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This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 20 (2000).   Urban Shocker is one of baseball’s forgotten stars, even though he was one of the American League’s dominant pitchers in the 1920’s. He won 156 games in that decade, most with the lowly St. Louis Browns, despite the fact that his […]

This spring, baseball attention will be focused on Henry Aaron as he strives to reach and pass that magic number in the home run summit of fame — 714.   There is another historic home run number that is being approached and soon some one will be achieving that milestone.   That will be the 100th home […]

Before the Boston Red Sox faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series, they sent Frank Malzone, a former All-Star infielder, to scout the opposition. “It was a great thing the club did in assigning Malzone to scout the Cardinals. He knows just what to look for, and for me it was just great. He […]

“You could not possibly train a baseball squad in Havana. The distractions are too great. … The after-dark program down there would kill a team before it ever had a chance to appear in National League competition. …” So opined baseball legend John McGraw when asked why he never took his New York Giants to […]

The Chicago White Sox of the early twentieth century provided the inspiration and the subject matter for three of America’s greatest novelists.   JAMES T. FARRELL For most of his youth, Farrell lived with his grandmother and a maternal uncle in several neighborhoods, all close to Comiskey Park. He attended as many as 40 White […]

On September 28, 1912, 22-year-old Mike González became the first Hispanic player to don the tools of ignorance in the major leagues with his debut with the Boston Braves. Five years later, as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, González confounded Philadelphia Phillies backstop Bill Killefer and his pitcher Joe Oeschger by stealing home […]

Gavilanes shortstop Luis Aparicio Ortega and his son Luis Aparicio Jr on the latter’s debut on November 18, 1953 before the game vs Pastora in the Venezuelan Western Baseball League. Aparicio Jr. later signed for the Chicago White Sox and played in the major leagues for 18 seasons. He was elected to the Hall of […]

Henry Aaron and Stan Musial, two perennial All-Stars, talk hitting. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In Henry “Hank” Aaron’s 23-year career in the major leagues, he earned 25 nominations to the National League All-Star team and played in 24 of those games – among the most games played by a single player in baseball history.1 Aaron’s astounding […]

Signage at Avista Stadium in Spokane. (Courtesy of Eric Vickrey)   Native American-themed team names and mascots were commonplace in professional baseball during the twentieth century. Images such as an Indian chief in a feathered headdress or warlike caricatures were often used in logos and advertisements. These depictions were often considered derogatory and misrepresented the […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).   Frank Bancroft, the new manager of the Providence Grays, was having second thoughts. Had he done well to leave Cleveland, where he had been treated kindly and where, the previous season, he had led his club to a […]

Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   In the immediate aftermath of World War II, minor-league baseball enjoyed unprecedented popularity. The year 1949 marked its peak with the minors boasting 59 leagues and 448 teams.1 Nowhere was this renaissance more evident than in North Carolina. Baseball has long been popular in North Carolina—only Texas has […]

The white sand beaches and warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico provide a pleasant distraction to the residents and tourists of Pensacola. A sense of optimism swept the Pensacola community in 1939 as the economy took a turn for the better with the ending of the Great Depression. During that summer, another form of […]

All baseball fans are familiar, if not from the movie, then from the grainy newsreel footage, with Lou Gehrig’s legendary speech at Yankee Stadium home plate on July 4, 1939. Yet that was not the first nor the last time a speech would have a dramatic impact at The House that Ruth Built. Baseball, football, […]

Major-league baseball players and umpires are sometimes at odds, but both groups seemed to be thinking along the same lines around 1968. It was then that the Major League Baseball Players Association won the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports, and umpires started on the road to formation of a union that would eventually […]

A no-hitter turns a pitcher into an instant celebrity in the baseball world. Regardless of what he did before or what he does after, he’ll always be a member of an elite group, a fraternal brotherhood that links Cy Young and Nolan Ryan with the likes of Jose Jimenez, Mike Warren, and Bobo Holloman. What […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 1985.   “It is always wrong to consider that something which begins in a small way cannot rapidly become important.” — Plutarch On June 5, 1942, Doreston Luke Carmen Jr. became the thin end of a very large wedge. That […]

A day after the New York Yankees lost the 1921 World Series to their landlords, the New York Giants, the squad gathered at the Polo Grounds to divide $87,756.67, the losers’ share of the postseason proceeds. During the meeting, each player also received a letter signed by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis reiterating Article IV, Section […]

1. My Model In issue number 33 of The Baseball Research Journal, I published an article entitled “Underestimating the Fog.” The thesis of this article is that we in sabermetrics have been relying on a method which doesn’t actually work, under closer scrutiny, and we should stop relying on this method. “This method” is the […]

When Brandon Nimmo took his position in right field on September 26, 2018, in a game at Citi Field, he was wearing his usual number nine and would bat ninth in the batting order. It seemed to me that this was an interesting confluence of facts: a player whose uniform number matches his fielding position […]

University baseball in Canada currently lacks a true national tournament. Since 1994, Canadian university (and college) teams have competed in a limited national championship either under the umbrella of the defunct Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association (CIBA1) or from 2013–19, the more recently defunct Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association (CCBA). CIBA and CCBA membership vacillated from a […]

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for Our Hero. After a dozen years in the majors with some success, he was coming off a subpar year and had just been traded for three minor leaguers, who would remain so. Little did he know that along with his manager, he would change the way baseball was played. He […]

  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 […]

Seldom are the occasions when a team emerges as back-to-back champions in the National League. Rarer still when that team’s manager could call upon a well-heeled mound corps that includes three future Hall of Famers. These were the well-earned privileges of Walter Alston as his Los Angeles Dodgers entered as 8–5 favorites against the Baltimore […]

Part I: The Great Glass Era In the damp and chilly spring of 1907, at the height of the great glass era, an erudite professor of languages, a polite young first baseman and an eccentric left-handed pitcher came to the Hilltop in Kane, Pennsylvania to play professional baseball. While their time together as teammates would […]