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WHAT’s in a name? If it’s a baseball team’s name, there’s a story in it. The story of what to call Washington, D.C., baseball teams (except “last in the American League”) began in confusion and remained that way for almost a hundred years. Professional league baseball began in Washington in 1871, with the Olympic Base […]
What’s in a name? If it’s a baseball team’s name, there’s a story in it. The story of what to call Washington, D.C., baseball teams (except “last in the American League”) began in confusion and remained that way for almost a hundred years. Professional league base ball began in Washington in 1871, with the Olympic […]
The Callaghan sisters, Helen (left) and Margaret. (British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame) The young women gathered on the grass in Chicago shagged flies and fielded grounders. They played scrub games under the watchful eyes of coaches. Even the practice games were not without incident, as Gladys “Terrie” Davis, a batting star in Toronto’s […]
Pete Rose’s reputation is built on two pillars: he has more hits than any player in history and he helped his teams immeasurably with his hustle. The first is a fact; the second is a complete misimpression. Rose was not much of a hitter and only an average offensive player. He didn’t create runs, he […]
Gus Greenlee, in hat and tie, shown here with some members of his Pittsburgh Crawfords team. (SABR-Rucker Archive) The United States Negro Baseball League is mostly known for its minor role in the Jackie Robinson story. It was famously backed by Branch Rickey in 1945, possibly for use as a cover for the Brooklyn […]
Birmingham Black Barons center fielder Willie Mays was not originally who scout Ed Montague was looking at for the New York Giants.1 On Alex Pompez’s recommendation to the Giants’ director of minor league operations, Jack Schwartz, he was looking at Barons first baseman Alonzo Perry for the Sioux City (Iowa) Soos, the Giants’ Class-A affiliate […]
This article was originally published in “St. Louis’s Favorite Sport,” the 1992 SABR convention journal. There was a time in baseball history when exhibition games meant something. There was a time when rival teams met each other on the field of play, and even though the exhibition contests did not figure in the regular […]
INTRODUCTION Pitchers are a breed apart. On average, they are taller and heavier than most players; contrary to their fielding brethren, they do not play every day; even the most resilient of relievers have to sit out half of their team’s games or risk burning out their arms, and most starters will work only every […]
The 1985 Winter Meetings had showcased a then-record 62 free agents, but the 1986 free-agent class shattered that mark as 82 players filed for free agency by the deadline.1 Despite the uptick in the number of free agents, however, for the second year in a row none of them signed with a new club at […]
In the summer of 1972 I was a 16-year-old pitcher for my American Legion team in Las Vegas, Nevada. That summer our team traveled to Southern California to play American Legion teams in the Los Angeles area. We won a few games, and we lost a few games. But the highlight of the trip was […]
This essay is intended as an exploratory survey of baseball players of the 1880s, what they did in the offseason, and how — or if — they planned for their future economic security. The purpose is to examine how the individuals of this era responded to the economic opportunities offered by their baseball careers and […]
Since the formation of the National League in 1876, many cities have failed to retain their major league teams. Fifteen such cities were represented in the majors before 1900. Most cities persevered in the minor leagues, but only Troy, New York suffered longer without professional baseball than Altoona, Pennsylvania, whose sole stint in the majors […]
Introduction and Context In 1937, both the National and the American Leagues held their Winter Meetings in Chicago, while the National Association met a few days earlier in Milwaukee. Rumors aplenty swirled around these gatherings, but very few teams actually pulled the trigger and made significant deals. The deals that did take place, however (and […]
Who is the greatest catcher to have ever played in the major leagues? Some might say it is Yogi Berra or Johnny Bench or Roy Campanella. The answer depends on what one uses as a measure of greatness. There have been numerous measures used or proposed 1 and numerous lists 2 ranking the great backstops. […]
On February 20, 1859, William Cauldwell, National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) convention delegate and secretary of the Union Base Ball Club of Morrisania, NABBP Rules Committee member, and editor/publisher of the New York Sunday Mercury, printed a notice of the Association’s impending second annual convention, scheduled to open on March 9. The notice […]
Not many fans are still around who remember when the Chicago Cubs compiled the best ten-year record in major league baseball history over the past century. That’s because it happened from 1903 through 1912. The Windy City Cubs—yes, those Cubs who haven’t made it to the World Series since 1945—won 980 games way back then […]
Introduction The most important labor arbitration decision of all time involved baseball, two pitchers and one of the finest labor arbitrators of all time, a true arbitration “superstar.” His 1975 decision in baseball’s Messersmith case still reverberates throughout the multibillion-dollar sports industry. Arbitrator Seitz set the players free. Peter Seitz was a role model for […]
On the southwest side of Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky, lies a plain granite marker with a slightly misspelled inscription, the gravesite pathetically guarded by a twisted sweet-bay magnolia tree. Buried there in lot #549 is Louis Rogers “Pete” Browning, whose occupation at the time of his death on September 10, 1905, at age […]
For most of the first 100 years of major league baseball, owning a team could be profitable or perilous. Some club owners made fortunes and wore handmade silk shirts. Others lost their shirts, whatever they were made of. Some did both in their lifetimes. Connie Mack was in the latter category. The patterns of his […]
The sacrifice fly was a part of major league baseball, off and on, for 36 of the 65 seasons before 1954, when it became, for the first time, a separate item in the official statistics. It has had a very checkered history and the reader may have trouble understanding or even following the various changes. […]
In slightly over a century of professional baseball history, seven major league clubs have attained a winning average of .750 or better for a single season. Five of those teams were relatively easy victors against little better than nominal opposition as shown by the following table. Year Club League Won Lost Pct. Games Ahead […]
Most baseball fans are familiar with historian Jacques Barzun’s famous 1954 quotation, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball,” but they may not know the rest of the sentence: “…the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.”1 If […]
This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, No. 20 (2000). Urban Shocker is one of baseball’s forgotten stars, even though he was one of the American League’s dominant pitchers in the 1920’s. He won 156 games in that decade, most with the lowly St. Louis Browns, despite the fact that his […]
At the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Dodgers tried to compensate for the short distance to left field with a high screen and national park-like dimensions for right and right-center. This is the 1958 layout. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library) With a seating capacity of over 90,000, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was […]