Search Results

Contrary to popular belief, so goes the old joke, the Minnesota Twins are not actually twins; one is adopted. Contrary to another commonly held belief, the Twins are not Minnesota’s first representative in major league baseball. That distinction belongs to the St. Paul Base Ball Club, which, in 1884, played nine games in the ephemeral […]

Yank Robinson’s One-Man Strike in 1889 When modern-day players go on strike against their owners they do so as a collective unit – the Major League Baseball Players Association – but back in 1889 it took a bit of courage for William (Yank) Robinson to stage a one-man strike against the owner of the St. […]

In recent years, statistics have been developed to facilitate comparisons of player performances across seasons and across generations. One such statistic, OPS+, places a players’ OPS (on-base plus slugging) into the context of the league’s OPS, adjusted by a park factor. An .800 OPS in a pitcher’s year such as 1968 results in a higher […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime (2004), No. 24.   The collapse of umpire John McSherry at home plate on April 1, 1996, recalled immediately the fatal beaning death of Ray Chapman in 1920. The latter is, we are told, the lone instance of a game-related fatality in major-league history. To […]

The role of umpires in establishing public acceptance of organized baseball in its early years has been given little attention. This is especially true of umpires in the minor leagues. If mention is made at all, it usually concerns some colorful personality with a foghorn voice or a flair for poetry rather than an acknowledgement […]

As November rolled into December 1923, Organized Baseball found itself with much on its plate, including a National League owner who had been indicted for perjury by a federal grand jury in the E.M. Fuller & Company bankruptcy case,1 and a Pacific Coast League president who had been ousted by a controversial majority vote but […]

Introduction At the 1951 Winter Meetings, the major topic of discussion was the future of the minor leagues. Attendance in the minors was down 20 percent in the 1951 season, a total loss of more than 7 million. In another important matter, for the first time in baseball history, rules that set forth the requirements […]

Jack Allen (Tartleton State University Athletics)   Jack Allen, former head coach at Ranger College and Tarleton State University, is a member of the National Junior College Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame (inducted 1986) and the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame (inducted 2000). Allen served as head coach for 23 years at Ranger […]

It is obvious that the game of baseball has changed drastically over the years. With the value of RBI compilations accepted now as a matter of course the serious historian must take note of their promi­nence in league history-and by extension, baseball itself. As far as the International League is concerned, the 1920s mark the […]

One of major league baseball’s most enduring trends over its one and a half centuries has been the distribution of the innings workload among an ever-increasing number of pitchers. When the National League opened for business in 1876, only 34 pitchers (just over four per team) were needed to navigate the 26-week season, in which […]

    Selecting an all-time baseball team is an extremely precarious pastime, fraught with difficulties and likely to induce mental anguish.  Therefore, we shall forego the best in favor of the jest.     We could be Poles apart in naming our all-time Ski team, but our squad prefers fastballs to snowballs and running bases to […]

Mickey Mantle’s wife, Merlyn, and eldest son Mickey, Jr. attended the first Mickey Mantle Day on September 18, 1965. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   Mickey Mantle stepped up to the microphone not far from where he had stepped up to the plate for 18 seasons, but it was no use. The 60,096 adoring spectators who had gathered […]

PREFACE By Tom Larwin This article is a summary of observations from seven individuals who watched a ball game in an unusual way: We watched the umpires—the umpires only—and not the players. Our observations and resulting viewpoints were augmented the following day in an informal meeting with two of the umpires, who discussed certain aspects […]

“Most of what I learned about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.” — John Sayles, filmmaker   A ballplayer’s life is rarely if ever finely crafted finish-work carpentry; rather it is almost always rough framing, with all the gaps and gouges exposed to critics and admirers alike. Polishing and puttying and sanding the rough edges […]

Excerpts from Cecil O. Monroe’s “The Rise of Baseball,” detailing the events between 1857 through 1870 that shaped baseball in Minnesota.

At the 2003 SABR national convention, SABR launched a survey about the future of baseball.1 SABR members as well as members of the general public were invited to respond. The instructions given to the respondents read as follows: “Answer the questions in light of what you believe will be true in 2020, not what you […]

Appendix 3 in Herm Krabbenhoft’s research on Hank Greenberg.

Runs batted in, now one of the most important measures of batting performance, were slow to be recognized by the major leagues. There were no official RBI records until 1920, and they were not carried in many box scores until ten years after that. It is not surprising then that a record such as “Most […]

Here is supporting evidence for the correction of errors in the official RBI record of Lou Gehrig.

Sandy Koufax pitched 14 complete games in which he gave up two hits or fewer. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)   In the run-up to the 1970 season, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn shared plans to continue minor-league trials with what became the designated hitter, begin another trial with livelier baseballs, and explore “bending” foul lines […]

A fictional tale about a personal rivalry between a Minneapolis player and a St. Paul player in the late 19th century.

A note from the editor of The National Pastime.

When Bill James first made his Game Score widely public in the Historical Baseball Abstract (1988), he humbly called it a “garbage stat.” He did feature a three–page essay on it and sprinkled it about that book, his last Abstract. Since then, it’s been broadly used, but only shallowly, as though through his description of […]