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The Whiz Kids Take the Pennant: The 1950 Philadelphia Phillies Edited by C. Paul Rogers III and Bill Nowlin Associate editors: Len Levin and Carl Riechers  Foreword by Curt Simmons Special Contribution by Dr. Bobby Brown  Publication Date: January 29, 2018 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-943816-31-6, $39.95  ISBN (e-book): 978-1-943816-30-9, $9.99 8.5″ x 11″, 366 pages The […]

Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox Edited by Jacob Pomrenke Associate Editors: Rick Huhn, Bill Nowlin, Len Levin Publication Date: June 11, 2015 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-933599-95-3, $19.95 ISBN (e-book): 978-1-933599-94-6, $9.99 8.5″ x 11″, 324 pages The Black Sox Scandal is a cold case, not a closed case. When Eliot Asinof […]

Since the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961, the team has boasted many stars, including several of the greatest players in the game. Minnesotans have embraced these players differently, highlighting the changing nature of our complicated relationship with our sports heroes.  The team that Calvin Griffith moved to Minnesota featured a player who was […]

Many casual baseball fans and serious sabermetricians alike hold the belief that the home run was not a terribly important part of the game until the arrival of Babe Ruth in the outfield of the New York Yankees in 1920. Just the year before, Ruth had hit 29 homers to slip past Ned Williamson’s single […]

Willie Mays with the New York Mets (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Willie Mays returned to New York in a trade on May 11, 1972.1 “It’s a wonderful feeling to be coming back here,” said the longtime Giants superstar, who left with the team for California after after the 1957 season. “I’ve always […]

Very little has been written about Deadball Era umpires who established the foundations of the modern umpiring profession — the implementation of umpire signals, the two-umpire system, and more support from league authorities for umpires. And yet this group of men who umpired during the Deadball Era established the traditions, rules, and procedures by which […]

In the baseball season just concluded, Dontrelle Willis of the Florida Marlins, Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals, Roy Oswalt of the Houston Astros and Bartolo Colon of the Los Angeles Angels were baseball’s only 20 game winners. In 2004, Curt Schilling won 21 games for the Boston Red Sox, Johan Santana won 20 […]

Carl Mays is unfortunately remembered for two incidents. To some, he is remembered as the man who threw the pitch that felled Ray Chapman. To others, he is remembered as the man who lost a suspicious game during the 1921 World Series. He should be remembered for much more. Mays’s career accomplishments from 1915 through […]

“I saw it all happen, from beginning to end. But sometimes I still can’t believe what I saw. This 19-year-old kid, crude, poorly educated, only lightly brushed by the social veneer we call civilization, gradually transformed into the idol of American youth and the symbol of baseball the world over – a man loved by […]

(Les Banos photograph courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   About Roberto Clemente, Ozzie Guillén, the three-time All-Star shortstop, outspoken World Series-winning manager, and fellow Latin American, said, “He is the Jackie Robinson of Latin baseball. … He lived racism. He was a man who was happy to be not only Puerto Rican, but Latin American. […]

Jackie Robinson and young fan, Stephen Rozansky in 1951 at the Hall of Fame Game in Cooperstown. Inspiring youth remains a goal of today’s Jackie Robinson Foundation.   “After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.” – Jackie […]

Introduction In January 1942, one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor had made the United States a combatant in World War II, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he had inquired “whether professional baseball should continue to operate.”1 Roosevelt’s famous reply, now known as the “green […]

Major-league attendance surged nicely in 1916 without Federal League franchises competing with six NL and AL teams in four cities, Chicago, St. Louis, Brooklyn, and Pittsburgh. The combined attendance of 6.5 million — up from 4.8 million in 1915 — was only returning to 1911 levels, but major-league magnates had to be relieved that the […]

The 1877 season did not turn out well financially for the National League. All six clubs lost money. St. Louis lost $8,000; Chicago $6,000; Hartford $2,500; Louisville, $2,000.1 Even the pennant-winning Boston Red Stockings, with Harry Wright at the helm, lost $2,230.85.2 The sixth NL club, the Cincinnati Reds, had been disbanded by owner Si […]

The results support many homilies about the benefits that a pitcher enjoys by staying ahead of the hitter – and also show that batters hit 36 points higher with runners aboard than with the sacks empty.   One of baseball’s greatest attributes is that it is, at the same time, both an individual game and […]

Harold Harris Chase was born February 13, 1883 at Los Gatos, Calif., a small town about ten miles south of San Jose.   The fact that years after his death certain baseball reference books listed him as Hal H. Chase or Harold Homer Chase only serves to emphasize the shroud of mystery that surrounded this strange, […]

This article was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   A National League players’ strike, instigated by some of the St. Louis Cardinals, against the presence in the league of Jackie Robinson, Negro first baseman, has been averted temporarily and perhaps permanently quashed. That’s the lede of Stanley Woodward’s story in the […]

After a World Series appearance in 1965 and finishing second to the Baltimore Orioles in 1966, there were many reasons to believe the Minnesota Twins had a good shot at the American League pennant in 1967. Decades later, this remains one of baseball greatest and most historic pennant races. On September 30, 1967, a Saturday […]

Walter O’Malley, center, shown with Jersey City officials, announced that, in 1956 through 1958, the Dodgers would play seven games each season in Jersey City and would have the option to continue the agreement for three years beyond that.   INTRODUCTION  The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the […]

After Hideki Matsui hit a home run against the Yomiuri Giants on March 28, nearly every major sports newspaper in Japan put his image on the front page. (Nippon Sports, March 29, 2004)   “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!” wrote Marty Kuehnert in the Japan Times. “If you haven’t heard, you’re not […]

David Ortiz retired at the end of the 2016 season with 10,091 career plate appearances in the major leagues, 8,861 as a designated hitter, putting him atop the leaderboard for DH appearances over Harold Baines (6,618). (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   Before Ron Blomberg stepped into the batter’s box on April 6, 1973, […]

As the 1875 baseball season approached, William Hulbert, the president of the Chicago White Stockings, was livid. Chicago’s entry in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP) had attempted, prior to the end of the 1874 season, to sign their star shortstop, Davy Force, for the next year. Such a move violated the […]

What we have in this special edition of the Baseball Research Journal are four snapshots of events and personalities from the wide world of “baseball-and-the-law”: Roger Abrams on arbitration and the 1975 Andy Messersmith reserve-clause case; Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court’s 1922 decision in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional […]