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. The addition of Jackie Robinson to its roster changed not only baseball but also the nation. Yet Robinson was just one member of that memorable club, which included Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Reiser, Duke Snider, Eddie Stanky, Arky Vaughan, and Dixie Walker. Also present was a quartet of baseball’s most unforgettable characters: co-owners Branch Rickey and Walter O’Malley, suspended manager Leo Durocher, and radio announcer Red Barber. 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: Commissioner Happy Chandler suspending Durocher, Rickey luring his old friend Burt Shotton out of retirement to replace Durocher, and brilliant outfielder Reiser being sidelined after running into a fence. In spite of all this, the Dodgers went on to win the National League pennant over the heavily favored St. Louis Cardinals. And of course, there is the biggest story of the season, where history and biography coalesce: Jackie Robinson, who overcame widespread hostility to become Rookie of the Year—and to help the Dodgers set single-game attendance records in cities around the National League.

The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers (Memorable Teams in Baseball History)

Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)

History

University Of Nebraska Press

For the Baltimore Orioles, the glory days stretched to decades. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the team arguably had the best players, the best manager, the best Minor League teams, the best scouts and front office—and, unarguably, 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. Led by the bats of Frank Robinson and Boog Powell and a trio of 20-win pitchers, the Orioles won 108 regular season games and dropped just 1 postseason game on their way to winning the World Series against the Reds. The club featured three future Hall of Fame players (Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, and Jim Palmer), a Hall of Fame manager (Earl Weaver), and several other star players in the prime of their careers. Featuring biographical articles on Weaver, his coaches, the broadcasters, and the players of the 1970 season, this book tells what happened in and out of the game. It details highlights and timelines, the memorable games, spectacular plays, and the team’s working philosophy, “the Oriole Way”—and in sum recreates the magic of one of the greatest seasons in baseball history.

Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles (Memorable Teams in Baseball History)

Americas

Of all the New York Yankees championship teams, the 1947 club seemed the least likely. Bridging the gap between the dynasties of Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, the team, managed by Bucky Harris, was coming off three non-pennant-winning seasons and given little chance to unseat the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox. And yet, led by Joe DiMaggio, this un-Yankees-like squad of rookies, retreads, and a few solid veterans easily won the pennant over the Detroit Tigers and the heavily favored Red Sox, along the way compiling an American League–record nineteen-game winning streak. They then went on to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a dramatic seven-game World Series that was the first to be televised and the first to feature an African American player. 
Bridging Two Dynasties commemorates this historic club—the players, on the field and off, and the events surrounding their remarkable season. Along with player biographies, including those of future Hall of Famers DiMaggio, Bucky Harris, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto, the book features a seasonal timeline and covers pertinent topics such as the winning streak, the Yankees’ involvement in Leo Durocher’s suspension, and the thrilling World Series.

Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees (Memorable Teams in Baseball History)

By 1964 the storied St. Louis Cardinals had gone seventeen years without so much as a pennant. Things began to turn around in 1953, when August A. Busch Jr. bought the team and famously asked where all the black players were. Under the leadership of men like Bing Devine and Johnny Keane, the Cardinals began signing talented players regardless of color, and slowly their star started to rise again. 
Drama and Pride in the Gateway City commemorates the team that Bing Devine built, the 1964 team that prevailed in one of the tightest three-way pennant races of all time and then went on to win the World Series, beating the New York Yankees in the full seven games. All the men come alive in these pages—pitchers Ray Sadecki and Bob Gibson, players Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Bobby Shantz, manager Johnny Keane, his coaches, the Cardinals’ broadcasters, and Bill White, who would one day run the entire National League—along with the dramatic events that made the 1964 Cardinals such a memorable club in a memorable year.

Drama and Pride in the Gateway City: The 1964 St. Louis Cardinals (Memorable Teams in Baseball History)

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. While the Reds dominated the National League from 1972 to 1976, it was the ’75 team that surpassed them all, winning 108 games and beating the Boston Red Sox in a thrilling 7-game World Series. Led by Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson, the team’s roster included other legends such as Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Pérez, Ken Griffey Sr., and Dave Concepción. The 1975 Reds were notably disciplined and clean-cut, which distinguished them from the increasingly individualistic players of the day. The Great Eight commemorates the people and events surrounding this outstanding baseball team with essays on team management and key aspects and highlights of the season, including Pete Rose’s famous position change. This volume gives Reds fans complete biographies of all the team’s players, relives the enthralling 1975 season, and celebrates a team that is consistently ranked as one of the best teams in baseball history.

The Great Eight: The 1975 Cincinnati Reds (Memorable Teams in Baseball History)

The National Pastime offers baseball history available nowhere else. Each fall 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. A Note from the Editor, John Thorn: What is baseball to America? Each in his own way, the writers in this edition of The National Pastime confront that question and suggest different answers. Where all agree, however, is that while baseball is surely a game—a fact sometimes obscured in a gumbo of "rites of passage" and "cosmic resonances"—it is also more than just the game of our youth. (Why else study a box score, or read a publication like this?) Merritt Clifton, in "Where the Twain Shall Meet," points out that America's national pastime has long since gone international. Now baseball may —perhaps must—provide a model to all humanity of how the values of the individual and those of society can be in harmony. For Clifton, "the twain" signify not only East and West but also male and female, winter and summer, farm and city, war and peace. Can baseball light the way for the world's tribes to come together as one? Read this provocative piece, beginning on page 12. Baseball is sport, and it is business. John McCormack, in "Let's Go Back to Eight-Team Leagues" (page 2) proposes a revolutionary plan—in the sense that the old has revolved 180 degrees to become new again—to make baseball better sport and better business. He makes sense—here's hoping that those in a position to effect such change consider the reasoning. In the same vein, Gary Hailey looks back to the events of seventy years ago—particularly, the dismantling of the Federal League. This chaotic retreat culminated in the famous Supreme Court ruling of 1922 exempting Organized Baseball from anti-trust legislation. Hailey clears up many misconceptions about baseball's legal standing—including the erroneous notion that the Court ruled in favor of baseball because it was "not a business"—and poses to today's owners and players a highly cautionary tale. Baseball is mathematics (what isn't, all you Pythogoreans must be muttering). It is governed by the laws of nature, the laws of man, and the laws of probability. In its order and regularity, it seems an exemplar of fairness in that what one sees is what one gets. For dissenting views, see Pete Palmer's "Do Clutch Pitchers Exist?" (page 7) and Frank P. Bowles; "Statistics and Fair Play: The Oliver System" (page 74). Baseball is a myth machine, writer-fodder for remembrances of things past. See David Sanders' "Farrell as Fan" (page 85) and Jack Zafran's "The Last Brooklyn Dodger" (TNP's first entrant in the realm of fiction, page 23). And baseball is, as the current TV spots rightly put it, a game of fathers and sons, a bridge across the generations. It not only has tradition, but in this experimental, diverse, volatile society of ours, baseball is tradition, the tie that binds where faith, community, and family fall away. Fred Ivor-Campbell writing of the Providence Grays of a century ago; Bill Mead recalling the Flint Rhem caper of 1930; Mark Gallagher exorcising the "Damned Yankees" of 1959: The skein of baseball's history is all of a piece.

The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History : Spring 1985, No. 1

Sports & Outdoors

Baseball

Society for Amer Baseball

The National Pastime offers baseball history available nowhere else. Each fall 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. A Note from the Editor, John Thorn: Who are those guys on the cover? The first reader to identify all twelve correctly may skip the rest of this introduction and go directly to page 2, where the real action begins. The rest of you are expected to slog through to the end of the column (you're on the honor system), where the editor has thoughtfully supplied the answers. Nothing sets the blood of a baseball fan a-racing like The Question of The Hall of Fame, variously cast as: How can they keep Nellie Fox out? How did they let George Kelly in? Can't we forget about the 1919 World Series and give Shoeless Joe his plaque? What if Jim Kaat had been a Yankee? And what about Reggie? And Ryan? And Rizzuto? The debate is endless and too often merely partisan, but it is good for baseball and better for the Hall, whose officials are delighted that there are folks out there writing letters for departed worthies like Tony Mullane and Vic Wilis and Riggs Stephenson. Long-winded letters protesting voting procedures may shed more heat than light, and are surely bothersome to answer, but they too are the bellows that fan the flame of the old hot stove. Besides . . . it's just plan fun to repopulate Coopertown's Hall of Fame according to one's own vision, just as it is to make "paper trades" in the off-season, or predict pennant winners, or debate whether the 1936 Yankees would defeat the 1976 Reds. Winter is the time for such cracker-barrel wisdom, and in this, the fifth issue of The National Pastime, Bob Carroll dispenses more than his two cents' worth. In a virtuoso performance as writer and artist (of the cover and twelve drawings on pages 16-27), Carroll presents the images and credentials of his deserving dozen, plus an innovative plan for cracking the logjam in the Hall of Fame Committee on Baseball Veterans. (The task confronting that group of selectors grows more difficult each year, with their choices remaining limited to two from an ever widening "talent pool.") Winter is also the time for holiday greetings, and our back cover features a delightful rarity: Babe Ruth's personal Christmas card from 1931. It is a combination of photograph and water color from the editor, who extends to TNP readers the message in the crossed bats in the foreground. The next issue of TNP will return to the pictorial format first displayed in the summer of 1984; scheduled for spring, it will be a lavish celebration of the games most beautifully photographed period, the dead-ball days of 1901-19. Also slated for 1986 publication is a "regular" TNP, the estimable Baseball Research Journal and a rookie called The SABR Review of Books.  ALL RIGHT—so who are the guys on the cover? Left to right, giant all: (top) Dick Allen, Ron Santo, Richie Ashburn, Bill Mazeroski; (center) Indian Bob Johnson, Ernie Lombardi, Hal Newhouser, Bobby Doerr; (bottom) Bid McPhee, Dickey Pearce, William Hulbert, Bill Dahlen.

The National Pastime Winter 1985: A Review of Baseball History

SOCIETY AMERICAN BASEBALL RESE

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 Baseball Research Journal (BRJ), Volume 14

In this issue . . . Baseball lives in all seasons. So the first issue of The SABR Review takes a look at two of the newest works on non-regular-season baseball: A Baseball Winter and (on Spring Training) The Short Season. We cover Jim Kaplan’s diary of ’83 season, too. But we don’t forget the history, with reviews of the two latest books on two of baseball’s prime movers, Ban Johnson and A.G. Spalding, discussed by A.D. Suehsdorf and Luke Salisbury.And what are the newest of the great baseball writers saying? In this issue we review the latest by Bill James, Roger Kahn, Peter Gammons, and Dan Okrent. Plus a special treat: a brief reminiscence of the immortal Red Smith by his teammate on the All-Time Great-Writers Team, Bob Broeg.Two of the national pastime’s oldest skills are also its most overlooked. Jack Carlson and Frank Boslett analyze what Bill Curran has to say about defense in Mitts, and what Kevin Kerrane learned about putting the Dollar Sign on the Muscle.Most of us started loving baseball at an early age, and most remember the almost sinfully delicious feeling when we discovered that we could actually read about it, too. That’s why this issue takes a special three-way look at those early books that first forged the magical link between the game and the imagination for many of us. Leverett Smith overviews what juvenile baseball literature has been about since its beginnings. Jack Kavanagh tells us about a star, Baseball Joe Matson, who lasted 16 years (and outlasted a writer or two). Next, Phil Bergen takes an in-depth look at how the works of John R. Tunis were clues to our society’s mores, from pre-World War II to the Vietnam conflict.Since much of the best of baseball writing occurs in shorter pieces, the anthology has long been a staple of baseball readers’ libraries. Tom Jozwik looks at one of the newest, The Armchair Book of Baseball, edited by John Thorn, and has the audacity to compare it to Charles Einstein’s Fireside Books. That’s a tough league to hit in.SABR researchers will be happy to hear about a new book that compiles baseball bibliographies in one volume for the first time. David Porter previews his Dictionary of American Sport Biography: Baseball. In addition to single-book reviews, The SABR Review will also take on larger subjects. In this go-round, there are three great ones. First, if you’ve ever wanted to know which books tell the real story of Negro League baseball, you’ll find out in the Jules Tygiel’s essay, “The Negro Leagues Revisited.” Mark Gallagher analyzes how the Yankees have served as fodder for baseball literature in a special way for a long time. And graphic specialist Mark Rucker looks at the more important illustrated works of baseball history, all the way back to 1831 (!)A feature we’ll make a regular member of The SABR Review’s lineup is “Personal Favorites.” In this issue, Darrell Berger sees Pat Jordan’s A False Spring as baseball’s “beat” (as in Kerouac) epic.Another feature we’ll continue is the phone survey. This time around we talked to people whose books we read to ask the deceptively simple question: What baseball book do you return to most often? Of course, they all answered The Macmillan Encyclopedia. But after probing Leonard Koppett, Lawrence Ritter, Peter Palmer, and some others had some intriguing things to say.

The SABR Review of Books, Volume 1: A Forum of Baseball Literary Opinion

Great baseball journal-buy with confidence!

The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, Winter 1987

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