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Since 1947 I have been researching and collecting baseball photographs, writing captions and reassembling the facts that surround them. My specialty is action photos of players sliding. Over the years I have learned that when all research tools have been exhausted, it is time for fresh eyes to view the photo; there are none better […]

“These men couldn’t do what I did because they didn’t have the chance. But they dreamed the dreams I did when they were 15, too. And they taught me and they gave me the combat training so that I could do it.” – Willie Mays on the Birmingham Black Barons.1   Performance can mean two […]

The Caguas Criollos won back-to-back Caribbean Series crowns in 2017 and ’18, beating Mexicali 1–0 in 10 innings on February 7, 2017, and defeating Aguilas Cibaeñas from the Dominican Republic on February 8, 2018. The Criollos’ fifth Caribbean Series title puts them in elite company: Only the Dominican Republic’s Tigres del Licey have won more […]

In a reception hall at the Marriott Rancho Las Palmas resort, the mood of the five-member Ottawa delegation might be best described as cautious optimism. Local entrepreneur Howard Darwin stood alongside his son, Jack. Joining them were Ottawa’s deputy mayor, Joan O’Neill, councillor George Kelly, and Don Gamble, the city’s culture and recreation commissioner. Their […]

When Negro National League officials agreed to close operations for 1932 due to the hard realities of the Great Depression, the usually minor Negro Southern League and the newly created East-West Colored League became black baseball’s “major leagues.” Low attendance figures, disillusionment with the National League collapse, doubts about the ability of the leagues to […]

In general, the baseball Winter Meetings can be viewed as a watershed event, marking both the end of one season and the beginning of the next. Even before the 2007 Winter Meetings got under way in Nashville, however, the offseason had been launched with a major new initiative. Major-league general managers held their annual meetings […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. Who has the highest single season batting average in major league history? The modern fan would probably say that Rogers Hornsby’s .424 in 1924 is the highest. Old timers would point […]

Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Hanley Ramirez, and Dustin Pedroia – names you likely would not expect to read about in a book about the 2004 Boston Red Sox. After all, these men were key players in the 2007 World Series championship. Lester, Papelbon, and Pedroia were on the team, while Ramirez was traded to the […]

  Red Springs, North Carolina, was a unique place for a 1960s minor-league baseball team. It is a small town of approximately 3,000 people in historically impoverished Robeson County, in the southeast part of the state. Robeson County, a unique place itself, is the homeland of the Lumbee Tribe, the largest tribe east of the […]

Whitey Witt batted .301 as a Yankee, from 1922-1925. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   It was long before the days when the elegant voice of Bob Sheppard introduced the starting lineup at Yankee Stadium. However, if there was a public-address announcer at the Bronx ballpark on the day it opened on April 18, […]

“I cannot see why they should object to playing with me in the game as they have played nine of us in Rockville, and I have pitched against them.”1 — Billy Holland after not being allowed to pitch for Manchester against Rockville on September 1, 1906   Barnstorming independent teams and semipro leagues were common in […]

With salaries for major league free agents skyrocketing, teams are more reluctant than ever to trade their top prospects. These prospects are valuable because if they reach their upside, a major league team has a star caliber player under their control for six full seasons while paying that player much less than what he would […]

There is no question that, when a hitter takes stock of his prize possessions, the eyes have it. In the early twentieth century, the great ones such as Cobb, Hornsby, and Lajoie refrained from reading newspapers or books. They even stayed away from movie houses, believing they were protecting their vision. One time shortly after […]

The average time required to play a major-league baseball game continues to hover just under three hours; the average game in 2009 took two hours and 55.4 minutes. However, games taking longer than that average are becoming more common—especially in the postseason, when the average grows to 3:36.6. In 2009, only one of the 30 […]

Editor’s note: This article describes an early version of SABR’s The Baseball Index database as it existed at the turn of the twenty-first century. To search the current database of The Baseball Index online, visit baseballindex.org.   Nearly all baseball research is drawn in some way from the printed word. Whether you’re researching a player […]

Appendix 4 in Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Hank Greenberg.

This history of the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants is the seventh in a series of SABR Digital Library books about the great Negro League teams of the first half of the twentieth century. The story begins with Tom Wilson, who established the team in Nashville in 1921. They had been previously known as the Nashville […]

In the 1936-37 offseason, The Sporting News carried a series of articles on baseball’s groundskeepers. Among those featured was Matty Schwab, the longtime superintendent of Crosley Field. Reds baseball writer Tom Swope described how Schwab, respected as a “master groundskeeper” by his peers, carefully tended his field, including the elaborate system of drains Matty had […]

In the 1915 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies, the second, third, and fourth games all ended in identical scores of 2-1. Remarkably, the Red Sox won each of these games (the Phillies won the first game 3-1). Nonetheless, each of these games was unique. The final score does not […]

Deadball Stars of the National League Edited by Tom Simon Foreword by Keith Olbermann Published by Brassey’s, Inc Publication Date: February 1, 2004 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-5748-8860-7, $39.95 8.5″ x 11″, 384 pages This new volume is the first book establishing a relationship between Brassey’’s, Inc. and the premier research organization in all of sports, the […]