Category: History
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Wild Pitches – Baseball Stadium Promotional Nights Gone Wrong: Disco Demolition
By Bill Coleman The Night the Records Exploded How Disco Demolition Night became baseball’s most infamous promotion and one of pop culture’s most debated moments On the evening of July 12th, 1979, baseball fans arrived at old Comiskey Park in Chicago and expected a quirky summer promotion. Instead, they witnessed one of the strangest collisions…
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Wild Pitches – Baseball Stadium Promotional Nights Gone Wrong: Ten Cent Beer Night
By Bill Coleman Ten-Cent Beer Night: The Wildest Promotion in Baseball History On June 4, 1974, the Cleveland baseball club (then known as the Indians) hosted a promotion that seemed harmless enough: beer for just ten cents a cup during a game against the Texas Rangers. What followed became one of the most infamous nights…
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The Day LSD Took the Mound: The Incredible Legend of Dock Ellis and Baseball’s Most Unbelievable No-Hitter
By Bill Coleman On June 12, 1970, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. That sentence alone would not have made history. No-hitters are rare, but baseball has seen hundreds of them. What happened that afternoon, however, transformed a remarkable achievement into one of the sport’s most enduring…
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Was Ted Williams Really a .406 Hitter? The 1941 season was even more extraordinary than the record books suggest
By: Bill Coleman There are certain numbers in baseball that need no explanation, like .406. Even people who do not follow baseball know what it means. Ted_Williams, the Boston Red Sox’s 22-year-old hitting prodigy, finished the 1941 season with a batting average of .406, which is the last time a major-league player finished a full…
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When Baseball Was Still “Base Ball” – Part II
Note: This is the second half of a two part post. Read the first part here. By: Bill Coleman Baseball Before It Became a Business There is another reason that vintage base ball played under the direction of the Vintage Base Ball Association (VBBA) can feel almost surreal to modern fans. The game exists outside…
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When Baseball Was Still “Base Ball” – Part I
Note: This is a two part post with the second half found here. By Bill Coleman Inside the Vintage Base Ball Association—and the remarkable movement bringing the 19th century’s game back to life On a summer afternoon, the baseball field looks almost right. There are nine men in the field, a batter waits at home…
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The Bird Who Captured Baseball
By Bill Coleman The Unforgettable Summer of Mark Fidrych By the summer of 1976, baseball needed something unexpected. Free agency was arriving. Television was changing sports. Attendance in some cities felt flat. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a young pitcher with blond curls, endless energy and a habit of talking to baseballs became the most…
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Next Stop: The Ballpark
By: Bill Coleman When Major League Baseball Players Skip the Luxury Car and Take the Train! Professional baseball players are often associated with luxury SUVs, chauffeured town cars and gated communities. Yet throughout Major League Baseball history, a surprising number of stars have preferred something much more ordinary: public transportation. Whether it’s the New York…
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Stolen Bases*
The number of stolen bases in baseball has fluctuated greatly over time. Some of those periods and the causes of those fluctuations include: The latest change in stolen base activity occurred with the introduction of analytics into the game in the early 2000’s. Prior to that, in the 1990’s there were regularly more than 3,000 successful…
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When the Money Reached the Diamond: MLB’s Biggest Gambling Scandals
By Bill Coleman For more than a century, Major League Baseball has treated gambling as its greatest threat to competitive integrity. While players have battled performance-enhancing drugs, sign-stealing controversies, and labor disputes, nothing has frightened baseball executives more than the possibility that the outcome of games could be influenced by betting interests. From the infamous…
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Ed Kranepool – The Original Mr. Met
By Stephen Kohn I met Ed Kranepool in the late 60’s at an autograph event in my hometown on Long Island. I was an avid Mets fan since 1965 and meeting him was a real thrill. He was one of the original New York Mets and his jersey number 7 became my favorite number throughout…
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Fidel Castro and the Island Game: Power, Politics and a Lifelong Love of Baseball
By Bill Coleman Few political figures of the 20th century are as tightly bound to a single sport as Fidel Castro was to baseball. In Cuba, baseball is not just a pastime, it is a cultural language, a shared rhythm and Castro spoke it fluently. Long before he became the face of revolution, he was a tall,…