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SABR Salute: Tweed Webb Editor’s note: The SABR Salute, first bestowed upon writer Fred Lieb in 1976, was designed as a manner of recognizing the contributions of some of the older members of the Society. Subsequent SABR Salutes appeared in the SABR Membership Directory and honored members who had made great contributions to baseball historical […]

The Membership Directory The first Membership Directory, one of SABR’s most basic and vital tools, was mailed in October 1971. It was a four-page mimeographed list containing 52 names. Since then, the Directory has remained the communication link that weaves the Society together. The second edition, with 105 listed members, had 20 subject categories for […]

Stan Musial batted .365 in 1946 and won his second NL MVP award. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   INTRODUCTION Stan Musial is undeniably one of the greatest baseball players of all time. With 24 All-Star appearances, just one behind Hank Aaron for the most ever, and three MVP awards – while finishing in the top 10 a […]

Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, the shortstop of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, first met the morning of August 28, 1945, in Rickey’s fourth-floor office at 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, New York. Clyde Sukeforth, a Brooklyn scout, told Robinson that Rickey was interested in signing the ballplayer […]

There was one sentence that I read in Ted Williams’ autobiography, My Turn At Bat, which set me off on a personal research journey that took me some unexpected places and raised a few eyebrows along the way. It was a 44-word sentence about his mother, which I really only focused on the third time […]

Introduction and Context By the time the National and American Leagues had held their winter meetings in New York and Chicago, respectively, the internecine trade war that had transpired between the two had been over for three years. Though formal conflict between the two leagues had been extinguished, rivalries between the individual team magnates still […]

“Heroes get remembered. But legends never die.” So says an apparition of Babe Ruth in The Sandlot. Statues affirm their permanence. Capturing a ballplayer’s essence creates a bond with passersby who stop to absorb the player’s importance to the game and admire the sculptor’s handiwork framing a moment. Ruth’s likeness adorns Oriole Park as a […]

This article was selected for inclusion in SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game. In the last two decades of the 19th century, some 30 Negro players saw service in leagues in Organized Baseball. After 1898, however, the doors of the majors and the members […]

    Check a statistical line for a pitcher and you’ll see lots of figures.  Plenty of strikeouts will be impressive; so will a few base on balls, or a low earned-run average.     However, no matter what you look at, the bottom line will be wins and losses. After all, winning is the name […]

A moment that marked a dramatic shift in the power structure between major league baseball players and owners occurred on December 23, 1975, when an arbitrator’s decision brought an end to the primary effects of the reserve clause. Prior to the decision,the pendulum of power had been firmly with the owners. The players had made […]

Topps commemorated Ryan Zimmerman’s 11th career walk-off with a collectible card in 2018. (THE TOPPS COMPANY)   “The pressure is on him, man. It’s not on me. I’m supposed to get out.” — Ryan Zimmerman1 Baseball games are filled with moments of great theater. What do we expect before the curtain rises? Perhaps a great […]

With the advent of limited instant replay in MLB in 2008, its subsequent expansion in 2014,1 and technological innovations like strike-zone automation on the horizon across baseball,2 it makes sense for us to ask in a serious vein what has been asked before mostly tongue-in-cheek: What do umpires do exactly? Angry musing after a blown […]

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, from Four Quartets   If it hadn’t been for my mother Jaqueline’s suggestion that I apply for a job as a Little […]

When he finally hung up his spikes, after hurling his last pitch on May 19, 1946, Ted Lyons had accumulated 260 mound victories, a total which at the time ranked fifth all-time in the American League for most career wins, behind only Walter Johnson (417), Eddie Plank (305), Lefty Grove (300), and Red Ruffing (267).1 […]

On June 21, 1952, the Harrisburg, Pa., Senators of the Inter-State League announced plans to sign a female player to a contract. She was Mrs. Eleanor Engle, 24, a 132-pound stenographer at the State Capitol. She worked out with the club at shortstop the next day, but did not play in the game against Lancaster. […]

Few single-game achievements are as highly-regarded as the cycle: “A single, double, triple, and home run (not necessarily in that order) hit by a player in the same game.”1 Since 1876, there have been 344 documented regular-season cycles in the history of major league baseball (excluding the Negro Leagues).2 Table 1 breaks down the players […]

Frank Torre, Crackers first baseman whose mother, sister, and brother Joe traveled from New York to Atlanta to watch his team in a crucial game against the rival Birmingham Barons on July 8, 1954.   For the first eleven days of July 1954, the Atlanta Crackers, the Birmingham Barons, and the New Orleans Pelicans fiercely […]

For many, Jack Roosevelt Robinson is the most important and recognizable figure in the history of Organized Baseball. He is a cultural icon who revolutionized American sports when he took first base on April 15, 1947. But despite the impact that Robinson has had on sport and society, popular culture largely remembers him for that […]

A real “put-down” for a club is to get shut out in both games of a doubleheader. This happened to the Red Sox on Labor Day of 1974 when the Orioles almost put the Beantowners out of business for the season. Actually, they were close games, with Ross Grimsley beating Luis Tiant 1-0 in the […]

One philosophy of pitching holds that pushing off the rubber as hard as possible and landing as far from it as possible generates the most velocity, while another holds that shortening stride length and “pulling off” the rubber will generate the most. In both theories, stride length is a critical component, both for establishing the […]

Its defiance of the reserve clause for two brief but eventful years in the second decade of the twentieth century has secured for the Federal League a lasting place in the history of sports law. Outbidding owners of the National and the American League for some of the best baseball talent of the era, Federal […]