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John Thorn: Why I’m a SABR member By John Thorn I joined SABR in 1981, in part to cover that year’s convention in Toronto, on assignment for The Sporting News. Cliff Kachline — at that time the historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame, later SABR’s first executive director, and posthumously, not long ago, a […]

R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?” TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?” Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In […]

Introduction and Context With the inauguration of free agency in 1976 and the introduction of a second interleague trading period in 1977, the baseball winter meetings had become agonizing to attend. The traditional exchange of players between teams became more limited now that players could bargain for long-term contracts and no-trade clauses. However, the 1980 […]

With an attack on a future Hall of Famer’s batting average, a lifetime ban handed down to a minor-league executive, and a power struggle between the American League president and the commissioner, the 1922 baseball winter meetings did not lack for story lines. Controversy abounded even before the meetings started, as there was serious concern […]

As the 1867 baseball season drew to a close, the sport was meeting and exceeding the goals that were anticipated by players and journalists alike. The anticipation that the “game of nines” would become the pastime of the United States had been predicted, and even perhaps prematurely proclaimed, for close to a decade. Now, with […]

The year 1947 was a banner one for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the same time as the newly desegregated Dodgers seized the National League pennant, the team expanded its appeal to a demographic not traditionally served by organized baseball. It was also a banner year for the advertising industry. With the abatement of wartime shortages, […]

INTRODUCTION When I was browsing old issues of the SABR Review of Books, one article from 1988 caught my attention.1 An article by Peter Bjarkman suggested that academic dissertations have much to offer baseball researchers, and he commented that these works “provide a fruitful scholarly resource.”2 He also noted that dissertations “remain one of the […]

What if? This is one of the most often asked questions of historians. What if the Mayflower had not sailed? What if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated? What if the Watergate break-in had never been discovered? Baseball fans play out the same scenarios. What if Shoeless Joe Jackson had not been banned from baseball? […]

Luis Olmo played for Guayama against Enid in 1940. By 1943, he and Enid shortstop Red Barkley were teammates on the Brooklyn Dodgers. (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Library)   The town of Enid, Oklahoma, had minor-league baseball in the early twentieth century, with such teams as the 1922 Enid Harvesters in the Class […]

Forty years ago, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) took a step to provide long overdue recognition for the top players in minor-league baseball history. SABR surveyed its members in 1983 to select the top 10 minor leaguers of all time. The next year, a review committee revised the plan by expanding the list […]

In my 40 years working at the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum in Baltimore, my primary focus has been preserving and celebrating the life and legacy of George Herman “Babe” Ruth. But during my tenure, the museum also expanded its mission to chronicle the rich heritage of area sports, including serving as the official archives of […]

A generally accepted narrative of the early days of baseball integration is that White pitchers deliberately threw at Black batters. According to Ken Burns’ Baseball, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, “Pitchers threw at his head.”1 His counterpart in the American League, Larry Doby, stated, “I was knocked down in many games. I was […]

National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues The citizens of Asheville, North Carolina, rolled out the red carpet for the minor-league meetings in 1926. The 25th annual meeting of the National Association was held December 7 to 9, with a record number of executives from both the big leagues and the NAPBL descending upon the Southern […]

Don Zimmer in Cuba, 1952. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Cal Ripken Jr. has said, “I had the most fun in baseball in my first year in the minor leagues than at any other time in baseball. Once you get to the major leagues, it’s more of a business.” In my more than 50 years interviewing ballplayers, […]

In Eight Men Out, author Eliot Asinof wrote about the 1919 Chicago White Sox: “Many players of less status got almost twice as much on other teams. … (Charles Comiskey’s) ballplayers were the best and were paid as poorly as the worst.” This passage sums up the entire foundation of Asinof’s thesis: Low salaries and […]

When he finally hung up his spikes, after hurling his last pitch on May 19, 1946, Ted Lyons had accumulated 260 mound victories, a total which at the time ranked fifth all-time in the American League for most career wins, behind only Walter Johnson (417), Eddie Plank (305), Lefty Grove (300), and Red Ruffing (267).1 […]

Thomas Francis Qualters was a bonus baby whom the Philadelphia Phillies signed on June 16, 1953, for an estimated $40,000. He was a star pitcher at McKeesport, Pennsylvania and once struck out 21 batters in a seven-inning high school game and 24 in an eight-inning high school game, allowing only one hit in each contest.1 […]

The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies are known for staging one of the most precipitous collapses in the history of major-league baseball, squandering a 6½-game lead with 12 games to play. Nearly a century earlier, another Philadelphia team, the White Stockings, also lost a seemingly insurmountable lead and gave the National Association flag to Harry Wright’s Red […]

2015 view of Montfort Street, with Fenway Park in the background. (Courtesy of Bill Nowlin)   For those who have followed the Whitey Bulger saga and the Winter Hill Gang, thrilled to Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, read Dennis Lehane’s novels such as Mystic River, feared the Boston Strangler, were appalled by the murders at Sammy […]

The actress and noted Giants baseball fan Tallulah Bankhead once said, “There have only been two geniuses in the world – Willie Mays and Will Shakespeare.”1 This book, Willie Mays: Five Tools, focuses on the first of those two great men. Willie Howard Mays Jr. could do it all. To many, he is the greatest […]

Photographic evidence has emerged that disproves the oft-cited narrative that the 1925 American Association was the first baseball league at any level to consistently number their players’ uniforms. This article will present the photographs along with a brief history of uniform number usage in baseball. The practice of using jersey numbers, which was in use […]

On Saturday, August 26, 1939, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds played a doubleheader at Ebbets Field. The opening game is noted for being the first televised major-league game and for the celebrations afterward in honor of Alexander Cartwright Jr., who had been admitted into the Hall of Fame that year, which Major League Baseball […]