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Most people associate the history of night baseball with a few isolated incidents, Larry MacPhail in 1935, Johnny Vander Meer’s double-no-hitter in 1938, Wrigley Field in 1988. But the story is a complex one, going all the way back to the first night game in 1880, just a few months after Edison perfected the incandescent […]

Of the major American sports, baseball is the only one that continues to enforce a segregation so complete that girls are directed to an “equivalent” sport. Yet generation after generation of women, from the late eighteenth century when baseball first arrived in the United States, to the USA Baseball National Team today, have refused to […]

Milwaukee County Stadium was in its third season as home of the National League’s Braves when it hosted the inaugural Global World Series in 1955. (Courtesy of the Milwaukee Brewers)   Half a century before there was a World Baseball Classic, there was the Global World Series. The scars of World War II had not […]

When eternal Dodgers hero Johnny Podres threw the first pitch to Cincinnati Reds shortstop Eddie Kasko on April 10, 1962, it marked the official opening of Dodger Stadium as the new home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.1 Less recognized and certainly less celebrated was how it represented the definitive end of what has come to […]

1. THE INTERNATIONAL RETURNS In the case of Ottawa’s return to the International (née Eastern) League, as has so often been the case in Organized Ball, one town’s misfortune proved to be another city’s gain, however briefly. The New York Giants’ Triple-A club in Jersey City, affectionately or derisively known as the Little Giants, struggled […]

An industrial lot on the eastern edge of downtown Greenville, Texas, covered with heavy equipment, gives no sign of its grand history, except for one feature: a brick and concrete arch still stands with the welded metal inscription “Majors Stadium,” coated with a layer of primer paint, across the top. It takes an excellent imagination […]

Unlikely as it may seem, a careful reading of Louisville’s two major daily newspapers in January 1978 does not reveal a single article of local origination announcing that one of the city’s former sports cornerstones had passed away in upstate  New York. Perhaps it was a mark of shame to Louisville’s sense of  history that […]

Jackie Robinson with the Kansas City Monarchs, October 23, 1945 (COURTESY OF RACHEL ROBINSON AND THE ESTATE OF JACKIE ROBINSON)   A brief and often forgotten chapter in the legendary life of Jackie Robinson was the five months he spent as the Negro Leagues batting star for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1945. This era […]

The 1967-68 offseason was launched in October when Kansas City Athletics owner Charlie Finley was granted permission to move his team to Oakland, California. When Kansas City officials threatened legal action, the American League hastily announced plans on October 18 to add new teams in 1969 in both Kansas City and Seattle. The National League […]

Washington is the only city to have lost two major-league teams. In its last twenty-five years as an American League franchise, the nation’s Capital never even reached the first division. But its greatest single misfortune may have taken place on October 26, 1934, when owner Clark Griffith sent Joe Cronin to the Red Sox for […]

The 1957 baseball Winter Meetings, held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from December 2 to 7, had many issues on the table — the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively; remuneration to and realignment of the Pacific Coast League; major-league television rights in minor-league territories; minor-league […]

The 1936 Black Panthers. Charlie Culver is the first on the left, sitting. (Jerry Cohen, Ebbets Field Flannels)   The reception that Jackie Robinson received in Montréal is well known. A few years later, the Provincial League became a prime destination for Negro League veterans. Many factors can explain how that came to be, but […]

On August 4, 1948, the Roseville Press-Tribune trumpeted the arrival of a new professional baseball team. The Far West League’s financially failing Pittsburg Diamonds were moving ninety miles northeast along what was then US Highway 40 to Roseville, just outside Sacramento.1 The late-season move was bold; although Roseville today ranks among California’s fastest growing cities […]

In 1987, Stan Musial traveled to Poland. He is shown here during a baseball clinic in Kutno (wearing a Boston Red Sox cap borrowed from another American) with Waldemar Goralski and Moe Drabowsky. (Courtesy of Slawomir Podemski, with thanks to Josh Chetwynd)   Stan Musial’s father, Łukasz, believed in the American dream. Work hard, get […]

Montreal Expos’ manager Gene Mauch and New York Mets’ manager Gil Hodges post prior to the first game in franchise history, Shea Stadium, April 8, 1969. The Expos won, 11-10. (Courtesy of the McCord Museum, Montreal)   Gerry Snyder, Charles Bronfman, and John McHale. Three of the biggest names in Montreal Expos history. Without Snyder’s […]

Major League Baseball has always been a for-profit business.  It emerged from the Roaring Twenties and survived the Great Depression to emerge firmly entrenched as “The National Pastime,” but despite the reverence held for the game the primary objective of the owners was to fill the stadiums and keep costs to a minimum, maximizing their […]

Former Washington Senators pitcher and pitching coach Sidney Charles “Sid” Hudson dedicated 19 seasons as a player and coach to the national pastime in the nation’s capital. Unsung and scarcely remembered in the city in which he lived and worked all those years, Hudson nevertheless holds an exalted place in the hearts of the people […]

The late Ed Linn, coauthor of Veeck—As in Wreck, later wrote in The Great Rivalry (1991), “I don’t care what anybody says, there is no rivalry on the face of the earth that can compare with the Yankees and Red Sox.”1 Linn, who died in 2000, might have been able to justify that statement more […]

When the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, one question among the many to be answered was: What will baseball’s place in American society be during wartime? Thanks to a letter written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1942, baseball’s role became clear. In that communication, known as the ”Green […]

Cover of the Arizona Diamondbacks expansion draft program on November 18, 1998. (Photo courtesy of Joel Zolondek)   In the first two decades since major-league baseball granted an expansion bid to Arizona Baseball, Inc., the Arizona Diamondbacks franchise has been characterized by the stability of its leadership. The franchise has had two managing general partners, […]

“For the hour will come when Your vigor will fade, And Fortune, ye know is a slippery jade; The Partition’s but flimsy, `twixt glory and shame And Solomon like Napoleon is now lost to fame.” — Anonymous   Homer King Solomon ruled supreme for one brief and brilliant year. He wore the flowing purple in […]

Aquino Abreu in the uniform of the 1968–69 National Series champion Azucareros ball club, three seasons after his miraculous three-game pitching string. (Author’s Collection)   Aquino Abreu—a diminutive right-handed fastball specialist who labored for a decade and a half during the formative years of the modern-era post-revolution Cuban League—remains entirely unknown to North American and […]

Minor-league baseball in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is virtually synonymous with Texas League professional baseball in the region. The small parts not connected to the Texas League are the rise and fall of black baseball in the area and the brief sojourns of the Fort Worth and Dallas teams in other leagues. (The Metroplex is […]