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Major League Baseball (MLB) has seen the length of games increase and has explored ways to shorten it.1 Because increasing run-scoring disparity should shorten extra-inning games, in 2020 MLB introduced a rule intended to reduce the length of extra-inning games. The rule, which places a runner on second at the beginning of each extra inning, […]

Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, the shortstop of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, first met the morning of August 28, 1945, in Rickey’s fourth-floor office at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, New York. Clyde Sukeforth, a Brooklyn scout, told Robinson that Rickey was interested in signing the ballplayer […]

The 2003 Winter Meetings were held from December 12 to 15 at the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans. This was the fifth time the Winter Meetings were held in The Big Easy, with the most recent having been in 1997. Economic conditions in the United States were improving as lower interest rates, the child-tax credit, […]

Punctuated by Enos Slaughter’s mad dash around the bases in Game Seven of the World Series, the 1946 season saw major-league baseball back on the upswing. Total attendance had climbed to more than 11 million, a 71 percent increase over the previous season. The total also well exceeded the prewar 1941 figure of 9.7 million. […]

Background As the 1969 baseball Winter Meetings approached, the central issues on the minds of most owners were the recommendations of the restructuring committee that had been created the year before. At that meeting, in San Francisco, the owners had fired William Eckert as commissioner, and had formed a group to examine ways to restructure […]

Introduction The 1983 Baseball Winter Meetings were held at the Opryland Hotel, in Nashville, Tennessee, from December 5 to 10. Trades and free-agent signings usually headline the agenda of the annual gathering of executives, managers, scouts, agents, lawyers, accountants, and media personnel. Going into the 1983 meetings, though, there were several unresolved issues, including the […]

I’m a science fiction writer who, quite literally, grew up in baseball. My father, Del Wilber, played for the Cardinals, Phillies, and Red Sox before working as a coach, scout, and minor league manager for many years. Dad was a classic baseball lifer and Mom was a baseball wife who carved out her own solid […]

In 1994, Dave Eskenazi traveled to Yoncalla, Oregon, to visit one of the Pacific Coast League’s all-time great pitchers, Harold “Hal” Turpin. As a ninety-first-birthday present, Eskenazi handed Turpin a packet of letters written to him by some of his former Seattle Rainiers teammates.1 A quiet, reserved man who shunned publicity, Turpin was visibly touched […]

According to a well-known baseball saying in the Dominican Republic, “You don’t walk off the island.”1 It means that, for a ballplayer looking to advance to Major League Baseball, it is better to try to hit the ball than draw a walk, even at the possible expense of making an out. This may explain a […]

On June 28, 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs and Forbes      Field’s role in Pirate baseball was over. The park was condemned and doomed to the wrecker’s ball. It was 61 years earlier, almost to the day, that Forbes Field opened, with the Pirates hosting the same Chicago Cubs. Over […]

Fans of baseball history are well aware that it was the Cincinnati Reds who defeated the scandal-ridden Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series. More recent fans acclaim the greatness of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine of the 1970s. However, few remember Cincinnati’s other outstanding team, the back-to-back pennant winners of 1939- 1940. The anonymity […]

Much has been said about the Chicago Nationals’ “stonewall infield” of the 1880’s, both fact and fantasy. With Cap Anson at first base, Fred Pfeffer at second, Tommy Burns at short, and Ed Williamson at third, it was the most celebrated quartet of its day and an unbeatable combination for the Chicago champions of 1885 […]

    To include all of the many and varied statistics of baseball, references in the record books must be brief. Thus, much factual information that would help vivify a playing performance must, of necessity, be omitted. Of all the topical subdivisions in the record book, one of the most enigmatic is:  “No-Hit Games-Less Than […]

When the lively ball era was launched in 1920 there were few players who displayed the combined ability of speed and power. If a player were to accumulate a lot of extra bases it would be with his bat and not his feet. Thus it was automatic that when we thought of extra bases it […]

1951 is remembered as the one and only year that the New York Yankees trained in Arizona. When the Yankees ventured west, the Cactus League was in its infancy. Only two teams were training in the Grand Canyon State—the Cleveland Indians and New York Giants had both moved to Arizona in 1947. The Yankees spent […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Buckeye State,” the 2004 SABR convention journal.   On Saturday, October 15, 1892, Charles Leander Jones of Cedarville, Ohio, pitched a no-hitter for the Cincinnati Redlegs against the Pittsburghs. It was Jones’ first major league game and the first National League no-hitter for the Reds. Additionally […]

The year 1969 was eventful. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the moon, President Nixon began troop withdrawals from Vietnam, and the Beatles released their classic album “Abbey Road.” Two other major events took place in New York State. The Woodstock festival brought a generation together in musical celebration and, in […]

The 46th National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues winter meeting took place in Miami during the first days of December 1947. The convention was held at the McAllister Hotel, located on the corner of East Flagler Street and Biscayne Boulevard in the heart of downtown. Upon its completion a quarter century earlier, the ten-story “ultra-modern […]

Elmer Dean, center, the older brother of St. Louis Cardinals stars Dizzy and Paul Dean shows his new House of David teammates how he grips a curveball on May 5, 1935. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   The brothers Jay Hanna (“Dizzy,” also known as Jerome Herman) Dean and Paul Dee (“Daffy”) Dean are […]

ABSTRACT Baseball is a male-dominated sport. Softball is often considered to be the “female counterpart” to baseball. Despite limited playing opportunities, girls and women are playing baseball. The purpose of the present study was to explore the preferences of female baseball players regarding the differences between baseball and fastpitch softball. Female baseball players (N=49) participating […]

After the St. Louis Cardinals captured the sixth and clinching game of the 1944 World Series, Browns owner Don Barnes and general manager Bill Dewitt made their way to the victor’s offices to extend congratulations. As related in Bill Mead’s Even the Browns, they found Cardinals owner Sam Beardon, who responded boorishly: “If we’d lost […]