Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Baseball
One hundred years ago this month, the “House That Ruth Built” became the first true baseball stadium.
He was unlike any other baseball star in America, a blond-haired boy from the heartland whose raw power and mythical purity made him a hero.
History professors Roberts and Smith recently co-authored A Season in t
He was unlike any other baseball star in America, a blond-haired boy from the heartland whose raw power and mythical purity made him a hero.
History professors Roberts and Smith recently co-authored A Season in t
A curious story of religion, sex, and baseball grew out of a long-forgotten postcard among her grandmother’s belongings.
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Bill Veeck changed baseball forever, integrating the American League in 1949 and creating a variety of stunts and promotions to bring more people to the stadium.
Entering the friendly confines of Wrigley Field in Chicago, a first-time visitor cannot help but be struck by the panorama of ivy-covered brick outfield walls, the traditional manually operated scoreboard, and an overall scale and proportion that seems perfect for baseball.
He was a lieutenant in the Army of the United States: he saw no reason to sit in the back of the bus
ON JULY 6, 1944, Jackie Robinson, a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, boarded an Army bus at Fort Hood, Texas.
In baseball's earliest years, players beaned baserunners and often had to flout town laws prohibiting the game
The game of baseball was not always the well-ordered sport we know today, played on elegantly manicured fields bordered by crisp white lines. As historians have debunked the widely held myth that Abner Doubleday of Cooperstown, New York, invented the sport out of whole cloth in 1839, they have discovered its deeper American origins. In 1787, the same year the Constitution was written, a Worcester, Massachusetts, publisher printed A Little Pretty Pocket Book, the American edition of an English book for children, which included a poem and illustration dedicated to “base-ball.”
The pitcher with the unhittable fireball deserves as much credit for breaking baseball’s color barrier as does Jackie Robinson.
Leroy Paige was bo
Just as the year changed the nation, so its World Series changed American sports.
WHY BASEBALL DOESN’T PLAY BY THE RULES OF BUSINESS
BASEBALL WAS PLAYED FOR 30 YEARS BEFORE ANYONE THOUGHT ABOUT FINDING A WAY TO PROTECT PLAYERS’ FINGERS.
What happened when a historian largely indifferent to the subject set out to write the script for Ken Burns’s monumental new documentary
I’VE NEVER LIKED BASEBALL MUCH, IN part because my father has always loved it so.
In his last time at the plate, Ted Williams crushed a 440-foot home run deep to right field.
A lifelong baseball fan recalls his early days and explains the rewards of abject loyalty.
Two months after the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series of 1909, my mother presented them with one of their most faithful fans—me.
Forget football, basketball, and all the other sports that are artificially regulated by the clock. Only baseball can truly reveal our national character. Only baseball can light our path to the future.
It was a hundred years ago, and the game has changed a good deal since then. But there are plenty of people who still insist that cranky old Hoss Radbourn was the finest pitcher ever.
Greatest season performance by Major League pitcher? One hundred years ago last summer, Charles Radbourn won 60 and lost 12 for the Providence Grays of the National League.
Abner Doubleday had an eventful life, but as far as we know, he never gave a thought to the game with which his name is so firmly linked
SOME TWO hundred and fifty thousand people a year come to the little village of Cooperstown, in upstate New York, to visit the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame.
A portfolio of rare photographs recalls baseball’s rough-and-tumble vintage era
PARADISE LOST . It is a sweet and on the whole harmless vision that prettifies the past of America and the game dearest to its heart.
… illuminated by the hand-tinted slides that helped make it a hit
ONE NIGHT in 1888, from the stage of a Broadway theater, the actor DeWolf Hopper recited for the first time a poem about a ballplayer, known only as the Mighty Casey, who struck out.
Albert Spalding’s middle name was Goodwill, which seemed fitting in 1888 when the baseball impresario and sporting goods king decided to take the game on a grand tour to parts of the world as yet unexposed to the glories of the American national pastime.
Like most authentic folk creations, baseball is deeply and obscurely rooted in the past and its moment of origin is cloaked in legend. There are innumerable threads that go back to the beginning of things, but nobody can follow them all the way.
The classic American baseball poem might have vanished if not for an actor's impromptu performance.
A mysterious phenomenon, to which professional critics are usually oblivious, reoccurs often in the literary history of the United States.
Foul was fair, and fair foul, when eight players of the championship White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series
Foul was fair, and fair foul, when eight players of the championship White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series
Baseball’s rules and rituals are much as they were fifty years ago and anything to win still goes.
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