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Here’s my latest video:

I’ll have more detailed information and clippings in the future. For now, enjoy the video!

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The end of the daytime World Series game came in 1985.

Yes, yes, I know they played one game in the afternoon in 1987 as a kind of experiment. It didn’t work well, though you could argue that whatever ratings ABC got that year were probably due to the Series featuring teams from Minnesota and St. Louis, and not because people don’t like World Series day games.

But what you probably don’t realize is that there was a little bit of a push to get daytime World Series games back in 1986.

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Perhaps Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News said it best:

Lupica wasn’t the only one who felt this way:

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And it actually seems that Commissioner Ueberroth considered the idea for a while:

But, of course, the idea didn’t last long.

It might have helped a bit that the World Series was dominated by west coast teams (especially the Oakland Athletics) in the late 1980s. But, for one reason or another, the powers that be have never really given the weekend day World Series game a try.

What do you think? Is this a mistake? Or does the market dictate that day games are obsolete in October?

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While working on a different project for a different sport, I came across this article:

I’m not sure if you’ve rewatched the 1986 World Series or not. I’ve watched the last two games several times, though the first couple of games are a bit harder to get through. Of course, I never thought that Scully was even the least bit biased in his broadcast.

But, then again, maybe I was wrong. After all, the New York and Boston newspapers were convinced that something was going on.

The cool thing is that newspapers covered televised sports all the time back in those days. Of course, this is back when newspapers employed television critics, which is something that kids these days like can’t even dream of. And NBC’s broadcast of the 1986 World Series got some pretty poor reviews right from the start:

The New York papers started criticizing Scully and Garagiola the very next day:

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Newsday, however, was a bit more positive:

A few days later, the Boston Globe subtly criticized Scully for talking too much by noticing that he didn’t say quite as much in the fifth game:

The New York press, meanwhile, was still on the attack:

Of course, if you read through these articles, you’ll notice that fans of the team trailing tended to portray themselves as the victims of whatever it is they thought Scully and Garagiola were doing in the booth.

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Some of these articles are actually quite well written:

October 26, of course, was the day after that infamous game 6. Interestingly enough, the Boston press was rather kind to Scully and Garagiola after that one:

And there was this little tidbit that you probably haven’t heard of before:

Anyway, when it was all said and done, the Boston press seemed to be somewhat sour on Scully and Garagiola, despite the earlier praise:

But was it really negative? The paper seemed to do an about-face the next day:

And I’m guessing that you’ve probably never heard of the “Lost In Space” episode the article refers to.

In the end, the 1986 World Series really took its toll on Vin Scully:

In the end, though, the fans were the ones whose opinion really mattered. And, to be honest with you, it’s kind of fun to read these old letters to the editor, especially as a baseball fan:

And I think we’ll give the last word to Erma Arcio:

Having watched that 1986 NLCS several times, I’m not sure I agree that McCarver was less biased than Scully and Garagiola. But maybe I’m biased. What do you think?

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Out of curiosity, I took a look at some of the mainstream media articles that were published in the lead up to the beginning of the Designated Hitter rule.

I came across this interesting Boston Globe article from December 31, 1972:

This part right here is the reason that has been traditionally passed down for the implementation of the Designated Hitter. Or, to put it in numerical terms, the American League had a batting average of .239 in 1972, while the National League had a batting average of .248.

To put that in context, the current MLB-wide batting average in 2026 is .244.

But maybe it wasn’t only about batting average:

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Now, you’d think that World Series games would naturally draw sellout crowd. And it did in those days - well, for the most part, that is.

World Series games in Baltimore occasionally struggled to draw a large crowd. For example, game 6 of the 1971 World Series had an attendance of a little over 44,000, compared to well over 53,000 for games 1 and 2. Game 7 drew a little over 47,000 fans, and game 5 of the 1970 World Series famously drew only about 45,000 fans.

But the more interesting question here is the one about the influence of television on the sport.

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Sure, The Boston Globe was going to put the blame on the hated Yankees. That’s only natural.

But could it potentially be true that there was pressure from big television to stop pitchers from hitting in hopes of increasing the amount of action in each game?

This is a pretty interesting article in general. Harold Kaese reminds us of the sort of moments we’d miss with the Designated Hitter in place:

And even pinch hitting occasionally created interesting moments:

Of course, pinch hitting hasn’t completely disappeared. But there is an interesting point here.

So what do you think? Was it a television conspiracy? Or is this article full of hot air?

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Though this seems like a distant memory, there actually was a time when the powers in charge of Major League Baseball seriously considered banning the Designated Hitter.

There were movements that would crop up every few years to get rid of the deporable concept of having a man hit who didn’t need to play the field. Sadly, the movement never really gained steam, though it apparently did come close to success in late 1990.

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This was when Fay Vincent was Commissioner, back when things in Major League Baseball seemed a little bit more calm and sane. And there are articles like this one to prove that it really did happen:

There was quite a bit of irony here, of course. Lou Pinella, who was managing the Cincinnati Reds in 1990, happened to be the first American League player to receive the Designated Hitter spot in the lineup for a World Series game. That happened back in 1976, which really wasn’t that long ago in 1990.

Though Vincent’s push wound up for naught in the end, the movement did gather quite a bit of attention, even in places relatively far from big cities:

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Though 1990 might not seem like a long time ago for many of my readers, the truth is that it was over 35 years ago. And, since it’s been so long, it’s refreshing to look back and see what the average Joe on the street thought of the whole thing:

So what do you think? Was it right to make the DH universal? Should it have been scrapped all along? Or are you somewhere in the middle?

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I was listening recently to a copy of the radio broadcast of game 4 of the 1990 World Series.

I don’t know how old you were in October 1990. I was 6 years old; old enough to remember watching the game on television, but not quite old enough to really appreciate what I was seeing.

Anyway, one thing I had completely forgotten about the 1990 World Series is the fact that José Canseco was benched for the deciding 4th game of the series.

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It might not seem like much today, of course. Canseco isn’t thought of quite as fondly these days as he was back in the late 1980s.

You have to remember that Canseco burst on the baseball scene like a bomb back in 1986. He hit 33 home runs at the young age of 21, and only improved from that. He famously became the first man with 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season in 1988, which is also the year he won his first and only Most Valuable Player award.

Canseco was big, big news, especially in 1990. In fact, the 1990 Athletics are still remembered as one of the greatest teams in American League history, largely because of the Canseco / McGwire power hitting combination. Most of us also forget that the Athletics had Rickey Henderson, Willie McGee, Harold Baines, and a pitching staff that ranked up with the best teams of all time.

And yet Canseco’s power was completely gone in October, and the A’s were swept by the unhearlded Cincinnati Reds.

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Canseco did manage to make a brief appearance in that fourth game. He came in as a pinch hitter for none other than Harold Baines in the bottom of the 9th inning, down by a run.

He managed to ground out weakly to third base.

Now, it is true that Canseco had some physical ailments during that series. He struggled with injuries in 1989, and wasn’t really 100% for most of the 1990 season. And it turns out that heavy steroid use isn’t some sort of magic formula to make all your physical problems go away.

But it still boggles my mind that Canseco was benched in an elimination game like that. And I’m not sure if I can think of any good parallels in baseball history.

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With all of this talk recently about 1932 in this blog, I decided to take a peek at some of the old issues of The Sporting News from that year.

You’ve got to remember that The Sporting News was essentially the only place for baseball fans to communicate with each other. There was no television, obviously, and we were a long way away from the eventual development of the internet. Radio did exist, but sports talk radio wouldn’t be a thing for decades to come.

And so the best fans could do is write to publications like The Sporting News and hope that their modest letters would be printed.

And, well, sometimes those letters would stir up a storm:

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The key here is this talk about Lefty Gomez being put in during the “soft spots.”

Gomez had a heck of a year in 1932, of course. That’s the year he went 24-7. His 4.21 ERA probably wasn’t much to write home about, but he still managed to complete 31 of the 37 games he started despite giving up his fair share of runs.

Sugar Cain, by the way, lost that game to Gomez 5-1 in front of only 5,000 people at Shibe Park. That’s pretty disappointing, especially when you realize that the Athletics were three time defending American League champions.

Anyway, The Sporting News gave Gomez his due a week later with this short blurb on the front page:

But that wasn’t quite enough to satisfy the fans.

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And so, on July 14th, the Gomez supporters came out in full force:

It’s a shame that the quality of these images isn’t much better. Regardless, this gives you at least a taste of what the age old debates were like even back in those days.

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Remember how I mentioned the 1932 Philadelphia Athletics the other day?

Well, surely you’ve heard of this game, right?

This was the highest scoring game in Major League baseball history for years, until the famous 23-22 Phillies-Cubs game in 1979 shattered all records. And the story behind this one is nothing short of bizarre.

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The Philadelphia Athletics were coming off a bizarre scheduling quirk where they played three doubleheaders in a row against the Chicago White Sox. Two of those games were postponed because of excessive cold in early May; the other one was a postponement because of rain.

With a pitching staff completely depleted by double header duty, Connie Mack made the controversial decision to bring only two pitchers with him to Cleveland.

Now, you need to understand that the only reason the Athletics played in Cleveland on July 10th, a Sunday, is because of the old Blue Laws in Philadelphia. The Athletics were not allowed to play any home baseball games in Philadelphia on Sundays.

Back in the real old days, around 1900 or 1901 or so, the Philadelphia teams used to skirt the law by playing games in rural towns outside Philadelphia. Of course, by 1932 baseball was big business, and the Depression meant that there wasn’t much money in those small towns anyway. And so Connie Mack and his crew faced a one game road trip.

Mack decided that he would only bring pitchers Lew Krausse and Eddie Rommel with him to Cleveland, leaving the rest of his pitchers home. This was actually pretty common back in the deadball era, and is one of those quirks that most modern replayers tend to forget about. You’d have to closely read the daily newspapers to understand who was actually with the team on which road trip.

Of course, Mack had no idea what was coming.

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Philadelphia’s problem is that Lew Krausse didn’t get past the first inning. He gave up 3 runs on 4 hits and looked awful. Philadelphia had given him two runs in the top of the first, but he managed to give up 3 in the bottom of the inning.

Eddie Rommel came in to relieve Krausse, and wound up going 17 innings.

It’s not that Rommel pitched well, of course. He gave up a whopping 14 runs, 13 of which were earned. He walked 9 and struck out only 7. He also gave up 29 hits, which very well might be a record for a relief pitching performance.

The ball seemed to fly all over the park that afternoon. Philadelphia scored 7 times in the top of the 7th inning, only to give up 6 runs in the bottom of the 7th. The Athletics went out in front by one with 2 in the top of the 9th, only to blow the lead in the bottom of the 9th. It was one of those games, that’s for sure.

The real hero was almost certainly Johnny Burnett, who managed 9 hits in the madness:

And this headline says it all:

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Though I don’t watch as much baseball these days as I should, I still try to follow the game as closely as I can. And so I was pretty interested the other day when Bryce Harper hit for the cycle and Kyle Schwarber managed to hit three home runs.

It’s happened before in history, though you have to go back nearly 100 years. And, as Not Gaetti tells us in this tweet, the last time this happened was pretty significant:

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That 1932 game took place in Philadelphia on June 3rd.

Now, it’s easy to forget that the New York Yankees weren’t necessarily all that dominant int he early 1930s. In fact, the Philadelphia Athletics had won three straight American League pennants (1929-1931) and had managed to win the World Series twice during that stretch. In 1931, the Athletics won a whopping 107 games, but managed to lose the World Series in 7 games to the Cardinals.

In other words, this wasn’t one of those second division Athletics teams.

However, Philadelphia was struggling a bit in the standings in early June:

And, yeah, the Red Sox were pretty bad in the 1930s.

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The other thing to note is that the newspapers really only highlighted Gehrig’s four home runs in a single game. Not even Babe Ruth had done that; in fact, that feat hadn’t happened since 1894:

The Philadelphia press also didn’t have much to say about Lazzeri hitting for the cycle:

The other somewhat bizarre feature of that game is that the Athletics were ahead as late as the top of the 6th inning. The Yankees did most of their scoring late, taking advantage of some really poor Philadelphia relief pitching:

And, of course, the real headline that day had nothing to do with Gehrig hitting four home runs or Lazzeri hitting for the cycle. Instead, everybody’s attention was paid to the other New York team:

Sometimes the story around the game is bigger than the game itself.

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There’s a general assumption among many baseball historians that the 1950s marked a major period of decline in Major League Baseball attendance.

It’s true, of course. The neighborhoods in which the old stadiums were located were increasingly becoming run down, and people who really cared about the sport could follow more games on television than ever before.

But what we tend to forget is that the malaise and decline continued on through the mid-1960s.

While doing a bit more research on the odd phenomenon of the 1964 pennant races being played in front of sparse audiences, I came across this article by none other than the famous Bill Veeck:

Now, just so you’re aware, Bill Veeck did not own any Major League Baseball team at this time. This was in that odd period of time between when Veeck sold the Chicago White Sox in 1961 and when he purchased the team again in 1975.

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Veeck is a fascinating person whose Wikipeda page oddly doesn’t really do him justice. He was a master of independent fundraising techniques, and was a constant thorn in the side of the traditional Major League Baseball owners and the way things had always been done.

And so it must have felt natural for him to write this article about how baseball attendance wasn’t really all that great.

Of course, that’s not extremely difficult math to figure. And the part that Veeck doesn’t tell you is that he was personally responsible for quite a bit of that 20.9 million total in 1948. His Cleveland Indians drew huge crowds by combining well thought out promotions with a team that actually played well and had good players (imagine that!).

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Now, the baseball establishment had learned a thing or two from Veeck - well, sort of, that is. The problem, of course, is that Major League Baseball teams in those days had promotions and special events that were utterly predictable and entirely corporate in nature. Sort of like what happens today, by the way.

Anyway, there’s a bit of Veeck for your Saturday.

Honestly, I think that Major League Baseball is actually in danger of going down the same path once again, assuming that it hasn’t gone that far already. And the rumors of pending labor trouble are certainly not helping things.

Veeck understood that baseball was entertainment, first and foremost, and did his best in very difficult circumstances to provide both quality baseball and a reason for casual fans to go to the ballpark.

We don’t have anything like him today. Local baseball broadcasts are slow and predictable, special events no longer feel special, and over half the teams in the Major Leagues would rather plead poverty than make a free agent signing.

We could use another Veeck.

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While I was listening to a broadcast of the famous September 30, 1964 Reds at Pirates game, I noticed that the announcers kept mentioning other pivotal regular season games that were scoreless for a long time.

I figured that I’d take a look at a few of those games. However, the most interesting is almost certainly the August 1, 1918 Pirates at Braves game.

This game was played under less than ideal circumstances. The Great War was pending, and there were reports all over the press that baseball players were going to walk away from the sport in large numbers to do their patriotic duty:

Unlike that famous 1964 game, neither the Pirates nor the Braves were doing all that well in early August 1918. At least the Pirates were in the first division:

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And this set the stage for one of the craziest baseball games of all time.

Art Nehf of the Braves squared off against Erskine Mayer of the Pirates. And both pitchers were simply excellent.

Mayer overcame numerous offensive assaults by the Braves, including a low line drive to right field by Art Nehf that looked like it would be a sure triple before the Pirates right fielder managed to get to it in time. Boston also managed to load the bases in the bottom of the 12th, but Mayer got Art Wilson to pop out to short to end the threat.

Meanwhile, Art Nehf matched Mayer inning by inning, getting numerous key double plays in the process.

In fact, in the top of the 12th, Nehf managed to get an odd 1-2-3-6 double play when Fritz Mollwitz tried to score Billy Southworth on a squeeze play. Not only did the squeeze not work, but Mollwitz tried in vain to advance to second base.

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It wasn’t until the top of the 21st inning that the Pirates finally stuck enough hits together to defeat Nehf. A Max Carey single and a Billy Southworth double combined to score two runs with two men out, allowing the Pirates to complete the shutout.

Mayer “only” managed to stay in there for 15 1/3 innings, while Wilbur Cooper picked up the remaining 5 2/3 in relief. Art Nehf, meanwhile, pitched a full 21 innings in a losing cause, allowing 2 runs on 12 hits and walking 5 while striking out 8.

Naturally, the papers realized that the game was something unusual:

Unfortunately, the incredible ballgame was overshadowed by all the talk of war in Europe.

But it’s still amazing to me that two teams could play for 20 innings without scoring a single run.

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When most people talk about the 1964 National League pennant race, they talk about the Philadelphia Phillies having that famous collapse.

The collapse of the 1964 Phillies is certainly an interesting story. However, there’s another story that nobody talks about.

On September 20, 1964, the Cincinnati Reds hosted the St. Louis Cardinals. The Major League standings looked like this:

The Reds wound up with a fairly predictable crowd of a little over 11,500 that day:

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The Reds then went on an 8 game road trip. They won all 8 of those games, including a three game series at Philadelphia.

When the Reds returned to Cincinnati on September 29, the National League standings looked like this:

That’s right. In that short space of time, the Reds went from third place and a hopeless 7 games out to first place.

Surely the Reds filled up Crosley Field against the Pirates, right?

Wrong.

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This is the part that I just don’t understand.

The Reds were tied for first place after that 9th inning loss to Pittsburgh. They had another evening game on September 30th, which wound up being a tremendous 1-0 16 inning loss to the Pirates, in what still is honestly one of the greatest regular season games in National League history.

I haven’t been able to locate a suitable original newspaper boxscore for that game, since it lasted deep into the night. However, as Baseball Reference reports, the attendance was just a little bit over 8,000.

The town that was in first place, the town that should have gone baseball crazy, barely decided to show up for one of the biggest games in one of the greatest pennant races of all time.

And people noticed.

For instance, this came from a Dick Forbes column on September 30:

And this was printed the very next day:

Now, it is true that Crosley Field wasn’t exactly the greatest ballpark in the world. It was a small bandbox, and could seat maybe 29,600 at most at that time.

And, actually, the fact that the stadiums in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Philadelphia were all so old is one of the reasons why that 1964 season is so interesting. All three teams wound up with new cookie cutter stadiums in less than a decade. This really was the last stand for those old classic ballparks - one more exciting pennant race for the road.

We tend to think of Crosley Field as one of those classic old stadiums, and there are always people who wonder why in the world we got rid of it in the first place. But, then again, we don’t talk much about articles like this one:

Anyway, I don’t know. Maybe Crosley Field was in the wrong neighborhood. Maybe it was too small. Maybe people just didn’t care for whatever reason.

It’s still a mystery to me, though - especially that awful attendance for that classic September 30th game. I’d love to know if you’ve got any theories as to why attendance was so bad.

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In my opinion, a lot of the magic of baseball was lost when the Major Leagues switched over to divisions.

Yeah, I know - nobody wants to cheer for a 9th place team that is 40 games out of first place. However, no October magic these days can come even close to what we once had with the classic pennant races.

I’ve spent a little bit of time over the past few days listening to St. Louis radio broadcasts from late September 1964. And, of course, there’s a story behind these.

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Now, you can listen to these recordings if you want. They’re up for download in the member’s section of this blog.

Note, however, that the games are not complete. I’ve presented the recordings exactly how I received them, and I’m not the one who digitized these older games.

These recordings seem to originally come from John Miley, well known for The Miley Collection. Based on the numerous Miley recordings I’ve been able to acquire, it seems that John started recording radio broadcasts of sporting events using a reel-to-reel recorder sometime in the 1950s.

However, John went a step further than what you’d expect. Rather than keeping the original broadcasts fully intact, John cut them up and edited them. There are numerous reels out there featuring John himself guiding the listener through sport highlights that last several months.

I think John did this in part to conserve reels and to reuse old tape, and also in part to develop his own announcing skills. And, when it comes to developing announcing skills, I can only sympathize with his dreams.

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Though I’m fairly certain that a lot of these recordings could never be sold because they were broken up this way, there are some real gems here.

For example, KMOX in St. Louis maintained a direct telephone connection with KDKA in Pittsburgh to relay information from the Pirates - Reds series on September 29 and September 30, 1964. This includes the famous 16 1-0 inning game that the Pirates won in Cincinnati on September 30, the game that allowed the Cardinals to finally take sole control of first place.

It’s fascinating to go back and listen to this stuff, especially since the technology in those days was primitive. They didn’t relay the actual broadcast. Rather, Bob Prince, Jim Woods, and Claude Haring took turns talking with KMOX on the telephone, and the station simply played the voice from the telephone receiver over the air.

Oh, and by the way, the ratings for this were astronomically high:

That 90% rating is so astronomically high that I’m having a hard time fathoming it. I suppose it was helpful that the game was played so late at night. Still, it’s amazing to me that so few people opted to listen to late evening music instead of the ball game.

Of course, you didn’t see pennant races like these every year:

But we did have them every once in a while. And when the magic would happen, it was far better and much more exciting than any manufactured October drama ever could be.

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If you were curious, I can confirm with full confidence that Twitter is just as bad for serious baseball discussions today as it was years ago.

I ran into this Not Gaetti tweet the other day:

Of course, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible player, sure.

But my good friend Not Gaetti has a good point here. Ohtani, as good as he is offensively, is nowhere near as dominant as Ruth was. And Ruth was an excellent pitcher as well, though we tend to forget that part.

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In fact, when Ruth was purchased by the Yankees in January 1920, he was just as much a pitcher as he was a hitter:

In fact, Ruth probably could have hit even more home runs if the Red Sox had been willing to put him in the lineup every single day in 1919:

And there were rumors in the air that Ruth might also join the Yankees’ pitching staff in 1920:

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But the other argument here is the old “plumber” argument.

This argument is something along the lines of saying that all the ballplayers of a certain era of the past were horrible athletes that would never even make the field these days.

Occasionally these arguments are exaggerated to a bizarre extent. For example, you’ll see people who claim that pitchers maxed out at 80 miles per hour or so before World War 2, which is a pretty crazy exaggeration.

If you read Walter Johnson’s Wikipedia page, you’ll see something in there about a 1917 military test indicating that the Big Train could throw a little over 130 feet per second, or around 91 miles per hour. I haven’t been able to find contemporary reporting of that feat. However, I was able to find a similar test that was conducted sometime around 1913 and was reported on in numerous newspapers around the country:

I’m not sure if this test was later repeated, or if Johnson’s speed was simply misreported as the years went by. I do know, however, that Johnson likely could have thrown the ball faster had he been fully warmed up. And I’m also convinced that they called him “The Big Train” because his fastball was faster than the 20th Century Limited.

The more you read about the feats of players of the past, the more you’ll understand that they were quite a bit better than the critics give them credit for. The truth is that baseball was organized and quite popular 110 years ago - probably more popular in those days than today, as a matter of fact. And it simply wasn’t the sort of sport where a guy with no athletic talent at all was going to last long at any level, let alone at the highest level of play.

So here’s to Ruth.

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If you ever wonder why Bill James became big when he became big, I think this article might provide some insight:

You see, the early years of baseball arbitration weren’t exactly the best from a scientific perspective. And the problem lay in the lack of an effective way to statistically measure the value of baseball players against each other.

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This article was printed in April 1975, of course. We were still a few years away from the development of The Bill James Baseball Abstract, a book that really didn’t become anything big until early 1982.

But you can see the seeds of Jamesian thinking in this article. I mean, just look at what Marvin Miller is talking about here. Per Martin, arbitrators didn’t understand:

• The fact that big name stars cannot possibly win the MVP award every single year

• The fact that winning 19 games instead of 21 as a pitcher is not necessarily a big step backwards

• The fact that an increase of 0.10 in ERA from one year to the next is not statistically significant or indicative of anything

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• The fact that leadoff hitters naturally have fewer RBIs than cleanup hitters

And I’m sure that there were more points that simply didn’t make it to press.

The funny thing, of course, is that these are all points that Bill James made throughout the early years of the Abstract. And, interestingly enough, research into sabermetrics and the way baseball players actually compete with each other wind up helping players earn a lot of arbitration victories as time went on.

Of course, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to research baseball in a way that is actually relevant and meaningful. But you probably didn’t realize that there were financial incentives behind it from the beginning.

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If you’ve ever seriously studied the history of Major League Baseball, you know that the sport has been “dying” for decades now.

In fact, it’s surprisingly hard to find a period of time in the long and storied history of the sport at the highest level in which pundits weren’t declaring the modern form of the game an utter failure, or predicting that the entire enterprise would soon come crashing down.

And I’d argue that we’ve seen a return to form, especially with the current squabbling over the next collective bargaining agreement.

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Of course, there are hundreds of media sources out there where you can find every take imaginable on the salary cap issue, or on the salary floor issue, or on how big or small the gap between the two ought to be if there is an agreement in the end.

But the thing that you might find interesting is that people were talking about how this very issue would destroy the fabric of the game as far back as 50 years ago.

After a very quick search, I was able to find this long forgotten AP piece from April 1977:

Of course, the funny thing about this article is that Major League Baseball somehow survived the early years of free agency.

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In fact, if these researchers had taken a step back to thing about it, they’d realize that the only reason Major League teams were willing to pay high dollar amounts for free agents is because they figured that they could afford the players.

This isn’t to say that a completely unrestricted market is necessarily the way to go, of course. As I’ve noticed in a few recent OOTP projects, the world of free agency becomes increasingly difficult when the difference between the minimum salary and the median salary for a run-of-the-mill free agent is a significant amount of money. At some point in time the poorer teams simply stop trying to spend money on free agents, and try instead to build up as many good young players as possible.

But the idea that we would have to move to all paid television or enforce home town teams or whatever is completely laughable.

Anyway, I hope that there won’t be a work stoppage in 2027. If I were a betting man, though, I’d bet money on it.

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As objectionable as it can be, sometimes the best inspiration comes from random posts on X.

This caught my attention last night:

Bumpus Jones managed to pitch a no-hitter in his first game for the old Cincinnati Reds, and then proceeded to fall apart the next season.

But the story here is even more interesting than the Baseball Reference page reveals.

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You see, the Bumpus no-hitter came on the last day of the season in 1892, after everybody had given up on the sport.

It was October 15, 1892. That’s right: back in the really old days the season didn’t end until mid-October.

As was common in those days, the game started at 3 PM, despite the fact that there must not have been much afternoon sunlight in mid-October in Cincinnati.

Of course, most people didn’t care about the meaningless Pittsburgh - Cincinnati game. Both teams were a long way out of the pennant race by this time:

You’re probably wondering what happened to all the games. It turns out that 1892 was the one and only time in National League history where the season was split into two halves. This was also the first time the National League experimented with a 154 game season, and I presume that the owners wanted to make sure that teams weren’t so far out of first place by the end of the season that fans simply wouldn’t show up.

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Of course, that didn’t help things in Cincinnati that afternoon. Only 800 people bothered to see the last game of the season.

The few that did show up saw something unforgettable.

Jones, of course, had actually played in the minor leagues before his major league debut. In other words, this newspaper article kind of exaggerates his accomplishment a tad.

But it’s still impressive that he was able to throw a no-hitter in his first major league game, even if nobody was there to see it.

So why did Jones fall apart?

It turns out that the pitching mound moved back before the 1893 season to 60 feet 6 inches from home plate. And, well, Bumpus simply couldn’t adjust.

And so there you have the story of the young phenom who only had a single good game, and who was out of the major leagues for good halfway through the next season.

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Every now and then I like to look around old issues of The Sporting News at random to see if anything interesting pops out.

I found something at least somewhat odd from 1911.

Back in those days, it was pretty common to see major disagreements between the clubs and the umpires. Part of the problem, of course, is that there really wasn’t much supervision of the umpires. The American and National Leagues weren’t really staffed well enough to keep tabs on all umpires at all times, and there was obviously no television to record things.

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Horace Fogel, who owned the Philadelphia Phillies, proposed that the National League employ “umpire scouts” that would travel in secret and at random to various National League games to check up on the umpires:

This was actually a pretty practical solution to the problem. There were only 8 teams in the National League, and so having four scouts on hand would have taken care of every single game.

But, of course, newspapers in 1911 were run by men who had legendary senses of humor.

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And so the St. louis Post-Dispatch decided to run this cartoon on May 24:

This cartoon was reprinted in The Sporting News on June 1st, though the reprinted version is kind of hard to make out. The above scan is better.

Anyway, the cartoon takes the “umpire scout” idea out of context, and makes it look like the scouts would be going to find new umpires. But it’s still pretty funny.

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I was recently able to get an almost full, high quality copy of the July 28, 1977 Reds at Cubs broadcast.

And, let me tell you, if you don’t know about this game you really need to check it out.

You see, back in the 1970s and 1980s Wrigley Field was notorious for occasionally having absolutely wild high scoring games. I’m sure you’ve already heard about (or watched, or listened to) the 23-22 1979 Phillies at Cubs game, for example.

That game had crazy scoring throughout the entire contest. This one from 1977, however, is actually more dramatic and more bizarre.

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The first thing you need to understand is that the 1977 Chicago Cubs were actually a pretty good team.

This was a Cubs team that featured Bill Buckner and Manny Trillo in their prime, as well as a 31-year-old Bobby Murcer. Greg Gross was still with the Cubs in those days, and the pitchers included names like Rick Reuschel, Bruce Sutter, Willie Hernandez, and Donnie Moore.

Though Baseball Reference will tell you that the 1977 Cubs wound up with a less-than-impressive 81-81 record, the truth is that the Cubs were in first place for huge stretches of the 1977 season. In fact, on July 28, 1977, both the Cubs and the White Sox were sitting pretty in pole position:

Anyway, a crowd of over 31,000 showed up around 1 PM on July 28th to see the Cubs take on the Big Red Machine at Wrigley. The Reds were off to a slower than usual start - but, of course, everybody wanted to see the Cubs in action.

As for the game? Well, this pretty much tells the story:

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And, beleive it or not, that front page article doesn’t even come close to doing this game justice. Highlights included the following:

Jose Cardenal, who had injury problems all season, came in as a pinch hitter for shortstop Ivan de Jesus in the bottom of the 8th inning. Cardenal played shortstop for the first time in his career, and played second base as well. In the 9th inning, Jose Cardenal and Dave Rosello swapped positions depending on the handedness of the opposing batter.

Bobby Murcer played shortstop for the first time since 1966, and also wound up platooning between second base and shortstop with Dave Rosello. Cardenal went to the outfield, mostly because his throws to first base tended to be a second or two too late.

The Cubs overcame a 6 run deficit in the first inning and another 4 run deficit in the 8th inning.

And, of course, like in all great games, the extra innings were filled with action, just as much as the regulation innings.

Anyway, if you haven’t listened to this game before, you really should. It’s absolutely wild. And I’ve got a really nice sounding copy in the “Remastered Radio Broadcasts” link in the Members Area.

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Johnny Beazley had bounced around the St. Louis Cardinals farm system for a few years before his big chance came.

After he went 16-12 in New Orleans in 1941 with a 3.61 ERA, the Cardinals gave him a chance. He pitched a single complete game in 1941 at the age of 23, was invited to Spring Training in 1942, and wound up becoming a major star for the Cardinals during their rush to the title.

Now, Beazley’s story is interesting in part because things didn’t turn out the way he expected. The war intervened, and Johnny pitched so hard and so often to entertain the troops that he wound up throwing his arm off. He simply wasn’t the same pitcher when he returned to civilian life in 1946.

But the other interesting story for us is how much money Johnny was making. Or, perhaps I should say how little money he was making compared to others in Major League Baseball at the time.

And this wasn’t some obscure point of trivia, either. Newspapers actually reported on salaries from time to time even back then.

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I’m not sure what the waiver price was in 1942, though my guess is that it was probably something like $5,000.

In another article, commenting on the fact that the Cardinals were drawing home crowds of under 3,000 fans during the pennant stretch, there was this snippet:

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And there was this as well:

So precisely how much as Beazley earning? It seems that he was somewhere around $3,500 or so:

Then again, you’ve got to remember that $3,500 a year wasn’t exactly poverty wages in 1942. That’s evidenced by this anecdote (and I don’t know why they called Beazley “Bill”):

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