The Spring 2024 issue of the Baseball Research Journal features fourteen articles covering topics ranging from statistical analysis to nineteenth century baseball from researchers including Alan Cohen, Herm Krabbenhoft, and Woody Eckard, as well as profiles of this year's Henry Chadwick Award winners: Sarah Langs, Larry Gerlach, and Leslie Heaphy. Charlie Pavitt brings us the first of two articles analyzing plummeting batting averages in the major leagues (more than defensive shifts are to blame) and Peter Dreier takes a comprehensive look at how the changes in demographics of the United States are reflected by the representation of Jewish players in major league baseball. ON THE COVER: Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, is the oldest professional baseball park in the United States. This summer it will add another chapter to its rich history when it hosts the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals in an MLB regular-season game. In this issue, John Shorey and Kevin Warneke examine how a game played 100 years ago at Rickwood between the Black Barons and the Cuban Stars was the first major-league game played at the historic ballpark. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: “Mary Dobkin: Baltimore’s Grande Dame of Baseball” by David Krell Mary Dobkin learned English through radio broadcasts and newspapers, which is a familiar tale for twentieth-century immigrants. Baseball was both an outlet and a salve, as she suffered through many operations and medical treatments. “Then one summer she got to attend therapy camp,” reads a 1979 Los Angeles Times profile. “From her wheelchair, she was taught to catch and hit a baseball. It was magic. Quiet, reclusive Mary Dobkin returned to the hospital a new person, ignited by direct experience with baseball.” She would go on to create and run baseball teams for underprivileged kids for decades, and her life story would become a movie starring Jean Stapleton. “The Ill-Fated Dodgers and Indians World Baseball Tour of 1952” by Matthew Jacob Abe Saperstein is best known as the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, but he also was deeply involved in many aspects of professional baseball. With the US State Department’s cooperation, Saperstein drafted plans for an international tour by big-league baseball teams in 1952—a trip that one sports editor called “the most ambitious barnstorming tour in the history of baseball.” Saperstein’s plan called for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cleveland Indians to play a series of 22 games over a 60-day schedule, beginning in Hawaii and then continuing to Japan, India, Egypt, Australia, and North Africa. The Dodgers and Indians had been the first racially integrated teams in their respective leagues, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson referred to this dynamic as a key reason why the government would back the proposed tour. Because both teams had players “of every nationality, creed, and color,” he wrote, the trip would attest to America’s democratic values. “‘Death to Flying Things’: The Life and Times of a Spurious Nickname” by Richard Hershberger “Death to Flying Things” is one of the all-time great baseball nicknames, routinely included in lists of such things. Indeed, it serves double duty, attributed to two players: Robert Ferguson and John Chapman. Both men played for the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn in the 1860s, but, sadly, neither Ferguson nor Chapman was called “Death to Flying Things” during their playing careers, or for many years after. The nickname is entirely spurious. This article will attempt to explain where the supposed nickname came from in the first place, and how it got assigned to two different persons.
Ty Cobb has reigned over baseball history as a titan of the game, and according to quotes repeated by Cobb’s biographers, he believed the name “Tyrus” to be unique to him. Was the name an invention of his father’s, meant to be a historical or Biblical reference of some kind? In this issue, Dr. William “Ron” Cobb debunks the spurious explanations given by previous chroniclers as to the origin of the name, and offers insight into Cobb family history. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: “More Relief Pitchers Belong in the Hall of Fame: Which Ones?” by Elaina and John Pakutka Jane Forbes Clark, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The National Baseball Hall of Fame, reminds us each year on inudction day that the Hall contains the top 1% of major-league players. But that 1% is not evenly distributed across eras or positions. If the “best 1%” standard were applied to the subset of relief pitchers we study in this article, 20 to 30 of them would be in the Hall of Fame. Only nine have won induction. Relief pitchers generate about 10% of the total WAR each year, but constitute only 3% of Hall of Famers. “Balancing Starter and Bullpen Workloads in a Seven-Game Postseason Series” by David J. Gordon, MD, PhD In general, the strategy of routinely removing a starting pitcher in the fifth or sixth inning when the batting order turns over for the third time may win some games by rescuing starters from the Third Time Through the Order Penalty (TTOP), but it leaves a shortfall of innings that must be covered in a seven-game series, leading to overexposure of a limited pool of relievers. The deleterious effect of repeatedly using relievers—an increase of as much as .076 in wOBA—substantially outweighs the effect the TTOP on starters (approximately a .030 increase in wOBA). Protecting starters from the significant but relatively small TTOP does no good if your best high-leverage relievers become fatigued and/or “old hat” to opposing hitters by the time they are needed in the deciding game of a seven-game series. “Keith Hernandez and Cooperstown: A Data Synthesis and Visualization Project” by Stephen D. Dertinger, PhD Our player performance analyses provide interesting insights into Keith Hernandez’s Hall of Fame case. A key component of the ToxPi methodology involves synthesizing multiple, carefully chosen performance metrics into composite scores. Player performances are distilled into single values, while the associated visuals provide a clear indication of where they excelled (and where they did not). Hernandez’s ToxPi Profiles reveal defensive excellence both compared to his contemporaries and compared to Hall of Fame first basemen... [but also] make it clear that his offense also contributes to his Hall of Fame case. Whether considering traditional or advanced statistics, these analyses support the contention that Keith Hernandez belongs in Cooperstown.
Welcome to the windswept plains, lakeshores, towns, and church ballfields in the heart of the Midwest. In this issue of The National Pastime, we barnstorm through Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, as well as several stops in Illinois, both in Chicago and in towns just a train ride away. The last time the SABR convention was in Chicago, in 2015, the focus was very much on the urban center. So when we found out SABR would be returning to Chicago for the 2023 summer convention, we wanted to broaden the horizon of the publication to see what interesting stories could be discovered if we included not just Illinois but its bordering states. SABR members responded with a plethora of tales. Some of them do concern favorite Chicago topics like beloved Bill Veeck and bedeviled Buck Weaver, and both Smiling Stan Hack and Hack Wilson, Cap Anson and Ken Holtzman, but we’ll also meet a Mexican women’s baseball team based in East Chicago (Indiana), minor league teams from Michigan City (also Indiana) and Wausau, Wisconsin, some baseball-savvy politicians (like Col. Frank Leslie Smith), a card-collecting magnate (Larry Fritsch), and hear all about the Negro Leagues teams who barnstormed through Iowa on a regular basis—often playing each other in league play.
The National Pastime is the annual review of baseball historical research and regional topics published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Each year the publication focuses on the history of baseball in a different region or city, following the annual SABR convention from one major league territory to another.
In this issue our cover story looks at the history of "Greenberg Gardens." After playing his whole career in Detroit, in 1947 Hank Greenberg was sold to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates installed an inner fence in a portion of Forbes Field, reducing the distance down the left field line of the ballpark by 30 feet, with intention of helping Greenberg to hit more home runs. The area between the new fence and the outer wall became known as Greenberg Gardens, and local newspapers kept a tally of how many Garden homers were hit. Greenberg retired after the 1947 season, but the Gardens remained through 1953. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: "Pitching Against Alzheimer's: A Study of Baseball Reminiscence Programs" by Lou Hernandez, Monte Cely, and Barry Mednick Reminiscence programs focused on music, singing, cinema, art and crafts have become popular offerings to people living with dementia. The first baseball reminiscence program in the US was the Cardinals Reminiscence League, begun in 2011 as a joint effort by the Alzheimer’s Association, St. Louis University, the Veteran’s Administration, and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum. Since then, baseball reminiscence programs have been founded in Texas, New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere. This paper summarizes the results of the Baseball Memories Research Study launched under the umbrella of SABR’s Baseball Memories Chartered Community, studying the effects of these programs on the quality of life for participants and their caregivers. "The Doomed Pilots of 1969: The Results of Advice Ignored" by Andy McCue In the early 1960s, Seattle’s city fathers were confident their city was an attractive and growing market. In 1961, the city commissioned a Stanford Research Institute study to assess what was needed to gain major league sports, especially baseball. The think tank’s study came back cautiously positive. Attracting major league baseball was possible, the report said, if the city could meet three conditions. It would need to provide a major league quality stadium and the team would need to find support from both the political/financial leadership and the fan base. Ultimately, they would founder on all three, sinking the Seattle Pilots franchise barely after it had left the dock. "Were Pitchers More Likely to Throw at Black Batters? 1947-66" by Jerry Nechal A generally accepted narrative of the early days of baseball integration is that White pitchers deliberately threw at Black batters. Besides the need for statistical confirmation of the anecdotes, there are other important questions to ask: If widespread targeting did happen, how long did it last? Was the practice curtailed as more Black players entered the leagues? The ranking of batters by the number of times hit per season 1947-56 reveals evidence to support the narrative. This study will explore the answers to these questions by examining data covering a longer time period, 1947 through 1966.As well as articles about why fewer triples are hit today than in the past, the forgotten "six-man" variant of baseball, using data visualization on the 2020 season, the tribulations faced by the Phillies when trying to enter the National League, and the remarkable 1919 season of the Klein Chocolate Company baseball team, among others.
In this issue, we remember the enormous contribution of Jim Bouton, pictured on the cover in a portrait by artist Gary Cieradkowski. Throughout baseball’s hidebound history, rebels and mavericks have emerged to challenge the status quo in the sport and the wider society, none more so than Bouton. His book Ball Four ultimately changed baseball, the sports media, and American literature. During his playing days, Bouton spoke out against the Vietnam War, South African apartheid, the exploitation of players by greedy owners, and the casual racism of the teams and his fellow players. When his baseball career ended, he continued to use his celebrity as a platform against social injustice. Fifty years after Ball Four’s publication and now two years after Bouton’s death, Robert Elias and Peter Dreier look back at the legacy. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: “When the Fans Didn’t Go Wild” by J. Furman Daniel, III & Elliott Fullmer While the circumstances of the 2020 MLB season were far from ideal, it did present a unique research opportunity. Home-field advantage has long been observed in all major team sports, including baseball. Over the past several decades, researchers have sought to explain this persistent phenomenon. While multiple explanations have been advanced, the most common centers on the effect of attending crowds. Cheering (or booing) fans, the argument goes, affect the performance of players or umpires, leading to advantages for the home team. Because the 2020 MLB season was played without crowds, we are able to test the impact of fans on game outcomes through this unique natural experiment. “Impact of the Varying Sac-Fly Rules on Batting Champs, 1931–2019” by Herm Krabbenhoft The back-and-forth character of the sacrifice fly rule (i.e., at-bat or no at-bat) over the course of the twentieth century has resulted in some interesting “What if?” situations. For instance, one of baseball’s oldest (and at-one-time highly revered) batting metrics is batting average, with the player with the highest batting average being regarded as the batting champion of his league. But which players would have won baseball’s batting crowns if the rule had been consistent? What if the current sacrifice fly rule had been in effect for the 1931–53 period? Who would have won the batting titles, then? “‘Country’ Base Ball in the Boom of 1866,” by Robert Tholkes As baseball spread throughout the United States after the Civil War, not every newspaper was supportive of the notion. “Violent exercise,” reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer, would lead to “the production of fevers and bowel diseases.” The Raleigh Daily Sentinel disapproved of Southerners spending time on amusements, noting that “Intellect, energy, frugality and hard labor will raise the South, and nothing else can.” And as incidents of Sunday ballplaying proliferated, stiff opposition was raised by the Sabbatarians and other religious groups, like the State Street Congregational Church of Brooklyn’s Missionary Society. The Society’s diatribe warned that the game had turned from “a reasonable exercise into a moral contagion…insidiously diffusing and infusing itself into the minds and brains of thousands upon thousands of our young American people, from thirty years of age downward to little children…exhibiting a reckless abandon and mad ecstasy.” Additional articles reexamine Hank Aaron’s home run record, the career of Al Kaline, and the uncanny walk-off prowess of Ryan Zimmerman. One study looks at whether the perception that PED use prolonged MLB careers is correct. The “fourth out rule” and the earliest use of uniform numbers in the minor leagues are also investigated, among 18 articles in all.
Since its inception, The National Pastime has featured excellent research and essays about baseball history. This year, though, we asked our contributors to point their lenses not toward the past, but toward the future.
Babe Ruth continues to interest and fascinate us over 100 years after his fateful trade from Boston to New York. As Michael Haupert writes in “The Business of Being the Babe,” “Babe Ruth is frequently lauded as the greatest player in Major League Baseball history, and arguably the first true superstar athlete. Ruth transcended the game of baseball, and with the aid of agent Christy Walsh, he profited tremendously from that transcendence. Whether barnstorming, making movies, or modeling underwear, Ruth had a Midas touch that allowed his income to exceed even his famously outsized spending habits.”
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented to expand our knowledge of baseball as it is, was, and could be played.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
An annual review of baseball historical research and regional topics published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Each year the publication focuses on the history of baseball in a different region or city, following the annual SABR convention from one major league territory to another.
Volume 49, issue 2, of SABR's Baseball Research Journal, runs the gamut of research, from the nineteenth century to events that took place in 2020. The article that anchors this issue of the journal, appearing last, is Richard Hershberger’s account of the “First Baseball War,” in which the nineteenth-century clash between leagues contributed to the creation of the reserve system that suppressed free agency until the late twentieth, while Mary Hums and her team document MLB’s decision to change the name of the “disabled list” to “injured list,” including the advocacy and rationale behind the change, and an analysis of fan reactions to it.As always, we have some articles that delve into stats to enhance our understanding of the game. Among them, Theo Tobel gives us a breakdown of brushback pitches: do they really intimidate batters and provide an advantage to the pitcher? Randy Robbins noticed a statistical quirk in the record of Warren Spahn and it prompted an examination of one of the game’s pitching greats. Will Melville and Brinley Zabriskie undertake the task of trying to determine how much benefit, if any, the 2017 Astros derived from their cheating efforts, while Irwin Nahinsky analyzes the effects of luck and skill on team success. Ron Backer looks at Lou Gehrig in a new light—klieg lights, in fact—in his article on Gehrig’s Hollywood career, which like his life and playing career was cut short by ALS. Charlie Pavitt delves into the fact that a player’s ethnicity can be a predictor for what position he plays in MLB. Howard M. Wasserman examines Jewish players through the lens of their performances on Yom Kippur, while Alan Cohen examines one of the great hitters of all time, Josh Gibson. Because of racial segregation, Gibson never had the opportunity to play in the major leagues, but because many Negro League teams did play games in major league ballparks, we can look at those performances to prove how prodigious he truly was. An image of Josh Gibson graces the cover of this issue, in a piece of original art by Gary Cieradkowski, the creator of the Infinite Baseball Card Set.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
The 1975 Cincinnati Reds, also known as the "Big Red Machine," are not just one of the most memorable teams in baseball history - they are unforgettable. This book commemorates the people and events surrounding this baseball team with essays on team management and key aspects and highlights of the season, including Pete Rose's position change.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is a peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
The annual review of baseball historical research and regional topics published by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Each year the publication focuses on the history of baseball in a different region or city, following the annual SABR convention from one major league territory to another.
The flagship publication of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), the Baseball Research Journal is a peer-reviewed publication presenting the best in SABR member research on baseball. History, biography, economics, physics, psychology, game theory, sociology and culture, records, and many other disciplines are represented.
For the Baltimore Orioles, the glory days stretched to decades. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the team had the best record in the American League. But the best of all, and one of baseball's greatest teams ever, was the Orioles team of 1970. Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers documents that paradoxically unforgettable yet often overlooked World Champion team.
Of all the teams in the annals of baseball, only a select few can lay claim to historic significance. One of those teams is the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, the first racially integrated Major League team of the twentieth century. This book is the first to offer biographies of everyone on that incomparable team as well as accounts of the moments and events that marked the Dodgers' 1947 season.
From the Introduction: This volume contains essays that describe many leagues now long gone, and teams that fostered a love of the sport in communities where fans never saw or even heard a major league game. There are personal pieces by players and a coach, vignettes of their baseball careers in Canada. There is sadness in the account of the untimely death of Linus "Skeeter" Ebnet on the diamond in 1938. Humour is not lacking here, though, with lighter pieces by David McDonald on the WWI-era Canadian League, and Kit Krieger''s account of his meteoric rise to PCL stardom. Before there were Expos and Jays, there were great International League teams now in Montreal and Toronto, when the International League contained players of renown. The sport has a peculiar hold on the imagination of the French, as we see in Michel Nareau''s piece on baseball in Québécois fiction. Inevitably, this journal is about the past rather than the present, but not always the distant past.
Each Autumn this publication from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) explores baseball history with fresh and often surprising views of past players, teams, and events. Drawn from the research efforts of more than 6,700 SABR members, The National Pastime establishes an accurate, lively, and entertaining historical record of baseball.
Presents baseball research with a strong analytical approach. Made up of statistical studies, in-depth examinations of playing techniques, and articles focusing on baseball as a business, the Baseball Research Journal draws from the research efforts of members of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Each Autumn this publication from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) explores baseball history with fresh and often surprising views of past players, teams, and events. Drawn from the research efforts of more than 6,700 SABR members, The National Pastime establishes an accurate, lively, and entertaining historical record of baseball.
Presents baseball research with a strong analytical approach. Made up of statistical studies, in-depth examinations of playing techniques, and articles focusing on baseball as a business, the Baseball Research Journal draws from the research efforts of members of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Each Autumn this publication from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) explores baseball history with fresh and often surprising views of past players, teams, and events. Drawn from the research efforts of more than 6,700 SABR members, The National Pastime establishes an accurate, lively, and entertaining historical record of baseball.
Presents baseball research with a strong analytical approach. Made up of statistical studies, in-depth examinations of playing techniques, and articles focusing on baseball as a business, the Baseball Research Journal draws from the research efforts of members of the Society for American Baseball Research.
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