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Of the many minor leagues that existed in professional baseball at the end of World War II, the Pacific Coast League (PCL) was at the pinnacle, the one with the best players, several fine stadiums, and robust attendance. In 1946, total attendance for the league was 4,068,372, a PCL record, dwarfing that of any other […]

As late as the 1980s, the softball/baseball Minneapolis Millerettes were one of Minnesota’s forgotten professional sports teams.1 Eventually, the Millerettes and other female ballplayers in the 1940s and 1950s got the spotlight they deserved. Reunions and the development of a players association led to an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, […]

The .400 batting average (BA) for an individual in a single season has been the standard of hitting excellence all batting champions have sought, but few have achieved. In fact, the last time it was accomplished was in 1941 when Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox managed the feat with a .406 BA. To […]

In Baseball Research Journal 33 Fred Worth presented an intriguing article titled “Interesting Statistical Combinations,” analyzing combinations like high batting average and low walks or lots of losses but a low ERA. He concluded the article, “Obviously there are many more comparisons that could be considered.” I took this as a challenge and investigated a number […]

In October 1999, as part of the merging of the National League and American League into Major League Baseball, the decision was made to create a unified approach to look after the health and wellness of major-league umpires. Under the auspices of the Office of the Commissioner, Sandy Alderson and Ralph Nelson reached out to […]

This article illustrates the problems that existed in the 1884 Minneapolis Grounds, covering the social tensions that arose to legal difficulties that were created by the ballpark.

Introduction The 1884 professional baseball season demonstrated the nationwide baseball boom then underway.1 It was an exciting time to be a lover of baseball. The 1883 season concluded with most professional clubs in acceptable financial condition, with plans for higher salaries and improved baseball grounds for 1884. Like 1882, the 1884 season offered new associations, […]

INTRODUCTION It is not unusual to hear a sports fan or announcer say something like, “The window for this team is closing.” But what exactly does this expression mean? The general notion is that a team has a limited number of years when it can contend for a championship. Saying the window is closing implies […]

It took some time for professional baseball to take hold in Minneapolis. Ultimately, a feisty first baseman with the unintimidating nickname of “Peach Pie Perry” made a record-setting contribution to get professional baseball over the hump in Minneapolis. Organized professional baseball first arrived in Minnesota in 1877 when Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Winona sported entries […]

When San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem during a 2016 preseason game to protest police violence against black people in America, all hell broke loose. Voices of praise and condemnation rained down. Passion often trumped reason. The “conversation” remains heated, while complicated criminal justice problems remain unsolved. Is […]

Dodgers right-hander Don Sutton talks about pitching with Sandy Koufax during spring training in 1979. (Photograph by Donald Gregory Dughi.)   Sandy Koufax threw his final pitch in a major-league game in 1966, but his influence could still be spotted on a mound decades later. Not in a pitch but in a stare. A death […]

In 1958, three years before a major-league expansion team took the field for the first time, Milwaukee Braves owner Lou Perini, one of the lone voices in baseball’s hierarchy pushing for extending into other regions of the country, complained, “Baseball men have always been averse to changes. … They simply can’t continue to sit back […]

Indian Head Rockets sweater crest, 1951. (Indian Head Museum)   “Wonder how long it will be before we have baseball in these parts again?” mused the man on Coffee Row as he sipped his java. He was scanning the sports pages jammed with holiday ball tournaments. There must have been 100 teams within hailing distance […]

The on-the-field history of the Texas Rangers began on April 15, 1972, but efforts to bring major-league baseball to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex started more than a decade earlier. In 1953, after 50 years without expansion or relocations in either the American League or the National League, the Braves’ move from Boston to Milwaukee was […]

In 1922, the New York Yankees played the New York Giants in the World Series; the majors produced three .400 hitters; Rogers Hornsby won the Triple Crown; and Organized Baseball reached the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Baseball had long been a popular pastime on the Shore. Almost every town supported a team, and competition among […]

Sandy Koufax posted a career 57-15 won-loss record at Dodger Stadium and a 1.37 ERA. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Sandy Koufax’s baseball career is a tale of two cities, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. It is a tale about a career that contained two disparate time periods, the worst of times and the best of times. For […]

Professional baseball’s first Baltimore Orioles played in the American Association (AA) in 1882. Another franchise of the same name played in the AA from 1883 until joining the National League (NL) for nine seasons, from 1891 through 1899, but the NL vacated four cities after the 1899 season. The following season, the Western League’s owners […]

In the early years of World Series play, game schedules were not nearly standardized as today’s for­mat. Back then, a coin toss decided the site of the opening game as well as possible seventh game. The order of games hosted by each league’s pennant win­ner varied each year. And as late as 1956, the games […]

“No nation that has had as intimate contact with baseball as the Japanese,” The Sporting News wrote in an editorial shortly after Pearl Harbor, “could have committed the vicious, infamous deed of … December 7, 1941, if the spirit of the game had ever penetrated their yellow hides.”1 Today, 60 years removed, the writing is […]

The average time required to play a major-league baseball game continues to hover just under three hours; the average game in 2009 took two hours and 55.4 minutes. However, games taking longer than that average are becoming more common—especially in the postseason, when the average grows to 3:36.6. In 2009, only one of the 30 […]

The 1981 baseball season marked the 66th straight year that the Chicago Cubs have played their games at what is today known as Wrigley Field. Only three other teams, the White Sox, Red Sox and Tigers, have played in their respective parks for more consecutive years. But the story behind the construction of Wrigley Field […]