Book Reviews

Origin stories aren’t just for superheroes. True Batman fans know about Bruce Wayne’s parents being murdered in front of his eyes, and those who love Superman know he left Krypton just before its destruction and ended up on Earth. And while baseball’s lineage is long disputed and quite a story ...

There is a famous political cartoon from the 1860 U.S. Presidential election, depicting Abraham Lincoln winning a baseball game against fellow candidates John Bell, Stephen Douglas and John Breckinridge. The Currier & Ives piece uses terminology like “put out,” “strike,” “short stop,” “home run” and “fair ball,” words that would be familiar to voters even then, ...

“Deep to Left… Yastrzemski will not get it… it’s foul by a few feet. Bucky Dent just missed giving the Yankees the lead.” Had Bill White‘s memorable call of Bucky Dent‘s iconic 1978 A.L. East playoff at-bat gone something like the above, followed by Dent making the out that his ...

Baseball fans know 1968 as “The Year of the Pitcher”—batting averages and ERAs looked like those of the Deadball Era across the board, led by the last 30 game winner, Denny McLain of the Tigers, and the MLB record 1.12 ERA of the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson. Those two big personalities ...

Fantasy sports may be all the rage on earth, but what if the result of a single baseball game, whose teams are comprised of players selected by God and the Devil themselves, from among anyone ever to play in the Majors or Negro Leagues, would determine the fate of the ...

Baseball’s trading deadline is a few weeks away (and Amazon’s Prime Day is upon us!). Trade talk around the league has been ramping up, in what could culminate in a bonanza like July 2017 or — like many other years — a lot more speculation than actual swapping. Will teams ...

When Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, author Marty Appel surmises, he likely “played with or against or managed more” fellow Hall of Famers than any of the then-100+ enshrinees. Having been born before Babe Ruth, started his playing career in ...

Good things come in small packages. That’s how’s the saying goes, but when it comes to basketball, it usually doesn’t apply. Enter Muggsy Bogues, the “missing link” that completed the Baltimore Dunbar High School basketball squad that 35 years ago began a two-year undefeated reign as the consensus national champions. ...

Even avid baseball fans are not likely to have heard of Win Mercer. His career–and, sadly, his life–over just before the detente between the National League and upstart American League would lead to the first World Series, Mercer toiled for always losing and mostly dismal Washington teams in seven of ...

For many who enjoy baseball history, the agreement between the newly-formed American League and National League to begin play in the World Series in 1903 signaled the beginning of the “modern” baseball era. Indeed, Jack Chesbro‘s 41 wins for the New York Highlanders still counts as the standard for single-season ...