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Winning a championship involves a large number of ingredients coming together in just the right fashion and at the right time. 1918 was an unusual season in that it was truncated by war and the timing of the truncation was not known until shortly before it occurred. Because teams played the season without knowing how […]

I have been fortunate to work in professional baseball for almost 60 years. It has been an interesting career with many treasured and exciting experiences, and I am frequently asked what is my fondest or greatest memory. Most of my career (35 years over three different intervals) was spent with the Houston Astros. During the […]

The 1939 Yankees are known as one of the greatest teams of all time. They were an outstanding squad, finishing 17 games ahead of the second-place Boston Red Sox and winning the AL pennant in a breeze. Sportswriters of the day referred to the 1939 American League as the Yankees and the seven dwarves. The […]

A star among stars, Jackie Robinson had an excellent batting record in six career All-Star appearances. The influx of Robinson and other African-American stalwarts for the National League helped reverse the course of the series. Prior to integration, the American League won nine of the first 13 contests. Surprisingly, Robinson played in neither the 1947 […]

In the Best Interests of Baseball? The Revolutionary Reign of Bud Selig by Andrew Zimbalist John Wiley and Sons (2007) $14.95, paperback. 250 pages. Photos, notes Allan H. “Bud” Selig has nominally been in charge of the national pastime longer than any commissioner since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Needless to say, the game has expanded […]

Imagine a newspaper that contains no sports section. Imagine a sports page that contains no stories on baseball. Imagine a story on baseball that contains no statistics. What you are imagining is a newspaper prior to the era of Henry Chadwick. Baseball historians recognize Chadwick as the first newspaperman to report on the game of […]

“Even during the depression we could always count on a good crowd when the Saints and Millers played each other,” recalled Oscar Roettger, a pitcher and first baseman for St. Paul during the 1920s and 1930s. “Pay days – that’s what those games were.” The diamond rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul was in its […]

Fourteen post-1900 hurlers have averaged 20 or more victories in their best ten seasons. Mathewson heads the group with almost 28 wins per year. Canton and Palmer are the latest additions to the list. Through the years there have been many attempts to compare baseball’s outstanding pitchers. Statistical analysts have usually concentrated on either a […]

Both Thompson’s All Time Roster of Major League Baseball Clubs (1973) and Macmillan’s The Baseball Encyclopedia (1976) identify player Porter of the 1884 Kansas City Union Association club as Henry Porter. That is in error. Henry Porter, a fine pitcher, spent the 1884 season with Bay City and Milwaukee of the Northwestern League and Milwaukee […]

This article was originally published in “A Celebration of Louisville Baseball,” the 1997 SABR convention journal.   A native Louisvillian, Louis “Pete” Browning was born June 17, 1861, in the first summer of America’s Civil War. One of eight children (four sons and four daughters) born to Samuel and Mary Jane Sheppard Browning, Pete grew […]

Editor’s note: Reprinted courtesy of the Oakland Tribune. Research by Paul J. Zingg, author of Harry Hooper: An American Baseball Life, contributed to this article. An earlier version ran as a column in The Oakland Tribune on April 9, 1995.   Fans of professional football hear incessantly of the collegiate connection to their game. Jerry […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in the Buckeye State,” the 2004 SABR convention journal.   The evolution of baseball’s playing and scoring rules was a slow and turbulent process beginning in the nineteenth century. Apart from the early establishment of such basics as four bases and their 90-foot separations, there was plenty of […]

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:1 The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,2 And then when Cooney3 died at first, and Barrows4 did the same, A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game. A straggling few got up to go in deep despair.5 […]

Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, hosting a meeting on August 24, 1953, with Emilio de Aldrey of the Puerto Rican League, Bobby Maduro of the Cuban League, and Luis Alejandro Blanco Chataing of the Venezuelan League. The baseball executive council agreed to permit 48 major-league players to participate in 60 games with Caribbean Confederation-affiliated clubs. (Getty […]

As late as the 1980s, the softball/baseball Minneapolis Millerettes were one of Minnesota’s forgotten professional sports teams.1 Eventually, the Millerettes and other female ballplayers in the 1940s and 1950s got the spotlight they deserved. Reunions and the development of a players association led to an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, […]

In the course of his career, Roberto Clemente played in 2,433 games and earned 266 assists. He made any number of spectacular defensive plays. One often cited is the time that Clemente, playing right field, earned an assist on a bunt. The game was at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on Friday night, August 27, 1965. […]

INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT As the twenty-first century began, the commissioner’s office and many team owners were concerned about competitive imbalance. After free agency began in the 1970s, some teams were able to use their financial heft to gain a competitive edge, especially those with lucrative local radio and television contracts; the New York Yankees, for […]

The 1940 major-league winter meetings, held at Chicago’s Palmer House on December 10 and 11, saw a number of proposals fail to be adopted. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis voted for the status quo in most instances, though in a couple of notable votes he sided with the National League in one case and the American […]

The 1963 baseball winter meetings were alive with discussion of important issues, including the permissible size of catcher’s mitts and the color of baseball bats. The clubs also made time to once again reconfigure the minor-league structure and adopt an amendment designed to assist the player-development efforts of expansion teams. The minor leagues kicked off […]

Introduction and Context The 1950 winter meetings were held in St. Petersburg, Florida, from December 3 to December 13. It was the third time in history that the Sunshine State played host to the winter meetings – they were in Jacksonville in 1941, while Miami was the site in 1947. At first, it was expected […]

“The disturbed state of the country and the fact that the baseball players are the most largely represented fraternity in the ranks of our volunteers, and to this may be attributed the small number of represented, there being sixty-one answering the roll call,” wrote the Brooklyn Daily Eagle,1 referring to the annual meeting of the […]

  Chicago White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito trying out VR during spring training in 2016. (ARTURO PARDAVILA III / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)   A NEW KIND OF BATTING PRACTICE Mariano Rivera wasn’t always destined to be the greatest closer of all time. He entered the majors as an old rookie at age 25 and took a […]

“The main quality a great third base coach must have is a fast runner.” — Rocky Bridges, California Angels coach “It’s frustrating. Your job is not to get in the way of a rally.” — Rich Donnelly, Dodgers third base coach after Game One of the 2006 NLDS   Most readers will remember what was […]