No other term is linked more to the Baltimore Orioles of the old days and to the Deadball Era than the Baltimore Chop. This batting technique was refined by the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s. In the Deadball Era, a period in which runs were not scored by a lot of home runs, every team…
Today, 67 years ago, six MLB owners but two voted against Bill Veeck’s plan to move the ailing St. Louis Browns to Baltimore. This signaled the end of Veeck as the owner of the St. Louis Browns. Through the decades, the St. Louis Browns served as the doormat of the American League. In the 51…
As you may know by now, I am a logo nut. The added Youtube clip shows a broad variety of logos through the years per club. Where many clubs went through a lot of logo changes, some only had a few. Take the New York Mets for example. From the club’s inaugural year, it had…
Today, 107 years ago, the Amsterdamsche Honkbalclub (AHC) Quick was founded. The club from Amsterdam survived several critical periods in its history but eventually stood the test of time to become Europe’s oldest existing baseball club. On March 1, 1913, a group of friends founded AHC Quick at the Parkzicht hotel. From the start, the…
On this day, sixty years ago, a wrecking ball, adorned as a baseball, will start the demolition of the home of the former Ebbets Field. After forty-seven years, the legendary ballpark will be erased. The iconic ballpark was opened on April 9, 1913. In the previous years, Dodgers’ owner Charlie Ebbets, bought pieces of land…
Today a hundred years ago, the first professional negro league was founded. On the first day of a two-day meeting, eight team owners meet at the YMCA in Kansas City to create one of the most successful Negro League Baseball entities. Next to establishing the Negro National League, its governing body the National Association of Colored…
Shortly after the 1913 World Series, that was won by the Philadelphia Athletics with its A$100,000 infield, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, Charles Comiskey and the manager of the New York Giants, John McGraw, started a promotional tour around the globe. According to the legend, Charles Comiskey and John McGraw made the plan…
If there is one player made famous by a novel and/or a movie, it must be Archibald “Moonlight” Graham. The obscure ballplayer played an important part in the novel “Shoeless Joe” and the movie that was made after the novel “Field of Dreams. Graham was made famous for his one game in the 1905 season…
In today’s episode of Minor League History, we pay attention to the Mississippi Valley League. This was a class D league that ran from 1922 through 1933. Only in its last year of operation, the league got the B classification. In its first year of operation, the league contained six teams; five from Iowa and…
In this episode of Minor League History, we pay attention to the Missouri-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas League or MINK League for short. The league was rather short-lived and lasted for three and a half seasons. The Class D MINK League started in 1910 and ran until mid-June 1913 before if folded. In the first three seasons, the league…
