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The word “daring” is associated with Chico Ruiz’s game-winning steal of home on September 21, 1964. “Insane” and “mad” are among the labels, too. But was he really so wrong? An analysis of the famous play in the National League pennant race.   “We’re playing Cincinnati. Two outs in the sixth inning, and we’re locked […]

On a warm summer evening July 8, 1953, Sacramento Solon Neill Sheridan did something no professional ballplayer before or since has ever done. Between games of a twi-night doubleheader against the San Francisco Seals, he raced an Arabian horse—and won. Then in the nightcap, the right-handed slugger homered over the right-field fence, something no one had […]

Braves Field home plate on display at the Sports Museum. (Courtesy of Sports Museum of New England)   The final theft of home plate at Braves Field did not take place during a regular-season game but instead on a cold late-March Boston day in 1953 in an empty park, shortly after the ballclub announced its […]

One game for the pennant: winner takes the flag. Tiebreaker playoffs have produced drama—rookie Gene Bearden shutting down the Red Sox on one day’s rest in 1948 and Bobby Thomson hitting the most famous homer ever three years later—but these were the result of a tie at the end of the regularly scheduled season. A […]

Bordering Hoboken — which dubs itself the “birthplace of baseball” because of the legendary 1846 game between the Knickerbockers and the New Yorks at Elysian Fields — Jersey City stands on the edges of the Hudson River and Newark Bay, somewhat obscured by the baseball notoriety of its neighbor to the northeast and the epic […]

The 114th annual Baseball Winter Meetings were held in Nashville at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center from December 7 to 10, 2015. The 700,000-square-foot resort had played host to baseball on six previous occasions (1983, 1989, 1998, 2002, 2007, and 2012) and the festive holiday ambiance eloquently blended into the background as the […]

The baseball community met at the Galt House hotel in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, December 3-9, 1992. Reportedly, 1,800 to 1,900 people registered for the annual meeting, with vendors increasing the size of the meeting to about 2,500. By most accounts, the 1992 Winter Meeting was especially eventful, highlighted by a number of prominent free-agent signings […]

The London, Ontario, baseball tournament held toward the end of August 1869 featured a special category reserved for “colored” teams from Canada and the United States. Two years after the country’s Confederation in 1867, Canadians were still held in high regard for having opened their borders to freed slaves in the pre-Civil War era while […]

On the eve of the 1943 season, Boston Red Sox manager Joe Cronin faced a daunting task: replacing Ted Williams and Dom DiMaggio in his outfield. The two All-Stars were serving their country as World War II raged across Europe and the Pacific. Sensing Cronin’s predicament, Associated Press features sports editor Dillon Graham shared a […]

Roberto Clemente and Bill Virdon receiving Gold Gloves in 1962 from Rawlings employee Guy Palso. (Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)   Roberto Clemente had gained many admirers of his defense as a right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates since his major-league debut in 1955. Clemente’s strong right arm and an array of running catches, basket […]

There are a number of reasons teams complete transactions in major-league baseball. While the goal is clearly to improve the team, the exact nature of that improvement varies considerably, based on the circumstances in which the team finds itself. A contending team will look for upgrades in the field or on the mound in the […]

The year was 1947. The place was the shrine in Brooklyn called Ebbets Field. The time was 3 a.m. As I sat on that cement street corner at Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place, wrapped in an old Army blanker, holding a brown bag of two salami sandwiches and an apple close to my chest, I […]

1953 Eddie Lopat All-Stars (Rob Fitts Collection)   Eddie Lopat was a fine, soft-tossing southpaw during a 12-year baseball career with the Chicago White Sox and most famously the New York Yankees. Called the Junkman because of his assortment of off-speed pitches, Lopat was also something of a baseball entrepreneur. He not only ran a […]

It may be the most famous baseball painting of all time. Created by Norman Rockwell, it goes by many different names, including The Three Umpires, Game Called Because of Rain, Tough Call, and Bottom of the Sixth. It depicts a baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. […]

By consensus, it has been deemed that the Negro Leagues died in 1948. The last Negro League World Series was played that year. SABR’s book on the 1948 Homestead Grays and Birmingham Black Barons was titled A Bittersweet Goodbye. Seamheads, an authority on Negro Leagues history, does not go beyond 1948. When Retrosheet began doing […]

Background The 1972 baseball Winter Meetings played host to over 1,300 people at the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, from Saturday, November 25, through Friday, December 1. “It looms as the largest in history,” said Jack Quinn, general manager of the Pacific Coast League’s Hawaii Islanders, “and it marks the first time that all convention […]

This article was originally published in “Baseball in Cleveland,” the 1990 SABR convention journal.   In the spring of 1913, the Organized Base Ball monopoly seemed to have very successfully driven the “outlaw” organizations to cover. An eastern-based United States League was in the process of organization, but with little financial backing, and appeared— rightly—to […]

The war for the pennant The 1897 Beaneaters opened spring training in Macon, Georgia, with optimism that may have been out of proportion to their 74-47 fourth-place finish, 17 games behind the champion Baltimore Orioles, a year earlier. The core of the team was familiar: Tommy Tucker, Bobby Lowe, Herman Long, and Jimmy Collins across […]

Actor Jack Lemmon toes the rubber, looks in for the sign, and takes a deep puff from a sizeable Cuban cigar. He throws a fastball down the heart of the plate, and I whistle a line drive inches from his famous visage for a single. This was no dream or fantasy—just one of the Hollywood […]

Willie Mays played in more regular-season games in center field than anyone else in major-league baseball history (2,832). He also played 83 games at first base, 12 in right field, 2 in left field, 2 at shortstop, and 1 at third base. This article presents the positions in order by when Mays made his first regular-season […]

This article provides an in-depth look at Ted Williams and his year spent in Minneapolis.

SABR Salute: Alex Haas 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 […]