Baseball

Negro League Baseball got its start thanks to the increasing popularity of two things after the Civil War: baseball and segregation.. The National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players rejected African American membership in 1867, and in 1876, owners of the professional ...read more

LikeJackie Robinson, these four men had to deal with unimaginable pressure. They all had teammates who wouldn’t shake their hands or play catch with them. They all had fans who ridiculed and threatened them with every slur in the book. None of them could stay in the same hotels ...read more

Although the ceremonies surrounding baseball’s Opening Day have been around since at least 1890, it took 20 years for the commander in chief to become part of the tradition. The first sitting president to throw a pitch was William Howard Taft. The corpulent commander in chief ...read more

1. The first spring training was a spa compared to today’s version. In one form or another, spring training has always been a part of organized baseball. In the early days of the National League, which formed in 1876, spring training was quite different than today. Teams ...read more

When the Cubs last won In 1908… A British company struck oil at Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Persia (now Iran), marking the beginning of petroleum production in the Middle East. Controversy erupted at the Olympic Games, held in the new 68,000-seat stadium in the Shepherds ...read more

On the afternoon of May 15, 1941, some 9,000 spectators converged on the Bronx to watch the New York Yankees face the Chicago White Sox. The big league season was only a month old, but already the Yanks were off to a disappointing start. The club had lost seven of its last nine ...read more

He was the son of German immigrants. Born Henry Louis Gehrig in New York City on June 19, 1903, the future sports icon was the son of German immigrants. His father and mother each arrived in America as young adults then met and married in New York City. Gehrig, the only one of ...read more

From the sport’s earliest days, baseball has been at the heart of American culture, and at the heart of the baseball itself has been rubber. During the dawn of baseball in the 1840s, players crafted homemade hardballs by wrapping whatever small objects they could find—rocks, ...read more

Just like peanuts and Cracker Jack, the seventh-inning stretch is a baseball tradition. Precisely how this custom came about is unknown, but there are several theories. According to one popular tale, William Howard Taft, America’s 27th president, is to thank for the ritual. In ...read more

In April 2013, an unidentified man drove up to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, and left behind a box containing a black, severed goat’s head. News outlets immediately speculated on what the shocking parcel might portend. Was it a warning? Was it a threat against team ...read more

1. Paige learned how to pitch in reform school. Leroy Robert Paige spent a hardscrabble youth working to support his family in Mobile, Alabama, and may have first earned the nickname “Satchel” during a stint as a porter at a local train station. He grew up loving baseball, but ...read more

The “American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language” cites the conventional wisdom that the word “southpaw” originated “from the practice in baseball of arranging the diamond with the batter facing east to avoid the afternoon sun. A left-handed pitcher facing west would ...read more

Just how the “Big Fix” of 1919 played out remains a subject of considerable debate among baseball historians. Accounts differ, but the scheme may have first materialized a few weeks before the World Series, when White Sox first baseman C. Arnold “Chick” Gandil and a gambler named ...read more

By the fall of 1921, Babe Ruth had become the brightest star in America’s most popular pastime. The New York Yankees slugger, who first broke into the major leagues in 1914, had set the single-season home run record for the third straight year and already smashed Roger Connor’s ...read more

On the afternoon of August 26, 1939, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Dolph Camilli stepped up to the plate against Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Niggeling. The Dodgers had lost the first game of a doubleheader 5-2 to the visiting Reds earlier that day, and now the fans at Ebbets field ...read more

1. Ruth first gained fame as a pitcher. Although best remembered for swatting a prodigious 714 home runs and slugging .690, which remains a major-league record, Ruth was one of baseball’s most dominant left-handed pitchers in the 1910s. He won 89 games in six seasons with the ...read more

On June 12, 1939, a constellation of baseball’s brightest stars and a crowd of 10,000 fans thronged a pastoral village of only 2,800 people nestled in the rolling hills of upstate New York. They had come to Cooperstown to celebrate the 100th birthday of the national pastime as ...read more

1. Churchill Downs This fabled venue is home to America’s most celebrated horse race, the Kentucky Derby. In the early 1870s, after two earlier local racecourses closed, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. (grandson of explorer William Clark) filled the void by developing a ...read more