The Last Yankee


Book Description

A collection of articles, essays, statistics, and lore on the game of baseball.




The SABR Baseball List & Record Book


Book Description

From the authority on baseball research and statistics comes a vast and fascinating compendium of unique baseball lists and records. The SABR Baseball List & Record Book is an expansive collection of pitching, hitting, fielding, home run, team, and rookie records not available online or in any other book. This is a treasure trove of baseball history for statistically minded baseball fans that's also packed with intriguing marginalia. For instance, on July 25, 1967, Chicago's Ken Berry ended Game Two of a doubleheader against Cleveland with a home run in the bottom of the sixteenth inning -- Chicago's second game-winning homer of the day. The comprehensive lists include Most Career Home Runs by Two Brothers (Tommie and Hank Aaron have 768), Most Seasons with 15 or More Wins (Cy Young and Greg Maddux each have 18), and Highest On Base Percentage in a Season by a Rookie (listing every rookie above .400). Unlike other record books that only list the record holders -- say, most RBI by a rookie, held by Ted Williams with 145 -- SABR details every rookie to reach 100 RBI. Other record books might note the last pitcher in each league to steal home; here SABR has included every pitcher to do it. The book also includes a number of idiosyncratic features, such as a rundown of every player who has hit a triple and then stolen home, or every reliever who has won two games in one day. Many of the lists include a comments column for key historical notes and entertaining trivia (Bob Horner hit four home runs in a 1986 game, but his team lost). This is a must-have for every fan's library. Edited by Lyle Spatz, Chairman of the Baseball Records Committee for SABR




Never Just a Game


Book Description

America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this book, the first installment of a highly readable, comprehensive labor history of baseball, Robert Burk d




Scandal on the South Side


Book Description

The Black Sox Scandal is a cold case, not a closed case. When Eliot Asinof wrote his classic history about the fixing of the 1919 World Series, Eight Men Out, he told a dramatic story of undereducated and underpaid Chicago White Sox ballplayers, disgruntled by their low pay and poor treatment by team management, who fell prey to the wiles of double-crossing big-city gamblers offering them bribes to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Buck Weaver, Eddie Cicotte, and the other Black Sox players were all banned from organized baseball for life. But the real story is a lot more complex. We now have access to crucial information that changes what we thought we knew about “baseball’s darkest hour” — including rare film footage from that fateful fall classic, legal documents from the criminal and civil court proceedings, and accurate salary information for major-league players and teams. All of these new pieces to the Black Sox puzzle provide definitive answers to some old mysteries and raise other questions in their place. However, the Black Sox Scandal isn’t the only story worth telling about the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The team roster included three future Hall of Famers, a 20-year-old spitballer who would go on to win 300 games in the minor leagues, and even a batboy who later became a celebrity with the “Murderers’ Row” New York Yankees in the 1920s. All of their stories are included in Scandal on the South Side, which has full-life biographies on each of the 31 players who made an appearance for the White Sox in 1919, plus a comprehensive recap of Chicago’s pennant-winning season, the tainted World Series, and the sordid aftermath. This book isn’t a rewriting of Eight Men Out, but it is the complete story of everyone associated with the 1919 Chicago White Sox. The Society for American Baseball Research invites you to learn more about the Black Sox Scandal and the infamous team at the center of it all. With contributions from Adrian Marcewicz, Andy Sturgill, Brian Cooper, Brian McKenna, Brian Stevens, Bruce Allardice, Dan Lindner, Daniel Ginsburg, David Fleitz, David Fletcher, Gregory H. Wolf, Irv Goldfarb, Jack Morris, Jacob Pomrenke, James E. Elfers, James R. Nitz, Jim Sandoval, John Heeg, Kelly Boyer Sagert and Rod Nelson, Lyle Spatz, Paul Mittermeyer, Peter Morris, Richard Smiley, Rick Huhn, Russell Arent, Steve Cardullo, Steve Steinberg, Steven G. McPherson, and William F. Lamb. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction, by Jacob Pomrenke 2. Prologue: Offseason 1918-19, by Jacob Pomrenke 3. Joe Benz, by William F. Lamb 4. Eddie Cicotte, by Jim Sandoval 5. Eddie Collins, by Paul Mittermeyer 6. Shano Collins, by Andy Sturgill 7. Dave Danforth, by Steve Steinberg 8. Red Faber, by Brian Cooper 9. Season Timeline: April 1919 10. Happy Felsch, by James R. Nitz 11. Chick Gandil, by Daniel Ginsburg 12. Joe Jackson, by David Fleitz 13. Bill James, by Steven G. McPherson 14. Joe Jenkins, by Jacob Pomrenke 15. Dickey Kerr, by Adrian Marcewicz 16. Season Timeline: May 1919 17. Nemo Leibold, by Gregory H. Wolf 18. Grover Lowdermilk, by James E. Elfers 19. Byrd Lynn, by Russell Arent 20. Erskine Mayer, by Lyle Spatz 21. Hervey McClellan, by Jack Morris 22. Tom McGuire, by Jack Morris 23. Season Timeline: June 1919 24. Fred McMullin, by Jacob Pomrenke 25. Eddie Murphy, by John Heeg 26. Win Noyes, by Bruce Allardice 27. Pat Ragan, by Andy Sturgill 28. Swede Risberg, by Kelly Boyer Sagert and Rod Nelson 29. Charlie Robertson, by Jacob Pomrenke 30. Season Timeline: July 1919 31. Reb Russell, by Richard Smiley 32. Ray Schalk, by Brian Stevens 33. Frank Shellenback, by Brian McKenna 34. John Sullivan, by Jacob Pomrenke 35. Buck Weaver, by David Fletcher 36. Roy Wilkinson, by William F. Lamb 37. Season Timeline: August 1919 38. Lefty Williams, by Jacob Pomrenke 39. Owner: Charles Comiskey, by Irv Goldfarb 40. Manager: Kid Gleason, by Dan Lindner 41. General Manager: Harry Grabiner, by Steve Cardullo 42. Executive: Tip O’Neill, by Brian McKenna 43. Batboy: Eddie Bennett, by Peter Morris 44. Season Timeline: September 1919 45. Walking Off to the World Series, by Jacob Pomrenke 46. The 1919 World Series: A Recap, by Rick Huhn 47. The Pitching Depth Dilemma, by Jacob Pomrenke 48. 1919 American League Salaries, by Jacob Pomrenke 49. The Black Sox Scandal, by William F. Lamb 50. Epilogue: Offseason 1919-20, by Jacob Pomrenke




Baseball on Trial


Book Description

The controversial 1922 Federal Baseball Supreme Court ruling held that the "business of base ball" was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act because it did not constitute interstate commerce. In Baseball on Trial, legal scholar Nathaniel Grow defies conventional wisdom to explain why the unanimous Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which gave rise to Major League Baseball's exemption from antitrust law, was correct given the circumstances of the time. Currently a billion dollar enterprise, professional baseball teams crisscross the country while the games are broadcast via radio, television, and internet coast to coast. The sheer scope of this activity would seem to embody the phrase "interstate commerce." Yet baseball is the only professional sport--indeed the sole industry--in the United States that currently benefits from a judicially constructed antitrust immunity. How could this be? Drawing upon recently released documents from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Grow analyzes how the Supreme Court reached this seemingly peculiar result by tracing the Federal Baseball litigation from its roots in 1914 to its resolution in 1922, in the process uncovering significant new details about the proceedings. Grow observes that while interstate commerce was measured at the time by the exchange of tangible goods, baseball teams in the 1910s merely provided live entertainment to their fans, while radio was a fledgling technology that had little impact on the sport. The book ultimately concludes that, despite the frequent criticism of the opinion, the Supreme Court's decision was consistent with the conditions and legal climate of the early twentieth century.




Breaking Into Baseball


Book Description

While baseball is traditionally perceived as a game to be played, enjoyed, and reported from a masculine perspective, it has long been beloved among women—more so than any other spectator sport. Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime upends baseball’s accepted history to at last reveal just how involved women are, and have always been, in the American game. Through provocative interviews and deft research, Jean Hastings Ardell devotes a detailed chapter to each of the seven ways women participate in the game—from the stands as fans, on the field as professionals or as amateur players, behind the plate as umpires, in the front office as executives, in the press box as sportswriters and reporters, or in the shadows as Baseball Annies. From these revelatory vantage points, Ardell invites overdue appreciation for the affinity and talent women bring to baseball at all levels and shows us our national game anew. From its ancient origins in spring fertility rituals through contemporary marketing efforts geared toward an ever-increasing female fan base, baseball has always had a feminine side, and generations of women have sought—and been sought after—to participate in the sport, even when doing so meant challenging the cultural mores of their era. In that regard, women have been breaking into baseball from the very beginning. But recent decades have witnessed great strides in legitimizing women’s roles on the diamond as players and umpires as well as in vital management and media roles. In her thoughtfully organized and engagingly written survey, Ardell offers a chance for sports enthusiasts and historians of both genders to better appreciate the storied and complex relationship women have so long shared with the game and to glimpse the future of women in baseball. Breaking into Baseball is augmented by twenty-four illustrations and a foreword from Ila Borders, the first woman to play more than three seasons of men’s professional baseball.




Remembering Japanese Baseball


Book Description




Issei Baseball


Book Description

Baseball has been called America's true melting pot, a game that unites us as a people. Issei Baseball is the story of the pioneers of Japanese American baseball, Harry Saisho, Ken Kitsuse, Tom Uyeda, Tozan Masko, Kiichi Suzuki, and others--young men who came to the United States to start a new life but found bigotry and discrimination. In 1905 they formed a baseball club in Los Angeles and began playing local amateur teams. Inspired by the Waseda University baseball team's 1905 visit to the West Coast, they became the first Japanese professional baseball club on either side of the Pacific and barnstormed across the American Midwest in 1906 and 1911. Tens of thousands came to see "how the minions of the Mikado played the national pastime." As they played, the Japanese earned the respect of their opponents and fans, breaking down racial stereotypes. Baseball became a bridge between the two cultures, bringing Japanese and Americans together through the shared love of the game. Issei Baseball focuses on the small group of men who formed the first professional and semiprofessional Japanese baseball clubs. These players' story tells the history of early Japanese American baseball, including the placement of Saisho, Kitsuse, and their families in relocation camps during World War II and the Japanese immigrant experience.




Turnstyle


Book Description

Turnstyle is the new journal of art and literature published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). As editors Joanne Hulbert and Jay Hurd write in their introduction to this inaugural issue, in its pages "your eyes will behold the work of many SABR writers and artists who find inspiration in the romance, mythology, history, and discipline that baseball offers. We do not in any way intend to duplicate the great work of other literary baseball journals. Rather we embrace the legacy those journals have bequeathed to us; we are encouraged to continue what has been an integral part of baseball-the art and literature dedicated to the game."In addition to poems, short stories, and articles, the pages are adorned with some of the art of Cuban illustrator and artist Andez. Sprinkled throughout readers will be delighted to find cartoons and excerpts from 19th century newspapers and writing on baseball, including satire from Henry Guy Carleton, Hugh E. Keogh, and Marcus "Brick" Pomeroy.Includes: -Night Game, by Tom Lagasse-The Case for Baby Doll Jacobson, by B. Craig Grafton-Yakyu Haikus, by Tetsuo Furukawa-What Might Have Been..., by Bill Barna-The Ball, by George R. Skornickel-A Star in the Face of the Sky, by Andrea Long-The Lost Teams, by W.B. (Bryan) Steverson-The Books Must Balance--November 15, by R.J. Lesch-Link to Cuban Baseball Artist Provides a SABR Opportunity, by Bob Brady-Baseball Among the Rice Paddies, by Edwin Epps-The Hall, by Matthew H. Schaedler-An interview with cover artist Andy Brown




Deadball Stars of the National League


Book Description

The first in a series of baseball histories by the game??'s best historians