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Baseball’s Most Valuable Prints
They lag behind cards, memorabilia, and artifactsNew York Fashions for March 1870; ButterickThe other day I received a printed catalog (Portfolio, Vol. LXXIX, №1) from The Old Print Shop, where I have...
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A Tale of Two Clowns
Digby Bell’s lost companion piece to “Casey at the Bat”The Evening World reports on the debut of “The Tough Boy”“Casey at the Bat” is an American classic, and deservedly so. When it made its public...
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De Wolf Hopper on Baseball
“The next play of mine will be a baseball production, because I will be sure then of having some runs.”De Wolf Hopper, when he played in “100 Wives” in 1880Last week I posted a story about De Wolf...
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A City Playground
How street children played more than a century agoFirst Championship Game of the Hogan’s Alley Team, by Richard F. Outcault, New York World April 12, 1896The article below, to which my friend Richard...
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Two Sports, One Family
Pat Mahomes and morePatrick Mahomes wearing his dad’s jerseyYesterday’s heroics by Pat Mahomes II recalled for me not only his father’s 8–0 record as a pitcher for the Mets in 1999 but also those other...
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Two-Sport Stars
Following up on the Mahomes storyDave DeBusschere, 1965Last week I threatened to pile on a bit — after a squib about the Mahomeses and cross-generational NFL-MLB combinations — to discuss two-sport...
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The New Baseball Bible
Dan Schlossberg’s new book; my foreword to itNow available: https://www.amazon.com/New-Baseball-Bible-Nuggets-National/dp/1683583469/Dan Schlossberg’s book has had a fabulous longevity that is the...
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The Hall Ball: One Fan’s Journey
My foreword to Ralph Carhart’s new bookI met Ralph Carhart through the Society for American Baseball Research, and our mutual interest in placing headstones on the unmarked burial sites of the game’s...
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How Old Is Anson?
Hyder Ali’s poem, published in full for the first time in a centuryHyder Ali Khan (1720–1782)Once upon a time Eastern rulers were fair game for English and American versifiers. As I wrote in this space...
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A Talk with Sockalexis
What the Noted Indian Ball Player Has to Say About the National Game.Lou Sockalexis with Holy Cross, 1896The title and subtitle above are as they appeared in The New York Sun, June 7, 1897. This...
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The National Pastime
When, precisely, did the term debut?The ornate masthead of the Sunday Mercury; on May 1, 1853, it gave space to the new game of base ball“That the New York game was the ‘national pastime’ was declared...
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What’s in a Name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; except perhaps in sportJohn Edwards. The British herbal, 1770.I stumbled upon this story I wrote long ago, back when I could write...
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Play Ball!
The Negro Leagues, from a lost issue of The Crisis, May 1938Josh Gibson on the cover of The Crisis for May 1938My friend Dr. Steven Lomazow has an unparalleled collection of American periodicals in all...
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The First Japanese Professional Game Took Place in …. Kansas?
Who’s on first … in Japanese baseballContinue reading on Our Game »
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Baseball in Japan during the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic
A guest column by Adam BerenbakWaseda University team, 1918As Major League Baseball has delayed the opening of the 2020 season due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, baseball’s first interruption since the 1994...
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Ralph “Spud” Johnson
RBI champion died in obscurity; guest column by Peter MorrisContinue reading on Our Game »
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Presidential Namesakes
A guest column by Dave Smith of RetrosheetMartin Van Buren (Walker)While deducing a game for Retrosheet, Tom Thress came across the remarkable career of Marty Walker of the Phillies. Marty’s entire...
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Old Days in Baseball
Odd bits for your perusalThe National Chronicle, successor title to The New England Base BallistI love the disconnected baseball squibs once gathered in Sporting Life and The Sporting News and in the...
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