History Of Baseball Research Articles

Glenohumeral Findings on Magnetic Resonance Imaging Correlate With Innings Pitched in Asymptomatic Pitchers

Background: In recent years, there has been a documented increase in the number of professional baseball players on the disabled list and the total number of days on the disabled list. Pitchers account for the largest number of disabled list reports. Purpose: To examine the relationship between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in asymptomatic professional pitchers and subsequent time on the disabled list (DL). Study Design: Cohort study (Prognosis); Level of evidence, 2. Methods: A total of 21 asymptomatic professional pitchers from a single Major League Baseball (MLB) organization underwent preseason MRIs of their dominant shoulder from 2001 to 2010. Asymptomatic was defined as no related DL stays in the 2 seasons before the MRI. These studies were reevaluated by a fellowship-trained musculoskeletal radiologist who was blinded to patient name, injury history, and baseball history. A second investigator who was blinded to the MRI results collected demographic data, total career number of innings pitched, and any subsequent DL reports for each subject. Results: The mean age at the time of MRI was 29.04 years (range, 20-39 years). Eleven of 21 pitchers had a rotator cuff tear (RCT): 9 had an articular surface tear (AST), and 2 had a full-thickness rotator cuff tear (FTT). Ten had superior labral anterior posterior (SLAP) tears, and 13 had either anterior or posterior labral tears. There was a statistically significant relationship between the number of innings pitched and presence of an RCT (AST + FTT). The mean number of career innings pitched by those with an RCT was 1014 compared with a mean of 729 innings pitched in pitchers without an RCT (P < .01). In addition, the number of career innings pitched was moderately correlated with presence of RCT (r = 0.46) and presence of superior and anterior/posterior labral tears (r = 0.43). There were no statistically significant findings between any single preseason MRI finding and subsequent time on the DL. Conclusion: The MRI findings in asymptomatic MLB pitchers do not appear to be related to near future placement on the DL. However, there was a significant difference in numbers of innings pitched between pitchers who had an RCT and those who did not and a moderate correlation between innings pitched and the presence of RCT as well as the presence of labral lesions. This finding supports the notion that RCT and labral injury in pitchers may result from repetitive overhead motion with subsequent strain on the rotator cuff tendons and glenoid labrum. Asymptomatic shoulder lesions in professional baseball pitchers appear to be more frequent than previously thought.

Going global: the historical contingency of baseball hall of famer developmental networks

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how the changing of institutional logics in an established field shapes the developmental networks of high‐achievers.Design/methodology/approachThis research combines time series analysis of more than 80 years of historical data (1922‐2004) with qualitative analysis of induction speeches of 99 hall of fame players from the same period.FindingsFindings indicate that a change in field logics from a more staid “insular” logic to a market or more business‐oriented logic coincided with changes in key players' developmental networks. In particular, the key players' self‐identified developmental relationships become both more numerous and more diverse in nature. Results of the time series analysis connect the shift in logic with the late 1950s which was an important time in Major League Baseball's history. It was during this period that, for the first time, each team had at least one African American player on their roster and each team had an average of at least one full‐time scout based in a country outside the USA – both indicators of MLB's increasingly global search for talent.Research limitations/implicationsThe study focuses on extraordinary career performers (versus all performers) in an all‐male professional sport where the nature of the sport and the number of organizations remains relatively stable over time.Practical implicationsThese findings show how changes to industry level logics can affect individual level changes in mentoring and developmental networks. In particular, they demonstrate how organizations can create and remove potential developer roles as their respective logics change from era to era.Originality/valueThis is the first known study to explore the effect of macro level changes on mentoring and developmental networks at the individual level.

The farmers' game: baseball in rural America

Anyone who has watched the film Field of Dreams can't help but be captivated by the lead character's vision. He gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening just as the star pitcher takes the mound. Baseball, America's game, has a dedicated following and a rich history. Fans obsess over comparative statistics and celebrate men who played for legendary teams during the golden age of the game. In The Farmers' Game, David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes. He presents the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although-contrary to legend-Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught's deeply researched exploration of baseball's rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.

Strike Three, You're Dead by Josh Berk (review)

Reviewed by: Strike Three, You're Dead by Josh Berk Elizabeth Bush Berk, Josh . Strike Three, You're Dead. Knopf, 2013. [256p]. (Lenny & the Mikes) Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-97008-5 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-87008-8 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-98736-6 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-7. Although Lenny, an ardent Phillies fan, lacks the athletic skill for the diamond, he does have a big voice that he hopes will make him into a sports announcer one day. A local network offers a DIY video contest with an inning at the announcer's mic as the prize, and Lenny and his best pals, Mike and Other Mike, recreate a 1944 game in which a fluke led to the worst earned run average for a pitcher in baseball history. Their video clinches the coveted announcer gig, but Lenny never gets his chance in the box: just before Lenny's debut, a young pitcher keels over dead on the mound. Lenny's cardiologist parents agree that the circumstances of the death seem unusual, if not outright suspicious, and that's all Lenny and his crew need to begin the detective work to find the murderer. While the mystery itself won't be too difficult for readers to solve (the motive and opportunity will be evident to any reader half awake), the real fun here is hanging out with Lenny and his pals. Berk has a great ear for junior-high banter, and the guys are just bright enough, just silly enough, and just focused enough to sound realistic, even in an improbable plot. Librarian bonus alert: check chapter four for the reference interview. How would your skills measure up if Lenny, Mike, and Other Mike turned up at your desk? [End Page 369] Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Base Ball Convention of 1857

In early 1857, a collection of baseball clubs in and around New York City held a con- vention called by the senior club, the Knickerbocker, for the purpose of revising the rules of the game. This event would come to be recognized as a seminal one in the history of organized baseball, and has received the attention it is due from baseball historians. I propose here to look at it from a different direction, as a snapshot of the state of baseball, both as a social construct with clubs interacting with one another, and how the game was played on the field.The Growth of Baseball to 1857The earliest extant baseball code, and the direct ancestor of the modern game, is that of the Knickerbocker Club from 1845. The newly formed Knickerbockers were part of an existing baseball community in New York, and it is likely that their rules were adapted from an earlier code, but these earlier rules are less well documented and in any case the line to the modern rules runs through the Knickerbockers.1 New York's baseball community of the 1840s collapsed, for unknown reasons, and disappears from the record following the 1846 season. The Knickerbockers were the sole organized survivor, while some individual players would regroup in the 1850s. The Knickerbockers remained active throughout this period, and even revised their rules in 1848.A club could exist indefinitely without outside competition because its purpose was for its members to meet regularly to take their exercise together two or three days a week, dividing themselves into teams for a ballgame in a socially congenial setting. The vast majority of baseball through the 1850s and '60s were such intramural affairs. Match games between clubs initially were rare highpoints to the season. They gradually grew more frequent and more important to the life of the club, with the intramural fading away into mere practice sessions.Baseball began a slow revival in 1851, and by the 1854 season there were about a half-dozen clubs in New York and Brooklyn. In December 1854 three of these, the Knickerbocker, Gotham, and Eagle clubs, met for a social dinner and ball, and to nego- tiate a common code for match games. The following spring, in a baseball first, this code was published by a newspaper.2 That season saw an explosion of baseball activity. A virtuous cycle formed, with increased newspaper coverage encouraging new clubs, which in turn led to yet more newspaper coverage. This resulted in an unprecedented level of interest. By the end of the 1856 season dozens of clubs were active in New York, Brook- lyn, and adjoining counties of New Jer- sey and New York.This sets the scene for several questions about the convention: Why hold a convention at all? Why was there a need for a major revision of the rules only two seasons after the previous revision?3 And what were the specific changes proposed, which were adopted, and why were some proposals rejected?The Need for a ConventionWhy did the baseball community in general, and the Knickerbockers in particular, feel a need for a convention at all? Even granting that rules revisions were needed, there were other ways they could have gone about it.The meeting of 1854 shows one possibility. This was a meeting of a limited number of clubs who played one another frequently, working the revisions out among themselves. As late as 1856 the Knickerbockers played match only with the Gotham, Eagle, and Empire clubs. If the Knickerbockers wanted yet more changes, they could have met with just their traditional competitive partners and let the rest of the baseball community follow or not.A more extreme possibility was that the Knickerbockers could have counted on their prestige as the senior club and unilaterally announced rules changes and only played match with clubs willing to follow these rules.There is a tradition of interpreting the Knickerbockers as would-be autocrats, striv- ing to dominate the baseball community, if not on the playing field then at least insti- tutionally. …

Pitching and clutch hitting in Major League Baseball: What 109 years of statistics reveal

ObjectivesTheory on performance under pressure in sport has proposed that an athlete may be disrupted psychologically when distracted, or when explicitly monitoring too much the skills involved (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Masters, 1992). Research has also suggested that the extent to which an athlete allows pressure to impact performance may be greater for skills of increased complexity, such as hitting a baseball (Kinrade, Jackson, Ashford, & Bishop, 2010; Masters, Polman, & Hammond, 1993). Accordingly, hypotheses for the current study were that baseball hitters would be more susceptible to pressure-induced performance changes than pitchers, whose skills are less based in hand-eye coordination. Design & methodAn archival design was employed, accounting for 109 years of historical baseball data at both the team and individual levels. ResultsIn line with hypotheses, for players with a minimum of 10 postseason innings pitched in a single year (n = 835) pitching statistics were significantly correlated from regular season (less pressure) to postseason (more pressure). For those with a minimum of 20 postseason at bats in a year (n = 1731), hitting statistics were similarly correlated from season to postseason; overall, however, the weakest such relationship was batting average. For teams (n = 370), regular season pitching was expected to be the best predictor of postseason success rates; this hypothesis was supported, but only for the most recent era of baseball history (1995–2011). ConclusionsThe data imply that, while hitting should not be wholly neglected, a successful, clutch baseball team should be built primarily around pitching.

A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson (review)

A People’s History of Baseball by Mitchell Nathanson (review)

John Adams’s Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives by Timothy A. Johnson (review)

John Adams's in Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives. By Timothy A. Johnson. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. [xv, 278 p. ISBN 9781409426820. $99.95.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.Richard Nixon's diplomatic mission the People's Republic of China in 1972 was one of the most important political events of the twentieth century, as it marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the emerging superpower since its transformation into a Communist nation. The meetings held between and his counterpart Mao Zedong were an important part of the former's strategy of detente with the Communist world. John Adams's opera in China-premiered fifteen years later in 1987-was one of the most important musical events of the twentieth century, as it was the composer's first foray in the world of opera and helped secure his place as one of the preeminent composers in the United States.For scholars of diplomacy and political science who wish examine Nixon's visit, the amount of secondary source material is almost embarrassing in its magnitude. The landscape is altogether different for those who wish study Adams's opera. While there are a number of articles and essays about it, it had not been the subject of extensive, monograph-length discussion. Timothy Johnson's new book, John Adams's Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives, aims correct that deficiency. Johnson had focused his previous work on bridging the gap between and other disciplines. His first two books-Foundations of Diatonic Theory: A Mathematically Based Approach Music Fundamentals (Emeryville, CA: Key College Publishing, 2003) and Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2004)-paired theory with mathematics and baseball history. This new book returns Johnson an area he began studying more than twenty years ago, when he wrote the first published dissertation on the of John Adams (Harmony in the Music of John Adams: From Phrygian Gates in China, Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1991).In the present book, Johnson sets out to correlate historical events with those depicted onstage and highlight the actions, emotions, feelings, and motivations depicted in the opera through music (p. 5). By and large he succeeds. In comparing historical events the music, Johnson utilizes two primary methods of musical analysis that focus on metrical dissonance and neo-Riemannian harmonic transformations. When using the former, he borrows from Harald Krebs's notational system. The choice analyze Adams's as containing metrical dissonance is a wise one given that the composer consistently builds offsetting layers of time into his music. The predilection for this stylistic feature is as evident in his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic as it is in in China.The latter method of analysis provides a method through which Adams's harmonic language can examined both accurately and rewardingly. Adams has a decidedly twentieth-century bent his harmonic language, yet it defies serial analysis. Rather, he works largely in triads that shiftslowly over time create the foundational building blocks upon which his formal structures rest. The neo-Riemannian analysis is crafted precisely work with these triads, and Johnson does an excellent job of using the tools of the still-new and exciting system. In examining Richard Nixon's News aria in act 1, scene 1, for instance, Johnson points out the shifts from A-flat major F minor, back the original tonality and then C minor (p. 93). The neo- Riemannian system analyzes these changes as simple transformations from one chord the next based on common tones. Johnson then combines these transformations with the significance he has attached each tonality crafta broader semiotic picture of the aria.What makes this approach so successful is the fact that the analysis is never opaque. …

The Little League Champions Benched by Jim Crow in 1955: Resistance and Reform afterBrown v. Board of Education

This article tells a little known story that began in South Carolina in 1955, a few months after the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education. The story concerns the Cannon Street YMCA All Stars Little League team, which Little League Baseball, Inc. today calls “the most significant amateur team in baseball history.” The 11-12-year-old All Stars won the Charleston, South Carolina city championship; the South Carolina state championship in Greenville; and the southern regional championship in Rome, Georgia. They traveled to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. as guests of Little League’s national office, but they were not permitted to play for the national title because they had won each of the earlier championships by forfeits. At the local, state and regional levels, all 70 other teams refused to play the All Stars for one reason – the other teams were all-white and 11-12-year-old All Stars were all-black. White parents and southern newspapers expressly linked interracial youth baseball competition to Brown’s recent order to integrate elementary and secondary school classrooms. In the early summer of 1955, the Charleston Post and Courier publicly condemned the All Stars and their parents for trying “to force the colored team into the league,” where they “weren’t wanted.” When the city of Charleston honored the All Stars in 2'008 however, the paper praised them as “classy, forgiving men” whose sterling example taught a “lesson of courage and inspiration.” When Little League invited the All Stars back to Williamsport to throw out the first pitch at the World Series in 2002 and 2005, fans representing teams from around the world responded with sustained standing ovations. The Boston Globe calls the Cannon Street All Stars’ story “one of baseball’s cruelest moments,” and ABC News calls it “the civil rights story that got lost in history.” Histories of individual indignities such as those suffered by the All Stars, and accounts of the victims’ lifelong successes and dignified forgiveness, enrich understanding of Brown and its influence on America and the nation’s children.

The Little League Champions Benched by Jim Crow in 1955: Resistance and Reform after Brown v. Board of Education

The Little League Champions Benched by Jim Crow in 1955: Resistance and Reform after Brown v. Board of Education DOUGLAS E. ABRAMS Introduction Little League Baseball, Inc. calls them “the most significant amateur team in baseball history.”1 The Boston Globe calls their story “one of baseball’s crudest moments.”2 ABC News says that their story is “[n]ot about man’s inhumanity to man but man’s inhu­ manity to children.”3 They were the Cannon Street YMCA All Stars, a team of eleven- and twelve-year-olds who went to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. in 1955 after winning the Charleston, South Carolina city champion­ ship; the South Carolina state championship in Greenville; and the southern regional championship in Rome, Georgia. They did not lose a single game.4 The Cannon Street All Stars were also the only team that ever went to Williamsport but was forbidden to play there for the World Series title. They attended as Little League’s guests, but they sat in the stands and watched, barred from competing because they had won the city, state, and regional titles by forfeits.5 The All Stars were “the team that no one would play.”6 Every other Charleston Little League team refused to take the field against them in the city championships. All sixty-one other South Carolina teams eligible for the state tournament joined the boycott, and so did all seven other state champions that qualified to play for the southeastern regional title, the final step on the road to William­ sport.7 In the wake of the mass boycott and forfeits, Little League’s national office recog­ nized the Cannon Street All Stars as the city, state, and southeastern regional champions.8 None of the other teams—more than seventy in all—ever suggested that the Cannon Street All Stars played dirty. None ever suggested that the All Stars violated any 52 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY The Cannon Street All Stars traveled from Charleston, South Carolina, to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to play in the Little League World Series in 1955. They were not allowed to play, however, because they had won their place in the World Series through forfeits—the other teams had all refused to play them because of their race. Little League rule. The several dozen teams refused to play them for only one reason—all the kids playing for the All Stars were black and every other southern Little League team with eyes on Williamsport was all white. Jim Crow laws had enshrined statesanctioned racial segregation in the Deep South for decades,9 and race relations remained especially tense in the summer of 1955. Barely a year had passed since May 17, 1954, when the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board ofEducation held that racial segregation in public elementary and secondary schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.10 Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III calls Brown “the story ... of a thousand tales of human suffering and sacrifice subsumed in the winning of a principle.”11 The story of the Cannon Street All Stars belongs in this vast array, but the story has evidently gone untold in extended studies of the Court’s landmark decision. The All Stars and their young prospective white opponents in the Deep South were The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public elementary and secondary schools violates the Equal Protection Clause on May 17,1954, barely a year before the All Stars were kept out of the World Series. THE LITTLE LEAGUE CHAMPIONS BENCHED BY JIM CROW IN 1955 53 caught in a drama that transcended Little League baseball. Black and white South Carolina children often played informal pickup baseball games together on local sandlots, at least until police broke up the contests.12 The prospect of integrated Little League tournaments, however, struck a raw nerve among white parents enraged by Brown’s threat to the existing legal and social order. The Supreme Court confined Brown’s holding and rationale to public elementary and secondary education, without explicitly dismantling official segregation in all walks of American life. Southern whites who dug in their heels, however...

A People's History of Baseball

A People's History of Baseball

Shoeless Joe, the Bambino, the Big Bankroll, and the Jazz Age

Shoeless Joe, the Bambino, the Big Bankroll, and the Jazz Age John Thorn (bio) Most of you have read Shoeless Joe, a novel of magical realism by Bill Kinsella, whom I knew a little bit thirty years ago, before he finished that book and before I became a historian of the game we both so clearly love. Shoeless Joe is a novel about fathers and sons, the baseball of now and then, and guilt, and hope. It is about the transformative power of fable and dream. Bernard Malamud is another fellow whose baseball novel about sin and redemption, The Natural, is, like Kinsella’s, more widely known through the film adapted from it. It was Malamud who once observed, “The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.” Yes indeed. This creates a problem no less for the novelist than for the historian. We crave realism not only from game accounts but also from imaginative renderings of an activity that itself is not real. Play, like play acting, is metaphoric action. Like a novelist who ventures to write about theater or film, the writer tackling baseball always starts off at one remove from reality, and is always playing catch-up. Baseball is not about baseball, at least not entirely, even if you’re playing it. For those watching it or thinking about it or reading about it, this great game is about past glories, power transference, surrogated combat, and unconscious contests of generation and gender. Yet another author, one who with The Great Gatsby may have written the best of all American novels, used baseball as a symbol of all that was good about our nation, so that he could depict how even an icon could be stained. My own book, too, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, deals with the game’s history and legend and good and evil—the title gives that away rather blatantly—but it is a work of history, not fiction. All the same, it raises issues that one may confront with Shoeless Joe and in one’s observations of what we uncertainly call “real life.” What is real, and what is made up? Can we shape or even alter the facts of history to make for a better story? Can our imaginations create a desired reality? If we do so, are we artists of our own lives, architects of legend, or mere liars, no matter how lofty our intentions might be? [End Page 118] Shoeless Joe’s ballpark in the cornfield speaks to us as a symbol of paradise lost, when rural innocents played ball for the love of the game, when distant fathers could toss a ball with sons perplexed by real life. But baseball’s idyllic past, like America’s and like our own, for each of us, is not history; it is a pretty story agreed upon. Not a lie, exactly, but a sustaining myth. What might possibly join The Great Gatsby, Shoeless Joe, and my little book? Let’s look to the Jazz Age, the Black Sox scandal, and the religion of baseball—complete with a creation myth, a fall from grace, an expulsion from paradise, and an eternal longing for a dimly recalled golden age. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald—an all-American boy from St. Paul, Minnesota—drifted east with his family’s shifting fortunes and in 1913 entered Princeton University. Graduating with the class of 1917, he went to New York, determined to become a writer. Two years later, after a despairing, impoverished return to bunk in his parents’ home, he linked up with Scribners, a prestigious house, to publish This Side of Paradise, his first novel. Appearing in 1920, it portrayed a generation that, drained of all illusion by the horrific casualties, was heedless in its pursuit of pleasure. The novel was a great success and launched his magazine career, where the real money was back then. Short fiction in Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and other story papers often fetched five thousand dollars—a handsome annual salary for a white-collar worker and four times that of the common working man. In 1922, Fitzgerald published a collection of stories titled Tales of the Jazz Age...

"The Inauguration of This Noble and Manly Game Among Us"

It is commonplace to label baseball America's national pastime. As early as 1856, local York City journals were referring to base as the national or the national Yet for a pastime claimed national, baseball seemed to many contemporaries what the game was often called: the New York Northerners, and especially those in York, formulated the rules, proclaimed their teams champions of America, and assumed the authority to organize the game. This regional bias grew so obvious that the organization of a Association of Base Ball Players in 1858 prompted even the York Clipper to object:... the convention appears to be rather sectional and selfish in its proceedings, than otherwise, there having been no invitations sent to Clubs in other States.... National indeed! Why the association is a mere local organization, bearing no State existence even-to say nothing of a National one.1What is perhaps more curious is that modern historians have perpetuated this bias. Peter Morris's magisterial But Didn't We Have Fun? follows, in great detail, the history of baseball's pioneer era, 1843-1870. Yet in its 286 pages there are only four brief mentions of baseball in the southern half of the United States. doings of the otherwise obscure Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kekionga baseball team occupies more space than baseball in the 11 states of the Confederacy. chapter on how The York Becomes America's Game makes no reference to any baseball played in Orleans, Savannah, Macon, or Houston-four cities where organized baseball teams played games prior to the Civil War. John Thorn's Baseball in the Garden of Eden chapter on postwar baseball mentions the South only in the context of a northern team (the Brooklyn Atlantics) planning a southern tour. book that might, at first glance, seem most on point, William Ryczek's When Johnny Came Sliding Home, mentions Southern clubs on only two pages, and merely to point out a few observations by (inevitably) Yorkers on how baseball could bring together the once-warring sections of the country. Ryczek's Baseball's First Inning: A History of the National Pastime through the Civil War, spends little space on prewar Southern baseball, and claims (incorrectly) that New Orleans was the only southern city to embrace any type of ball claims.2 In fact, at least six cities (New Orleans, Macon, Norfolk, Augusta, Galveston, and Houston) fielded baseball clubs prior to the war.3With historians the caliber of Thorn, Ryczek, and Morris, this regional bias is doubtless not deliberate, but rather the product of the lack of available sources on early Southern baseball. York City press, and especially the sporting world press, largely ignored the South (and indeed ignored the U.S. 20 miles outside Manhattan), and with these Northern journals as primary sources, it is not surprising that historians have treated baseball as a Northern phenomenon. It is time to correct this bias. To paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter, telling the story of early baseball while omitting Southern baseball is like staging Romeo and Juliet without Juliet. And with the aid of Southern newspapers, newly digitized, this article will try to tell this hitherto untold story of the spread of baseball in the 11 Southern states that formed the Confederacy.4 As will be seen, even prior to the Civil War, baseball had spread to several Southern cities, at the same time as baseball had migrated from its York City roots to such Midwest cities as Milwaukee and Chicago.Southern Baseball Prior to the Civil WarAs with the rest of the country, bat-and-ball games had been played in the South for decades prior to the Civil War, and prior to the popularization of the York game that most historians credit as the beginning of modern baseball. Abundant references have been found to bat-and-ball games in North Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere in the 1820s and 1830s, games with names such as town-ball or old cat. …

Double No-Hit: Johnny Vander Meer’s Historic Night Under the Lights by James W. Johnson (review)

Reviewed by: Double No-Hit: Johnny Vander Meer’s Historic Night Under the Lights by James W. Johnson James R. Tootle James W. Johnson. Double No-Hit: Johnny Vander Meer’s Historic Night Under the Lights. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. 216 pp. Paper, 15.95. An overflow crowd of 38,748 packed Ebbets Field on the evening of June 15, 1938, to witness a historic game. The contest between the Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds was the first major-league night game played in the New York metropolitan area. Before the evening was over, the excitement regarding the new bright lights at the ballpark was eclipsed by a momentous event on the playing field—Johnny Vander Meer’s second consecutive no-hit game, described by author James W. Johnson as “a feat so unique that it almost relegated that three-ring circus of a night to a footnote in baseball history”(17). To place Vander Meer’s singular accomplishment in context, the book’s [End Page 162] prologue provides a concise account of Vander Meer’s first no-hitter on June 11 at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field against manager Casey Stengel’s Boston Bees. To put Brooklyn’s inaugural night game in perspective, Johnson describes the Dodgers’ executive vice president Larry MacPhail’s entrepreneurial efforts to bring night baseball to the major leagues, first when he was at Cincinnati in 1935, and later in Brooklyn. While night games are common today, the reader is reminded that in the 1930s there were strenuous objections from many club owners, city officials, sports writers, and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. But the flamboyant MacPhail had successfully campaigned for a few experimental night games. The pregame festivities on this landmark evening were indeed something of a “three-ring circus” which included fireworks, bands, and Olympic champion Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals at Berlin in 1936, who was hired by MacPhail to “put on a track exhibition” (15). The enormously popular Babe Ruth, three years into his retirement as a player, was present at the game and was quickly surrounded by admiring fans upon his arrival. Seizing the moment and the opportunity to attract large crowds, MacPhail announced Ruth would be the Dodgers’ new first base coach beginning with the following game. Vander Meer had appeared in only nineteen games for the Reds in 1937 and was still officially considered a rookie, but was unfazed by all the hoopla which caused a delayed start. Once the game got underway, Vander Meer picked up exactly where he left off four days earlier, retiring the Dodger batters through the early innings without allowing any hits. The heart of the book is an inning-by-inning account of Vander Meer’s second no-hitter, an accomplishment unmatched throughout the long history of the national pastime. The book is enriched by Johnson’s biographical sketches of the Dodger players as they came to bat. Background information on Vander Meer’s teammates is also provided, enabling all the participants in this epic encounter to come to life. These vignettes of both the famous and the forgotten players humanize the box score that shows Vander Meer and his teammates recording twenty-seven outs over nine innings without the opposition getting a hit. The reader feels present at the memorable game and is reminded of the well-known figures of baseball lore who were involved. The Brooklyn lineup includes Kiki Cuyler, Leo Durocher, and Cookie Lavagetto—forever remembered for his role in breaking up Bill Bevens’s no-hitter with two outs in the ninth during the Yankee-Dodger World Series of 1947. Future Hall of Famer Ernie Lombardi was Vander Meer’s catcher for both no-hitters. Johnson discusses the influence of Reds manager Bill McKechnie on young Vander Meer’s development. [End Page 163] As the Dodgers continued to go hitless through the middle innings and the drama builds, the reader learns that the Dodger fans gradually began rooting for the Cincinnati lefty to go where no pitcher had ever gone before. Even though the reader knows the outcome, Johnson’s account of the tension present in the late innings is especially riveting. A theme running through...

Fred Goldsmith

Snake-ball, twister, hook, deuce. No matter the name, the curveball holds a special place in baseball history. However, as with much of baseball history, the fact and myth surrounding the curveball have become intertwined. The objective of this article is not to answer the ancient question of who invented the curve, the roots of which extend back to the early 19th century and cross the boundary of baseball as we know it to other bat-and-ball games such as cricket and the Massachusetts game.1 Such a task is a fool's errand. Anyone throwing a throughout history might naturally have experimented with various grips and deliveries and stumbled across the curve. Instead the focus is whether or not Fred Goldsmith formally demonstrated the curveball in 1870.The ClaimIn 1880 the Chicago White Stockings signed 24-year-old pitcher Fred Goldsmith. The Chicago Tribune approved of the acquisition, saying of Goldsmith, His delivery is easy on a catcher, but at the same time very effective, including all the known curves and twists.2 With his curveball, Goldsmith helped the White Stockings win three consecutive National League championships (1880-1882) while averaging 24 wins per season.Forty years later, in 1924, the 68-year-old Goldsmith first claimed, at least publicly, that he had given a formal demonstration of the curveball at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn. This was part of a larger claim that he originated the curve, a surprising contention given that until then most credit had been given to William Arthur Candy Cummings or Bobby Mathews. In November of that year, Goldsmith told a reporter for the Chicago Tribune:Hamilton Avery, then a professor of philosophy at Yale and a good player himself had helped me develop it, but we had a hard time convincing others that the actually curved. They laughed it offas an optical illusion. Of all the sportswriters who covered the game, Chadwick of the Brooklyn Eagle was the only one who really believed in the curve. Pop refused to be laughed off. He arranged for me to go to New York and I demonstrated to a huge crowd in the old Capitoline grounds he was right. This was in 1868 when I was 14 years old [he was 14 in 1870]. Three posts were set in a straight line. I stood on one side of an end post and threw the so that it curled around the far side of the center post back by the near side of the third post. The fans of those days were dumbfounded but they had to accept the evidence of their eyes.'If true, a demonstration of the in 1868 would mark Goldsmith as an important early contributor to its development. At that time, an actual curveball was generally considered to be against the laws of physics and was rarely mentioned in the press. If a curve was mentioned, it typically referred to the vertical of the high-arcing slow ball which resembled a softball pitch.4 In the early 1870s, increasingly frequent references to puzzling or deceiving deliveries may have indirectly referred to curveballs, but it wasn't until 1875 that recognition of the horizontal exploded and game accounts mentioned the pitch regularly.5Other than his own word, Goldsmith offered no proof of his story in 1924. That wouldn't come until seven years later when he presented apparently indisputable evidence. In November 1931 The Sporting News (TSN) began a three-part series on the evolution of pitching. The second installment focused on the curveball. No specific names or dates were mentioned, however a sidebar pictured John Ward, Larry Corcoran, and Goldsmith under the headline, Some Old Masters of Curve Ball Art.6This prompted Goldsmith to contact TSN and later write an article in which he claimed not only to have demonstrated the (now saying it was 1870, not 1868), but that he had primary-source proof in the form of a Brooklyn Eagle article written by Henry Chadwick. Goldsmith wrote:It was in the year of 1870 that an article appeared in the Yale College Journal as to whether a could be delivered from the pitcher's hand and made to take a circular course through space or describe an arc. …

Rusie for Mathewson

The most lopsided trade in baseball history is the one that sent Amos Rusie from the New York Giants to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for Christy Mathewson in December 1900.1 Not only was it a rare case of two future Hall of Famers being traded for each other, but it had the added dramatic element of there being almost a perfect symmetry to their careers. Rusie, the most dominant pitcher of the last decade of the 19th century, had won 246 games, all but 12 for the New York Giants. He would play for only two more months in the National League and never win another game. Mathewson, who had already played two months in the league without a victory, would become the greatest pitcher of the first decade of the 20th century, winning 373 regular-season games in his career, all but one for the Giants.2The trade proved to be so one-sided that it is widely believed that John T. Brush, the owner of the Reds, sent Mathewson to New York in preparation for his planned purchase of the Giants. According to this view, Brush recognized what a valuable player Mathewson was about to become and that Rusie's career was essentially finished.There is little doubt that at the time the trade purportedly occurred Rusie was owned by the Giants and Mathewson had been drafted by the Reds. It is also true that in 1901 Rusie did play for the Reds and Mathewson for the Giants. However, whether they were actually traded for one another is much less certain.This article focuses on the three most important aspects of the so-called trade: (1) Did John Brush arrange for Christy Mathewson to go to the Giants in preparation for his buying the team? (2) How and why did Mathewson wind up on the Giants and Amos Rusie on the Reds in 1901? (3) Were they actually traded for each other?Did Brush Arrange for Mathewson to Go to the Giants Because He Was Planning to Buy the Team?The primary reason that this story has gained such wide acceptance is that Brush did end up buying the Giants and selling the Reds. However, this did not occur until late in August 1902, over 20 months after the Rusie-Mathewson trade supposedly occurred.There were many rumors throughout 1900 and 1901 that Brush might sell the Reds. He was widely unpopular with the Cincinnati fans for a variety of reasons including the team's generally poor record under his control and the fact that he did not live in Cincinnati, preferring to remain in Indianapolis where he owned a clothing store.3 However, there were few, if any, stories about his planning to buy the Giants; even if he intended to do so, he would have had a problem finding someone to take the Reds offhis hands.Whenever a possible sale of the Reds was discussed at the time, the most widely mentioned potential buyers were the Fleischmann brothers, Julius and Max. They not only had the financial resources to make such a purchase, being heirs to the yeast fortune that bore their family name, but also the finest of political connections with Julius having been elected mayor of Cincinnati in April 1900. Finally, they were both great baseball fans and owned a notable semi-pro team in Fleischmanns, New York, the Catskills resort town named for their family, for which the brothers at times played.4The Fleischmanns did end up purchasing the Reds from Brush in July 1902 along with Cincinnati political boss George Cox and August Herrmann. However, when they did so the circumstances were markedly different from those in either 1900 or 1901 when the team was faced with a number of challenges that called into question whether it would survive. The 10-year agreement that held the National League together was due to expire after the 1901 season and there were already signs of discord among the owners, especially between those of the big-and small-market teams. The league had jettisoned four small-market teams after the 1899 season and there was speculation that others such as Cincinnati might eventually suffer the same fate if the league reorganized. …

The rank and file of 19th century major league baseball: biographies of 1,084 players, owners, managers and umpires

With this volume, David Nemec completes his remarkable trilogy of 19th-century baseball biographies, covering every major league player, manager, umpire, owner, and league official. It provides in-depth information on those figures unnoticed by most historians, men noted in the historical record only by last name, or not at all. Each detailed entry includes vital statistics, peer-driven analysis of baseball-related skills, and an overview of the individual's role in the game. Also chronicled are players' first and last major league games, most important achievements, movements from team to team, and much more. By unearthing the stories of these overlooked baseball personalities, this reference enriches the history of 19th century baseball.

Lives of the Knickerbockers

looking over the early history of baseball, Albert Spalding observed in 1905, I find the names of eleven New York gentlemen who were the founders of the original Knickerbocker club, names that should be honored and remembered as the founders of the national game by the million baseball players of the present day. They are as follows: Col. James Lee, Dr. Ransom, Abraham Tucker, James Fisher, W. Vail, Alexander J. Cartright [sic], William R. Wheaton, Duncan F. Curry, E.R. Dupignac, Jr., William H. Tucker and Daniel L. Adams [who was actually not an original member; see above]. Are not some of these gentlemen still living? Or possibly some of their heirs might throw some light on the early history and especially the origin of baseball.1By then, all of those men were indeed in their graves and the members of Spalding's commission on baseball's origins do not appear to have tried to contact those Knickerbockers who were alive in 1905. As a result, General Abner Doubleday, deceased since 1893, was anointed as baseball's inventor-a conclusion that would have amazed that distinguished gentleman-and the game's true pioneers slipped into undeserved obscurity. Fortunately, that has begun to change in recent years and the sketches that follow are, in part, the result. In the upcoming volume of Base Ball Pioneers (McFarland, 2013) the authors of the profiles below expand upon the legacy of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York. In a decidedly new contribution to baseball scholarship, we have researched the lives of men who may have been known only by their last-name entries in the surviving KBBC Game Books.In what is admittedly something of a tease, prompting readers of this journal to purchase the forthcoming volume, we provide below a few of the more interesting profiles of lesser known Knicks. Absent from this preview are such men as Daniel L. Adams, Alexander Cartwright, Duncan F. Curry, James Whyte Davis, Louis F. Wadsworth, William R. Wheaton, and Wright, all amply profiled in Baseball in the Garden of Eden.David Haight Anthony: Two men with the surname of played in the Knickerbockers' celebrated June 19, 1846, game against the New York Club. One was Henry T. Anthony, later a club officer. The other is listed as D. Anthony by Charles Peverelly, so is presumed to be Henry's brother David, a grocer who did not remain involved in the club's activities. David was born in Manhattan on December 12, 1821, and died in Hackensack, New Jersey. A third brother, Edward (b. January 31, 1819, New York City; d. December 14, 1888, New York City) was Henry Anthony's business partner and may also have been involved in the Knickerbockers. Yet another brother, Jacob Anthony, Jr., who was born in New York City on October 24, 1816, and died there on May 25, 1872, was also a club member. Harold Peterson believed that the father, Jacob Anthony, Sr., was also a club member, but the basis for this conclusion is not known.2Henry Tiebout Anthony: While his brothers appear to have had only limited involvement with the Knickerbocker Club, Henry T. served several terms as a club officer during the 1850s. In an 1865 letter Alexander Cartwright mentioned Harry Anthony as one of the Knickerbockers whom he remembered fondly.3 Henry was born in New York City on September 18, 1814, into a distinguished family that had come over from Holland in the 1620s. His father, Jacob Anthony, Sr., held prominent positions at the United States Branch Bank and the Bank of the State of New York. Henry studied at Columbia College and graduated in 1832 along with fellow Knickerbocker Walter Avery.4 Like Avery, he became a civil engineer and worked on several major projects, including the Croton Aqueduct. Meanwhile his brother Edward had been studying the new art of daguerreotyping under Samuel Morse and in 1841 opened his own studio. By 1852 the business's success enabled Henry to become Edward's partner in the firm, which eventually became known as E. …

An Unbreakable Game: Baseball and Its Inability to Bring About Equality during Reconstruction

On 3 September 1869, the all‐black Pythian Base Ball Club of Philadelphia played the all‐white Philadelphia Olympics, marking the first recorded interracial game in organized baseball history. Thou...

Histories of the Old Pacific Coast League: A Review Essay

Dennis Snelling. The Greatest Minor League: A History of the Pacific Coast League, 1903-1957. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2012 380 pp. Cloth, $45.00. Richard Beverage. The Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League: A History, 1903-1957. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2011. 260 pp. Paper, $40.00. The triple-A Pacific Coast (PCL) today remains a thriving operation, continuously underway since 1903. Yet the version that has been in place since 1958--when the Dodgers and Giants transplanted themselves across the continent, and the PCL was deprived of its Los Angeles and San Francisco flagship venues--bears little meaningful resemblance to the league that bore that name for the first half of the twentieth century. When any discussion of baseball history turns to the Pacific Coast League, it's almost certainly focusing on the PCL, the league that included not just the Los Angeles Angels and San Francisco Seals, but also occupied the now-major-league locations of Seattle, Oakland, and San Diego, and featured (mostly) independent teams competing for wins, fans, and revenue. This wasn't merely a farm operation subsidized by and subservient to the majors. That PCL was without question a great minor league, well-capitalized (especially in its most populous cities) and genuinely independent enough to present a very high quality of play. Whether it was truly the greatest minor league, as the title of Dennis Snelling's book confidently proclaims, is a matter of debate. The American Association and the International League, in their roughly 1920-1950 heyday, were both also quite superior to their later editions, or to any modern pure farm league. But taking everything into consideration--not just the quality of play, but the intensity of fan interest and attendance, and the glamour and color of operating in such stylish locales as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and, of course, Hollywood--it does seem fair to consider the grand old Pacific Coast as the pinnacle of minor-league baseball. Thus over the years the PCL has attracted a significant degree of attention from baseball historians. This season, we're greeted with two new additions to the literature. Snelling's work is a grand and comprehensive history of the entire league over its glory years. Richard Beverage's is a similarly ambitious undertaking, but limiting its focus to just one PCL team--albeit the team that's properly characterized by Beverage in his preface as perhaps the premier franchise in the Pacific Coast League (1), capturing fourteen pennants, the most of any PCL team (eclipsing their rivals from San Francisco, who won eleven). These books are remarkably similar to one another in structure. Both are straightforward and traditional macro-scale histories, following a strict chronological line through the decades, divided into short and sensible chapters covering a few seasons apiece. Both devote a generous portion of their space to elaborate and exquisitely detailed appendices, presenting statistics and records (for Beverage it's about one-fifth of the book). Both also include thorough bibliographies and subject indices. Snelling's book goes one further and also includes exhaustive endnotes, covering nearly fifty pages. It's entirely fair to say that a reader seeking to learn about nearly any player, any event, or any episode of any significance within the scope of these works will not be disappointed. Each author clearly intends his book to become the source, the standard reference, covering his subject matter. Suitably for such serious ambitions, both authors present a writing style that's clear, direct, and efficient. Consider Snelling's description of the conception and construction of a great new ballpark in Los Angeles in the 1920s: Shortly after purchasing the Los Angeles Angels in 1921, [William] Wrigley vowed to replace the ramshackle Washington Park with a beautiful stadium that would fit his image and make the city proud. …