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Narrative films are not factual films — even when they purport to divulge the true-life stories of real people. Whether their subjects are sports figures,show business personalities, or world leaders, such movies often are rife with misinforma­tion. But unless their function is to propagandize, they are not purposefully fashioned to toss the viewer curveballs and […]

Ray Brown: Hall of Famer When Negro Leagues great Ray Brown was inducted posthumously into baseball’s National Hall of Fame in 2006 as one of 17 individuals chosen for their essential contributions to “the history of blacks in the game,” he also became the first player with links to the Quebec Provincial League ever to […]

Taylor Shaffer, brother of the “Orator,” shortchanged on playing record Taylor Shaffer, younger brother of George “Orator” Shaffer, has a short listing in the baseball encyclopedias: Born, July, 1870; Philadelphia Athletics, American Association, 1890. However, I find that Taylor was born in 1864, was 5-foot-7, weighed 155 pounds, and played in the 1884 Union Association […]

On September 28, 1947, the Bambino made an appearance before a game benefitting his Babe Ruth Foundation – later recognized as the first Old-Timers Day. (SABR-Rucker Archive)   The story of Yankee Stadium cannot be told without telling the story of Babe Ruth. His home-field exploits during his playing days are well covered, but a […]

Stars of Soul of the Game, Mykelti Williamson (l.), Blair Underwood (c.), and Delroy Lindo (r.) at an event honoring the film at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. (Courtesy of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum)   Soul of the Game premiered on April 20, 1996, on the Home Box Office (HBO) cable network. The docudrama […]

When Calvin Griffith sold the Minnesota Twins in 1984, he bowed out of baseball as the last of the family owners whose franchise represented their principal business and source of wealth. Griffith spent practically his entire life in baseball, spending his young adulthood working in one capacity or another for the Washington Nationals organization that […]

In 1927, at the height of the booming 1920s, Cleveland was a bustling metropolis, a manufacturing dynamo and transportation hub on the Great Lakes. As the fifty-two-story Terminal Tower—ground was broken the year before, and construction would be completed in 1930—began to rise over Public Square, the city had a new monument and focus to […]

By the fall of 1978 modern free agency was entering its third year, and teams were beginning to come to terms with both its existence and its potential, though ownership still hoped to roll it back dramatically. Front offices were figuring out the mechanics of pursuing free agents, how to fit them into their payroll […]

Analysis of front page coverage of Boston’s largest-circulation newspaper demonstrates the degree to which the Impossible Dream season of 1967 was an entirely unexpected phenomenon.Every springtime, Boston Red Sox fans hope for a pennant and the chance to win the World Series. It wasn’t always this way. There were fallow periods in Red Sox history […]

Seldom are the occasions when a team emerges as back-to-back champions in the National League. Rarer still when that team’s manager could call upon a well-heeled mound corps that includes three future Hall of Famers. These were the well-earned privileges of Walter Alston as his Los Angeles Dodgers entered as 8–5 favorites against the Baltimore […]

Summertime 1934. Buffalo. Depression. Unemployment rate: 21.7%.1 Mood: troubled, despairing. Social services and a New Deal were responding as best they could, helping people manage from day to day, but two big local newspapers were looking ahead to the winter. The Buffalo Courier-Express sponsored the Christmas Toy Fund and publisher and editor Burrows Matthews was […]

As 1945 dawned, World War II was winding down toward its conclusion – even if that wasn’t apparent as the year began. After repelling the Nazis in the Battle of the Bulge, Allied troops were moving through Europe, making their way toward Berlin – and presenting the question of how to defeat the Japanese in […]

Al Kermisch, who joined SABR in 1971, was a baseball researcher for over 60 years. His paper, “Walter Johnson: King of the 1-0 Hurlers,” appeared in the first SABR Baseball Research Journal in 1972, and in 1975 he debuted “From a Researcher’s Notebook”: seven small stories covering 4½ pages. This became a regular feature and […]

In the latest edition of an ongoing SABR project, researchers tabulated a banner year for Willie Wells, Rube Foster, and other Negro-league immortals.   LATIN AMERICANS called Willie Wells “Diablo”- the Devil. In 1930 he showed why. The little shortstop hit .404 to lead the western clubs in hitting. (Bill Terry led the white majors […]

When I was designated for assignment in Anaheim on April 30, 1981, I thought I was headed to the New York Yankees. I was the fourth-string catcher on the Milwaukee Brewers and hadn’t even played in a game that season. I didn’t catch an inning nor hit any baseballs outside of batting practice. Ted Simmons, […]

Social distancing restrictions were still in place for COVID-19 for this game at Dodger Stadium on May 29, 2021. (Photograph by Scott Carter.)   The Los Angeles Dodgers began the 2020 regular season – finally – on July 23. A worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with prolonged negotiations on how the games could safely be played, […]

South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin […]

This article discusses Roger Maris’s 1961 season from a new perspective. This is not a comparison of each home run hit by Maris in 1961 with those hit by Babe Ruth in 1927, but rather proposes a method to compare the Maris performance with the Ruth performance on a near-equivalent basis. Though there exists the […]

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 […]

Happy Birthday, Mr. K! Royals pitcher Moe Drabowsky presents a birthday cake to Ewing Kauffman as his wife Muriel and ‘Royal Lancer’ Lester Milgram look onwards, September 1969. (Courtesy of the Kansas City Royals)   Charles O. Finley never seemed to connect with the people of Kansas City after acquiring ownership of the Athletics in […]

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Spring 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 1).   Hitting has been on the rise in ba8eball the past decade or so, and there is talk that today’s ball, the Rawlings Rabbit, has more spring than any hare of seasons past. This is shortsighted history. Let me […]

Organized Baseball’s 1958 Winter Meetings were held in Washington from December 1 to 4, with the major leagues headquartered at the Statler Hilton Hotel and the minors at the Mayflower Hotel, both within walking distance of the White House. As usual, there were many items on the table to be discussed and voted on, including […]

SABR Salute: Stan Grosshandler 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 […]