Recently added articles from The Baseball Research Journal:
Note from the editor.(Column)
Jan 01, 2008; ... When we become perfect, so will The Baseball Research Journal, at which point we won't need it anymore, because we'll already know everything. And it won't need us. It won't need us to read it--to examine it for holes in its swing and glitches in its mechanics or to let it know that, if it ...
Correspondence.(Letter to the editor)
Jan 01, 2008; ... A perusal of the 2008 National Pastime leads me to comment on one of its articles. On pages 35-39 is an article by Randy Fisher and Jami N. Fisher, "The Deaf and the Origin of Hand Signals in Baseball." The article strongly suggests that deaf players were responsible for the ...
Roland Hemond: if you can't take part in a sport, be one anyway, will you?
Jan 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Roland Hemond has made lasting and unprecedented contributions to professional baseball with seven major-league teams. Born in 1929 to parents of French-Canadian heritage in Central Falls, Rhode Island, Hemond is one of the industry's most respected and ...
National Cartwright Day and the first televised major-league game.(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... On Saturday, August 26, 1939, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds played a double-header at Ebbets Field. The opening game is noted for being the first televised major-league game and for the celebrations afterward in honor of Alexander Cartwright Jr., who had been admitted into the ...
George Sisler: a close look at vision problems that derailed him.(Essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... There is no question that, when a hitter takes stock of his prize possessions, the eyes have it. In the early twentieth century, the great ones such as Cobb, Hornsby, and Lajoie refrained from reading newspapers or books. They even stayed away from movie houses, believing they were ...
Major-league players who wore glasses.(professional baseball players)
Jan 01, 2008; ... You can't hit it if you can't see it. Success in baseball requires good visual skills, including being able to see clearly. Many people need glasses or contact lenses. The most common reason for using them before age 40 is myopia (nearsightedness), which affects 20 to 30 percent of young ...
History versus Harry Frazee: re-revising the story.
Jan 01, 2008; ... When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, it was their fifth triumph in the fifteen years of the modern classic. The club had the best player in baseball, outfielder-pitcher Babe Ruth, another top hitter in Harry Hooper, star catcher Wally Schang, and four other pitching ...
George H. Lawson: the rogue who tried to reform baseball.(Biography)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Few men appear to have been less qualified to take a stand against professional baseball's greatest shame, the unwritten "color line" that segregated the sport for seventy years, than George H. Lawson (1864-1927). Lawson lived in the shadow of his more notorious brother, Alfred W. Lawson ...
Beating the Klan: baseball coverage in Wichita before integration, 1920-1930.
Jan 01, 2008; ... Baseball fans planning to attend the game at Island Park in Wichita, Kansas, on June 21, 1925, were advised by the Wichita Beacon, the afternoon newspaper, that "strangle holds, razors, horsewhips, and other violent implements of argument" would be barred at the gate. (1) The fear was not ...
Hitting streaks don't obey your rules: evidence that hitting streaks aren't just by-products of random variation.(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Professional athletes naturally experience hot and cold streaks. However, there's been a debate going on for some time now as to whether professional athletes experience streaks more frequently than we would expect given the players' season statistics. This is also known as having "the hot ...
Clutch hitting and the Cramer test.(baseball)(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Bill James recently asserted that Dick Cramer's famous 1977 clutch-hitting study, which purportedly demonstrated that clutch talent is a myth, was fatally flawed. James argued that the study's finding that year-to-year clutch hitting looks random was not enough to show nonexistence. Here, ...
Mapping the Fog: a response to "Clutch Hitting and the Cramer test".(CLUTCH HITTING)(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... 1. MY MODEL In issue number 33 of The Baseball Research Journal, I published an article entitled "Underestimating the Fog." The thesis of this article is that we in sabermetrics have been relying on a method which doesn't actually work, under closer scrutiny, and we should stop ...
Response to "Mapping the Fog".(baseball clutch hitting)(Letter to the editor)(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... In a famous clutch-hitting study in 1977, Dick Cramer took 122 players who had substantial playing time in both 1969 and 1970. He ran a regression on their 1969 clutch performance versus their 1970 performance. Finding a low correlation, he concluded that clutch performance did not repeat ...
Clutch hitting revisited.(baseball)(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Do clutch hitters exist? More precisely, are there any batters whose performance in critical game situations consistently exceeds expectations, as established both by that batter's performance in less critical situations and also by the relative performance of average batters in critical ...
A pitcher shows his age: the case study of Ace Winger.(baseball)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Ace Winger broke into the big leagues at the tender age of 21 and went on to a productive twenty-year-long pitching career. By the time he hung up his cleats at 40, he had notched 272 victories and logged 4,157 innings. He was known for his command of a bewildering array of pitches as well ...
Ted Williams's "most embarrassing" moment.(professional baseball game )
Jan 01, 2008; ... While off-air, with a tape running, Ted Williams once told a television interviewer: <Pre>The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me was in 1946.We won the pennant, but one night in Washington ... we got beatthat night, 2 to 1-2 to 1. And I hit two triples ...
Bullpen Cy Young Awards: when and why do relievers win it?(PITCHING)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Major League Baseball marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Cy Young Award in 2006. The award was established in 1956 by Commissioner Ford Frick to honor the best pitcher in major league baseball. The award was named for all-time wins-leader Denton True "Cy" Young, who had died the year ...
A farewell to arms: the major leagues in 1968 and the transition to a new modern era.(PITCHING)(Report)
Jan 01, 2008; ... By any measure 1968 was a year of upheaval. Assassinations, riots, protests, and the decision by the incumbent commander in chief to forgo a reelection bid all pointed to the unrest and instability that wracked the nation, and the bloodiest year of fighting in Vietnam did nothing to soothe ...
The OBP Triple Crown.(TRIPLE CROWN)(on-base percentage)(Table)
Jan 01, 2008; ... It's an article of faith these days that batting average is an old-fashioned statistic and that the new Holy Grail for batters is OBP--on-base percentage. The "walk's as good as a hit" approach has a lot to recommend it. After all, the hitter's goal is to get on base and, if possible, help ...
Where have you gone, Carl Yastrzemski? A statistical analysis of the Triple Crown.(TRIPLE CROWN)(Report)(Statistical data)
Jan 01, 2008; ... All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, "There goes the greatest hitter that ever lived." --TED WILLIAMS In the 216 combined seasons of the modern era (1901-2008) in baseball, there have been 14 winners (9 in the American League, 4 ...