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In 1903, one of the more prominent citizens of Poughkeepsie, New York, was William A. McCabe. McCabe, the Chief of Police and “tenement” investor, had been a professional baseball player with the 1886 Poughkeepsie team in the old Hudson River League, primarily at second base, and had sponsored semi-professional teams in Poughkeepsie since the mid-1890’s. […]

On October 14, 1969, Gary Gentry pitched 6 2/3 shutout innings against the Orioles, and then got relief help from Nolan Ryan as New York beat Baltimore 5–0 to take a two-games-to-one lead in the World Series. Of course the Mets went on to shock Baltimore and win the Fall Classic in five games. While […]

Whitey Lockman and Willie Mays made Giants manager Leo Durocher a happy man. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   The ties linking superstars and managers follow patterns often beginning as mentee-mentor before changing into relationships of equals, then deference to the player based on his status, and, finally, awkwardness as the star’s skills (but not […]

Gary Ward with the Big 8 conference championship trophy in 1995, the 15th of 16 consecutive league championships. (Oklahoma State Athletics)   Founded in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1890, Oklahoma A&M College (OAMC) became Oklahoma State University (OSU) in 1957. The school fielded its first baseball team in 1909 and from then through the 1977 season, […]

“I don’t like to compare myself to hitters of the past because people always start talking about eras — ‘Gwynn’s got to face four different pitchers in a game’ — all that stuff. Forget all that. It’s still the game of baseball. When I’m dead and gone, all that will be left is the numbers. […]

Introduction The 2017 MLB season set records for both home runs (6,105) and strikeouts (40,104). Conventional wisdom would suggest that this is not a coincidence. The argument is that players don’t mind striking out more often if they also hit more home runs. The raw data for these two parameters are easily plotted over time […]

Sometimes a pitcher and a catcher (battery) come together as a fully charged duo outperforming all other battery com­binations for either player. In some cases the result of this pairing has been a full point or more below both the pitcher’s and the catcher’s individual ERA. On the other hand, the battery can fall a […]

Walking into the old-school-like surroundings of Estadio Changa Mederos in Havana’s Ciudad Deportiva and running into umpire Yanet Moreno Mendinueta is an interesting experience in itself.1 Off the field, the short and smiling umpire lacks the serious and stern look that she displays while wearing the black-and-blue outfit and calling the shots either behind the […]

April 6, 1987, was a slow news day. President Reagan spoke to the Canadian Parliament, hardly a reason to stop the presses. Republican former quarterback Jack Kemp announced his candidacy to succeed Reagan in 1988. The Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 2,400 for the first time. It was Opening Day for 16 of the 26 […]

Rogers Hornsby’s will to excellence and his combativeness on the field won him a loyal following in the stands. Sportswriters, too, admired Hornsby because he answered questions in the same straightforward manner he took on a Walter Johnson fastball. However, his irascibility didn’t endear him with major league owners and front-office men. When one adds […]

During the four seasons that Bobby Wine and Ruben Amaro were teammates, from 1962 through 1965, they split the shortstop duties for the Philadelphia Phillies — and each won a Gold Glove. In May 1962, Rubén Amaro (who had previously been in the Mexican Army) was recalled to service in the US Army. The Phillies […]

Vida Blue lost two consecutive 1-0 games in 1971 and fans wondered why those Oakland batters couldn’t get this great pitcher some runs. Walter Johnson had this same problem a half century ago, but it wasn’t for just two games, or two seasons, but for 20 years. Johnson, in the course of his career, participated […]

On October 26, 1960, Calvin Griffith received permission to move his Washington Senators ballclub and bring major league baseball to Minnesota. As a result, in 1961 the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were joined in support of one team. Until the coming of the Twins, however, the two cities had been supporters of their […]

Al Pinkston. (Courtesy Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association)   Al Pinkston was one of hundreds of minor-league stars whose career accomplishments came to light decades later thanks to the efforts of SABR. For the most part, Pinkston’s numbers, outstanding though they might appear, seem a bit pedestrian compared with others in SABR’s first volume […]

On four books about baseball cards: “The T206 Collection” (Zappala, Zappala, Blasi); “Mint Condition” (Jamieson); “Cardboard Gods” (Wilker); and “House of Cards” (Bloom).

When Jack Roosevelt Robinson set foot on the green grass of Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, he understood the enormity of the moment and his role in it. He was breaking through a barrier that had been in place for 60 years, and by doing so was elevating his entire race. He knew the […]

From left, Arlington High School baseball head coach Brian Womack, Abby Moore, and Gloria Rogers. (Arlington High School Instagram)   Abby Moore has played baseball in her hometown of Arlington, Texas, since she was four years old, and now the high school student is making a splash on the national stage in women’s baseball. Moore […]

The Federal League suspended operations after the 1915 campaign, with the clouds of World War I on the horizon. It survived for two seasons and remains the only attempt in this century to plant and sustain a viable “third major league.” Aside from it, major league baseball has meant National League and American League baseball […]

On April 22, 1980, Chicago Cub shortstop Ivan DeJesus became only the tenth player in that team’s history to hit for the cycle, collecting a single, a double, a triple, and a home run during a 16-12 win over St. Louis. The following morning, the writeup in the Chicago Sun-Times listed every Cub player of the so-called “modern” […]

The researchers at Protoball — the de facto authorities on baseball’s ancestral and descendant games — unsurprisingly categorize the popular recreational sport of kickball as a baseball derivative.1 But how did kickball originate? In On the Origins of Sports: The Early History and Original Rules of Everybody’s Favorite Games, authors Gary Belsky and Neil Fine […]

In the baseball season of 1932, Jimmie Foxx—known then and now as Double X—made a concerted assault on Babe Ruth’s home-run record of 60 in a season. The Philadelphia A’s strong boy came up two short, ending his season with a total of 58. There is a persistent legend that Foxx would have broken Ruth’s […]

Installing the lights at Lexington Park, St. Paul, in May 1937. (Minnesota Historical Society)   Although one was a pioneer for night games, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were the last holdouts when it came to baseball under lights in the American Association. The first night game in the history of the […]