Eighteenth in a season-long series — Who threw the first curve ball? This was a matter of dispute 150 years ago and, despite the Hall of Fame plaque controversially awarded to Candy Cummings in 1939 (his won-lost record in MLB was 21–22), it may remain so. Not long ago, David Arcidiacono wrote…

Seventeenth in a season-long series — Baseball is best enjoyed outdoors, in the sunshine. Next best is under the lights, still outdoors. But sometimes it rains or snows, and that’s when fantasy baseball rules. Its history begins in a distant time and place, in the ancient Indian game of pachisi — familiar to all…

Sixteenth in a season-long series — The Base Ball Writers Association of America (archaically named to preserve its venerable acronym) has rightly honored reporters with its annual BBWAA Career Excellence Award. A singular exception took place in 2014, when the award was given to Roger Angell in 2014 for his New Yorker columns and books; unlike…

Fifteenth in a season-long series — In the third entry of this season’s series, I identified Lou Castro, born in Colombia in 1876, as the major leagues’ first Hispanic player. …

Fourteenth in a season-long series — From a story on pioneer fans to one on early collectors, we conclude our little trilogy of the grandstand with the question: What was it like to be at the old ball game? This has always interested me: what did it feel like to be there and then? Today let’s…

Thirteenth in a season-long series — As promised in my last post, about baseball’s first fans, it seemed wise to distinguish them from pioneer collectors, though certainly they overlapped. Nineteenth-century saloonkeepers Harry Venn and Mike Henry were fans (of the Gothams and Atlantics, respectively), but if these men are recalled today it is for the case…

Twelfth in a season-long series — Who was the first fan? For me that is an interesting question, once we move beyond the earliest unknown enthusiasts, whether adults or children. In the 1850s, when baseball became an event for spectators as well as players, the watchers were nonplaying members of the opposing clubs, sometimes their lady…

Hero to a hobby that he may be said to have created — I wrote this brief profile of Burdick for SABR’s Baseball Research Journal in 2018, the year he was honored with the Henry Chadwick Award as one of the game’s great researchers. Burdick was not the first collector — that was Benjamin K. …

Eleventh in a season-long series — A while back in this year’s Pioneers series, I identified Luis Castro, born in Colombia in 1876, as Major League Baseball’s first player of Hispanic origin. Some readers pointed out that Castro’s debut in 1902, with the Philadelphia Athletics, was rather late, as Steve Bellán, born in Cuba, had preceded…