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The World’s Colored Championship
1924 World’s Colored Championship Official Program By 1920 the best black players were not barnstormers but men who played in a real league, with regular schedules, rules, and umpires. Former pitcher...
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The Letters of Abner Graves
Abner Graves The following are the two letters submitted by Abner Graves in 1905 describing the purported invention of baseball by Abner Doubleday. The first of these was addressed to the editor of the...
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A “Bass-Ball” Challenge in the Delhi Gazette, 1825
William Blake, The Echoing Green In Baseball in the Garden of Eden, one of my recurrent themes was the vital role that gambling played in making a boys’ game worthy of adult attention. That gambling...
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Rickey and Roth and Lindsey and Cook
Hidden Game of Baseball, 1984 This week marks the second edition of the SABR Analytics Conference, in Phoenix (http://sabr.org/analytics). I had planned to attend, as I had last year, but a bothersome...
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Ed Walsh Remembers
Big Ed Walsh Ed Walsh,born in Plains County, Pennsylvania, not far from Wilkes-Barre, began his Organized Baseball career pitching for the Meriden, Connecticut, team in 1902. After a few unremarkable...
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Thinking About Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson Here’s a story about the bridge that Jackie Robinson crossed, and some of the men who built that bridge. I was going to deliver this as a speech last month, to close out a regional...
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Thinking About Jackie Robinson, Part 2
William White, 1879 This continues a story commenced yesterday at http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2013/03/18/thinking-robinson/. During the early professional period that, in the 1870s, produced the first...
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Who Remembers Pushball?
Base Ball and Roller Skates, Sporting Life, July 15, 1885 A recent discussion thread on the listserv of SABR’s Nineteenth Century Baseball group focused interestingly (to me, anyhow) on the odd sport...
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Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents
Ray Robinson My old friend–and by old I refer both to the duration of our friendship as well to his nonagenarian status–Ray Robinson has written a new book(let). It has been published more or less to...
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The Unions of Morrisania
Union of Morrisania, 1866 The Unions of Morrisania were a celebrated early team, of interest for such players as George Wright, shortstop par excellence; Doug Birdsall, who went on to play...
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Buck Ewing and King Kelly
Buck Ewing Buck Ewing and King Kelly were quite a pair, though they never played on the same club. Ewing was Cincinnati’s hometown hero who made his mark in the big leagues with Troy; Michael Joseph...
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Arlie Latham
Arlie Latham, 1886 In yesterday’s post I spoke about King Kelly as a rough and ready player of the old school. Here’s another in that vein. Imagine a combination of the pugnacity and tenacity of Pete...
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Baseball Magazine
Baseball Magazine, August 1908 In the golden age of magazines, the period 1880-1920, the newsstands were bedecked with general-interest and literary publications: the weeklies included such fare as The...
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Tim Murnane: Heart of the Game
Tim Murnane Two images accompanying this article neatly frame Tim Murnane’s story, even though they were photographed only nine years apart in his six-decade life in baseball. In the first photograph —...
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The Knickerbockers: San Francisco’s First Base Ball Team?
The garden spot of baseball in the golden west, Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, January 1851 This brilliant essay by Angus Macfarlane–now presented at Our Game in two parts–ran in the first number...
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The Knickerbockers: San Francisco’s First Base Ball Team? Part Two
William R. Wheaton The following text continues and concludes the article commenced yesterday at: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2013/05/14/the-knickerbockers-san-franciscos-first-base-ball-team/ William...
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Pittsfield 1791 and Beachville 1838
Beachville, Ontario Not two hours ago, reader Brian Dawe posted this interesting comment about Adam Ford and the game he recalled playing in Beachville, Ontario on June 4, 1838. The article he...
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“The New Marlboro.’ Match Base Ball Co.” of 1863
The South Berkshire Institute of New Marlborough, MA, locus of the “New Marlboro game.” The article below, by Richard Hershberger, appeared in print in the Spring 2010 number of the journal Base Ball....
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A Reconstruction of Philadelphia Town Ball
Olympics of Philadelphia, 1837 Constitution The previous post, Richard Hershberger’s article on the 1863 “New Marlboro Match Baseball Co.”, elicited this comment from reader Jim Roebuck: “One thing...
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Double Exposure
The Peskin Shot, from The Miracle at Merion Today, as we near the fifth U. S. Open to be held at the Merion Golf Course in Ardmore, PA, my friend Joe Posnanski published a fine story about the glory...
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