“His fastball was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It really rose as it left his hand. If you told him to aim the ball at home plate, that ball would cross the plate at the batter’s shoulders. That was because of the tremendous backspin he could put on the ball.” – Pat Gillick No one […]
THE UNAPPRECIATED CURT FLOOD
Check out Signed Cards and Game Used Items by CURT FLOOD For decades, baseball’s Reserve Clause bound a player to a team unless he was traded, sold, or released. A player had zero bargaining power at contract time other than refusing the owner’s terms, forcing him to quit baseball. The “status quo” of the Reserve […]
WAS THE FEDERAL LEAGUE REALLY A MAJOR LEAGUE?
Nearly 45 years ago, five men made a decision that has colored our view of baseball history ever since. Collectively, they were known as Special Baseball Records Committee, and they were brought together because, with the imminent publication of the first edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia, “it became necessary to draw up a code of […]
A ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME: RAY FISHER’S BAN FROM BASEBALL
“Charlie Hustle” was back in the news recently, making his case for reinstatement. Pete Rose’s banishment from baseball is a saga that’s well known to most fans—the then-Cincinnati Reds manager agreed to a lifetime ban from Commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989 after an investigation revealed that he had bet on his own team for years. […]
WHY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION WAS A MAJOR LEAGUE
Major and minor are relative terms; something is major or minor based upon its relative position among a group of objects. In the United States, the Democrats and Republicans are considered major parties, while the Libertarians and Greens are minor parties. If the former two didn’t exist, the Greens and Libertarians would be the major parties, even if […]