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One of the surprising pleasures of my life was being elected president of a Triple-A baseball league. Interestingly, this occurred five years ago, just about when the minor league, at all levels, leaped into a period of an unexpected and unparalleled renaissance. This revival of the minors has occurred during a time of turmoil at […]

Maryville College is a fast-growing co-educational institution, located in St. Louis County.  As a part of our innovative approach to higher education, I originated an accredited course in baseball history during the spring semester of 1973. Entitled “The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball,” which I adapted from Leonard Koppett, the course was designed for the […]

There is a lengthy tradition of Red Sox booster clubs, ranging from the Royal Rooters to the Winter League and the Red Sox Half Century Club. The most venerable of all, though, is the BoSox Club, founded in early 1967.There is a lengthy tradition of Red Sox booster clubs, ranging from the Royal Rooters to […]

Hall of Fame baseball owner Bill Veeck is remembered for many things, including winning American League pennants as owner of the Cleveland Indians in 1948 and the Chicago White Sox in 1959; suffering injuries as a Marine in WWII that required him to use a wooden leg the rest of his life; signing Larry Doby […]

The baseball fans of the 1930s and 1940s were a special breed, far removed from their counterparts of today. The “colorful” fans of recent years – the sign carriers, the inane and loud-mouthed drunks, the affluent junketeers who follow their teams on a road trip a year – are pale copies of their hardier predecessors. […]

Appendix 3 in Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Hank Greenberg.

Sandy Koufax posted a career 57-15 won-loss record at Dodger Stadium and a 1.37 ERA. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Sandy Koufax’s baseball career is a tale of two cities, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. It is a tale about a career that contained two disparate time periods, the worst of times and the best of times. For […]

Chattanooga Lookouts first baseman Jess Levan was the last man to be banned from professional baseball for trying to fix games. The uproar surrounding Levan’s banishment in 1959 revealed evidence linking other players to wide­ spread gambling in Southern ballparks. The Southern Association scandal was either, as The Sporting News dismissed it, “relatively insignificant;’1 or […]

As the 1959 Winter Meetings approached, both the nation and baseball were on a roll. For America, the postwar economy was firing on all cylinders. The Space Race against the Soviet Union was on, and a burly, proud nation was confident of ultimate victory. Television ratings toppers like Father Knows Best reflected a culture that […]

On July 8, 1949, the New York Giants became the fourth major-league team to put a black player on the field when Hank Thompson started at second base and Monte Irvin pinch-hit in the eighth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers. All of the five black players who would play in the […]

The Phillies’ Richie Ashburn hit only 29 homers—approximately one per 300 times at bat—in a 15-year career, and none of them are legendary because of their length. Eight were inside-the-parkers that never left the playing field. Exhibiting a slashing style of hitting that contrasted sharply with the “swing-from-the-heels” approach of most of his contemporaries, he […]

Upon arriving in the United States in the spring of 1956, without knowing a single person, ignorant of the native language, customs, and food, and unaware of racism, Felipe Alou was armed with nothing but his mind, courage, determination, and talent. No Dominican had ever played in the major leagues, and there were as yet […]

One aspect of amateur baseball that is largely unexplored is the baseball played in our nation’s prisons. Prison games are easily overlooked by historians because few in the general public witnessed these games and they are seldom documented. One exception is the Stillwater State Prison in Stillwater, Minnesota, whose prison newspaper—The Prison Mirror, managed and […]

Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison wound up as the game’s hero, hitting a dramatic walk-off three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning to give the NL a 7-4 victory.Named to the 1964 National League All-Star Game roster as a reserve outfielder, Johnny Callison […]

In the early months of 1926, Ty Cobb recounts in his autobiography, My Life in Baseball, the great outfielder was obliged to submit to eye surgery at the Johns Hopkins Clinic in Baltimore: “the dust of a thousand ballfields was in my eyes.” Shortly before he was admitted, a poem appeared in one of the […]

Birmingham Black Barons center fielder Willie Mays was not originally who scout Ed Montague was looking at for the New York Giants.1 On Alex Pompez’s recommendation to the Giants’ director of minor league operations, Jack Schwartz, he was looking at Barons first baseman Alonzo Perry for the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos, the Giants’ Class-A affiliate […]

  The Washington Post described the so-called significance of the August 12, 2021, matchup between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox played in Dyersville, Iowa—where the movie Field of Dreams was filmed—this way: “Thursday night, 30 years and a pandemic after the release of that movie, the state will host its first […]

It was a hot summer day in 1897 when hundreds of fans of the Federalsburg Club in Maryland gathered for a game. This small town of barely a thousand people was proud of their team. Little did they know that three of the young teenagers taking the field for them that day would soon be […]

One of the most exciting accomplishments in major league baseball is exciting because of its rarity. When a batter hits for the cycle, he gets a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game. From 1876 through the end of the 2017 regular season, there have been only 319 instances of a batter […]

Although on the surface Miller Huggins and Jacob Ruppert seemed worlds apart, the two men had striking similarities. They were the architects of the New York Yankees’ dominance in the 1920s. (BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY)   Jacob Ruppert believed that hiring Miller Huggins as his manager after the 1917 season was the first and most important […]

Only 21 Border League (1946-51) players made it to the major leagues.1 Of these, only one made it all the way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Willard Jessie Brown was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1915. In 1934, Brown played with the Monroe Monarchs of the Negro Southern League. He rose to the […]