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On August 29, 1966, the Beatles played what would be their final live concert ever at Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. The event provided much enjoyment for the concertgoers as the band, still wearing matching suits and their mop-top hairstyles, played a setlist of hits and other music they had recorded over […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2). Zane Grey possesses “no merit whatsoever either in style or in substance,” wrote Burton Rascoe, the brilliant but acerbic New York literary critic. And this was the view of another critic, Heywood Broun: “The substance of any two Zane […]

Connie Mack’s wartime Athletics were coming off a 1941 season in which they finished dead last in the American League, with a record of 64-90, a slight improvement over 1940’s 54-100 mark.  They were six games behind the seventh-place Washington Senators, and the season’s attendance was just 528,894. The A’s had declined rapidly after Mack […]

The year 1947 was a banner one for the Brooklyn Dodgers. At the same time as the newly desegregated Dodgers seized the National League pennant, the team expanded its appeal to a demographic not traditionally served by organized baseball. It was also a banner year for the advertising industry. With the abatement of wartime shortages, […]

Not all fans attend the ballpark on a regular basis, but that doesn’t diminish their fandom. Take Kathryn Gemme, interviewed by this author at age 109. The paragraphs that follow were written in midsummer 2003 and are, in places, obviously dated — given the fact of the 2004 and 2007 World Championships. Red Sox fans […]

Albert Spalding lived an extraordinary life as one of baseball’s most important figures. This article focuses on his San Diego years, during which he helped develop San Diego into the city it is today, as well as key connections in his early life that set up his grand finale. The Rockford Files Rockford, Illinois, is […]

As a franchise that began 130 years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies have made an indelible mark not only on the city where they play but also on the whole sport of baseball. This is a team that has maintained the same name longer than any other team in professional sports. And with some of the […]

“My favorite experience of ’em all – and I’ve seen baseball on all levels – was the Clowns at Crosley. I could swear I could smell the grass growin’ during a light rain. It was intimate. The style of play was nice and loose, the way I learned to play it.” – Moses Hudson, 1993.1 […]

P.K. Wrigley and the Chicago Cubs’ “College of Coaches” in 1961. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)   In any business venture, management often seeks to make changes in everyday operations in order to bring about improvements in overall performance. These changes may range from minor tweaks in normal operating procedures to overhauls of the conventional methods in place. […]

The 1962 Mets were a lot worse than they looked.  That’s an outlandish statement to make about a team that won just 40 of 160 games. But even among baseball historians, few realize that nearly a quarter of those precious few victories came during a two-week burst in May in which the Mets won nine […]

As a young southpaw, I naturally felt an affinity for major league left-handers. Lefties, by nature, are outsiders. The consensus of sources spanning more than three decades states that only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, making we portsiders indeed a rare breed.1 I, personally, never experienced the forced switching of penmanship meant […]

In 1974, the Oakland Athletics signed track star Herb Washington as a “designated runner,” despite his having had very little baseball experience. Keeping on the roster a player whose only purpose was to run was a new idea, but there have been many other real baseball players whose main purpose it was to pinch-run. The […]

In the early months of 1926, Ty Cobb recounts in his autobiography, My Life in Baseball, the great outfielder was obliged to submit to eye surgery at the Johns Hopkins Clinic in Baltimore: “the dust of a thousand ballfields was in my eyes.” Shortly before he was admitted, a poem appeared in one of the […]

A note from the editor of The National Pastime.SABRen, welcome to “The Burgh,” home to some truly significant episodes in baseball history, being not only the home to the great Negro Leagues teams the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, but to a major-league team who came by their name honestly — no pun intended — […]

In 1971, the year SABR was founded, the analysis of baseball statistics was still in its infancy, and computers were in the hands of few. Sabermetrics developed alongside the information age, with personal  computers enabling those who did not work where computers were easily  available to develop their algorithms and analyze data at home. In […]

For many Dominican children, a future in the sugar cane fields, the hotel or travel industry, or some other low-paying job may seem inevitable. But when Major League Baseball (MLB) began obtaining talent from the Dominican Republic (D.R.), Dominican boys could dream of making heaps of money hitting home runs. For a few, baseball became […]

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey talk happily after a contract signing meeting in the offices of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field on January 25, 1950. (SABR/The Rucker Archive)   In 1947, concerned about the firestorm that could erupt once he went public with his plan to break baseball’s color barrier by hiring Jackie Robinson, […]

The use by Baltimore of two non-pitchers on the mound in a 24-10 loss to Toronto on June 26, 1978, served as a reminder that there have been a sizeable number of regular players who have taken a fling at pitching. If the pitching staff is depleted or overworked, the manager may go this route […]

By the fall of 1978 modern free agency was entering its third year, and teams were beginning to come to terms with both its existence and its potential, though ownership still hoped to roll it back dramatically. Front offices were figuring out the mechanics of pursuing free agents, how to fit them into their payroll […]

Between the years 1888 and 1891, the National League Philadelphia Phillies lost two prominent ballplayers on what promised to be contending teams. In an age when the life expectancy for American men was 46 to 53, it was surprising to see athletically-fit young men in their mid-twenties die before their expectant lifespan.1 This fate, however, […]

Bill Thomas. (Minor League Stars, SABR, 1978)   This is the story of two of the greatest pitchers in the history of the minor leagues. One was a lean righthander, 6 feet tall, 175 pounds, who pitched from 1926 to 1952 for 24 different teams in 24 seasons, but he never pitched in the major […]

As shortstop Ivan De Jesus fired the ball across the diamond into the glove of first baseman Lamar Johnson to retire Toby Harrah for the game’s final out, to the casual observer it might have appeared to be little different from any other playoff series-concluding game. Pitcher Elias Sosa raised his hands in triumph on […]