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The 1962 Mets were a lot worse than they looked.  That’s an outlandish statement to make about a team that won just 40 of 160 games. But even among baseball historians, few realize that nearly a quarter of those precious few victories came during a two-week burst in May in which the Mets won nine […]

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 […]

The role of umpires in establishing public acceptance of organized baseball in its early years has been given little attention. This is especially true of umpires in the minor leagues. If mention is made at all, it usually concerns some colorful personality with a foghorn voice or a flair for poetry rather than an acknowledgement […]

The drama of All-Star, championship series, and World Series contests notwithstanding, the no-hitter remains the most intensely exciting game in baseball for spectators and participants alike. The pressure felt by a pitcher striving to realize a rare achievement that will ensure him both fame and immortality in the record books is widely appreciated. And the […]

Jimmy Porter will be remembered for his tall tales and by a youth baseball field that bears his name. (Courtesy of the City of Carrollton)   In the 1950s Dallas and Fort Worth stood apart, and scattered small towns surrounded the big cities. Since then, the cities have spread, the towns have filled in, and […]

A rainout in the Astrodome? How is that possible? It’s domed, protected from the elements. The Astros don’t even have the traditional rain check printed on their tickets! Yet on Tuesday, June 15, 1976, the supposed impossible happened. A game between the Astros and the Pittsburgh Pirates was postponed because of rain. A powerful thunderstorm developed […]

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), […]

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 […]

Bruce Markusen’s Baseball’s Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s, an entertaining account of the club that dominated the American League West in the early to mid 1970s, has the following piece of trivia about the 1972 A’s team: “Later in the year, when terrorists murdered several Israeli athletes during the Olympic Games, [Ken] Holtzman, [Mike] Epstein […]

This article was selected as the winner of the 2017 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award. So, turn the key with me and enter Room 509 of the [Hotel Carlos], the most famous place in Chicago that you barely knew existed. — (Kankakee, Illinois) Daily Journal and (Ottawa, Illinois) Daily Times, April 10, 2010 1 The 1932 […]

The 1937 season had been frustrating for the Chicago Cubs. After a slow start, they had climbed their way through the National League standings, taking over first place on June 15. They maintained a lead over the second-place New York Giants for all but one day of the next 10 weeks. By August 3 the […]

Hard as it may be to believe, the Brooklyn Dodgers have been the Los Angeles Dodgers for half a century—and have now played more seasons in Chavez Ravine than in Ebbets Field. By August 5, 1957, the storied history of the Brooklyn Dodgers was fast approaching its final days. But as the Dodgers, who were […]

On November 9, 1953, the United States Supreme Court issued a one paragraph opinion in Toolson v. New York Yankees, Inc.1 The decision affirmed three lower federal court decisions that turned aside lawsuits challenging the Court’s 1922 ruling regarding the application of the nation’s antitrust laws to Organized Baseball.2 The concluding sentence succinctly declared that […]

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (McFarland & Co., Fall 2009).   In August of 1932, Gus Greenlee added permanent lights to the Pittsburgh Crawfords home field. (NOIRTECH RESEARCH INC.)   The Story of Greenlee Field Any story requires plot, characters, and setting. In […]

On a warm summer evening July 8, 1953, Sacramento Solon Neill Sheridan did something no professional ballplayer before or since has ever done. Between games of a twi-night doubleheader against the San Francisco Seals, he raced an Arabian horse—and won. Then in the nightcap, the right-handed slugger homered over the right-field fence, something no one had […]

Speaking before a banquet of baseball aficionados in Philadelphia at the turn of the century, editor Francis Richter of Sporting Life extolled the “steady progress” baseball had made as business and sport since the inception of the National League. “Every patron of the sport,” he began, “knows that baseball is a fixed and stable-business which […]

Star shortstop Dick Lundy was on the Hilldale team that played against the Boston Red Sox on September 14, 1918, just a week after the World Series ended. (HELMAR ART CARDS)   “Every one of the 16 Major League franchises that operated between 1901 and 1960 faced a black team at some point in their […]

This is the online appendix for Herm Krabbenhoft’s article, “Bobby Layne, 28-0: Hall of Fame Caliber Pitcher for the Texas Longhorns,” in SABR’s The National Pastime: Baseball in Texas and Beyond (2025).   Click on a link below to scroll down: APPENDIX A: Brief Summaries of Each Game Pitched by Bobby Layne for the Texas […]

In reading accounts of the 1903 World Series, I so often came across the team name “Boston Pilgrims” that I accepted this on faith as one of the names by which the team was known. I even used it myself, presenting it as fact (see page 1 of Tales from the Red Sox Dugout). I […]

The annual meetings of the National League and the American Association after the 1888 season took place in the unusual context of “the great event in the modern history of athletic sports,” as the famous baseball journalist Henry Chadwick dubbed it. He was referring to the six-month world tour by the Chicago White Stockings and […]