After Babe Ruth erased Buck Freeman's record in 1919, the new mark stood for 34 years before Maris bettered it, defying as he did an incredulous sporting public.
Most baseball fans know Red Sox owner Harry Frazee as "e;the man who sold Babe Ruth,"e; initiating a championship drought that plagued the Red Sox from 1919 through 2003.
Joe McCarthy was headed towards a career as a plumber--until the parish priest intervened, and convinced McCarthy's mother that he could make more of himself in baseball.
The Akron club's accumulation of talented ballplayers and its success against the best opposition of the time set it apart from the general development of 19th century baseball.
Relief pitchers have important roles in baseball today, often coming in to pitch at some of the game's most critical and exciting moments, but they have not always been a part of the game.
In this collection of interviews, baseball players, coaches, and managers speak candidly about their most memorable moments and experiences in baseball's big leagues.
When in 2000 the Baseball Writers Association of America elected the ever-durable Carlton Fisk to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, many fans quietly pointed to the Hall's omission of Fisk' greatest American League contemporary, Thurman Munson.
The first World Series was a best-of-nine series between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburg Pirates, with the first three games to be played in Boston starting at the Huntington Avenue Grounds on October 1, 1903.
The Indiana State University Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995.
This history of America's pastime describes the evolution of baseball from early bat and ball games to its growth and acceptance in different regions of the country.
True professional baseball has not been played in Cuba since banned by the communist regime after the 1961 season, but there is a legacy of more than 70 years of continuous excellence by countless Cubans who played in the organized leagues of the island from 1878 to 1961.
On September 10, 1934, grizzled reliever Burleigh Grimes helped the Pittsburgh Pirates to an inconsequential 9-7 win over the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds.
This collection of well-crafted essays spans more than 40 years of franchise history but hews to a single theme: the experience--sometimes humorous, sometimes painful--of being a fan of the New York Mets.
As World War II depleted the available manpower available to the major and minor leagues, Chicago Cubs owner Phillip Wrigley came up with a plan to ensure baseball would continue in the war years: the creation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
This work focuses on the baseball movie genre in the years following World War II, beginning with the 1948 biopic The Babe Ruth Story and ending with the 1962 Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris vehicle Safe at Home!
Thirty years into baseball's sabermetric revolution, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of a major league umpire's ball-and-strike judgment on game results.
Known today as "e;the Babe Ruth of the 1880s,"e; Hall of Famer Roger Connor was the greatest of the nineteenth-century home run hitters, his career total (138) having stood as the major league record for nearly 24 years--until it was broken by Ruth himself.
While the story of the Negro Leagues has been well documented, few baseball fans know about the Japanese American Nisei Leagues, or of their most influential figure, Kenichi Zenimura (1900-1968).
Every spring, thousands of ball players across the country step back to the nineteenth century to play vintage base ball using the equipment, uniforms, rules, and customs of the game's early years.
It is not known exactly when base ball first made its way down to the Carolinas, but it was being played in North and South Carolina at least as early as the Civil War.
In early 1869, Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club made an announcement to the sporting press: the Red Stockings would be the first all-professional club in the history of the game.
