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Canadian soldiers play baseball against their American allies at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London during the First World War. (Library and Archives Canada)   Bill Humber, Canada’s foremost baseball historian, has long made the case for baseball’s distinction as Canada’s earliest “national game.” Before indoor rinks and reliable refrigeration, hockey had yet to freeze itself […]

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 […]

On the surface, baseball does not appear overly complex. Not only is the sport easy enough for millions of children to understand and play in their Little League games, its charming simplicity is one of the many reasons it was adopted as “America’s Pastime.” However, as both the interest and capital involved in professional baseball […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2).   J. Lee Richmond played four full seasons and parts of two others in baseball’s major leagues. Not a long career. Today, more than 100 years later, a check of his statistical record reveals little that would seem to […]

There have been only a handful of major league pitchers who threw three no-hitters: Larry Corcoran, Cy Young, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, and Nolan Ryan. Similarly, only Johnny Vander Meer, Allie Reynolds, Virgil Trucks, Jim Maloney, and Nolan Ryan threw two nine-inning no-hitters in a single sea­ son. Bill Doak almost joined these two elite […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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

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 […]

    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 […]

Editor’s note: This is an article that appeared in the September 1985 issue of Baseball Gold.   On June 26, 1936 a gangling young Hoover High School graduate named Ted Williams signed a baseball contract on the kitchen table at neighbor Johnny Lutz’s house on Utah Street in San Diego’s North Park district. The contract, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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 […]