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Don Fisher was working for the electric company and pitching sandlot baseball in Cleveland when he signed with the New York Giants in August 1945. He pitched only two games for the Giants, was sent to the minors in 1946, and won just three games there before his brief professional career came to an end. […]

What was the best-hitting team in modern (i.e,. post-1900) baseball history? There are many ways to answer that question. If you were to rank offense the way newspapers used to, by batting average, the 1930 Giants and their .319 batting average would top the list. That same year, the Phillies collected the most hits in […]

While Charlie Chaplin went into the boxing ring in City Lights (1931), the Marx Brothers played football in Horse Feathers (1932), Curly Howard wrestled his opponent to the mat in Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937), and W.C. Fields almost played golf in The Golf Specialist (1930), the true sport of the great movie comedians is […]

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Vol. 1 (1986).   Who reads baseball juveniles? It’s pretty sure the kids still do; those series books in the shelves at Braswell Memorial Library here in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, look pretty well-thumbed to me. I’m hoping that adults do, too, or that […]

For the past two years I have pored over approximately 2,000 media guides, from the  1960s through 2007, to find material for this article. In addition to learning about players’ off-season jobs, marital status, children, fathers, brothers, hobbies, and other oddities, I found out a great deal about media guides themselves. Let others devour reams […]

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. There are ways of recognizing the best pitched games of starting hurlers — the record books list the no-hit games and in a special category even the perfect games where no […]

For more than 40 years I have exhaustively researched marathon games by time and by innings played at all levels of professional and amateur baseball. Last year the Baseball Research Journal published part of that research: marathons lasting 20 or more innings. Continuing that effort, I now present the research on games lasting six hours or […]

“My mother and father never taught me to hate anyone, or to dislike anyone because of their race or color.…I don’t believe in color. I believe in people.” – Roberto Clemente Walker Images courtesy of The Clemente Museum.   The establishment of the Clemente Museum in the Lawrenceville neighborhood adjoining downtown Pittsburgh was the brainchild […]

The annals of baseball prose include several memoirs and biographies from and about major-, minor-, and amateur-league umpires, well stocked with entertaining war stories from the diamond front, as well as numerous how-to-manuals for those pondering careers in this noble and unappreciated profession; and books inviting fans to offer their own interpretation of baseball’s knottier […]

Fans depart Wrigley Field via the diamond. Note the temporary bleachers set up beyond the left field wall on Waveland Avenue as well as the “jury box” section in left-center field. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   On January 22, 1914, Charlie Weeghman leased land to build a ballpark at Clark and Addison streets […]

Who was William Holbert? No, not the founder of the National League.  That was William A. Hulbert. We are talking about William H. Holbert, a National League catcher from 1876 to 1888. His claim to fame is that he is the only major league player to go to bat 2,000 times in his career without […]

After the Dodgers’ win over the Pirates on August 5, 2004, the game’s broadcasters announced that the Dodgers had just achieved a season sweep of the Pirates. The announc­ers added that it was the Dodgers’ first season sweep since mov­ing to the West Coast in 1958. First, I found it surprising that this was their […]

Major League Baseball’s point man for international umpiring is Larry Young. A veteran who umpired for 25 years at the big-league level highlighted by two World Series and All-Star games in addition to several Division and League Championships, Young has worked as a supervisor since the latter half of 2007 and represented MLB at each […]

In the old days of professional baseball, players fist-fighting on and off the field was not uncommon. Players would scream at each other. Some would tease. Many others were just downright mean. One player in particular earned a nickname that perfectly described his slick dugout demeanor. The handle followed him throughout his days in the […]

Billie Barnie had taken the reins of the Baltimore Club of the major league American Association in March of 1883. He was determined that the fans not suffer through another dismal season like the previous one. That aggregation, led by Henry Myers, had been hammered in local newspapers with headlines like “BAD GAME OF BALL—DISBAND […]

I still think relief pitchers are slighted or faintly patronized in most fans’ and writers’ consideration. Ask somebody to pick an all-time or all-decade lineup for his favorite team or for one of the leagues and the chances are the list will not include a late inning fireman. — Roger Angell1 Much has changed since […]

Roland Hemond joined the Los Angeles Angels’ on the ground floor in 1961, remaining with the Halos until 1970. Here is Hemond in 1961 with prospects Dan Ardell (l) and Tom Satriano (Courtesy of Angels Baseball)   Responding to six decades of demographic change, the National and American leagues moved to expand as the 1960s […]

Early baseball teams in Minneapolis and St. Paul played in a number of hastily built and short-lived ballparks before settling on a pair that each lasted 60 years, longer than any other park or field used for professional baseball in the Twin Cities.  NICOLLET AND LEXINGTON Opened and closed a year apart, Nicollet Park in […]

This article was honored as a 2023 McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award winner.   The names of Jenny Fulle, Amy Dickinson, Elizabeth Osder, and Janine Cinseruli are rarely, if ever, mentioned in the existing literature regarding the integration of female ballplayers into Little League Baseball. These four girls were pioneers on the ground in the first […]