After writing about "Casey at the Bat" for all these years, the challenge was to find a new angle. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Despite ample assertions on the web and in books, Nate Berkenstock, hero of the final game of the 1871 season--pulled from the stands to play right field after not having been active since 1867--was not Jewish.

🔥⚾️🎨 1969 World Series Program, cover illustration by the legendary Willard Mullin. #BaseballArt #SportsArt #SportsArtist

I wrote this for Douglas Alden’s year-long project on 1927 ten years ago to the day of its republication at Our Game, i.e., right now. ourgame.mlblogs.com/cobb-speaker...

We return to the Year of Merkle for another big baseball event: the issuance of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Seventy-five years ago. On October 3 we will mark the anniversary of the Shot Heard 'Round the World (no, not Lexington and Concord).

A new and important story from Mark Rucker, reflecting a trove of correspondence that dates back thirty years. ourgame.mlblogs.com/bob-burks-it...

A colleague in SABR has suggested a Hall of Fame for pre-professional baseball players. I wrote on this subject 15 years ago. ourgame.mlblogs.com/my-19th-cent...

This is the library of Major League Baseball’s Official Historian John Thorn. Are outfield grass and envy the same shade of green? @johnthorn.bsky.social

America's National Game; seventh in the series. The Merkle Game, with scapegoats to follow. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

SABR has chosen a 19th-century team. I once wrote: “To know that Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter are part of a seamless web with Roger Connor and John Ward makes the experience of today’s games richer than merely to compare our stars with those since 1901.” sabr.org/all-time-era...

Guilty as charged. Invoking the words of The Most Interesting Man in the World: “Stay nerdy, my friends.”

Baseball Goes West, in a season that once grieved me, but no longer. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Hail and farewell, Bobby Cox.

On this day, 10 years ago: MLB and SABR placed a marker on the gravesite of James Whyte Davis, whose remains were wrapped in the flag of the old Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, draped over the dresser in his abode from 1882 until he died in 1899. Text, punctuation, capitalization are Davis's own.

Three Finger Brown pitching, a digital reconstruction from a flip book produced by The Winthrop Moving Picture Company in 1907. The site is the Polo Grounds. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzky...

Hail and farewell, Ted Turner.

Hail and farewell, Bob Skinner.

It's National Cartoonist Day, evidently. Well, here's baseball's first cartoon litho, by William T. Crane, from 1859: A Comprehensive View of Base Ball. One example survives at the Library of Congress.

New at Our Game: The innovation of night baseball; fifth in the series, America's National Game, 1935. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

On this day in 1871, in the first pro league game, Fort Wayne defeated Cleveland. While some call it the first major league game, @MLB ruled that the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (1871-75) would not be included. www.retrosheet.org/1stGame.htm

May 2, 1876: the first ever MLB homer May 3, 1876: "these guys don't know how to play small ball like back in my day [my day being before the Civil War]" (probably)

On this day in 1876 Chicago’s Ross Barnes hits the first MLB homer, off Cherokee Fisher at Cincinnati. (Yes, the Chicago club wore fezzes, with differing stripes marking the different positions.)

Albert Spalding’s vision of baseball  as a sport for all--exemplified by a world tour in 1888-89-- has been made real. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Today, MLB Morning Lineup headed its highlights from yesterday: "Ya gotta Bo-lieve! Mets win again." I am reminded of Tug McGraw and of this pretty good story, from 15 years ago: "Ya Gotta Believe: The faith of a fan." ourgame.mlblogs.com/ya-gotta-bel...

A bonus post to Our Game, by Jay Wigley: ourgame.mlblogs.com/from-kiosk-d...

150 years ago today, MLB played its first game. Boston defeated Philadelphia 6-5, at Philly. ourgame.mlblogs.com/mlbs-first-g...

Third in a season-long series, at Our Game. Jackie Robinson Day, reconsidered. The story concludes: "I must have known how alone he was and how awesome a mission he had assumed: to be the individual who shaped the crowd — which is what a hero does." ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Hail and farewell, Garret Anderson.

Pedestrianism! Also known as race walking, it was a major sport in the 19th century. blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/...

Jackie Robinson Day coincides with the death of Lincoln.

"Come On, Play Ball With Me, Dearie"; as sung in Flo Ziegfeld Jr's annual review "Follies of 1909." The girls and the costumes are great, but that backdrop is a really good depiction of the Polo Grounds before the fire of 1911.

Once upon a time ...

For every child who dares to dream ... tomorrow. www.mlb.com/video/we-are...

Second in a season-long series: America's National Game. This essay focuses on 1920 and three men who changed the game: Babe Ruth, Rube Foster, and Joe Jackson. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Jayson Stark throws me a nod in his discussion of the Jo Adell game. www.nytimes.com/athletic/718...

A bonus post at Our Game: The Cleveland Indian, by Mark Rucker. ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-clevelan...

Hail and farewell, Davey Lopes.

Now on Youtube, Larry Lester and I, gabbing about "Negro Leagues Stats and MLB's Official Record": www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1E9...

The launch of a new, season-long series at Our Game, focusing on events in baseball that changed America. The opening essay is on FDR's green-light letter of January 15, 1942. ourgame.mlblogs.com/americas-nat...

Via the NYT: I love the idea of a version of Melville's Bartleby for kids. Seems to teach, more gently, the same lesson. That said, sometimes it's emotionally satisfying to identify with Ol' Bart's attitude.

My first contribution to a published book, in a section on shaving implements, from Catalog of the Unusual, 1973.

There is some precedent! A few years ago, @johnthorn.bsky.social and friends recorded a re-creation of a famous game from 1870: m.youtube.com/watch?v=k52j...

Not 42 (Dodgers). Not 9 (Montreal). Not 5 (Monarchs). Number 30 is new to me.

And I would say the game overall is better for it. The extra-inning rule is still quite contentious, but otherwise time after time, these rules changes faced fan pushback until they were implemented and then largely accepted. It's an accomplishment: www.baseballamerica.com/stories/abs-...

MLB played its first game on April 22, 1876. Here is a play-by-play that I worked up, from newspaper sources. ourgame.mlblogs.com/mlbs-first-g...

The Final Four, sorta. At Durland's Academy, 1902.

Andrew Marchand on Opening Night, in the @nytimes: "A new season starts another chapter, but it is an old book." Yes indeed.

What the original Polo Grounds looked like before its demolition, at the end of the 1888 season, to cut a street (111th) through? Diagram from the New York Sun, February 9, 1889.

This photo of Jackie Robinson in 1947 is new to me. Scurlock Studio, Washington, DC.