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Opening Day ceremonies at the Tokyo Dome on March 25, 2008. (Courtesy of Bill Nowlin)   The third in a series of five Major League Baseball visits to Japan opening the regular season featured the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics in March 2008. Earlier series had been in 2000 with the New York Mets […]

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 […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).   Exactly a hundred years ago, on June 3, 1888, Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. Baseball and the written word have been on good terms ever since. It was not until 1981, however, […]

At first I thought it was a misprint. Right in the middle of the Deadball Era — the years of the Hitless Wonders, small ball and Bill Bergen — the 1911 Boston Nationals’ pitchers allowed 1,021 runs scored.1 Even for 1911, the high-water mark for offense in that era, it was a phenomenal number of […]

Johnny Ritchey broke the Pacific Coast League’s color barrier with the San Diego Padres in 1948. (COURTESY OF BILL SWANK)   On March 30, 2005, the Padres unveiled a bust of Johnny Ritchey at the recently opened Petco Park, two years after his death. On February 21, 2017, Ritchey was inducted into the Breitbard Hall […]

At the time of his death in May 1969, LEE ALLEN had been the historian at the Hall of Fame for ten years. Celebrated for his encyclopedic recall of baseball persons famous and obscure, and events large and small, he was a prolific writer whose books and articles marked him as the foremost baseball historian […]

The National League started off without too much fanfare in 1876. Only one game was scheduled on its opening day on Saturday, April 22, with Boston playing at Philadelphia. Of course, that was 34 years before a President of the United States attended an opening game, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult for President […]

Fred Girard Haney touched all the bases in a 65-year baseball career that led him from athletic stardom in high school to the general manager’s office of the Los Angeles Angels.

In 1876, at the time of the National League’s inception, the only reasonable way for a baseball team to travel from New York (home of the Mutuals) to St. Louis (home of the Brown Stockings) on a regular basis was by train. Stagecoach was too slow. Buses, and roads good enough to support them, were […]

Six of the eight most populous cities in the United States were not represented in the National League for the baseball season of 1881. New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Cincinnati were not members of the League, which included only two charter members (Chicago and Boston) and teams from the smaller cities of […]

Red Smith wrote of Willard Mullin, the cartoonist: “There is no estimating how many sports columns were inspired by his sketches.” Likewise, it would be difficult to overestimate the influence of sports cartoonists on our memory of baseball from the 1940s and 1950s. The cartoonists created many of the best-remembered images from that era of […]

What with Bill Veeck Jr.’s gregarious nature, numerous achievements, and well-known career as “a champion of the little guy” (to quote from his Hall of Fame plaque), it is not surprising that writers have penned quite a few profiles of the flamboyant baseball executive. On the other hand, regrettably little ink has been spilled in […]

Cecil Fielder on the Hanshin Tigers (Robert Fitts Collection)   In the mid- to late 1980s, tensions between the United States and Japan rose to a level not seen since World War II.1 Americans were frightened at the rising strength of the Japanese economy. Japanese imports, especially automobiles and electronics, seemed to be taking over […]

John J. “Honest John” McCloskey, one of the legendary figures of minor-league baseball, was born in 1862 in Louisville, Kentucky, where he began playing semi-pro ball in the 1880s. Primarily a catcher, he soon joined barnstorming teams that toured the midwest and southwest. These journeys led him to El Paso, Texas in 1885, where he […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth, left, poses with Boston Braves teammates Wally Berger and Hal Lee in 1935. (Leslie Jones photo, courtesy of the Boston Public Library.)   The buildup had been tremendous, and for a few days, at least, the hype seemed completely justified. On April 16, 1935, the Boston Braves hosted the New York Giants in […]

When James Bentley “Cy” Seymour of the Reds stepped into the batter’s box on August 2, 1905, in Cincinnati, he was battling Pittsburgh Pirates great Honus Wagner for the National League batting crown. At start of play that Wednesday afternoon Wagner, 31, was batting .356, and Seymour, 32, was at .357.1 Wagner had won the […]

Kirk Gibson of the Detroit Tigers and Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox led baseball’s free-agent class going into the 1985 Winter Meetings.1 Kansas City Royals GM John Schuerholz was so interested in slotting Gibson into the team’s cleanup spot that he asked a team representative to host him on a hunting trip to […]

The Arlington Hotel, a spring training hotspot for two decades. (Author’s collection)   From 1900 to 1941 as many as seven major league teams held spring training in Texas. San Antonio was the preferred Texas locale. Marlin, in central Texas near Waco, was second. The Alamo City hosted for 29 seasons; Marlin for 16.1 For […]

Minneapolis Millers shortstop Andy Oyler topped a pitch into the mud in front of home plate at Nicollet Park. Before the visiting team could find the ball, Oyler raced around the bases for what may be the shortest home run in history. This story has been around for over 100 years. For more than half […]