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A game at Minneapolis’ Nicollet Park in 1954, the most hitter-friendly park of its era. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)   Contrary to what you might read elsewhere, Forbes Field was not the first modern ballpark made of steel and concrete. That honor belongs to a minor-league stadium that now, like so many historic […]

The Japanese Base Ball Association in 1911. (COURTESY OF ROB FITTS)   Since the mid-nineteenth century, baseball has helped immigrants assimilate into American society. By following their local team or taking the diamond, foreigners improve their English, become part of the cultural fabric, and learn American values. Between the mid-1890s and 1910, over 100,000 Japanese […]

On Opening Day of the 2015 season, Miami Marlins players and fans had to scurry for cover as Marlins Park was soaked with rain — despite the retractable roof installed on the facility.  Dee Gordon slipped as he accelerated out of the batter’s box. The speedy Miami Marlins second baseman had just laid down a […]

From 1920 to 1958, baseball fans across the Deep South and Southwest looked forward to the annual Dixie Series, a best-of-seven postseason matchup between the playoff champions of the Southern Association and the Texas League. In 1967, after an 8-year hiatus, owners in the Double-A Texas League and the newly created Southern League resurrected the […]

Nearly all accounts of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies’ epic collapse, which would etch itself deep in the city’s historical psyche, focus on the Phillies’ 10-game losing streak that started on September 21, when they had a 6½-game lead with only 12 games remaining, and ended with them having lost eight games in the standings in […]

At the annual SABR convention in 2003, in Denver, I presented my analysis of game scores in relation to overall team success.1 The inspiration for that study was the common assertion that the ability to win close games is an indication of “clutch” performance and that better teams will stand out in these games over […]

The final performance of Stealin’ Home, featuring Bobby Bradford (cornet), Chuck Manning (tenor saxophone) and Vinny Golia (bass saxophone). (Courtesy of Jon Leonoudakis)   Jazz and baseball are two distinctly American forms of entertainment which have close ancestors that originally began in Europe, but were probably not recognizable as either jazz music or the game […]

Probably almost everyone has heard of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) thanks to the movie A League of Their Own. Of course, the film did not deal with other professional leagues or an international girls’ baseball league. The idea for an international league was first proposed by Arthur Meyerhoff, a Philip K. Wrigley […]

On Friday, April 10, 1953, August Anheuser “Gussie” Busch Jr., head of the firm that purchased the St. Louis Cardinals from Fred Saigh less than two months earlier, announced that the Anheuser-Busch brewery had also purchased Sportsman’s Park for $1.1 million from Bill Veeck, the owner of St. Louis Browns. He said the park would […]

Editor’s note: This column was originally published in the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee’s April 2015 newsletter. In lore, the Deadball Era is often remembered for teams’ aggressive play and steadfast reliance on the stolen base. With home runs being rare, the employment of speed and daring on the bases shaped this period more than […]

Long fences and “dead” indoor air gave Astrodome a reputation for being unfriendly to hitters. This analysis compares batting average, slugging percentage, and home run rate (home runs per 1,000 at-bats) for all Astros games at home (in the Dome) and on the road.Long fences and “dead” indoor air gave Astrodome a reputation for being […]

When the 1941 major-league baseball season ended, the Chicago White Sox were in a familiar spot: for the third straight year and the fifth time in six seasons, the White Sox had finished in the American League’s first division under manager Jimmy Dykes. While the team’s first pennant since 1919 still seemed a long way […]

A great deal of attention has been given to the baseball closer, particularly since the save was officially recognized in 1969. But the modern bullpen is now multidimensional, complete with analytics and new algorithms, and this should give a manager more weapons with a late-game lead. This paper discusses the evolution of the specialized bullpen, […]

The 1946 season had been a deep disappointment for the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians. Hopes had been high for both organizations. After two dismal war years when NY finished third and fourth in 1944 and 1945, the Yankees were looking forward to securing their normal perch on top of the AL pack, […]

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in  “Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, 1958-2016” (SABR, 2017), was honored as a 2018 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   Negro League baseball magnates meet at the Hotel Teresa on June 20, 1946, in New York City. The owners had all attended the Joe Louis boxing bout the night […]

Rarely can an athlete lay claim to having been both the most colorful and productive in a respective time period. Ali and Ruth were two colossal examples, but for the underrepresented enigma of nineteenth-century baseball, Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn provides a fascinating fusion of personality and achievement. In the days when mounds were only fifty […]

Batting average measures the batter’s ability to avoid striking out and his ability to “hit ’em where they ain’t.” However, the relative importance of these two skills is blurred by the traditional way in which we write AVG (H/AB). By rewriting AVG as a function of strikeouts per at-bat and hits per ball put in play, we gain greater insight […]

The Sporting News neatly summarized the April 15, 1968, game played at the Astrodome between the New York Mets and the Houston Astros in a classic headline: “24 Innings, Six Hours, One Run.”1 Surely fans who attended this Monday night game could not have anticipated that they were going to witness a total of 158 […]

The on-the-field history of the Texas Rangers began on April 15, 1972, but efforts to bring major-league baseball to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex started more than a decade earlier. In 1953, after 50 years without expansion or relocations in either the American League or the National League, the Braves’ move from Boston to Milwaukee was […]

JOHN THORN (1947–) is the noted co-author of The Hidden Game of Baseball, subsequently the editor and publisher of Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, an incomparable scholar of the origins of the game, and is today the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, having taken office in 2011 as just the […]

A great deal has been written about the faceoff between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds in the best-of-nine 1919 World Series. Probably no other baseball World Series has drawn more attention from commentators and historians. However, the vast majority of words written about the Series relate to what has become commonly known […]

Pete Browning: An Overlooked 19th Century Legend (2009) Editor’s note: In 2009, SABR’s Nineteenth Century Research Committee selected Deacon White as its Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend. This article first appeared in the Fall 2009 edition of the SABR Nineteenth Century Committee newsletter. By Joe Williams Louis Rogers “Pete” Browning was born during the early […]