On the 95th anniversary of the Federal League, More Hardball presents a concise history of the short-lived major league. Thanks to them, MLB owns an anti-trust exemption.

Mental Floss lists the all-time Ivy League team. Harvard's contingent gets shutout, but Shawn Haviland gets a mention as an up and coming player.

Earlier I linked to Scott Simkus on how MLB and the Negro Leagues fared against common semi-pro opponents. In a follow up, Scott produces two tables showing how MLB and Negro League teams fared against each level of baseball.

What's fascinating is that when you compare the levels, MLB does better at every level than the Negro leagues, adding justification to my calculation that MLB would have about a .600 winning percentage against Negro league teams. When the two went head-to-head, however, the Negro League teams won 55% of the time!

That makes me wonder if:

• The Negro League teams were stacking their lineups with stars from other teams.
• MLB stars were refusing to play against blacks.

Any opinions?

Scott Simkus compares Negro League and Major League statistics against a common opponent, white semi-pro leagues. What he finds is that both sets of players pound the semi-pro players, giving us a good idea of how the Negro Leagues compared to the Major Leagues at the time.

Although he doesn't post the numbers, Scott's statistics do indicate that in one dimension of the game the Major Leaguers were superior; they walked more. The Negro Leaguers posted a higher batting average, but the Major Leaguers scored more runs per game. The reason is that they used many fewer at bats per 154 games, and those missing at bats likely were walks.

The other thing I believe we can do is figure out the winning percentage of the majors against the Negro Leagues. Using the log5 method (and assuming 4.5 runs per game league average for the majors and the minors), the Majors should outscore the Negro Leagues 4.18 runs to 3.36 on a per game basis. That would indicate a .607 winning percentage in favor of the Major Leaguers.

Someone should probably check my math on that one.

Hat tip, The Hardball Times.

Wezen-ball is updating the all-time uniform number list and would like you help.

Paul Sullivan is working on a series in which he comes up with the all-time teams for all 30 franchises. He'll define two teams, however, the home grown and the acquired. Here's his entry for the Athletics.

Chris Jaffe writes a terrific column on why Steve Garvey is and should be the most reviled player of all time. I actually believe Pete Rose is slightly ahead of Steve, but the article makes a great point:

In fact, his status as the most vilifiable player was proven in a rather unscientific method a couple years ago at a discussion at Jim Furtado's excellent Baseball Think Factory website. A thread there launched into a discussion of who everyone's least favorite player was.

After 100+ replies, someone noticed three clear themes emerged in the Most Hated Player Sweepstakes. People picked their least favorite because he either: 1) did something unspeakably vile to your favorite team (such as help beat them); 2) committed some sort of dastardly off-field transgression; or 3) according to the sabermetric point of view, the individual was overrated by the public at large.

Naturally, the question arose if anyone fell into all three categories. Steve Garvey fits the bill if you're a Cubs fan. No one else in that thread could think of another Trifecta of Scorn winner. This could only mean one thing: Cubs fans have the obligation--nay, the sacred sworn duty--to vilify Steve Garvey more than any other fan disdains any other player in all baseball history.

Which was pretty cool, because, of course, that was already the way I felt about the guy in the first place.

In the mid-1980's, I joined a Strat-o-Matic league called the SOMBILLA. To kick off the draft every year, they burned Pete Rose's strat card. When I saw them do that, I knew I picked the right organization. When Rose retired, Garvey got the honor.

My favorite story, of course, is that some town named a school after Steve, and then were rather embarrassed when his numerous paternity suits came to light. Garvey, the gift that keeps on giving.

Craig Calcaterra follows the political movements at the Negro Leagues Museum. The latest appointments may kill Buck O'Neill's dream of an education and research center there.

Darren Rovell talks to Billy Ripken on the 20th anniversary of the imfamous Fleer card. As Big League Stew points out:

Think about that for a minute. Is there anyone else in the world whose notoriety arose from two completely separate, yet equally random, circumstances? I've always felt a little bit bad for Billy Ripken, even though I light up like a Duraflame any time that card is brought up in conversation. From that era, only the Ken Griffey rookie in the inaugural Upper Deck set holds more weight.

Chone Smith points out that the two pitchers picked around Nick Swisher were World Series game 1 starters Scott Kazmir and Cole Hamels. Those picks were panned as wasted in the book Moneyball. As Tom Tango points out:

Intentionally never drafting a high school pitcher in the first round is as foolish as intentionally never sac bunting. If you have 1000 American 18 year olds on one hand, and 1000 Canadian 18 year olds on the other hand, you are naturally NOT going to select 15 Americans and 15 Canadians in the first round. But, is it possible that the correct balance is 29 and 1?

Or, in this case, 28 and 2. Just in case you forgot, it was the Mets who drafted Scott Kazmir and turned him into Victor Zambrano. At least Beane got something when he traded Swisher.

Update: Related item here. Hamels and Kazmir never faced each other in a game, but were well aware of each other before they were drafted.

The five teams that once called the Polo Grounds home have joined forces to save the last remmant of the stadium, the stairs that lead down from Coogan's Bluff. Good for them.

Dodger Thoughts remembers the first lineup the Dodgers ever used against Jamie Moyer.

Cubs fans are still upset with Tony Gwynn over 1984.

It's the 100th anniversary of Merkle's Boner.

Lewis Maskell sends this link to a story of a British diarist mentioning baseball in the 1700s. I wish the diarist, William Bray, described the game in more detail. It would be fun to know how many bases were used, if they called balls and strikes, if they used terms like single and home run.

The Detroit Free Press makes no mention of Sheffield hitting major league home run 250,000.

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle mentioned it prominently.

I'll be watching the MLB Extra Innings Mix Channel, and recording it on my DVR as well. That should give me a good view of when the homers are hit and which order. I suppose if two players hit homer at the same time, the MLB replay nerve center can make the call as to which is 250,000. If you want to guess as to who will hit the milestone home run, leave a comment with the name. I'm going with Hanley Ramirez.

Update: 249,997 -- Jason Bay at 7:21 EDT. The solo shot gives the Red Sox a 3-0 lead.

Update: 249,998 -- Magglio Ordonez at 7:33 EDT. The two-run shot ties the Athletics at two.

Update: 249,999 -- Gary Sheffield at 7:37 EDT. His solo shot puts the Tigers ahead 3-2. Cabrera made an out between the two homers.

Update: 250,000 -- Gary Sheffield at 8:01 EDT. It's a grand slam, just to make it more memorable. He hits it off Gio Gonzalez and the Tigers lead 8-2.

Update: I was surprised not to hear this mentioned during the broadcast. They noted that Gary is now four home runs short of 500, but not that he had reached the milestone, at least not in the immediate aftermath.

Baseball Reference is keeping track of all-time home runs hit, and as of this morning we are four away from 250,000. Someone will hit the milestone homer tonight. Baseball Think Factory will be keeping track, and I'll do my best to watch for it as well.

I remember when the 1,000,000th run was scored. I was watching a Yankees game, and knew then next run scored would set the milestone. Chris Chambliss almost made it, but was thrown out at the plate on a fielder's choice. Bob Watson then gained the milestone in a Houston game in San Francisco. This should be just as exciting.

Update: Looking at the schedule, my money would be for the milestone home run to happen in the Florida-Philadelphia game or the Cleveland-Baltimore game.

The Brockett Blog looks back at the McGwire record:

It just seems impossible that events that brought about so much joy and attention, that could make Verducci write things like "America is a Baseball Nation again, and Mark McGwire is the head of state," could be revised so conclusively with embarassment and muted emotions. "If they cheated, isn't this right?" I tell myself. To borrow Taylor's metaphor, though, we're well aware that the relationship is over. Would it be so wrong to look back, however briefly, and still smile?

With the ten-year anniversary of Mark McGwire's 62nd home run approaching, Paul Hagen talks to six people connected with the event. I'm happy he included David Vincent, the keeper of the SABR home run list, and a person who helped me tremendously with research over the years.

"My opinion hasn't changed at all. We go through periods where the batters are dominant and we go through periods where the pitchers are dominant. This is just one more bump in the road. I think it was overblown."

I was at ESPN that day, and remember watching the game on small monitor in front of my desk. The record break was different than most of McGwire's home runs that season. Most of his shot were magnificent, high arching shots deep into the bleachers. This one he scorched, about as low as a line drive could be and still clear the fence, pulled right down the line inside the foul pole. There was nothing to stand and admire, the ball was out of the park too fast. It was a great moment at the time.

Alex Belth blogged up a storm today about the NY Giants. This post provides links to all the others. Wonderful stuff from a wonderful writer.

The Tao of Stieb learns the wisdom of Yoda, "Always in motion is the future."

We remember back when Roy was 23 (hey! same age as Ricky Romero!) and he was getting knocked all over the place. We were pretty convinced back then that Kelvim Escobar was a star, Chris Carpenter was going to be a mediocre number four pitcher and that Halladay may end up being a washout.

All three turned out to be pretty good.

Alex Belth visits Ray Robinson and gets a first hand look at his scrapbooks from the early 1930s. Alex provides great pictures with the story.

Mark Ecko agreed to donate Barry Bonds's 756th home run ball to the Hall of Fame. Still no word if the asterisk was ever applied.

Negro League star Art Pennington lost everything in the Iowa flood, including memorabilia. Dugout Central has information on how you can help.

Rick Chandler pens a great post about his visit to the Charles M. Schulz Museum, and how Schulz used baseball as a major theme in his work.

There will be a screening of Don Larsen's perfect game in New York on July 10th. It the complete game broadcast. Sounds like a fun evening.

Bleed Cubbie Blue notes that after the Cubs sweep, the Dodgers and Cubs are .500 over 118 years, 1010-1010.

I thought about this and these two franchises have traded periods of dominance. When the Cubs were a great team in the early years of the 20th Century, the Dodgers were horrid. When the Dodgers were winning ten pennants in the 20 years from 1947-66, the Cubs were awful.

This may be the best Cardboard Gods entry ever. If you read nothing else today, you'll miss this great story.

The Cubs won their 10,000th game last night, in a game of multiple comebacks on both sides.

In fitting fashion for a team with as much wacky history as the Cubs, they mounted a ninth-inning comeback against Colorado on Aramis Ramirez's home run, watched Kerry Wood blow the lead in the bottom of the inning and rallied again for a 7-6, 10-inning victory before a stunned crowd of 36,864.

In the end, Ryan Theriot's two-out RBI single off Kip Wells in the 10th gave the Cubs the lead for keeps, and they hung on after Carlos Marmol pitched a perfect 10th for the save.

"That was an exciting game, well-played on both sides," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "Our kids battled. They came back in the ninth on the two-run homer, and then Theriot gets that big base hit there in the 10th. These kids are confident, I can tell you that, and they're getting after it every night."

The Cubs have been around since 1876, so they average about 75 wins a year.

The Detroit Chapter of SABR is hosting a Baseball Race and Integration Symposium. It looks like a very interesting day including field trips and a good group of guest speakers.

Also, if you missed it over the weekend, check out this excellent guest post on Latinos and the color line.

Sean Deveney examines evidence that the Cubs threw the World Series in 1918:

Now, it cannot be said for certain that gamblers got to the '18 Cubs. But Eddie Cicotte, pitcher and one of the eight White Sox outcasts from the '19 World Series, did say in a newly found affidavit he gave to the 1920 Cook County grand jury that the Cubs influenced the Black Sox. Cicotte said the notion of throwing a World Series first came up when the White Sox were on a train to New York. The team was discussing the previous year's World Series, which had been fixed, according to players. Some members of the Sox tried to figure how many players it would take to throw a Series. From that conversation, Cicotte said, a scandal was born.

That's some heavy-duty history, and, fittingly, the Cicotte affidavit sits in a room on the third floor of the Chicago Historical Society. Last December, the museum won an auction for the rights to a group of documents pertaining to the 1919 White Sox. The museum's curator, Peter Alter, says the museum will eventually make the documents available to the public.

In the meantime, Alter gave me a sneak preview. It's fascinating stuff -- private notes, detailed depositions, internal memos, canceled checks. "It's a lot of material," Alter says. "What you are not going to find is something definitive that says who was innocent and who was guilty. People want clear-cut answers -- I understand. But there was a lot going on at the time that clouds the picture."

There was a lot questionable baseball going on in the teens, so anything is possible.

Adrian Burgos, Jr. is an Associate Professor of US History at the University of Illinois and author of Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (American Crossroads). As we celebrate Jackie Robinson this week, he sends along this thoughtful piece on how Latinos relate to baseball's integration story. Enjoy.

On April 15, Major League Baseball (MLB) again celebrated its integration pioneer Jackie Robinson by allowing players to wear his retired jersey number in honor of his legacy. All the black players donning 42 spurred lamentations in the media about the decline numbers of African Americans in baseball.

As African American numbers have declined, Latino numbers have skyrocketed, with many darker-skinned players from Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Venezuela owing thanks to Jackie's door-opening achievement. Little is said about why darker-skinned Latinos aren't so inclined to don 42, because so little is understood about how they relate to baseball's integration story.

The truth is, a major piece of the Robinson legacy is missing and MLB is blowing an opportunity to educate the American public about integration's full scope.

Latinos were drastically affected by segregation. While a select number of Latinos (just over 50) performed in the Majors before Robinson, over 230 played in the Negro Leagues, just as Robinson did before organized baseball's color line was dismantled.

The process wherein the overwhelming majority of Latinos were designated racially unacceptable for organized baseball remains one of baseball's lesser known stories. As I argue in my book Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (University of California Press, 2007), Major League team officials masterfully manipulated racial understandings throughout the time its color line stood in place to broker access for a few Latinos. Over time the Latinos officials ushered into organized baseball became increasingly racially ambiguous. "He's not black," they explained, "He's Cuban." Thus the Washington Senators, Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, and a handful of other organizations plucked players from the Spanish-speaking Americas. They so successfully muddled racial perception that it necessitated an unambiguously black player to destroy any semblance of ambiguity, enter Jackie Robinson.

It is extremely troubling that this history continues to be conveniently elided in the Robinson commemorations and the more recently instituted Civil Rights Game. For this year's game MLB convened a panel of seven African Americans and Mets GM Omar Minaya as the lone Latino to discuss baseball, race, and civil rights. The lineup of luminaries gathered reveals that MLB does not acknowledge Latino participation in the struggle to overturn segregation or their stake in the past, present, and future of baseball.

That this continues to occur at the moment when Latinos are nearing forty percent of Major Leaguers is shameful and contributes to the popular perception of Latinos as a people without a (long) history in America's game--although the first Latino played in the National League in 1882.

The way MLB (mis-)remembers Jackie and baseball integration also diminishes the legacy of the Negro Leagues and of the integrated Latin American leagues.

On the other side of organized baseball's racial divide African Americans and Latinos collaborated in the establishment of a circuit that for decades refined the ball-playing skills of the excluded. In Havana, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Mexico City, and Caracas, among other Latin American cities, African American players like Rube Foster, John Henry "Pop" Lloyd, and Willie Wells were welcomed in racially integrated leagues. Drawing on his own experience, Foster's vision for the Negro Leagues from his various failed start-ups until he successfully launched the Negro National League in 1920 always included Latinos.

Jackie Robinson was a product of the circuit they built. And let's not forget that it was in this circuit the multitalented athlete honed his skills in what was arguably his fourth best sport. And it was here where Branch Rickey and his men first scouted pioneering black players Robinson, Monte Irvin, Roy Campanella, and Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso, among others.

For all the recent talk about engaging in a national conversation on race, we are constantly revisiting a narrative of race relations of black-white, whether inside or outside of baseball. That circumscribed narrative about race fails us all.

2009 will mark the 60th anniversary of Minnie Miñoso's debut as the first black Latino to perform in the Majors. His pioneering achievement in overcoming a doubly complex set of racial and cultural challenges as a black Latino to develop into a major league star ought to be the centerpiece of a year-long series of events that portrays baseball's integration saga in its full multicultural splendor. Only then will we truly remember the full impact of Jackie's achievement and honor the entire roster of those who contributed to the overthrow of baseball's Jim Crow system.

Update: Fixed the paragraph breaks.

Ernie Harwell notes Mickey Mantle's longest single and the confusion caused by the ball bouncing into the stands.

With the 50th anniversary of the Giants move to San Francisco coming up, Richard Sandomir reports on some of the remaining New York Giants fans. They don't get the attention of the Brooklyn Dodgers fans, mostly, I suppose, because the Dodgers went out as the better team.

Lyflines sets the history revisionists straight on Bill Buckner. I, too was surprised that people thought Bill was finally forgiven. I wasn't at the park, but I remember opening day 1990 and I thought that day put the whole thing to rest.

YanksFan SoxFan finishes the top 50 Red Sox seasons list.

John Thorn pushes back the date of the first organized baseball game.

The current research of the exceptionally accomplished baseball writer and historian John Thorn, as presented this weekend to the annual Nine Conference in Tucson, Arizona, has discovered an earlier organized, recognizable game of baseball as having taken place in November of 1843, also at Elysian Fields, conducted by an entity called the New York Magnolia Ball Club.

That's three years earlier than the famous Knickerbockers game.

On the anniversary of Babe Ruth's birth, a Baltimore researcher will erect a head stone on the grave of Katie Ruth, the Babe's mother. It's a fascinating story:

Curiously, her death notice in newspapers mentioned her sister, but no husband and no children. Still more peculiar, on the death notice that Harris found, Katie is listed as a widow, even though her husband outlived her by six years. George Herman Ruth Sr. was later buried in Loudon Park Cemetery, where his headstone mentions his second wife, but not Katie.

The forgotten woman is being remembered today.

Rich Folkers tells how Mark McGwire almost joined the Padres.

Alex Belth profiles Ray Negron, an unusual story of fate and the Yankees.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

The story also shows the underappreciated charitable side of George Steinbrenner:

Steinbrenner replied, "No. You are going to learn. You're going to pay the price for this. I'm going to make sure you learn."

He shoved Negron into the cell and left. Negron was terrified. One of the cops taunted him.

"You know what?" Negron remembers today. "It was just, the team was bad, the stadium was corroded. It was just about doing an 'NY' on the wall as far as I was concerned. It was innocent. It wasn't about writing 'fuck you' on the wall or anything."

Less than ten minutes later, Steinbrenner returned. "Get him out of there." Steinbrenner escorted Negron around the corner to the Yankee clubhouse and brought him to Pete Sheehy, the team's clubhouse manager since the Babe Ruth days. Steinbrenner told Sheehy to get Negron a uniform. "He's got damages he's got to work off."

Great work by Alex on the story. He really brings his characters to life.

The Library of Congress posted a series on Flickr of news photographs from the early 1910's. There are many baseball photos included. This search found most of them. One of my favorites is this one of Hal Chase. Hal was one of the truly evil men to play the game. Just as Jose Canseco was a major vector for spreading steroids, Chase was the big reason throwing games was a problem in the teens. Read Bill James article on Chase in his Historical Baseball Abstract.

Thanks to Adrian Arroyo for the link.

It's a very special day for Yankees fans.

I didn't know Rob Neyer played for the Yankees in the early 1960s! (See picture in the upper right-hand corner.)

Bronx Banter publishes a great story on how reverse psychology led to the Oakland A's growing mustaches in the early 1970s.

Via BBTF, I agree with Hal Bodley that it's high time to put Marvin Miller in the Hall of Fame. In my lifetime, Miller did more to change the game in a positive way than anyone else. Free agency brought a new dynamic to the game that brought in fans in droves. The owners may bristle at the salary structure Marvin helped create, but it also made them very rich. They should thank him with a plaque in Cooperstown.

I'm at the Smoky Joe Wood Chapeter meeting of SABR. Gary Waslewski, who started game 6 of the 1967 World Series, is the special guest.

Update: Gary said he struck out Brock, the first batter of the game, with a pitch he made up. He threw a slow curve, a pitch he didn't have, and it got Brock out in front.

Update: Waslewski gave an excellent presentation. In a short career, he played for two of the best managers of his day, Dick Williams and Gene Mauch. He had lots of good stories and lots of great insights.

Yanksfan vs. Soxfan finds the first mention of Babe Ruth in the New York Times.

Tom Elia notes a double anniversary for the Cubs, their 1908 World Series win and the 2003 Bartman game. To me that game turned on Dusty Baker not having the bullpen ready when Prior got in trouble. Dusty is reported to be the new manager of the Reds:

Dusty Baker was hired as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, agreeing to a three-year deal Saturday with a team coming off its seventh straight losing season and looking for stability at the top.

The 58-year-old Baker worked in television for a year after the Chicago Cubs fired him after the 2006 season. The Reds decided to go for someone who knows the NL Central and has been to the World Series as a manager.

Dusty strikes me as the type of manager who does real well with talent. I've never thought of him as someone who can turn around a franchise. There is some good talent on the Reds, so we'll see if Baker can bring out their best. I'd really be worried about young Reds pitchers like Homer Bailey turning into the next Mark Prior.

Marc Ecko announced the results of his on-line, scientific poll and he'll brand the Bonds' record breaking ball with an asterisk before donating it to the Hall of Fame. Jerk is too mild a word for what I think of Ecko. I'm surprised the Hall of Fame wants anything to do with this:

Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey, also interviewed on the show, said accepting the ball did not mean the Hall endorses the viewpoint that Barry Bonds used drugs.

"We're happy to get it," he said. "We're a nonprofit history museum, so this ball wouldn't be coming to Cooperstown without Marc Ecko buying it from the fan who caught it."

My respect for the Hall of Fame just went down a notch. Since when does a museum endorse mutilating history? I hope they display the ball with the asterisk on the bottom hidden by the pedestal.

Update: I just wrote the Hall telling them I'm ashamed of them. If you want to write, there is a form here, as well as telephone numbers. I sent my letter to general information.

The person who purchased the ball Barry Bonds hit for his 756th, record-breaking home run is letting the public decide the fate of the artifact:

The fate of Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run ball is now in the public's hands after its buyer announced Monday he was taking votes on whether to give the ball to the Hall of Fame, brand it with an asterisk or blast it into space.

Fashion designer Marc Ecko revealed himself as Saturday's winning bidder in the online auction for the ball that Bonds hit last month to break Hank Aaron's record of 755 home runs. The final selling price for No. 756 was $752,467, well above most predictions.
Ecko had not even taken possession of the ball before setting up a Web site that lets visitors vote on which of the three outcomes they think the ball most deserves. He plans to announce the final tally after voting ends Sept. 25.

"I bought this baseball to democratize the debate over what to do with it," Ecko wrote on the Web site. "The idea that some of the best athletes in the country are forced to decide between being competitive and staying natural is troubling."

This, of couse, from someone who designs clothes modeled by perfectly natural women.

The voting site is here. Please vote to send the ball to the Hall of Fame where it belongs. I don't want to see history destroyed again a la the Bartman ball.

Also, there don't seem to be any safeguards on the site. Unless the auditors go through log files, there's nothing to stop you from voting as much as you like for one choice or another.

Pillage Idiot remembers a hidden ball trick involving a potato:

Twenty years ago this past Friday, Dave Bresnahan, a minor-league catcher, pulled off what's considered one of the top baseball pranks ever. He took a potato, sculpted it to look like a baseball, and deliberately threw it over the head of the third baseman in an effort to pick a runner off third. When the runner ran home, Bresnahan was waiting with the real ball. Everyone thought it was funny, but he was fined by the manager and released by the team, dropped like a (dare I say it?) hot potato.

He stayed within the rules, but broken the spirit of those same rules. Good to see his team took the appropriate action against him.

The 2009 SABR convention is set for Washington, D.C.

Soccer Dad remembers some other big Orioles blowouts.

Just heard some interesting trivia during the Fox Detroit-New York telecast. Robinson Cano's father, Jose, was the last pitcher to pitch a complete game in his final appearance. That was in 1989. It was also Jose's only win.

Hot Dogs and Beer is keeping a watch on the Phillies as they approach 10,000 franchise losses.

Just My Show posts a podcast with three original members of the Baseball Bunch on the 25th anniversary of the show. The piece that stuck with me from that show was Reggie Jackson explaining how to dress for the game. I never realized baseball players wore so much under their uniforms!

Joe Posnanski refreshes our memory of Bo Jackson. Even before the injury, Bo was not a great baseball player. His OBAs were low, although he looked like he was improving just before the hip damage. What Posnanski captures, however, was the fact that Bo was the most exciting player in the game. While there were much better players at the time, Bo was someone you'd pay to go see on the off chance he did something super-human. I wish he had stuck with baseball. Who knows how many more stories we'd be telling about this remarkable athlete.

I did not know there was a symphony about great black ballplayers.

Art Kyriazis writes about the Phillies approach to a dubious record:

Also, the Phillies are approaching a milestone this summer that no team in any sport has ever achieved.

Yes, I am speaking of the 10,000 loss milestone. The phils are a mere 43 losses away from 10,000 losses as a franchise (1883-present). No franchise or team in any sport has ever achieved this dubious milestone, which is both historic and fully deserved Commissioner Bud Selig's attention, especially if he won't go to Bonds Home Run Record achievement. At least he should attend the 10,000th loss of the Phils!!!

Needless to say, there is a website devoted to this--celebrate10000.com

According to the website, they're closer than that, just 21 more losses to the magic 10,000! I suppose trying to avoid that loss could be a catalyst to send them on a winning streak!

The Baseball Crank turns back the clock and traces the development of left-hander pitchers from an oddity to a force in the game.

With the Braves traveling to Boston next week, Mike Milliard pens an article for the Boston Phoenix remembering the Hub's forgotten team.

The Braves -- known first, in 1876, as the Red Stockings or Red Caps, then variously as the Beaneaters, the Doves, the Rustlers, and the Bees -- weren't always a competitive squad. (Hell, even with future Hall of Famers George Sisler and Rogers Hornsby on their roster in 1928, they finished in second-to-last place with 103 losses, 44 and a half games out of first.)

But though their players often struggled on the field, the Braves franchise itself laid the groundwork for much of what we take for granted in baseball today: Sunday and night games, television and radio coverage, fan-appreciation days, even new uniform styles. They opened what was at one time the largest stadium in the majors. They were progressive on racial issues when the Red Sox were anything but. And they created the Jimmy Fund, which benefits Boston children with cancer.

"The Braves were always trying harder," says Sports Museum of New England curator Richard Johnson. "They introduced satin uniforms because they looked better on TV. They lowered the field by two and a half feet, so the sightlines would be better. They introduced different items on the menu, like fried clams. The kind of stuff the Red Sox are doing now."

The whole article is well worth a read. Mike did leave out one interesting fact about the team. The Boston Braves dominated the National League of the 1890s as their legacies did 100 and two cities later. They won five NL Pennants in the 1890s, and they did it by leading the league in ERA for the decade with a 3.67 mark.

I was told by Peter Gammons once that the Braves tried to build a new park at the intersection of what is now interestates 90 and 95, just outside of Boston. Given a new stadium, Henry Aaron and Eddie Mathews, the 1950s might have belonged to the Boston Braves.

Over at Mr. Irrelevant, bloggers discuss their favorite in person moments at baseball games.

On the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut in the major leagues, it seems appropriate to review Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season. Jonathan Eig presents a narrative tough to put down. I like to skim books to get a feel for the story, but I found myself reading page after page and letting the time slip away.

Eig provides not only the story of Robinson in that year, but of the struggle for civil rights as a whole in the mid 1940s. Huge demographic shifts took place at that time as soldiers returned from the war, and black Americans among them pushed for eqaul treatment. A wave of relocation brought many black southerners north looking for better jobs, and created an atmosphere in New York City where integration on the baseball diamond would soon become forced. Branch Rickey was stayed ahead of the curve, which allowed him to integrate on his terms.

Eig delves deeply into Robinson the man. We get a clear portrait of Robinson's willingness to fight for his rights on two bus ride stories. One, in which he refuses to go to the back of the bus while in the army, led to his court martial. The other, in which he used the power of the purse to persuade a gas station owner to allow the players to use the washroom. Those incidents stand in stark contrast to his first trip to spring training. Airlines found excuses not to fly Robinson and his wife Rachael all the way to Daytona. They ended up on a bus, sitting in the penultimate row. But the driver demanded they move all the way to the back, and Jackie did without argument. It was the first case of him following Rickey's orders to have the strength not to fight back and thanks to the author's prose, we feel Robinsons' struggle with those moments.

Eig takes us through the cheers and catcalls, the worries and the triumphs of that amazing season. He describes the scene when the Dodgers returned home from a western road trip in September that won them the pennant:

As the Dodgers stepped down onto the train platform along Track Thirteen, some of the less recognizable players mixed with the crowd and escaped, their hats pulled over their faces. Not Robinson. As he walked toward a phone booth, eager to call his wife, some five hundred people -- most of them men, most of them white -- moved with him. He took off running, got to the phone booth ahead of the crowd, and slammed shut the accordion door. When he finished his call, half a dozen policemen rescued him, forming a circle, and, like the front line of the UCLA football team, clearing a path. Robinson took off for the IND subway line, where several pursuing fans begged for the privilege of paying his five-cent fare. At last, he reached his train and climbed aboard. And still, dozens of giddy admirers trailed him. They squeezed into his subway car, their destination of little matter, happy enough just to be along for the ride.

Robinson didn't mind. The Dodgers were winners. He was going home to his wife and son.

"I'm tickled silly," he said.

This season, think about honoring Jackie Robinson by reading this fine story of his great 1947 season. It reminds us how lucky we and the game are that Robinson succeeded.

Bill Pennington describes the grass root movement that led to a unique way to honor Jackie Robinson on Sunday:

Sixty years after Jackie Robinson shook the baseball establishment and broke the sport's color barrier, an unforeseen grassroots movement by today's players has suddenly shaped the way Major League Baseball will commemorate the anniversary. Hundreds of players will wear Robinson's No. 42 retired by baseball 10 years ago in ballparks across the country on Sunday, the anniversary of Robinson's first appearance with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

While the tribute has received baseball's approval, it grew spontaneously from a request by the Cincinnati Reds' Ken Griffey Jr., who asked Commissioner Bud Selig earlier this month if he could wear the number on April 15. What has evolved since is surprisingly organic for a group of famous, feted athletes with multimillion-dollar contracts.

As word of Griffey's gesture spread, small groups of players -- among them stars like Barry Bonds, Dontrelle Willis and Gary Sheffield -- decided also to wear 42 that day. Soon, there was a representative from every team. The Los Angeles Dodgers then decided to have their entire roster wear 42.

Now, there are six major league teams that plan to have everyone in uniform wearing No. 42 -- players, coaches, manager and bat boys. Those teams are the Dodgers, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Houston Astros.

Willie Randolph sums it up best:

"Maybe the best thing about this year's tribute is that it came from the players," said Mets Manager Willie Randolph. "You hear these jokes that the modern player doesn't know anything about baseball history. But it's pretty clear that most of them do appreciate what Jackie Robinson did for them -- for all of them."

Hear! Hear!

Princeton graduate and pitcher Chris Young wrote his senior thesis on Jackie Robinson, titled, "The Impact of Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball on Racial Stereotypes in America: A Quantitative Content Analysis of Stories about Race in the New York Times." The story of that thesis and Young learning about Robinson the man from Don Newcombe makes one of the best Robinson stories I've read this week.

1967 American League Pennant Race is an historical blog "Documenting the Greatest Pennant Race of All Time." Stop by and say hi.

Today is the anniversary of Henry Aaron setting the career home run record, passing Babe Ruth as Aaron smacked his 715th long ball. I saw the replay on Fox yesterday, and the color was awful. It almost looked black and white. I just saw the same replay on Baseball Tonight, and the colors were vibrant. I wonder if ESPN took the time to restore the video? It's the best I've seen that home look in years.

Detect-o-Vision publishes some preliminary work on league quality. It looks promising.

In Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South, Bruce Adelson provides us with a detailed historical record of the integration of the minor leagues in the southern US during the 1950s and early 1960s. Bruce writes as an impartial observer very well, letting the people who experienced the drama tell the story. His book is full of first person narratives as black and Hispanic ballplayers famous and fleeting tell their stories of breaking the color barrier in a hostile environment. He also quotes numerous newspaper article from the era to give us a feel for how society reacted to something many never saw before, blacks and white working together as equals.

The book is amazingly positive. Adelson, time after time notes how the economic benefits of team integration brought owners and league officials over to that side of the aisle. In 1955, in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education, Georgia tried to ban interracial sports. The president of the Georgia State League fought the legislation, Bill Estroff fought the legislation and won, something different for the south.

And that, in a nutshell, is the thesis of the book. Minority ballplayers quietly set the stage for the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s. These players demonstrated that blacks and whites could work and play together, so that people in the south started to have doubts about their ingrained beliefs. At a time of declining attendance, black fans brought economic clout to change the way they were treated at ballparks. Adelson makes a strong case that the integration of baseball was central to the overall integration of the south. If you're interested in the history of baseball, or the history of the civil rights movement, this book is an invaluable resource.

A kinescope of Don Larsen's perfect game exists! Someone should digitize this fast so it doesn't get lost again.

In an article about parity, Bud Selig delivers this whopper:

A decade ago, "I had dreams of things getting better, but in many ways this has exceeded my fondest expectations," Selig said.

Well, a decade ago, baseball was finishing nearly 20 years of parity. Starting in 1978, the World series winners were:

1978. New York Yankees
1979. Pittsburgh Pirates
1980. Philadelphia Phillies
1981. Los Angeles Dodgers
1982. St. Louis Cardinals
1983. Baltimore Orioles
1984. Detroit Tigers
1985. Kansas City Royals
1986. New York Mets
1987. Minnesota Twins
1988. Los Angeles Dodgers
1989. Oakland Athletics
1990. Cincinnati Reds
1991. Minnesota Twins
1992. Toronto Blue Jays
1993. Toronto Blue Jays
1994. None
1995. Atlanta Braves
1996. New York Yankees

So that's 18 championships by 15 different teams, with only Toronto repeating in consecutive years. That after a three-peat by Oakland, consecutve wins by the Reds and consecutive wins by the Yankees. The change of teams continued in 1997 with the Marlins winning and in 1998 with the Yankees starting their run.

What was happening a decade ago was that it appeared the leagues were becoming polarized. It was happening because local money was outstripping National money for the first time is two decades. Why? Because all baseball did was whine about the labor problem. There was a work stoppage at the start of the 1990 season, just as MLB signed a new $1,000,000,000 contract with CBS. Labor strife continued, and at the end of that four year contract, no one was willing to pony up that much money again. The league had added two more teams, meaning a smaller pie had to feed more people. Then came the 1994 strike, and no one wanted to pay much for baseball.

Why didn't the owners recognize how good baseball was before 1990? They had parity, rising revenues and rising attendance. What more could you ask for? Why weren't they happy in 1990 with what they have today?

I'll invoke Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Basically, the old guard died out. I haven't gone through every team, but I believe the only person around from the first strike in 1972 is Selig, and he no longer owns a team (Steinbrenner came in a year later, so he's familiar with the old reserve clause). In other words, there's no one left around who remembers the good old days when owners controlled the players for life. The old paradigm finally died out.

Now the owners and players argue about drug testing and luxury taxes, important issues but ones that don't infringe on the basic right the players were fighting for all along, the right to earn what the market will bear through free agency. The owners accept the arbitration rules and the smart ones sign their good, young players to long term contracts to avoid the arbitration shock. The new owners understand the system works very well for them, so they're no longer interested in rocking the boat. If baseball had not been so resistant to change for two decades, it might be even better.

Duffy's Cliff is a new site dedicated to providing a lexicon of Red Sox history. It's in preview mode right now, but feel free to join and add to the language! I'm excited about the site because one of the people behind it is Edward Cossette, the ex-author of one of my favorite blogs, Bambino's Curse.

Tom Elia notes that this is a doubly important day in Cubs history.

Baseball Historians is a new site organized by Brian Borawski to aggregate feeds from historical baseball blogs:

What this site does is pull all of the feeds from each of the sites in the network so you have one handy place to check for content. On occassion, this site will also have some exclusive content which I'm working on as we speak. And as time goes by, I'm hoping to add sites for each of the major league teams. Next will be a Red Sox blog as well as a site that covers everything and anything regarding the All Star Game.

Stop by and say hi.

Mike Wechsler points out this nice baseball quiz at ESPN.com. Answering off the top of my head, I got 38 out of 50.

Bob Sikes remembers the long July 4th of 1985.

A reader from Germany writes:

I´m taking part of a quiz in Germany, and one question is:

where and when was the most dedly [sic] baseball game in Canada?

Do you know that and can you perhaps help me?

Thanks very, very much in advance!

I have no clue, and a quick search yielded nothing. If you know the answer, feel free to enlighten us in the comments.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the start of Dale Long's home run streak, Ralph Bennett remembers the excitement it generated in Pittsburgh. I really love the way Bennett captures how fans enjoyed the game back then, listening instead of watching:

That Monday night, May 28, 1956, is etched in my memory. School had ended that day, Daylight Savings Time was in full bloom and ancient ritual demanded that even though it was a cloudy and relatively cool day, we boys of Rector, Pa., should go swimming until dark at Devil's Hole, our favorite "deep spot" in the rushing mountain creek a mile above our house. But what about the big game?

Did I say life was good? Our family had recently acquired a then-new and exciting piece of technology -- a transistor portable radio. It was a teal-colored plastic Philco, about the size of a big dictionary, with a convenient gold handle on top.

We sat it on some rocks beside the swimming hole, volume turned to the max, listening to a rasping Bob Prince's play-by-play. The Dodgers had the superb Carl Erskine, who had recently pitched a no-hitter, on the mound. And even before he had to walk out to the hill, Duke Snider smashed a home run, knocking in Junior Gilliam for a two-run lead in the first.

We swam and horsed around, our lips turning blue from the ice cold water. We paused only when Long came to the plate, standing shivering in our dripping trunks around the radio. Long's first time up he grounded out to second. Back to the water. Then, in the fourth inning, Long was at the plate again. The count went to one and one. Erskine fired what he later described as "a good overhand curve. Low and away."

I wish I could say I heard the "crack of the bat." I didn't. Long had poled the ball into the lower deck in right center. The only thing I remember is the roar from that Philco portable. It overwhelmed the little speaker. The plastic grill on the radio vibrated. You couldn't hear the hoarse-voiced Prince, just the long roar that reverberated across the water of Devil's Hole and through the woods. I could hear someone whooping through the open window of a cottage just down stream.

It's a great tribute to Long, recalling not only his homers, but his other brief moments of fame as a player as well.

Baseball Primer Newsblogs links to a number of pieces on the anniversary of Rick Monday stopping a flag burning, although there seems to be more interest in making fun of Tommy Lasorda than celebrating Monday. You can make fun of Tommy anytime.

Javy Lopez passed Miguel Tejada on the bases yesterday after hitting a ball out of the park. If you're interested in other lost home runs, be sure to visit Retrosheet.org.

Baseball Minutia is a new blog taking a look at the game past, present and future. Check out his comparison of Adam Dunn and Ned Williamson, two slugger that did not want to leave the outfield.

Bob Sikes was a trainer for the Mets from 1980 through 1991. He started in their minor league system and worked his way up to assistant trainer with the major league team from 1985 to 1991. He's writing a remembrance of that time and is looking for a publisher. Here's a sample of his writing as he remembers game 6 of the 1986 NLCS against the Houston Astros, one of the great games in playoff history.

Bob is currently a science teacher and head girls soccer coach at Crestview High School in Crestview, Florida.

Maury Brown misses Charlie Finley. He's writing a two part series on the former A's owner at Baseball Analysts. Part I is here.

It would be nice to have a dissident voice like Finley's among today's ownership. Selig does a very good job of keeping all arguments between the owner in house, but I'd love to hear the other ideas that are surely discussed at owner's meetings.

Alex Belth writes on how the Yankees passed on Vic Power due to racism. Meanwhile, Jon Weisman looks at Power's legacy.

There is one flaw is the racism argument, however. The Yankees had a better first baseman in Moose Skowron. If you were just given Skowron's and Power's stats from 1954 to 1960, and asked if the Yankees kept the better player, wouldn't the answer be yes? So what if Power was a slick fielding first baseman, first basemen are supposed to provide offense. That's as true today as it was then.

This isn't to excuse the Yankees miserable track record during that era. But this isn't the Red Sox passing on Willie Mays:

In 1949, the Red Sox gave up the chance to sign future Hall of Famer Willie Mays, who would go on to hit more career home runs than all but one man before him and electrify crowds with his defensive play. As Juan Williams reports, "one of the team's scouts decided that it wasn't worth waiting through a stretch of rainy weather to scout any black player. That decision killed the possibility that Mays and Ted Williams might have played in the same outfield for the Red Sox."

The Yankees had a better option at first base and went with it.

The Hall of Fame is refusing a donation of Barry Bonds' 700th home run ball.

According to the company, the ball was offered with no strings attached to the Hall's executive board. But Hall of Fame spokesman Jeff Idelson said Friday rejecting the deal was an obvious decision.

"The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will never accept an artifact from any company whose business is promoting gambling," Idelson said. "We have a responsibility to preserve the game's history.

The other day I was invited to a party in New York on the 7th kicking off a tour of the ball before it went to the Hall of Fame. I won't be going (it's my 19th wedding anniversary). I wonder what this announcement is going to do to the tour.

Does anyone know when teams were first allowed to expand their rosters to 40 men? I can't seem to find it on the web.

The man with one of the biggest collection of Expos memorabilia is putting it on sale.

Pearo is part of a forgotten baseball subculture that took root in upstate New York and parts of northern New England after the Expos were created in 1969. Whether because of geography -- Montreal was hundreds of miles closer than big-league stadiums in Boston and New York -- or a simple love of the underdog, some fans adopted the new Canadian team.

He's looking for someone from the Washington area to buy it, but has gotten no takers:

Now, Pearo said he would like to sell the collection to somebody in Washington -- lock, stock and bobble-head. He would like to see it put on display, but he's a little doubtful, having heard from a friend in the D.C. area that Nationals fans aren't interested in the team's past.

"I guess they feel like it's a brand-new baby," he said. "And not an adopted child."

Dan Johnson and Jason Dubois both played DH and batted ninth last night. That's the first time both DH's batted ninth in a game.

The point of the DH is to have a great offensive player in the lineup. If they're going to bat ninth, they can't be that great an offensive player. The pitcher can hit ninth. More DH's should be like David Ortiz; player's whose whole career is about hitting.

The play of this year's Astros reminds Mickey Herskowitz of the 1963 Colt 45's. That team couldn't hit, and pulled a publicity stunt at the end of the season:

Two days before the end of the season, they pulled off a classic public relations stunt against the Mets. They started an all-rookie lineup, one that averaged 19 years, 8 months.

Pitcher Jay Dahl was 17. Four were 19, including Rusty Staub. Joe Morgan and Jerry Grote were 20. At 21, outfielders Jimmy Wynn and Aaron Pointer were elders.

Morgan made it to Cooperstown and the World Series; Staub, Grote and Wynn made the Series. Pointer's career was short, but he stayed in sports as a game official for the NFL. His sisters, Ruth, Anita, Bonnie and June, formed a singing group under their own name: the Pointer Sisters.

They had more hits than the '63 team.

Ouch.

Soxblog remembers April 29, 1986, a day it was easy to get a ticket to Fenway Park. I was at Yankee Stadium that night, in town for a business trade show. It was real easy to get tickets to the Stadium then, too. The game was delayed by rain, then went on forever as the pitchers for the Twins and Yankees could not get the ball over the plate. It had to be one of the worst games I've ever seen. In the middle of the evening, a sign flashed on the scoreboard that Clemens had struck out 20. My friend sitting next to me started to wail, because he could have had Clemens in the 20th round of his fantasy draft and didn't take him.

Both teams have come a long way.

Did you know there was a better player than Alex Rodriguez on Alex's high school team? Dr. Manhattan has the story.

It's interesting that the article has the tone that Butler's failure is some kind of mystery, when really it seems it's just unlucky injuries.

A few years ago, my good friend Jim Storer and I pondered writing a book that would use projections to fill in gaps in players careers. Player who lost time to the war. Players who lost time to racism. Players who's careers were cut short by injury. We never got around to that book, but Steve Treder at The Hardball Times is starting to fill it in. He looks at seasons lost to war in this article. You get a feel for how close Williams and Mays would have come to Babe Ruth's HR record if it hadn't been for military service.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

Rich Lederer has a great story about the day his father and Walter Alston traded jobs, including pictures and Alston's article. I get the feeling Walter would have made an excellent blogger.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

Eric Stone is the author of Wrong Side of the Wall, the Life of Blackie Schwamb, the Greatest Prison Baseball Player of All Time. You can read the introduction to the book at Eric's web site. Eric has agreed to take questions from Baseball Musings readers in the comments, so enjoy the discussion!

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

The Baseball Crank looks at what a great decade the nineteen teens were for developing young talent.

Darren Viola sends a link to this article about a project to record all Negro League boxscores in a computerized database.

The work, a three-year, first-of-its-kind project funded with a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball, used thousands of newspaper box scores to identify and compile statistics on more than 3,000 men who played in often-forgotten black baseball leagues from 1920 to 1948.

The 5,000-page volume - which shows more conclusively that the quality of Negro Leagues play equaled white baseball at the time - is more in-depth than past statistical studies on black players prior to integration.

The research will be given later this month to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Eventually, it will become part of the hall's statistical and narrative history of black baseball since the Civil War.

This is pain-staking work. The people sifting through the tiny print of the boxscores need to be commended. Their work will provide us with an invaluable research tool for the future.

Do you ever wonder why the Kansas City team is called the Royals? This Christmas story provides a clue.

Soxblog points out factual errors in Allen Barra's piece on do-overs in the Wall Street Journal (Subscription required). The facts of the George Brett Pine Tar game are totally backwards; the ump invalidated the HR and the league reinstated it, causing the game to be replayed from that point on. It's the only game protest that I remember being upheld in my lifetime (although I don't keep track of such things).

Here's a good article on the incident, including the fact that Lee McPhail, president of the AL, had not upheld a protest until this one. More importantly, it mentions the Munson incident, where Thurman lost a hit to excessive pine tar on his bat. I remember watching the Munson pine tar game, so when I saw Brett's bat being measured I thought, "They're going to take the HR away from him." I don't know if the Yankees protested the Munson game or not. But the Yankees had every right to believe that Brett's HR should be overturned.

There are two rules that apply here. Rule 1.10(c) deals with pine tar, and 6.06(d) deals with the penalties for illeagal bats. If someone has a pre-pine tar rule book, I'd love to see what the rules said then. This article has the rule reading (it was 1.10(b) then):

Baseball's Rule 1.10(b) states that "the bat handle, for not more than 18 inches from the end, may be covered or treated with any material or substance to improve the grip. Any such material or substance, which extends past the 18-inch limitation, shall cause the bat to be removed from the game."

The more modern language stipulates that batter won't be called out. My guess is that rule 6.06 was less specific at that time as well. So in the Munson game, the Twins manager Frank Quilici argued that it was an illegal bat, so Munson should lose the hit. The umps agreed. That's where the mistake was made. If the ump in that game had simply said, "The rule is we take the bat out of the game, the hit stands," Brett's pine tar game never would have happened.

The Book of Mike remembers the destruction of the Expos.

Harvard Magazine has an interesting article on the invention of the catcher's mask.

Scott Broduer of Mass Live dot com links to a story that has baseball being invented in Pittsfield, MA in the 1700's. Pittsfield is about an hour west of my home. Needless to say, Pittsfield is making a big deal about this, storing the document mentioning baseball safely away in a vault.

Much as I would like to root for the home state team, Pittsfield claim is going to be about as dubious as that of Cooperstown. Baseball, like so many things on earth, evolved. Once you have opposable thumbs, the usefulness of grasping and swinging sticks becomes pretty appearent. And you swing to hit things. Throwing and catching also have their uses in moving things distances with minimal effort, so those skills would also develop fast. And if you hit something with a stick, you can transport it even farther, as long as you have a sure-handed centerfielder. :-)

So as human society evolved, games which involved swinging sticks and catching objects evolved to refine these important skills. If you visit Cooperstown, there is evidence the Egyptians were playing ball and stick games. They didn't call it baseball, frankly, because the ancient Egyptians didn't speak English! What we do know is that Cartwright was the first person to formalize the game as we know it today, but he based it on a game that was already being played, not something he invented out of thin air.

Pittsfield should be pround that they have the first recorded mention of baseball in the country. But let's not get carried away with anyone claiming invention of the sport.