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A New Baseball Discovery
Beloit’s Middle College, built 1847 Baseball fever, catch it. When I am not thinking about the game, it can pop up insistently, reasserting its central position in my life. Let me tell you what...
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215 Montague Street
Plaque at 215 Montague Street I was delighted to speak yesterday at the site of the Brooklyn Dodger offices at 215 Montague Street. Chevrolet sponsored a four-stop baseball tour for media types who...
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Obituary, by Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner Ring Lardner published this jocular “obituary” for Christy Mathewson in the Chicago Tribune on July 22, 1916. Lardner’s standing column head in the Trib was the portentous “In the Wake of...
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Happy July 4, Baseball
Hauling flag at Ebbets Field 1914. Is that Casey Stengel in the front, second from left? Baseball is the American game,” I wrote in a 1988 book, The Game for All America. “ This is how I continued: “It...
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The All-Star Game You Don’t Know
2013 All-Star Game Logo This article appears in this year’s All-Star Game Media Guide. In 2013, Citi Field hosts the All-Star Game, the first time the home of the Mets has held this honor since 1964,...
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Forgotten Boxes, Family, and A Legacy: Recalling Henry Chadwick
Henry Chadwick in an 1880 number of the Clipper. This is a guest column, penned by my longtime friend Fran Henry, whose trove of Henry Chadwick materials I examined with her kind permission more than...
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Building a Winning Club in New York: A 1918 Interview with Colonel Jake Ruppert
Colonel Jacob Ruppert in his glory, 1932. What is the importance to Major League Baseball of a successful club in New York? That question has a present-day relevance in the age of revenue sharing, free...
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Inventing Baseball
Inventing Baseball, SABR This is the foreword I provided to Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the Nineteenth Century, a book published this week by the Society for American Baseball...
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The Tiger Base Ball Club: A Mystery Solved
Tiger Base Ball Club, belt plate This is a guest column, penned by my friend and colleague, Richard Hershberger, who thinks and writes inventively about the early game. His recent articles in the...
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Johnny Vander Meer Remembers
Johnny Vander Meer A young sportswriter and traveling secretary for the Reds, Gabe Paul would go on to make his name as a general manger with the Indians, Yankees, and Astros. In 1943 he interviewed...
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The Man Who Might Have Been the Greatest Player in the Game
Joe Jackson, Baseball Magazine, March 1916 Above is the title of a story about not Alex Rodriguez, as you may have been entitled to think in this momentous week of PED suspensions, but Joe Jackson,...
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The Story of William Bray’s Diary
David Block, 2007 This is a guest column by David Block. While filming the Major League Baseball documentary “Base Ball Discovered” in England, he and director Sam Marchiano met Tricia St. John Barry,...
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Chadwick’s Choice: The Origin of the Batting Average
Henry Chadwick Did you know that slugging average is older than the batting average, and was tossed aside in favor of it? And if so, do you know why? I did not, until I came upon Henry Chadwick’s “The...
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“Take Me Out to the Ball Game”: The Story of Katie Casey and Our National...
George Boziwick contributed this splendid article to the journal Base Ball, which could neither accommodate nor print in color all his wonderful accompanying illustrations. Here at last is the piece...
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Fans and Their Frenzies: The Wholesome Madness of Baseball
DeWolf Hopper, “Exalted Ruler of Fandom” “The fundamental reason for the popularity of the game is the fact that it is a national safety valve. Voltaire says that there are no real pleasures without...
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Free Advice to Big Papi
David Ortiz Grand Slam. Getty Images. This quickie is from longtime pal and esteemed baseball historian John B. Holway. It relates to the current American League Championship Series, and thus is more...
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Free Advice to Big Papi: Stay as You Are, A Reader Response
Joe Sewell Ordinarily I would be content to let a reader’s response to an Our Game post be available via hyperlink at the bottom of the selection. But this response, by David Lawrence Reed, is so...
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Palmer, Thorn, and SABR
To this year’s World Series program I contributed a sidebar on the perenially debated home-field advantage. Coming upon a doubtful point, I looked for someone who would know. “As has long been my...
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World Series Centennial: 1913
Game 1 of the 1913 World Series, A’s and Giants The 1913 Fall Classic matched two historic rivals—the Philadelphia Athletics and the New York Giants—that exist today if not in their original cities....
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Pesky: The Man, the Myth, the Truth
Johnny Pesky Another offering from old pal John B Holway, especially relevant as we near the third game of the fourth World Series matchup of the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Do reporters...
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