Baseball Hall Research Articles

A Tale of Two Umpires: Or, Restoring the Legacy of Dummy Hoy

A Tale of Two UmpiresOr, Restoring the Legacy of Dummy Hoy R. A. R. Edwards (bio) In April 1951, National League umpire Bill Klem sat down for a series of interviews with William Slocum of Collier’s magazine. Klem served as an umpire in the National League from 1905 to 1941 and umpired in a record eighteen World Series. By sitting down with Slocum, Klem was burnishing his record for Cooperstown. He would, in fact, be voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as an umpire in 1953; this was a break-through moment for the Hall, as Klem and his American League counterpart Tom Connolly became the first umpires ever inducted to the Hall. Klem’s brass plaque reads, in part, “Known as ‘The Old Arbitrator.’ Umpired in 18 World Series. Credited with introducing arm signals indicating strikes and fair or foul balls.” Klem was not shy in taking credit for transforming baseball in the early twentieth century. “When next you go out to the ballpark, you will see many things that are commonplace today, but which came about only after 20 year feuds or—at least—bitter arguments among reasonable men,” he told Slocum. “Many of these innovations are mine. And all of them helped baseball to grow from a country fair attraction to the great, beloved spectacle it is today.”1 One of the innovations Klem directly took credit for was inventing the umpire’s gestures behind home plate. As he put it, “Today, when an umpire calls a strike, his right hand shoots above his head so that everybody in the ball park knows it. If his hand remains at his side, it is a ball. I originated that system in 1906, when my voice went bad and I could no longer follow the custom of bellowing each decision.”2 There are only two problems with this story. One, it is not clear that it is true. And two, it is not clear that it is Bill Klem’s story to tell. Today, when we go to a baseball game, we expect to see umpires call a game. Fans know what these gestures mean. We hold our breath, waiting for the call on a close play at second base. Was the runner safe? We see the sign—yes, stolen base! The sign language of baseball makes the game understandable [End Page 1] to fans in the stands. We also expect to see the umpire gesture behind home plate. We delight in seeing a more vigorous call, with extra English on it, on a called third strike. The story of how umpires started to gesture in the first place is one largely shrouded in myth and mystery. The safe and out signals are especially murky. One thing is clear—they definitely predate the signs for balls and strikes. Baseball researcher Peter Morris concludes in his comprehensive study, A Game of Inches: The Story behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball, that “somewhat surprisingly, umpires appear to have been signaling out and safe before it became customary to have signs for balls and strikes.”3 Indeed, the Chicago Tribune noted in 1907, “There is no rule compelling an umpire to motion ‘safe’ or ‘out’ on the bases, but nearly all of them do by force of habit on plays which are not close.”4 There are reports of isolated instances of experimentation with gestures at various points in major-league baseball in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Baseball researchers have pointed to a handful of stories that detailed such novelties appearing in the 1880s.5 There were increasing calls for gestures from fans around this same time. As baseball increased in popularity and ballparks got louder, fans complained of not being able to follow the game, since they could not hear the umpire’s calls. In 1889, baseball cranks in New York wrote to the New York Sun, debating various solutions to the problem, offering ideas both aural, using bells or gongs, and visual, using hand gestures, to signal the calls.6 There is no indication that any of these proposals were put into action by umpires at that time. Umpires have typically been given...

Book Reviews

Andrew Zimbalist, a Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College reviews “Baseball on Trial: The Origin of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption”, by Nathaniel Grow. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes recently released documents from the National Baseball Hall of Fame to trace the Federal Baseball litigation from 1914 to 1922 in order to explain how the Supreme Court reached its decision in the Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs case. Discusses the rivalry beginning in 1913; the opening salvos--December 1913 to June 1914; the Federal League striking back--June 1914 to December 1914; the Landis case--January 1915; the long wait--February 1915 to February 1916; an aborted trial--February 1916 to June 1917; Baltimore going to trial, again--June 1917 to April 1919; the defense and verdict--April 1919; and the appeal and final decision--May 1919 to October 1922. Grow is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.”

A Two-Study Investigation Into How Television News Frames the Steroid Scandal in Major League Baseball and Fans’ Support for Bonds, McGwire, and Palmeiro’s Pending Induction Into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Under the guidance of social categorization theory (SCT), this project analyzed news coverage of steroid use in major league baseball (MLB), and fans’ perceptions of three players indicted for using steroids—Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro—should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Study 1 results revealed that widespread attention was given to issues of legality with fewer reports regarding the health costs of using steroids between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2011, with Bonds receiving the most negative coverage for his alleged use. Study 2 examined fans’ support of Bonds, McGwire, and Palmeiro’s pending Hall of Fame inductions by drawing from the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and cultivation theory. The results revealed that player likability, similarity, attitudes, and subjective norms predicted support for each player with differences emerging between each player. The results are discussed with an emphasis on how SCT was used to intersect the health, media effects, and race literatures.

Baseball on trial: the origin of baseball's antitrust exemption

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 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 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.

Developmental Network Degree Centrality and the Impact of Superdevelopers on Career Achievement

In this paper, I utilize developmental networks, mentoring, and social networks theories to test a series of contradictory hypotheses as to the characteristics of the developers having the highest degree centrality (i.e. the superdevelopers) in a collective group of egocentric developmental networks. The hypotheses are tested on the connected egocentric networks of 90 inductees of the National Baseball Hall of Fame who were enshrined between 1956 and 2005. These inductees represent the highest performing members of the Major League Baseball and those superdevelopers who are credited by the inductees with providing mentoring support thus constitute a key area of research focus in order to better understand how extraordinary career achievement is fostered through developmental relationships. Three competing hypotheses regarding superdeveloper degree centrality were developed and none passed prompting the need for more research in this area and deeper interpretation of the results. A fourth hypotheses regarding the helpfulness of having more superdvelopers in one’s developmental network, however, easily passed as those having more superdevelopers had almost universally higher objective and subjective career success as compared to those with fewer superdevelopers.

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.

메이저리그 타자들의 명예의 전당 입성과 탈락에 대한 Mahalanobis-Taguchi System의 적용과 비교

미국 프로야구(Major League Baseball) 명예의 전당의 입성과 탈락을 예측할 수 있는 여러 가지 통계적인 분류분석법을 실시하고 그 결과의 정확성을 비교하였다. 이를 위해 명예의 전당 가입 조건을 만족하는 타자들 중 1980년 이후 기록된 데이터의 17개의 독립변수를 사용하여 분류분석에서 널리 사용되는 기준으로 판별분석, 로지스틱 회귀분석과 상대적으로 최근에 제안된 Mahalanobis-Taguchi System(MTS)을 실시하여 비교하였다. 이 세 가지 방법 중 MTS가 상대적으로 더 나은 효율을 보였으며 이는 다변량 관측 값이 방향성이 없어 속성에 따른 도형적 그룹을 형성하지 못하는 경우에 효율적인 MTS의 특성에 의한 것으로 판단된다. Various statistical classification methods to predict election to the Major League Baseball hall of fame of are implemented and their accuracies are compared. Seventeen independent variables are selected from the data of candidates eligible for the hall of fame and well-known classification methods such as discriminant analysis and logistic regression as well as the recently proposed Mahalanobis-Taguchi system(MTS). The MTS showed a better performance than the others in classification accuracy because it is especially efficient in cases where multivariate data does not constitute directionally geographical groups according to attributes.

Can Honorific Awards Give Us Clues about the Connection between Socioeconomic Status and Mortality?

Social epidemiologists Marmot and Wilkinson argue that relative deprivation is the dominant mechanism through which socioeconomic status (SES) affects mortality. If such an argument is valid, we would expect to consistently see the influence of relative deprivation in situations where two or more highly qualified and very similar individuals are nominated in a status competition, but only one receives the status boost conferred by winning. We studied mortality experiences of Emmy Award winners, Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, and presidents and vice presidents—comparing each to nominated losers in the same competition. Our findings and results of similar studies fail to show consistent advantages for winners. The association between winning and longevity is sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes nonexistent. We conclude that the critical processes determining the strength and direction of any status effect on longevity are changes in life circumstances that result from winning or losing, rather than the processes that inexorably flow from one’s relative position in a status hierarchy.

I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now

We have all probably felt that way at some point in our lives, whether in our personal matters, in business, or in our medical profession. This statement seems to apply to the story of Sandy Koufax, one of the best all-time pitchers in the history of professional baseball. Sandy Koufax was forced to retire in 1966 during the peak of his career due to severe elbow pain. He has reportedly said that his elbow hurt every time he pitched. He suffered from a suspected UCL injury. His career record was 165-87 with a career ERA of 2.76, and he was the youngest player ever inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1974, Dr Frank Jobe performed the first UCL reconstruction on pitcher Tommy John, and the procedure became known as the “Tommy John procedure.” Tommy pitched for 14 more years after the surgery, winning more games after the surgery than before (164 compared to 124 games). As the story goes,4 Sandy Koufax had asked Dr Jobe in later years, “Why didn’t you do that on me?” Dr Jobe had responded, “We simply didn’t know what to do for them back then.” But today we do know what to do. Injuries in baseball players continue to increase and at all ages. In Major League Baseball pitchers, 67% of all injuries occur to the upper extremity, with 26% occurring to the elbow joint.7 Conte et al2 reported an elbow injury rate of 22% in major league players. Pitchers injure their elbow at a higher rate than positional players (26% compared to 16%). Youth baseball players, especially pitchers, injure their elbow at an alarming rate. Since 1998 we have seen a 2.5-times increase in elbow surgery rate in youth baseball players at our center. Not only do baseball players injure their elbow, but football players and other collision athletes sustain these injuries, too. Carlisle et al,1 examining elbow, forearm, and wrist/hand injuries in the NFL, noted that 40% of those injuries occurred to the elbow joint. Sprains of the elbow were the most frequent (21%) with offensive and defensive linemen sustaining the most elbow sprains. Kenter et al5 reported an average of 18 elbow injuries per year in the NFL, with sprains being the most frequent. The authors noted that there appears to be an increasing trend of elbow injuries in the NFL. Overuse injuries occur at the elbow joint, with tendinitis being the most frequently seen and often most difficult to treat. In tennis players, approximately 40% have reported current or previous complaints of overuse tendinitis. Patients above the age of 50 years described their pain as severe and disabling.3 Tennis elbow is common, especially in individuals over 40 years of age, where there is a 4-times increase among men and a 2-times increase among women. These lesions are often challenging to treat. The elbow joint is an “unforgiving joint,” as stated by Dr Morrey in his classic elbow joint textbook.6 This is due to the high incidence of joint stiffness, loss of motion complications following fractures, dislocations, and other injuries. In this special issue of Sports Health, we have compiled some of the experts in the area of recognition and treatment of elbow disorders in sports. With elbow injuries in youth baseball players being so common, there is an article discussing factors to reduce the elbow injury rate. We hope that the knowledge and expertise shared by these authors will help us all to better treat the elbow joint today and reduce the frequency of us saying, “I wish I knew then what I know now.”

Going Global: The Historical Contingency of Baseball Hall of Famer Developmental Networks

This study investigates how the changing of institutional logics in an established field shapes the developmental networks of high-achievers. This research combines qualitative analysis of induction speeches of 99 hall of fame pitchers and hitters with time series analysis of more than 80 years of historical data (1922-2004) to show how a change in field logics from a more staid “insular” logic to a market or more business-oriented logic is associated with commensurate changes in key players’ developmental networks such that their self-identified developmental relationships become both more numerous and more diverse. Results of the time series analysis identify the shift in this logic to the late 1950’s, a key time in Major League Baseball’s history when, 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 United States. Both of these indicators reveal a broader search for talent which manifested itself in hall of famer developmental networks which instead of being more based on the players around them were instead more tied to indicators of MLB’s global search for talent as well as more business-oriented factors including average ticket prices and player salaries. A more detailed investigation of these networks reveals that many new developer roles utilized in the 1958-2004 market logic era were created by the teams themselves thus giving these players greater opportunity to utilize potential developers that were more readily available than in the previous more insular logic period.

Changing Glasses: Does Our World Look Different as a Vendor or a Librarian?

Changing Glasses: Does Our World Look Different as a Vendor or a Librarian?

There’s No Dying in Baseball: Cultural Valorization, Collective Memory, and Induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame

The purpose of this paper is to determine how the collective memory of a baseball player’s contributions to his sport changes posthumously. We seek to examine if levels of veneration accorded to an athlete depend on whether he is alive or deceased, the timing of his death, and type of death he experienced. Building upon theories of cultural valorization, we propose that collective efforts to remember retired athletes are greater if those athletes have passed on. More explicitly, we argue that a player’s death supplements his lifetime achievements in posthumous efforts to construct and maintain his memory. We analyze the history of voting conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) on players eligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The results suggest that a variety of performance and recognition measures affect the amount of votes a player receives. As predicted, dying and age of death exert a powerful influence on votes received toward entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. However, when hitters and pitchers are analyzed separately, we find partial support for our propositions.

A Monument to Musial: The History of a Statue

A Monument to MusialThe History of a Statue Joseph Stanton (bio) In August of 1968, Stan Musial’s status as an iconic figure of St. Louis baseball was underscored with the unveiling of an enormous statue memorializing him as the quintessential Cardinal. This monument to Redbird sainthood is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that Musial was honored in this distinctive way at such a young age. Only forty-seven years old when the statue was completed and just a few years into his retirement, Stan was already deemed deserving to be a symbol of his team’s tradition. He was honored in bronze a year before he was even eligible to be considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Musial certainly understood the honor of having his statue erected before his plaque went up on the wall in Cooperstown.1 At the unveiling ceremony, Stan joked that he was “feeling eighteen feet tall” in reference to how high the redoubtable monument rose; it was a ten-foot, five-inch figure on an eight-foot, six-inch base. Deeply moved by the occasion Stan also declared, “I want to thank everyone—for my mother and the Musial family—for making me a Cardinal forever.” This moment was a crucial one in Stan’s life as he became the definitive Mr. Cardinal, leaving behind, to some extent, such other identities as the Boy from Donora. Many of the still-living “Cardinals legends” who had played with Stan were invited and many attended. In the presence of his many great colleagues Musial was declared the greatest. The celebration featured a reunion of members of the 1941 team—a collection of players who had been there to witness the emergence of the little-known rookie who would go on to become Stan the Man. The 1941 Cardinals who were able to make it to the party included Johnny Beazley, Walker Cooper, Frank Crespi, Erv Dusak, Harry Gumbert, Ira Hutchinson, Howard Krist, Whitey Kurowski, Eddie Lake, Gus Mancuso, Marty Marion, Steve Mesner, Johnny Mize, Terry Moore, Don Padgett, Howie Pollet, Enos Slaughter, Lon Warneke, and Ernie White.2 The lively pregame portion of the program involved Musial running out onto the field in full uniform [End Page 27] to join his 1941 teammates, who were in street clothes and occupying their old fielding positions. The idea for a monument to Musial came from his good friend Bob Broeg, who had become a kind of high priest of Stan the Man.3 In fact, that renowned nickname was itself the result of Broeg’s writings. Brooklyn fans may have been the first to chant “Here comes The Man, again! Here comes The Man!,” but Broeg seized upon the possibilities of the name as a means to celebrate the remarkable baseball potency of this quiet, hardworking, mild-mannered citizen of the national pastime. As Broeg’s passionate advocacy declared, Stan was not just one of the best hitters—he was the man. Calling him Stan the Man asserted, in the face of whatever anyone might say in favor of other hitters, that this guy was the one we should most admire. Broeg was, of course, not alone in his devotion to Musial. For instance, Bob Burnes, the top baseball writer for the St. Louis Globe Democrat, was also a Musial supporter. Burnes, who had started his career as a beat writer for the Browns, was not as close to Musial as Broeg was; nevertheless, Burnes was also a steady fan of Musial and his legend. Furthermore, in many of the other cities around the country there were sports columnists with a special affection for Musial, regarding him as the ideal of the congenial star player. It may sound reductive or sentimental to say that the enthusiasm for a Musial monument had something to do with a groundswell of support for the human decency allied with traditional notions of good sportsmanship that Stan seemed to represent, but that was what was happening. Major-league baseball has striven since its beginnings to be acceptable to imperatives of moral rightness; however, as hard as baseball has tried to satisfy the moral...

Debating Immortality: Application of Data Envelopment Analysis to Voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame

This paper applies data envelopment analysis to voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF). The approach interprets a player's career statistics as inputs and the percentage of votes that he received for the HOF as the output. A constructed frontier based on past voting defines the maximum number of votes that a player should receive based on his statistical profile. Our results suggest that about a third of the current members of the HOF (excluding Negro League players, managers, umpires, and executives) should be replaced by more deserving players. Our conclusions, however, do not account for those aspects of a player's career (both positive and negative) not captured by statistics. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Edd Roush: A Biography of the Cincinnati Reds Star (review)

Reviewed by: Edd Roush: A Biography of the Cincinnati Reds Star Douglas K. Lehman Mitchell Conrad Stinson . Edd Roush: A Biography of the Cincinnati Reds Star. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 248 pp. Paper, $29.95. Edd J. Roush is a name that may be unfamiliar to all but the most hardcore baseball fans, including fans of the Cincinnati Reds. But, during the late 1910s and the early 1920s Edd Roush was one of the most feared batsmen in the National League, known by every baseball fan in America. He came to the major leagues during the deadball era, participated in the 1919 Black Sox World Series, and finished his career a decade after Babe Ruth changed the game of baseball forever. Mitchell Conrad Stinson, a sportswriter hailing from Evansville, Indiana, first learned about Roush as a fourteen-year-old boy in 1978 while on a family [End Page 136] vacation. He and his family stopped by the octogenarian's house in Oakland City, Indiana, unannounced, and were granted an interview with the Hall of Famer. Two years later, Stinson and Roush met again and Stinson again tape-recorded the interview. Several years later, he embarked on writing this book and used those tape-recorded interviews with the now deceased Roush as the starting point for his research. Stinson has made use of his own interviews and interviews with others who knew Roush, as well as newspaper records, court records, secondary sources, and primary sources such as the Roush file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The result is an entertaining and readable, yet meticulously researched, biography of one of the great players of his era, but a man very few people could identify today. Roush was born in 1893, in Oakland City, Indiana, not far from Evansville. He and his twin brother, Fred, spent most of their lives in Oakland City, or its environs, except when they were employed playing baseball. Edd (yes, his parents named him Edd with two Ds, not Edward) became the better player and spent an apprenticeship in the low minors before climbing the ranks to the major leagues when he made his debut with the Chicago White Sox in 1913. Unfortunately for the White Sox, Roush did not make a big enough impression for them to keep him, so he returned to the minor leagues before joining the Indianapolis Hoosiers, a Federal League team, in 1914. He spent the 1915 season with the Newark team (the Indianapolis franchise had been transferred prior to the 1915 season), where he began making a name for himself. John McGraw's New York Giants acquired Roush when the Federal League failed, and while McGraw considered himself a sharp judge of talent, he and Roush clashed over Roush's 48-ounce bat, and McGraw shipped him off to Cincinnati. With the downtrodden Reds, Roush flourished and became one of the most feared hitters in the National League, winning batting championships in 1917 and 1919. In 1919, the Reds finally made it to the World Series, only to have it later revealed that several Chicago White Sox players had conspired with gamblers to throw the series. Roush (and Stinson) remained adamant that even had the White Sox been playing on the up and up, the Reds still would have won the series due to their superior pitching staff. The years that followed were not as successful for Roush. The game had changed, but he had a difficult time changing with it. Babe Ruth had changed the hitting part of the game from a scientific approach of well-placed hits and smart base-running to a game of power baseball and hitting home runs. Roush also suffered from injuries as he aged, and his well-known penchant for holding out each spring may have contributed to his maladies. Roush [End Page 137] never reached double figures in home runs, but he sported a career .323 batting average when he retired in 1931, after spending 1928 and 1929 with John McGraw's New York Giants and then sitting out the 1930 season. By then, Roush was thirty-eight years old and his legs just did not...

Catfish and Home

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I was never much for baseball. It wasn't that I hated the sport. I simply had no skill for it. A pop-fly to my left field usually went uncaught--never mind my batting. I was tall, arms hung apelike from my body, and my movements were too stretched out, languid flourishes that were useless, I wasn't built for it. But in Hertford, North Carolina, where baseball hung in every home, office, classroom, and service station, a boy like me had little else to choose from. Hertford was baseball. Some would say our sleepy hometown fell in love with the game when America fell for in the 1960s and '70s. Jimmy Catfish Hunter, a local hero, pitched for the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees (helping them to three straight pennants), played in the World Series six times, made eight All-Star teams, won 224 games, and in 1987 was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame--all the while maintaining his small-town farming roots: his Hertford roots. His professional career spanned 1965 to 1979, and in that time, he became Hertford's Prometheus, our link to the gods. He played every game with the shotgun pellets from a childhood hunting accident lodged in his foot, the result of winter mornings in the woods, doe-urine-splashed boots from stalking prey until nightfall, and natives imagined he held a major piece of them in his cleats. When he came back home for good at the age o f thirty-three, he was royalty. The winner o f the Cy Young Award, pitcher of a perfect game in '68, the subject of a Bob Dylan song, a titan in our town. Because of Catfish, Hertford had a name. It would be remembered. Hertford did have its own appeal, most of which was lost on me growing up. It's a simple town. It still retains a kind of calm, a repose all too swiftly fading (yet still lingering on southern back roads). It's one of the first permanent settlements in North Carolina, dating to the late 1600s, and home to one of the oldest buildings in the state: the Newbold-White House. Impressive Victorian and Georgian homes still mark the road winding along the Perquimans River. Tall, pillared structures framed by magnolias or weeping willows. Adorned in Spanish moss, cypress trees, melancholy and stoic, stand in the shallow water, osprey nesting in their limbs. An old 1950s-style malt shop thrives downtown. Dogbox-equipped flatbeds line the shoulders of various side roads, as hunters discuss the goings-on of whatever game is in season. There's racial tension, to be sure, but it simmers quietly--the surface somehow mostly still. The air practically carries southern ease, a cliche aura of small-town familiarity, as people meet and greet with smiles and how do's comfortable in their everyday routine. And that might've been image enough, but legislators and local business owners wanted to parade Hertford's quality. What would Hertford be without Catfish? A great mural now greets all who drive through downtown, homage to various aspects of our town's history and so-called progress. There is, of course, a giant Yankees cap with a ball poised before it in the very center of the painted wall, a peculiar icon for a small, southern town if you don't know its history. Beside it stands a Civil War soldier saluting an imposing Confederate flag, the source of much debate today. A silhouette of two Pilgrim settlers in the foreground, and to the left a Native American perches on a cliff above the river, watching two boys play in metal buckets. From that river a famous log juts forth with three turtles sunning lazily atop it. A tacky and, to some, offensive masterpiece, no doubt, but it remains endearing to most locals--evidence of context for a hero, proof the town exists. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We would see Hertford's hero around town at times--in the pharmacy, at the Hertford Cafe or local ball games--and he was usually pleasant. would smile and wave if he knew us, or simply tip his hat. …

Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball (review)

Reviewed by: Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball Richard Puerzer Mark Armour . Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. 382 pp. Cloth, $31.95. Despite the fact that Joe Cronin is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame based on his merits as a player, and that he managed the Boston Red Sox longer than anyone else in history, his name likely does not spring to mind when thinking of the most important men in baseball history. However, [End Page 150] as Mark Armour deftly makes clear in this superb biography, in his roles as player, manager, general manager, and league president, Cronin made an important mark on the game. Joe Cronin was born in San Francisco in 1906, just a few months after what became known as "the great earthquake." As an eighteen year old, he was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates and began his professional career playing in the minor leagues. The following year, Cronin found himself in the majors trying to establish a place on the big-league roster. After a great deal of work in learning how to play shortstop in the majors, but not yet established with the Pirates, Cronin was signed by the Washington Senators. Armour focuses on the multiple ways in which Cronin's time with the Senators launched him to baseball immortality. First and foremost, he became a star at shortstop. He also gained the trust of Senators owner Clark Griffith, which meant that he was not only named player-manager at age twenty-six, but later was married to Griffith's niece. In his first season as player-manager in 1933, Cronin led the Senators to the World Series. Following a disappointing 1934 season, and perhaps also due to claims of nepotism, Cronin was sold to the Boston Red Sox, where he would again see great success as both player and manager. Armour recounts Cronin's years playing and managing the Red Sox in great detail. The Red Sox of this era featured very good teams, but teams that were consistently caught behind the Yankees in the American League. Cronin, a quiet leader, dealt with several not so quiet personalities on these teams, including Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, and Ted Williams. Describing Cronin's relationship with Red Sox fans early in his tenure with the team, Armour compares Cronin to Alex Rodriguez. Another perhaps equally apt comparison from a career-long perspective could be made to Derek Jeter. Just as Jeter does today, Cronin played shortstop, drew criticism from some for his defensive prowess, served as a quiet yet recognized team leader, avoided controversy, and was held in high esteem by his peers. After the end of his playing career in 1945, Cronin stayed on as the Red Sox manager, leading them to the American League pennant in 1946. Then, following the 1947 season, Cronin moved to the position of general manager for the Red Sox. He would hold this position for the ten years before he assumed the presidency of the American League. Although he was considered for commissioner of baseball both in 1965 and in 1968, Cronin remained as president of the American League until his retirement in 1973. Armour describes the impact that Cronin first had on the Red Sox and then later the American League and professional baseball in these years. Of particular interest is Cronin's involvement, or lack thereof, in the integration of the Red Sox, and his approach to the changing labor-management environment in baseball. [End Page 151] Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Cronin's life in baseball, and this biography, are the decades that he spent as the virtual personification of the baseball establishment. Armour provides a detailed description of Cronin's various roles in baseball management, from player-manager to league president. In each role, Cronin tended to conform to the establishment. For example, writing about integration, Armour says Cronin and the Red Sox "sat the revolution out." Later, while American League president, Armour depicts Cronin's establishment view of labor practices. In 1968, Cronin fired umpires Al Salerno and Bill Valentine ostensibly for their work in trying to organize their fellow American...

On Becoming Extraordinary: The Content and Structure of the Developmental Networks of Major League Baseball Hall of Famers

We explore the structure and content of developmental networks depicted in 62 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction speeches to identify which developers and what support mattered most to induct...

Using Tree Ensembles to Analyze National Baseball Hall of Fame Voting Patterns: An Application to Discrimination in BBWAA Voting

We predict the induction of Major League Baseball hitters and pitchers into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. We employ a Random Forest algorithm for binary classification, improving upon past models with a simplistic input approach. Our results suggest that the random forest technique is a fruitful line of research with prediction in the sports world. We find an error rate as low as 0.91% in our most accurate forest, with no out-of-bag Error higher than 2.6% in any tree ensemble. We extend the results to an examination of the possibility of discrimination with respect to BBWAA voting, finding little evidence for exclusions based on race.

Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball , and: Our White Boy (review)

Reviewed by: Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball, and: Our White Boy Alan C. Atchison Playing in Shadows: Texas and Negro League Baseball. By Rob Fink, foreword by Cary D. Wintz. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2010. Pp. 188. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780896727014, $29.95 cloth.) Our White Boy. By Jerry Craft with Kathleen Sullivan, foreword by Larry Lester. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2010. Pp. 272. Illustrations, references, index. ISBN 9780896726741, $29.95 cloth.) In the decades since the 1960s, football, especially the professional game, has greatly increased in popularity, not only in Texas, but throughout the United States. Because of this five-decade growth in the status of America's Game, many Texans are unaware of the National Pastime's past influence on the state's history, including the more than 110 Texas towns and cities that have hosted professional baseball franchises. It is safe to assume then that even fewer are aware of the role of semi-professional and amateur baseball in developing the Lone Star State's culture. And certainly even fewer are cognizant of black Texans' impact on the game at both the state and national levels. With hopes of changing this situation, Playing in Shadows and Our White Boy, both part of the Sport in the American West Series, provide valuable insights into the effects of the game on African American culture and the role of the game in integrating Texas communities. [End Page 343] Rob Fink's Playing in Shadows examines baseball as played by African Americans, both semi-pro and professional, in Texas and the contributions of black Texans to the game at the national level from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Using secondary sources in general and some primary sources, mostly newspaper articles and interviews, Fisk compiles a brief history of black Texans and the summer game, exalting the role of prominent Texas-born African Americans in the success of the professional Negro Leagues. Most prominent, of course, was Andrew "Rube" Foster, to whom Fink dedicates an entire chapter, almost one-tenth of the book. Other notable black Texans who became stars in the Negro Leagues, including Louis Santap, "Smokey" Joe Williams, and Willie Wells, receive appropriate mention in Fisk's chronicle. Because the two chapters on these and other great black stars, many of whom are now enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, rely heavily on secondary sources, serious baseball historians and fans of the Negro Leagues are undoubtedly familiar with the information. Still, Playing in Shadows provides a service by not only condensing the key feats of these stars into one monograph, but, more importantly, connecting them to the Lone Star State's overall role in "shaping the state's African American community, as well as the Negro Leagues and the game of baseball" (13). Yet, Fink asserts that the local stars, teams, and leagues had the greater impact and reflect most directly the black culture of Texas in the twentieth century. In the chapters on the professional Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League (1929-1931), the various semi-pro leagues, and the Houston Eagles of the Negro American League, Fink's reliance on primary sources is profound and, thus, his contribution to baseball history is most significant. Here the author weaves together various stories of the attempts and, sadly, the failures of organizing leagues, signing players, and attracting fans. As did white teams and leagues, African Americans had to overcome depression and wars. But black owners also had to deal with the civil rights movement and the "push for integration of white teams and leagues" (91). Success of that push eventually doomed both the professional and semi-pro African American teams, statewide and nationally. The integration of professional white baseball, at least at the major league level, is as well documented and well known to even the casual fan and many non-fans as the attempts to integrate black leagues and teams is unknown and undocumented. And Fink does briefly mention Eddie Klep, Lou Chirban, and Louis Clarizion, white players signed by Negro American League teams who "hoped to attract more white fans" (120) in order to compete...