don Fisher was working for the electric company and pitching sandlot baseball in Cleveland when he signed with the New York Giants in August 1945. He pitched only two games for the Giants, was sent to the minors in 1946, and won just three games there before his brief professional career came to an end. […]

The famous city of Philadelphia totes the title the City of Brotherly Love for many reasons. One intention might refer to a friendship between a pitcher and a catcher that would last for 19 years. The catcher was Jimmie “Ace” Wilson, a backstop born and bred in the great state of Pennsylvania. In the fateful […]

Mislabeling all winter baseball played in California as “California Winter League” ignores the uneven color lines that existed in that time and place.

U.S. All-Star outfield from the 1962 game have their bats locked and loaded. The players are (L–R) Tony Conigliaro, Ron Swoboda, and James Huenemeier. Conigliaro and Swoboda starred for the Red Sox and Mets, respectively. Huenemeier signed with the White Sox, but never got beyond Class A. (HARRY RANSOM CENTER/JOURNAL-AMERICAN ARCHIVES)   Set against the […]

When confronted by a player or manager, Tim Hurst would offer to settle the matter with his fists, challenging the offender in his rich Irish accent. They called him “Sir Timothy” for his bearing and “Terrible Tim” for his temper.   The Irish potato famine of the 1840s and ’50s was probably the greatest human […]

One of baseball’s most highly-regarded accomplishments by an individual player is hitting for the cycle: collecting at least one of each of the four types of safe hits (single, double, triple, and home run) in the same game. While recognized as a rare and remarkable feat, the cycle has been achieved 286 times during the […]

Red Smith wrote of Willard Mullin, the cartoonist: “There is no estimating how many sports columns were inspired by his sketches.” Likewise, it would be difficult to overestimate the influence of sports cartoonists on our memory of baseball from the 1940s and 1950s. The cartoonists created many of the best-remembered images from that era of […]

    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 […]

The slugger stands at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, the score tied. The crowd rises in anticipation. The windup. The pitch and…there it goes! We’ve all seen them. Game-ending or “walk-off” home runs are shown on SportsCenter almost every night and many fans consider them to be among the most exciting plays […]

On September 8, 1978, Northside and Southside fans finally found something they could agree on: Don Kessinger.1 Fans from Chicago’s two storied baseball teams came together to cheer the veteran infielder at Comiskey Park on a special promotion night arranged by Sox owner Bill Veeck to salute Kessinger, one of the lucky few to have […]

Moving into 1909, change was in the wind. All ballparks had been, up to that point, made of wood, but Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, Philadelphia’s Shibe Park, and St. Louis’ rebuilt Sportsman’s Park opened that year as baseball’s first steel-and-concrete facilities.1 More umpires were hired so that the majority of big-league games would now feature two […]

The Chicago Cubs finished 1941 in sixth place in the National League with a 70-84 record. Their offensive attack was led by Stan Hack, who hit .317 with a .417 on-base percentage; Bill Nicholson, who contributed 26 homers and 98 runs batted in; and Babe Dahlgren, who added 16 homers in 99 games. The staff […]

Led by National League Most Valuable Player Dolph Camilli, the 1941 Brooklyn Dodgers won their first National League pennant in 21 years with a 100-54 record to edge out the St. Louis Cardinals by 2½ games. Camilli led the league with 34 home runs and 120 runs batted in.  Pete Reiser had the league’s highest […]

  In recent decades, rules in several professional sports have been revised with a goal of reducing the length of games or matches. Both pro and college football have changed their timekeeping rules repeatedly to shorten games. In hockey, five-minute overtime periods, often followed by shoot-outs, have become routine in non-playoff games. Tie-breakers are played […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]