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The turbulence in the business of baseball reached its height in 1890. The players, through their Brotherhood association and chafing under the owners’ efforts to exert more control over them, assembled the financial backing to form their own league, the aptly-named Players’ League. The magnates of the National League and the American Association — particularly […]

The National Association of Base Ball Players held its 14th annual meeting on November 30, 1870. It undertook business as normal. Reports were read. Officers were elected. Proposals of the rules committee were adopted, with the most important innovation being to allow the batter to overrun first base. The meeting appeared to be much like […]

Oscar Charleston is shown here in the uniform of the Santa Clara Leopardos, circa 1923. The 1923-24 Leopardos, for whom Charleston played, were considered the best Cuban team in history—a team so dominant that halfway through the season the league simply declared them champions and then reorganized. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)   April […]

“These men couldn’t do what I did because they didn’t have the chance. But they dreamed the dreams I did when they were 15, too. And they taught me and they gave me the combat training so that I could do it.” – Willie Mays on the Birmingham Black Barons.1   Performance can mean two […]

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 […]

My home town of Virginia, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range, is best known for its iron ore and as the home of the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company, for a time the largest white pine sawmill in the world. Sadly, growing up I had no knowledge of Virginia’s rich baseball past. It was […]

Introduction The annual baseball winter meetings of 1928 took place in three cities. The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the minors) went north for its 27th annual convention, filling the King Edward Hotel in Toronto from December 5 to 7. The chief topic of conversation was a continuation of 1927’s primary sticking point, the […]

For 21 years Theodore Amar Lyons pitched for the Chicago White Sox, endearing himself as no other player to South Side fans. He was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1955. Yet for all of his honors, two major aspects of Lyons’ career have never been properly assessed: the superiority of his own record […]

When the delegates to the annual convention of the National Association of Base Ball Players gathered at New York’s Grand Central Hotel in December 1870, they didn’t know they were attending the final meeting of the old organization, or that by the following spring the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players would be the […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. INTRODUCTION In his Hall-of-Fame career, Lou Gehrig established himself as a premier RBI producer. According to the 2012 edition of The Elias Book of Baseball Records, Gehrig led the American League […]

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 […]

Babe Ruth with Japanese students wearing Koshien jerseys. (Courtesy of Yoko Suzuki.)   The American ambassador to Japan stretched out his long legs and put the final touches on the speech to welcome the All American baseball team to the Land of the Rising Sun. Although the ambassador, Joseph Grew, was probably pleased with it, […]

The annual Winter Meetings of the National Association ventured to sunny Miami to hold sessions in the McAllister and Columbus hotels from December 3-5, 1947. Major-league representatives stayed at the McAllister, Columbus, or Martinique hotels.1 The annual joint meetings of the American and National Leagues followed shortly afterward, in frosty New York City, at the […]

Baseball is great theatre. Indeed, baseball stories have been fodder for Hollywood since the era of silent films, both dramatic and comedic. But baseball biographies in movies and TV-movies often sacrifice facts to move the story forward at a watchable pace, increase drama, or provide comic relief. For a sport whose patrons guard its history […]

This article was originally published in “Northern California Baseball History,” the 1998 SABR convention journal.   Described as a “most genial boniface” when he opened a San Francisco saloon in 1885, Calvin Alexander McVey (“Mac” to his friends) got a kick out of patrons who marveled at his hands: big ham fists with discolored lumps […]

Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, who played for the Cincinnati Reds 36 years before Jackie Robinson came along, should be credited with crashing the color barrier. — Felipe Alou1   On April 15, 1947, the story goes, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became the first black American to play baseball in the major leagues.2 […]

Tris Speaker is remembered more for his performance on the playing field than for his results as a manager. But in 1920–21 his personnel moves, tactics, and leadership generated outstanding results for the Cleveland Indians. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   Tris Speaker, considered one of the greatest hitters and center fielders of all […]

With the weather turning crisp in October of 1916, sports fans across North America were looking forward to the World Series. There had been great pennant races in both leagues, and the upcoming battle between Brooklyn and the Boston Red Sox looked like a good one. Though Toronto was still more than sixty years away […]

For the Astrodome to be built, many intricate pieces had to fall into place. In describing one of the most important factors, Craig Cullinan Jr. confidently asserted, “Baseball was the heart, lungs, brain, life blood of the whole thing. … Without it, there was nothing – no franchise, no stadium, no hotels.”1 Although Roy Hofheinz […]

Introduction and Context The 1939 baseball winter meetings were held in Cincinnati, with the major and minor leagues meeting together for the first time since 1923. But meeting together provided little impetus for agreement. The minor leagues approved several measures to govern major-minor affiliations, but when the American and National Leagues split on whether to […]

In the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams, the spirits of various diamond greats come to play ball on a field rising magically out of Midwestern corn stalks. “Ty Cobb wanted to play,” chuckles Shoeless Joe Jackson. “But no one could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it.” In […]

In 1944, even the Browns were able to win an American League pennant, having previously come close only when the George Sisler-led 1922 assemblage barely lost out to Babe Ruth and the pre-Lou Gehrig Yankees. But it could have turned out quite differently. Missing from the action The 1944 Red Sox were missing three of […]

The search for data on nineteenth-century minor leagues to be used in compiling league records has led to the discovery of stories about the accomplishments of individuals, teams, and even leagues which have long been forgotten, completely overlooked, or in some cases attributed to others. In 1887 Walton Goldsby assembled one of the premier teams […]

SABR Salute: Frank Williams Editor’s note: The SABR Salute, first bestowed upon writer Fred Lieb in 1976, was designed as a manner of recognizing the contributions of some of the older members of the Society. Subsequent SABR Salutes appeared in the SABR Membership Directory and honored members who had made great contributions to baseball historical […]